The Life of Jesus of Nazareth

A Study

Rush Rhees

1902

Copyright, 1900,

By Charles Scribner's Sons

To

C. W. McC.

In Recognition of Wise Counsel, Generous Help and Loving Appreciation

"I would preach ... the need to the world of the faith in a Christ, the claim that Jesus is the Christ, and the demand for an intelligent faith, which indeed shall transcend but shall not despise knowledge, or neglect to have a knowledge to transcend."--John Patterson Coyle

Preface

The aim of this book is to help thoughtful readers of the gospels to discern more clearly the features of him whom those writings inimitably portray. It is avowedly a study rather than a story, and as a companion to the reading of the gospels it seeks to answer some of the questions which are raised by a sympathetic consideration of those narratives. These answers are offered in an unargumentative way, even where the questions are still in debate among scholars. This method has been adopted because technical discussion would be of interest to but few of those whom the book hopes to serve. On some of the questions a non-committal attitude is taken in the belief that for the understanding of the life of Jesus it is of little importance which way the decision finally goes. Less attention has been given to questions of geography and archæology than to those which have a more vital biographical significance.

A word concerning the point of view adopted. The church has inherited a rich treasure of doctrine concerning its Lord, the result of patient study and, frequently, of heated controversy. It is customary to approach the gospels with this interpretation of Christ as a premise, and such a study has some unquestionable advantages. With the apostles and evangelists, however, the recognition of the divine nature of Jesus was a conclusion from their acquaintance with him. The Man of Nazareth was for them primarily a man, and they so regarded him until he showed them that he was more. Their knowledge of him progressed in the natural way from the human to the divine. The gospels, particularly the first three, are marvels of simplicity and objectivity. Their authors clearly regarded Jesus as the Man from heaven; yet in their thinking they were dominated by the influence of a personal Lord rather than by the force of an accepted doctrine. It is with no lack of reverence for the importance and truth of the divinity of Christ that this book essays to bring the Man Jesus before the mind in the reading of the gospels. The incarnation means that God chose to reveal the divine through a human life, rather than through a series of propositions which formulate truth (Heb. i. 1-4). The most perennially refreshing influence for Christian life and thought is personal discipleship to that Revealer who is able to-day as of old to exhibit in his humanity those qualities which compel the recognition of God manifest in the flesh.

An [Appendix] is added to furnish references to the wide literature of the subject for the aid of those who wish to study it more extensively and technically; also to discuss some questions of detail which could not be considered in the text. This appendix will indicate the extent of my indebtedness to others. I would acknowledge special obligation to Professor Ernest D. Burton, of the University of Chicago, for generous help and permission to use material found in his "Notes on the Life of Jesus;" to Professor Shailer Mathews, also of Chicago, for very valuable criticisms; to my colleague, Professor Charles Rufus Brown, for most serviceable assistance; and to the editors of this series for helpful suggestions and criticism during the making of the book. An unmeasured debt is due to another who has sat at my side during the writing of these pages, and has given constant inspiration, most discerning criticism, and practical aid.

The Newton Theological Institution, April, 1900.

Part I

[Preparatory]

[The Historical Situation] Sections [1]-[19.] Pages [1]-[20]
1. Section [1.] The Roman estimate of Judea.
2. [2], [3.] Herod the Great and his sons.
3. [4.] Roman procurators in Palestine.
4. [5.] Taxes.
5. [6.] The army.
6. [7.] Administration of justice.
7. [8.] The Sadducees.
8. [9], [10.] The Pharisees.
9. [11.] The Zealots.
10. [12.] The Essenes.
11. [13.] The Devout.
12. [14.] Herodians and Samaritans.
13. [15.] The synagogue.
14. [16.] Life under the law.
15. [17.] The Messianic hope.
16. [18.] Contemporary literature.
17. [19.] Language of Palestine.
[Sources of Our Knowledge of Jesus] Sections [20]-[35]. Pages [21]-[37.]
1. Section [20.] The testimony of Paul.
2. [21.] Secular history.
3. [22.] The written gospels.
4. [23.] Characteristics of the first gospel.
5. [24.] Of the second.
6. [25.] Of the third. 26-30. The synoptic problem. 31-32. The Johannine problem.
7. [34.] The two narrative sources.
8. [35.] Agrapha and Apocrypha.
[The Harmony of the Gospels] Sections [36]-[44]. Pages [38]-[14]
1. Section [36.] The value of four gospels.
2. [37.] Tatian's Diatessaron. 38. Agreement of the gospels concerning the chief events.
3. [39.] The principal problems.
4. [40.] Relation of Mark and John.
5. [41], [42.] Matthew and Luke. 43. Doublets.
6. [44.] The degree of certainty attainable.
[The Chronology] Sections [45]-[57]. Pages [45]-[56]
1. Sections [45]-[48]. The length of Jesus' public ministry.
2. [49.] Date of the first Passover.
3. [50.] Date of the crucifixion. 51-56. Date of the nativity.
4. [57.] Summary.
[The Early Years of Jesus] Sections [58]-[71]. Pages [57]-[69]
1. Section [58.] Apocryphal stories.
2. [59.] Silence of the New Testament outside the gospels. 60-62. The miraculous birth.
3. [63.] The childhood of Jesus.
4. [64.] Home.
5. [65.] Religion, Education.
6. [66.] Growth.
7. [67.] Religious development.
8. [68.] The view from Nazareth. 69 The first visit to Jerusalem. 70-71. The carpenter of Nazareth.
[John the Baptist] Sections [72]-[84]. Pages [70]-[81]
1. Section [72.] The gospel picture.
2. [73.] Notice by Josephus. 74. Characteristics of the prophet 75-78. John's relation to the Essenes; the Pharisees; the Zealots; the Apocalyptists.
3. [79.] John and the Prophets. 80-82. Origin of his baptism.
4. [83.] His greatness.
5. [84.] His limitations and self-effacement.
[The Messianic Call] Sections [85]-[96]. Pages [82]-[91]
1. Sections
2. [85], [86.] John and Jesus.
3. [87.] The baptism of Jesus.
4. [88], [89.] The Messianic call.
5. [90.] The gift of the Spirit. 91-94. The temptation. 95. Source of the narrative.
6. [96.] The issue.
[The First Disciples] Sections [97]-[105]. Pages [92]-[97]
1. Section [97.] John at Bethany beyond Jordan.
2. [98.] The deputation from the priests.
3. [99.] John's first testimony.
4. [100.] The first disciples.
5. [101.] The early Messianic confessions.
6. [102.] The visit to Cana.
7. [103.] The miracles as disclosures of the character of Jesus.
8. [104.] Jesus and his mother.
9. [105.] Removal to Capernaum.

Part II

[The Ministry]

[General Survey of the Ministry] Sections [106]-[112]. Pages [101]-[105]
1. Section [106.] The early Judean ministry.
2. [107.] Withdrawal to Galilee; a new beginning.
3. [108.] The ministry in Galilee a unit.
4. [109.] Best studied topically.
5. [110.] The last journey to Jerusalem.
6. [111.] The last week. 112. The resurrection and ascension.
[The Early Judean Ministry] Sections [113]-[124]. Pages [106]-[114]
1. Outline of events in the Early Judean ministry.
2. Section [113.] The opening ministry at Jerusalem.
3. [114.] The record incomplete.
4. [115.] The cleansing of the temple.
5. [116.] Relation to synoptic account.
6. [117.] Jesus' reply to the challenge of his authority.
7. [118.] The reserve of Jesus.
8. [119.] Discourse with Nicodemus.
9. [120.] Measure of success in Jerusalem.
10. [121.] The Baptist's last testimony.
11. [122.] The arrest of John.
12. [123.] The second sign at Cana.
13. [124.] Summary.
[The Ministry in Galilee--Its Aim and Method] Sections [125]-[149]. Pages [115]-[137]
1. Outline of events in the Galilean ministry.
2. Section [125.] General view.
3. [126], [127.] Development of popular enthusiasm.
4. [128.] Pharisaic opposition.
5. [129], [130.] Jesus and the Messianic hope.
6. [131.] Injunctions of silence. 132-135. Jesus' twofold aim in Galilee.
7. [136], [137.] Character of the teaching of this period: the sermon on the mount.
8. [138.] The parables.
9. [139.] The instructions for the mission of the twelve.
10. [140.] Jesus' tone of authority.
11. [141.] His mighty works. 142-144. Demoniac possession. 145. Jesus' personal influence.
12. [146.] The feeding of the five thousand. 147,
13. [148.] Revulsion of popular feeling.
14. [149.] Results of the work in Galilee.
[The Ministry in Galilee--The New Lesson] Sections [150]-[165]. Pages [138]-[152]
1. Section [150.] The changed ministry.
2. [151.] The question of tradition. 152. Further pharisaic opposition.
3. [153.] Jesus in Phœnicia.
4. [154.] Confirmation of the disciples' faith.
5. [155.] The question at Cæsarea Philippi. 156. The corner-stone of the Church. 157-159. The new lesson.
6. [160.] The transfiguration.
7. [161.] Cure of the epileptic boy.
8. [162.] The feast of Tabernacles.
9. [163.] Story of Jesus and the adulteress.
10. [164.] The new note in Jesus' teaching.
11. [165.] Summary of the Galilean ministry.
[The Journey through Perea to Jerusalem] Sections [166]-[176]. Pages [153]-[165]
1. Outline of events.
2. Section [166.] The Perean ministry.
3. [167.] Account in John.
4. [168], [169.] Account in Luke.
5. [170.] The mission of the seventy. 171. The feast of Dedication.
6. [172.] Withdrawal beyond Jordan.
7. [173.] The raising of Lazarus.
8. [174.] Ephraim and Jericho. 175,176. Summary.
[The Final Controversies in Jerusalem] Sections [177]-[188]. Pages [166]-[180]
1. Outline of events in the last week of Jesus' life.
2. Section [177.] The cross in apostolic preaching.
3. [178.] The anointing in Bethany.
4. [179.] The Messianic entry.
5. [180.] The barren fig-tree.
6. [181.] The Monday of Passion week. 182-186. The controversies of Tuesday.
7. [187.] Judas. 188. Wednesday, the day of seclusion.
[The Last Supper] Sections [189]-[195]. Pages [181]-[187]
1. Section [189.] Preparations. 190,191. Date of the supper.
2. [192.] The lesson of humility.
3. [193.] The new covenant.
4. [194.] The supper and the Passover.
5. [195.] Farewell words of admonition and comfort; the intercessory prayer.
[The Shadow of Death] Sections [196]-[208]. Pages [188]-[200]
1. Sections [196], [197.] Gethsemane.
2. [198.] The betrayal.
3. [199.] The trial. 200. Peter's denials.
4. [201.] The rejection of Jesus.
5. [202.] The greatness of Jesus.
6. [203], [204.] The crucifixion.
7. [205.] The words from the cross. 206. The death of Jesus.
8. [207.] The burial.
9. [208.] The Sabbath rest.
[The Resurrection] Sections [209]-[222]. Pages [201]-[216]
1. Section [209.] The primary Christian fact.
2. [210.] The incredulity of the disciples. 211-216. The appearances of the risen Lord. 217-220. Efforts to explain the belief in the resurrection.
3. [221.] The ascension.
4. [222.] The new faith of the disciples.

Part III

[The Minister]

[The Friend of Men] Sections [223]-[229]. Pages [219]-[225]
1. Section [223.] The contrast between Jesus' attitude and John's towards common social life.
2. [224.] Contrast with the scribes.
3. [225], [226.] His interest in simple manhood.
4. [227.] Regard for human need. 228, 229. Sensitiveness to human sympathy.
[The Teacher with Authority] Sections [230]-[241]. Pages [226]-[237]
1. Section [230.] Contrast between Jesus and the scribes.
2. [231.] His appeal to the conscience. His attitude to the Old Testament.
3. [234.] His teaching occasional.
4. [235.] The patience of his method.
5. [236.] His use of illustration.
6. [237.] Parable.
7. [238.] Irony and hyperbole.
8. [239.] Object lessons.
9. [240.] Jesus' intellectual superiority.
10. [241.] His chief theme, the kingdom of God.
[Jesus' Knowledge of Truth] Sections [242]-[251]. Pages [238]-[248]
1. Sections [242], [243.] Jesus' supernatural knowledge.
2. [244.] His predictions of his death.
3. [245.] Of his resurrection.
4. [246.] His apocalyptic predictions.
5. [247], [248.] Limitation of his knowledge.
6. [249], [250.] Jesus and demoniac possession.
7. [251.] His certainty of his own mission.
[Jesus' Conception of Himself] Sections [252]-[275]. Pages [249]-[269].
1. Section [252.] Jesus' confidence in his calling.
2. [253.] His independence in teaching.
3. [254.] His self-assertions in response to pharisaic criticism.
4. [255.] His desire to beget faith in himself. 256,257. His extraordinary personal claim.
5. [258.] His acceptance of Messianic titles. 259-266. The Son of Man. 267-269. The Son of God.
6. [270], [271.] His consciousness of oneness with God.
7. [272.] His confession of dependence; his habit of prayer.
8. [273.] No confession of sin.
9. [274], [275.] The Word made flesh.

[Appendix]

[Index of Names and Subjects]

[Index of Biblical References]

[Map of Palestine]

Part I

Preparatory

I

The Historical Situation

When Tacitus, the Roman historian, records the attempt of Nero to charge the Christians with the burning of Rome, he has patience for no more than the cursory remark that the sect originated with a Jew who had been put to death in Judea during the reign of Tiberius. This province was small and despised, and Tacitus could account for the influence of the sect which sprang thence only by the fact that all that was infamous and abominable flowed into Rome. The Roman's scornful judgment failed to grasp the nature and power of the movement whose unpopularity invited Nero's lying accusation, yet it emphasizes the significance of him who did "not strive, nor cry, nor cause his voice to be heard in the street," whose influence, nevertheless, was working as leaven throughout the empire.

Palestine was not under immediate Roman rule when Jesus was born. Herod the Great was drawing near the close of the long reign during which, owing to his skill in securing Roman favor, he had tyrannized over his unwilling people. His claim was that of an adventurer who had power to succeed, even as his method had been that of a suspicious tyrant, who murdered right and left, lest one of the many with better right than he should rise to dispute with him his throne. When Herod died, his kingdom was divided into three parts, and Rome asserted a fuller sovereignty, allowing none of his sons to take his royal title. Herod's successors ruled with a measure of independence, however, and followed many of their father's ways, though none of them had his ability. The best of them was Philip, who had the territory farthest from Jerusalem, and least related to Jewish life. He ruled over Iturea and Trachonitis, the country to the north and east of the Sea of Galilee, having his capital at Cæsarea Philippi, a city built and named by him on the site of an older town near the sources of the Jordan. He also rebuilt the city of Bethsaida, at the point where the Jordan flows into the Sea of Galilee, calling it Julias, after the daughter of Augustus. Philip enters the story of the life of Jesus only as the ruler of these towns and the intervening region, and as husband of Salome, the daughter of Herodias. Living far from Jerusalem and the Jewish people, he abandoned even the show of Judaism which characterized his father, and lived as a frank heathen in his heathen capital.

The other two who inherited Herod's dominion were brothers, Archelaus and Antipas, sons of Malthace, one of Herod's many wives. Archelaus had been designated king by Herod, with Judea, Samaria, and Idumea as his kingdom; but the emperor allowed him only the territory, with the title ethnarch. Antipas was named a tetrarch by Herod, and his territory was Galilee and the land east of the Jordan to the southward of the Sea of Galilee, called Perea. Antipas was the Herod under whose sway Jesus lived in Galilee, and who executed John the Baptist. He was a man of passionate temper, with the pride and love of luxury of his father. Having Jews to govern, he held, as his father had done, to a show of Judaism, though at heart he was as much of a pagan as Philip. He, too, loved building, and Tiberias on the Sea of Galilee was built by him for his capital. His unscrupulous tyranny and his gross disregard of common righteousness appear in his relations with John the Baptist and with Herodias, his paramour. Jesus described him well as "that fox" (Luke xiii. 32), for he was sly, and worked often by indirection. While his father had energy and ability which command a sort of admiration, Antipas was not only bad but weak.

Both Philip and Antipas reigned until after the death of Jesus, Philip dying in A.D. 34, and Antipas being deposed several years later, probably in 39. Archelaus had a much shorter rule, for he was deposed in A.D. 6, having been accused by the Jews of unbearable barbarity and tyranny,--a charge in which Antipas and Philip joined. The territory of Archelaus was then made an imperial province of the second grade, ruled by a procurator appointed from among the Roman knights. In provinces under an imperial legate (propraetor) the procurator was an officer for the administration of the revenues; in provinces of the rank of Judea he was, however, the representative of the emperor in all the prerogatives of government, having command of the army, and being the final resort in legal procedure, as well as supervising the collection of the customs and taxes. Very little is known of the procurators appointed after the deposition of Archelaus, until Tiberius sent Pontius Pilate in A.D. 26. He held office until he was deposed in 36. Josephus gives several examples of his wanton disregard of Jewish prejudice, and of his extreme cruelty. His conduct at the trial of Jesus was remarkably gentle and judicial in comparison with other acts recorded of his government; yet the fear of trial at Rome, which finally induced him to give Jesus over to be crucified, was thoroughly characteristic; in fact, his downfall resulted from a complaint lodged against him by certain Samaritans whom he had cruelly punished for a Messianic uprising.

There were two sorts of Roman taxes in Judea: direct, which were collected by salaried officials; and customs, which were farmed out to the highest bidder. The direct taxes consisted of a land tax and a poll tax, in the collection of which the procurator made use of the local Jewish courts; the customs consisted of various duties assessed on exports, and they were gathered by representatives of men who had bought the right to collect these dues. The chiefs as well as their underlings are called publicans in our New Testament, although the name strictly applies only to the chiefs. These tax-gatherers, small and great, were everywhere despised and execrated, because, in addition to their subserviency to a hated government, they had a reputation, usually deserved, for all sorts of extortion. Because of this evil repute they were commonly drawn from the unscrupulous among the people, so that the frequent coupling of publicans and sinners in the gospels probably rested on fact as much as on prejudice.

In Samaria and Judea soldiers were under the command of the procurator; they took orders from the tetrarch, in Galilee and Perea. The garrison of Jerusalem consisted of one Roman cohort--from five to six hundred men--which was reinforced at the time of the principal feasts. These and the other forces at the disposal of the procurator were probably recruited from the country itself, largely from among the Samaritans. The centurion of Capernaum (Matt. viii. 5; Luke vii. 2-5) was an officer in the army of Antipas, who, however, doubtless organized his army on the Roman pattern, with officers who had had their training with the imperial forces.

The administration of justice in Samaria and Judea was theoretically in the hands of the procurator; practically, however, it was left with the Jewish courts, either the local councils or the great sanhedrin at Jerusalem. This last body consisted of seventy-one "elders." Its president was the high-priest, and its members were drawn in large degree from the most prominent representatives of the priestly aristocracy. The scribes, however, had a controlling influence because of the reverence in which the multitude held them. The sanhedrin of Jerusalem had jurisdiction only within the province of Judea, where it tried all kinds of offences; its judgment was final, except in capital cases, when it had to yield to the procurator, who alone could sentence to death. It had great influence also in Galilee, and among Jews everywhere, but this was due to the regard all Jews had for the holy city. It was, in fact, a sort of Jewish senate, which took cognizance of everything that seemed to affect the Jewish interests. In Galilee and Perea, Antipas held in his hands the judicial as well as the military and financial administration.

To the majority of the priests religion had become chiefly a form. They represented the worldly party among the Jews. Since the days of the priest-princes who ruled in Jerusalem after the return from the exile, they had constituted the Jewish aristocracy, and held most of the wealth of the people. It was to their interest to maintain the ritual and the traditional customs, and they were proud of their Jewish heritage; of genuine interest in religion, however, they had little. This secular priestly party was called the Sadducees, probably from Zadok, the high-priest in Solomon's time. What theology the Sadducees had was for the most part reactionary and negative. They were opposed to the more earnest spirit and new thought of the scribes, and naturally produced some champions who argued for their theological position; but the mass of them cared for other things.

The leaders of the popular thought, on the other hand, were chiefly noted for their religious zeal and theological acumen. They represented the outgrowth of that spirit which in the Maccabean time had risked all to defend the sanctity of the temple and the right of God's people to worship him according to his law. They were known as Pharisees, because, as the name ("separated") indicates, they insisted on the separation of the people of God from all the defilements and snares of the heathen life round about them. The Pharisees constituted a fraternity devoted to the scrupulous observance of law and tradition in all the concerns of daily life. They were specialists in religion, and were the ideal representatives of Judaism. Their distinguishing characteristic was reverence for the law; their religion was the religion of a book. By punctilious obedience of the law man might hope to gain a record of merit which should stand to his credit and secure his reward when God should finally judge the world. Because life furnished many situations not dealt with in the written law, there was need of its authoritative interpretation, in order that ignorance might not cause a man to transgress. These interpretations constituted an oral law which practically superseded the written code, and they were handed down from generation to generation as "the traditions of the fathers." The existence of this oral law made necessary a company of scribes and lawyers whose business it was to know the traditions and transmit them to their pupils. These scribes were the teachers of Israel, the leaders of the Pharisees, and the most highly revered class in the community. Pharisaism at its beginning was intensely earnest, but in the time of Jesus the earnest spirit had died out in zealous formalism. This was the inevitable result of their virtual substitution of the written law for the living God. Their excessive reverence had banished God from practical relation to the daily life. They held that he had declared his will once for all in the law. His name was scrupulously revered, his worship was cultivated with minutest care, his judgment was anticipated with dread; but he himself, like an Oriental monarch, was kept far from common life in an isolation suitable to his awful holiness. By a natural consequence conscience gave place to scrupulous regard for tradition in the religion of the scribes. The chief question with them was not, Is this right? but, What say the elders? The soul's sensitiveness of response to God's will and God's truth was lost in a maze of traditions which awoke no spontaneous Amen in the moral nature, consequently there was frequent substitution of reputation for character. The Pharisees could make void the command, Honor thy father, by an ingenious application of the principle of dedication of property to God (Mark vii. 8-13), and thus under the guise of scrupulous regard for law discovered ways for legal disregard of law. Their theory of religion gave abundant room for a piety which made broad its phylacteries and lengthened its prayers, while neglecting judgment, mercy, and the love of God.

Yet the earnest and true development in Jewish thinking was found among the Pharisees. The early hope of Israel was almost exclusively national. In the later books of the Old Testament, in connection with an enlarged sense of the importance of the individual, the doctrine of a personal resurrection to share the blessings of the Messiah's kingdom began to appear. It had its clear development and definite adoption as part of the faith of Judaism, however, under the influence of the Pharisees. Along with this increased emphasis on the worth of the individual came a large development of the doctrine of angels and spirits. Towards both of these doctrines the Sadducees took a reactionary position. Politically the Pharisees were theocratic in theory, but opportunists in practice, accommodating themselves to the existing state of things so long as the de facto government did not interfere with the religious life of the people. They looked for a kingdom in which God should be evidently the king of his people; but they believed that his sovereignty was to be realized through the law, hence their sole interest was in the obedience of God's people to that law as interpreted by the traditions.

The theocratic spirit was more aggressive in a party which originated in the later years of Herod the Great, and found a reckless leader in Judas of Galilee, who started a revolt when the governor of Syria undertook to make a census of the Jews after the deposition of Archelaus. This party bore the name Cananeans or Zealots. They regarded with passionate resentment the subjection of God's people to a foreign power, and waited eagerly for an opportune time to take the sword and set up the kingdom of God; it was with them that the final war against Rome began. They were found in largest numbers in Galilee, where the scholasticism of the scribes was not so dominating an influence as in Judea. Dr. Edersheim has called them the nationalist party. In matters belonging strictly to the religious life they followed the Pharisees, only holding a more material conception of the hope of Israel.

Another development in Jewish religious life carried separatist doctrines to the extreme. Its representatives were called Essenes, though what the significance of the name was is no longer clear. Although they were allied with the Pharisees in doctrine, they show in some particulars the influence of Hellenistic Judaism. This is suggested not only by the attention which Philo and Josephus give to them, but also by certain of their views, which were very like the doctrines of the Pythagoreans. They carried the pharisaic demand for separateness to the extreme of asceticism. While they were found in nearly every town in Palestine, some of them even practising marriage, the largest group of them lived a celibate, monastic life near the shores of the Dead Sea. This community was recruited by the initiation of converts, who only after a novitiate of three years were admitted to full membership in the order. They were characterized by an extreme scrupulousness concerning ceremonial purity, their meals were regarded as sacrifices, and were prepared by members of the order, who were looked upon as priests, nor were any allowed to partake of the food until they had first bathed themselves. Their regular garments were all white, and were regarded as vestments for use at the sacrificial meals,--other clothing being assumed as they went out to their work. They were industrious agriculturists, their life was communistic, and they were renowned for their uprightness. They revered Moses as highly as did the scribes; yet they were opposed to animal sacrifices, and, although they sent gifts to the temple, were apparently excluded from its worship. Their kinship with the Pythagoreans appears in that they addressed an invocation to the sun at its rising, and conducted all their natural functions with scrupulous modesty, "that they might not offend the brightness of God" (Jos. Wars, ii. 8, 9). Their rejection of bloody sacrifices, and their view that the soul is imprisoned in the body and at death is freed for a better life, besides many features of their life that are genuinely Jewish, such as their regard for ceremonial purity, also show similarity to the Pythagoreans. It has always been a matter of perplexity that these ascetics find no mention in the New Testament. They seem to have lived a life too much apart, and to have had little sympathy with the ideals of Jesus, or even of John the Baptist.

The common people followed the lead of the Pharisees, though afar off. They accepted the teaching concerning tradition, as well as that concerning the resurrection, conforming their lives to the prescriptions of the scribes more or less strictly, according as they were more or loss ruled by religious considerations. It was in consequence of their hold on the people that the scribes in the sanhedrin were able often to dictate a policy to the Sadducean majority. Jesus voiced the popular opinion when he said that "the scribes sit in Moses' seat" (Matt, xxiii. 2). Their leaders despised "this multitude which knoweth not the law" (John vii. 49), yet delighted to legislate for them, binding heavy burdens and grievous to be borne. Many of the people were doubtless too intent on work and gain to be very regardful of the minutiæ of conduct as ordained by the scribes; many more were too simple-minded to follow the theories of the rabbis concerning the aloofness of God from the life of men. These last reverenced the scribes, followed their directions, in the main, for the conduct of life, yet lived in fellowship with God as their fathers had, trusting in his faithfulness, and hoping in his mercy. They are represented in the New Testament by such as Simeon and Anna, Zachariah and Elizabeth, Joseph and Mary, and the majority of those who heard and heeded John's call to repentance. They were Israel's remnant of pure and undefiled religion, and constituted what there was of good soil among the people for the reception of the seed sown by John's successor. They had no name, for they did not constitute a party; for convenience they may be called the Devout.

Two other classes among the people are mentioned in the gospels,--the Herodians and the Samaritans. The Herodians do not appear outside the New Testament, and seem to have been hardly more than a group of men in whom the secular spirit was dominant, who thought it best for their interests and for the people's to champion the claims of the Herodian family. They were probably more akin to the Pharisees than to the Sadducees, for the latter were hostile to the Herodian claims, from the first; yet in spirit they seem more like to the worldly aristocracy than to the pious scribes. The Samaritans lived in the land, a people despising and despised. Their territory separated Galilee from Judea, and they were a constant source of irritation to the Jews. The hatred was inherited from the days of Ezra, when the zealous Jews refused to allow any intercourse with the inhabitants of Samaria. These Samaritans were spurned as of impure blood and mixed religion (II. Kings xvii. 24-41). The severe attitude adopted towards them by Ezra and Nehemiah led to the building of a temple on Mount Gerizim, and the establishment of a worship which sought to rival that of Jerusalem in all particulars. Very little is known of the tenets of the Samaritans in the time of Jesus beyond their belief that Gerizim was the place which, according to the law, God chose for his temple, and that a Messiah should come to settle all questions of dispute (John iv. 25).

Although the religious life of the Jews centred ideally in the temple, it found its practical expression in the synagogue. This in itself is evidence of the relative influence of priests and scribes. There was no confessed rivalry. The Pharisee was most insistent on the sanctity of the temple and the importance of its ritual. Yet with the growing sense of the religious significance of the individual as distinct from the nation, there arose of necessity a practical need for a system of worship possible for the great majority of the people, who could at best visit Jerusalem but once or twice a year. The synagogue seems to have been a development of the exile, when there was no temple and no sacrifice. It was the characteristic institution of Judaism as a religion of the law, furnishing in every place opportunity for prayer and study. The elders of each community seem ordinarily to have been in control of its synagogue, and to have had authority to exclude from its fellowship persons who had come under the ban. In addition to these officials there was a ruler of the synagogue, who had the direction of all that concerned the worship; a chazzan, or minister, who had the care of the sacred books, administered discipline, and instructed the children in reading the scripture; and two or more receivers of alms. The Sabbath services consisted of prayers, and reading of the scriptures--both law and prophets,--and an address or sermon. It was in the sermon that the people learned to know the "traditions of the elders," whether as applications of the law to the daily life, or as legendary embellishments of Hebrew history and prophecy. The preacher might be any one whom the ruler of the synagague recognized as worthy to address the congregation.

The religious life which centred in the synagogue found daily expression in the observance of the law and the traditions. In the measure of its control by the scribes it was concerned chiefly with the Sabbath, with the various ablutions needful to the maintenance of ceremonial purity, with the distinctions between clean and unclean food, with the times and ways of fasting, and with the wearing of fringes and phylacteries. These lifeless ceremonies seem to our day wearisome and petty in the extreme. It is probable, however, that the growth of the various traditions had been so gradual that, as has been aptly said, the whole usage seemed no more unreasonable to the Jews than the etiquette of polite society does to its devotees. The evil was not so much in the minuteness of the regulations as in the external and superficial notion of religion which they induced.

Optimism was the mood of Israel's prophets from the earliest times. Every generation looked for the dawning of a day which should banish all ill and realize the dreams inspired by the covenant in which God had chosen Israel for his own. In proportion as the rabbinic formalism held control of the hearts of the people, the Messianic hope lost its warmth and vigor. Yet the scribes did not abandon the prophetic optimism; they held to the letter of the hope, but as its fulfilment was for them dependent on perfect obedience to the law, oral and written, their interest was diverted to the traditions, and their strength was given to legal disputations. Of the rest of the people, the Sadducees naturally gave little thought to the promise of future deliverance, they were too absorbed with regard for present concerns. Nor is there any evidence that the Essenes, with all their reputed knowledge of the future, cherished the hope of a Messiah. The other elements among the people who owned the general leadership of the scribes looked eagerly for the coming time when God should bring to pass what he had promised through the prophets. While some expected God himself to come in judgment, and gave no thought to an Anointed one who should represent the Most High to the people, the majority looked for a Son of David to sit upon his father's throne. Even so, however, there were wide differences in the nature of the hope which was set on the coming of this Son of David. The Zealots were looking for a victory, which should set Israel on high over all his foes. To the rest of the people, however, the method of the consummation was not so clear, and they were ready to leave God to work out his purpose in his own way, longing meanwhile for the fulfilment of his promise. One class in particular gave themselves to visionary representations of the promised redemption. They differed from the Zealots in that they saw with unwelcome clearness the futility of physical attack upon their enemies; but their faith was strong, and at the moment when outward conditions seemed most disheartening they looked for a revelation of God's power from heaven, destroying all sinners in his wrath, and delivering and comforting his people, giving them their lot in a veritable Canaan situated in a renewed earth. Such visions are recorded in the Book of Daniel and the Revelation of John. They are found in many other apocalypses not included in our Bible, and indicate how persistently the minds of the people turned towards the promises spoken by the prophets, and meditated on their fulfilment. The Devout were midway between the Zealots and the Apocalyptists. The songs of Zachariah and Mary and the thanksgiving of Simeon express their faith. They hoped for a kingdom as tangible as the Zealots sought, yet they preferred to wait for the consolation of Israel. They believed that God was still in his heaven, that he was not disregardful of his people, and that in his own time he would raise up unto them their king. They looked for a Son of David, yet his reign was to be as remarkable for its purification of his own people as for its victories over their foes. These victories indeed were to be largely spiritual, for their Messiah was to conquer in the strength of the Spirit of God and "by the word of his mouth." Such as these were ready for a ministry like John's, and not unready for the new ideal which Jesus was about to offer them, though their highest spiritualization of the Messianic hope was but a shadow of the reality which Jesus asked them to accept.

This last conception of the Messiah is found in a group of psalms written in the first century before Christ, during the early days of the Roman interference in Judea. These Psalms of Solomon, as they are called, are pharisaic in point of view, yet they are not rabbinic in their ideas. Their feeling is too deep, and their reliance on God too immediate; they fitly follow the psalms of the Old Testament, though afar off. Of another type of contemporary literature, Apocalypse, at least two representatives besides the Book of Daniel have come down to us from the time of Jesus or earlier,--the so-called Book of Enoch, and the fragment known as the Assumption of Moses. These writings have peculiar interest, because they are probably the source of quotations found in the Epistle of Jude; moreover, some sayings of Jesus reported in the gospels, and in particular his chosen title, The Son of Man, are strikingly similar to expressions found in Enoch. Can Jesus have read these books? The psalms of the Devout were the kind of literature to pass rapidly from heart to heart, until all who sympathized with their hope and faith had heard or seen them. The case was different with the apocalypses. They are more elaborate and enigmatical, and may have been only slightly known. Yet, as Jesus was familiar with the canonical Book of Daniel, although it was not read in the synagogue service in his time, it is possible that he may also have read or heard other books which had not won recognition as canonical. If, however, he knew nothing of them, the similarity between the apocalypses and some of Jesus' ideas and expressions becomes all the more significant; for it shows that these writings gave utterance to thoughts and feelings shared by men who never read them, which were, therefore, no isolated fancies, but characteristic of the religion of many of the people. With these ideas Jesus was familiar; whether he ever read the books must remain a question.

This literature exists for us only in translations made in the days of the early church. Most of these books were originally written in Hebrew, the language of the Old Testament, or in Aramaic, the language of Palestine in the time of Jesus. Traces of this language as spoken by Jesus have been preserved in the gospels,--the name Rabbi; Abba, translated Father; Talitha cumi, addressed to the daughter of Jairus; Ephphatha, to the deaf man of Bethsaida; and the cry from the cross, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani (John i. 38; Mark xiv. 36; v. 41; vii. 34; xv. 34). It is altogether probable that in his common dealings with men and in his teachings Jesus used this language. Greek was the language of the government and of trade, and in a measure the Jews were a bilingual people. Jesus may thus have had some knowledge of Greek, but it is unlikely that he ever used it to any extent either in Galilee, or Judea, or in the regions of Tyre and Sidon.

II

Sources of Our Knowledge Of Jesus

The earliest existing record of events in the life of Jesus is given to us in the epistles of Paul. His account of the appearances of the Lord after his death and resurrection (I. Cor. xv. 3-8) was written within thirty years of these events. The date of the testimony, however, is much earlier, since Paul refers to the experience which transformed his own life, and so carries us back to within a few years of the crucifixion. Other facts from Jesus' life may be gathered from Paul, as his descent from Abraham and David (Rom. i. 3; ix. 5); his life of obedience (Rom. v. 19; xv. 3; Phil. ii. 5-11); his poverty (II. Cor. viii. 9); his meekness and gentleness (II. Cor. x. 1); other New Testament writings outside of our gospels add somewhat to this restricted but very clear testimony.

Secular history knows little of the obscure Galilean. The testimony of Tacitus is that the Christians "derived their name and origin from one Christ, who in the reign of Tiberius had suffered death by the sentence of the procurator, Pontius Pilate" (Annals, xv. 44). Suetonius makes an obscure and seemingly ill-informed allusion to Christ in the reason he assigns for the edict of Claudius expelling the Jews from Rome (Vit. Claud. 25). The younger Pliny in the second century had learned that the numerous Christian community in Bithynia was accustomed to honor Christ as God; but he shows no knowledge of the life of Jesus beyond what must be inferred concerning one who caused men "to bind themselves with an oath not to enter into any wickedness, or commit thefts, robberies, or adulteries, or falsify their word, or repudiate trusts committed to them" (Epistles X. 96). This secular ignorance is not surprising; but the silence of Josephus is. He mentions Jesus in but one clearly genuine passage, when telling of the martyrdom of James, the "brother of Jesus, who is called the Christ" (Ant. xx. 9. 1). Of John the Baptist, however, he has a very appreciative notice (Ant, xviii. 5. 2), and it cannot be that he was ignorant of Jesus. His appreciation of John suggests that he could not have mentioned Jesus more fully without some approval of his life and teaching. This would be a condemnation of his own people, whom he desired to commend to Gentile regard; and he seems to have taken the cowardly course of silence concerning a matter more noteworthy, even for that generation, than much else of which he writes very fully.

The reason for the lack of written Christian records of Jesus' life from the earliest time seems to be, not that the apostles had a small sense of the importance of his earthly ministry, but that the early generation preferred what at a later time was called the "living voice" (Papias in Euseb. Ch. Hist. iii. 39). The impression made by Jesus was supremely personal; he wrote nothing, did not command his disciples to write anything, preferring to influence men's minds by personal power, appointing them, in turn, to represent him to men as he had represented the Father to them (John xx. 21). But the time came when the first witnesses were passing away, and they were not many who could say, "I saw him." Our gospels are the result of the natural desire to preserve the apostolic testimony for a generation that could no longer hear the apostolic voice; and they are precisely what such a sense of need would produce,--vivid pictures of Jesus, agreeing in general features, differing more or less in details, reflecting individual feeling for the Master, and written not simply to inform men but to convince them of that Master's claims. One evidence of the reality of the gospel pictures is the fact that we so seldom feel the individual characteristics of each gospel. This is especially true of the first three, which, to the vividness of their picture, add a remarkable similarity of detail. Tatian, in the second century, felt it necessary to make a continuous narrative for the use of the church by interweaving the four gospels into one, and he has had many successors down to our day; but the fact that unity of impression has practically resulted from the four pictures without recourse to such an interweaving, invites consideration of the characteristics of these remarkable documents.

The first gospel impresses the careful reader with three things: (1) A clear sense of the development of Jesus' ministry. The author introduces his narrative by an account of the birth of Jesus, of the ministry of John the Baptist, and of Jesus' baptism and temptation and withdrawal into Galilee (i. 1 to iv. 17). He then depicts the public ministry by grouping together, first, teachings of Jesus concerning the law of the kingdom of heaven, then a series of great miracles confirming the new doctrine, then the expansion of the ministry and deepening hostility of the Pharisees, leading to the teaching by parables, and the final withdrawal from Galilee to the north. This ministry resulted in the chilling of popular enthusiasm which had been strong at the beginning, but in the winning of a few hearts to Jesus' own ideals of the kingdom of God (iv. 18 to xvi. 20). From this point the evangelist leads us to Jerusalem, where rejection culminates, the sterner teachings of Jesus are massed, and his victory in seeming defeat is exhibited (xvi. 21 to xxviii. 20). (2) The evangelist's interest is not satisfied by this clear, strong, picture; he wishes to convince men that Jesus is Israel's Messiah, hence, throughout, he indicates the fulfilment of prophecy. The things in which he sees the fulfilment are striking, for, with but one or two exceptions, they are features of the life of Jesus objectionable to Jewish feeling. This fact, taken in connection with the emphasis which the gospel gives to the death of Jesus at the hands of the Jews, and to the resurrection as God's seal of approval of him whom his people rejected, forms a forcible argument to prove the Messiahship of Jesus, not simply in spite of his rejection by the Jews, but by appeal to that rejection as leading to God's signal vindication of the crucified one. (3) This evangelist, while proving that Jesus is the Messiah promised to Israel, recognizes clearly the freedom of the new faith from the exclusiveness of Jewish feeling. The choice of Galilee for the Messianic ministry (iv. 12-17), the comment of Jesus on the faith of the centurion (viii. 10-12), the rebuke of Israel in the parable of the Wicked Husbandmen (xxi. 33-46), and especially the last commission of the risen Lord (xxviii. 18-20), show that this gospel sought to convince men of Jewish feeling not only that Jesus is Messiah, but also that as Messiah he came to bring salvation to all the world.

The second gospel is much simpler in construction than the first, while presenting essentially the same picture of the ministry as is found in Matthew. To its simplicity it adds a vividness of narration which commends Mark's account as probably representing most nearly the actual course of the life of Jesus. While it reports fewer incidents and teachings than either of the others, a comparison with Matthew and Luke shows a preference in Mark for Jesus' deeds, though addresses are not wanting; and, while shorter as a whole, for matters which he reports Mark's record is most rich in detail, most dramatic in presentation, and actually longer than the parallel accounts in the other gospels. The whole narrative is animated in style (note the oft-repeated "immediately") and full of graphic traits. The story of Jesus seems to be reproduced from a memory which retains fresh personal impressions of events as they occurred. Hence the frequent comments on the effect of Jesus' ministry, such as "We never saw it on this fashion" (ii. 12), or "He hath done all things well" (vii. 37), and the introduction into the narrative of Aramaic words,--Boanerges (iii. 17), Talitha, cumi (v. 41), and the like, which immediately have to be translated. The gospel discloses no artificial plan, the chief word of transition is "and." While some of the incidents recorded, such as the second Sabbath controversy (iii. 1-6) and the question about fasting (ii. 18-22), may owe their place to association in memory with an event of like character, the book impresses us as a collection of annals fresh from the living memory, which present the actual Jesus teaching and healing, and going on his way to the cross and resurrection. After the briefest possible reference to the ministry of John the Baptist and the baptism and temptation of Jesus (i. 1-13), this gospel proceeds to set forth the ministry in Galilee (i. 14 to ix. 50). The narrative then follows Jesus to Jerusalem, by way of Perea, and closes with his victory through death and resurrection (x. 1 to xvi. 8).

The third gospel is more nearly a biography than any of its companions. It opens with a preface stating that after a study of many earlier attempts to record the life of Jesus the author has undertaken to present as complete an account as possible of that life from the beginning. The book is addressed to one Theophilus, doubtless a Greek Christian, and its chief aim is practical,--to confirm conviction concerning matters of faith (i. 1-4). The author's interest in the completeness of his account appears in the fact that it begins with incidents antecedent to the birth of John the Baptist and Jesus. Moreover, to his desire for completeness we owe much of the story of Jesus, otherwise unrecorded for us. Like the first two gospels, Luke represents the ministry of Jesus as inaugurated in Galilee, and carried on there until the approach of the tragedy at Jerusalem (iv. 14 to ix. 50). It is in connection with the journey to Jerusalem (ix. 51 to xix. 27) that he inserts most of that which is peculiar to his gospel. His account of the rejection at Jerusalem, the crucifixion, and resurrection, follows in the main the same lines as Matthew and Mark; but he gained his knowledge of many particulars from different sources (xix. 28 to xxiv. 53). It is characteristic of Luke to name Jesus "Lord" more often than either of his predecessors. With this exalted conception is coupled a noticeable emphasis on Jesus' ministry of compassion; here more than in any other gospel he is pictured as the friend of sinners. Moreover, we owe chiefly to Luke our knowledge of him as a man of prayer and as subject to repeated temptation. An artificial exaltation of Christ, such as is often attributed to the later apostolic thought, would tend to reduce, not multiply, such evidences of human dependence on God. This fact increases our confidence in the accuracy of Luke's picture. The gospel is very full of comfort to those under the pressure of poverty, and of rebuke to unbelieving wealth, though the parable of the Unjust Steward and story of Zacchæus show that it does not exalt poverty for its own sake. If our first gospel pictures Jesus as the fulfilment of God's promises to his people, and Mark, as the man of power at work before our very eyes, astonishing the multitude while winning the few, Luke sets before us the Lord ministering with divine compassion to men subject to like temptations with himself, though, unlike them, he knew no sin.

The first three gospels, differing as they do in point of view and aim, present essentially one picture of the ministry of Jesus; for they agree concerning the locality and progress of his Messianic work, and the form and contents of his teaching, showing, in fact, verbal identity in many parts of their narrative. For this reason they are commonly known as the Synoptic Gospels. Yet these gospels exhibit differences as remarkable as their likenesses. They differ perplexingly in the order in which they arrange some of the events in Jesus' life. Which of them should be given preference in constructing a harmonious picture of his ministry? They often agree to the letter in their report of deeds or words of Jesus, yet from beginning to end remarkable verbal differences stand side by side with remarkable verbal identities. Some of the identities of language suggest irresistibly that the evangelists have used, at least in part, the same previously existing written record. One of the clearest evidences of this is found in the introduction, at the same place in the parallel accounts, of the parenthesis "then saith he to the sick of the palsy" which interrupts the words of Jesus in the cure of the paralytic (Mark ii. 10; Matt. ix. 6; Luke v. 24). When the three gospels are carefully compared it appears that Mark contains very little that is not found in Matthew and Luke, and that, with one or two exceptions, Luke presents in Mark's order the matter that he has in common with the second gospel. The same is also true of the relation between the latter part of the Gospel of Matthew (Matt. xiv. 1 to the end) and the parallel portion of Mark; while the comparison of Matthew's arrangement of his earlier half with Mark suggests that the order in the first gospel has been determined by other than chronological considerations. In a sense, therefore, we may say that the Gospel of Mark reveals the chronological framework on which all three of these gospels are constructed. Comparison discloses further the interesting fact that the matter which Matthew and Luke have in common, after subtracting their parallels to Mark, consists almost entirely of teachings and addresses. Each gospel, however, has some matter peculiar to itself.

In considering the problem presented by these facts, it is well to remember that no one of these gospels contains within itself any statement concerning the identity of its author. We are indebted to tradition for the names by which we know them, and no one of them makes any claim to apostolic origin. The earliest reference in Christian literature which may be applied to our gospels comes from Papias, a Christian of Asia Minor in the second century. He reports that an earlier teacher had said, "Mark, having become the interpreter of Peter, wrote down accurately, though not, indeed, in order, whatsoever he remembered of the things said or done by Christ, for he neither heard the Lord nor followed him, but afterward, as I said, he followed Peter, who adapted his teachings to the needs of his hearers, but with no intention of giving a connected account of the Lord's discourses. So that Mark committed no error when he thus wrote some things as he remembered them, for he was careful of one thing, not to omit any of the things which he had heard and not to state any of them falsely.... Matthew wrote the oracles [of the Lord] in the Hebrew language [Aramaic], and every one interpreted them as he was able" (Euseb. Ch. Hist. iii. 39). The result of many years' study by scholars of all shades of opinion is the very general conclusion that the writing which Papias attributed to Mark was essentially what we have in our second gospel.

It is almost as universally acknowledged that the work ascribed by the second century elder to the apostle Matthew cannot be our first gospel; for its language has not the characteristics which other translations from Hebrew or Aramaic lead us to expect, while the completeness of its narrative exceeds what is suggested by the words of Papias. If, however, the matter which Matthew and Luke have in such rich measure in addition to Mark's narrative be considered, the likeness between this and the writing attributed by Papias to the apostle Matthew is noteworthy. The conclusion is now very general, that that apostolic writing is in large measure preserved in the discourses in our first and third gospels. The relation of our gospels to the two books mentioned by Papias may be conceived, then, somewhat as follows: The earliest gospel writing of which we know anything was a collection of the teachings of Jesus made by the apostle Matthew, in which he collected with simple narrative introductions, those sayings of the Lord which from the beginning had passed from mouth to mouth in the circle of the disciples. At a later time Mark wrote down the account of the ministry of Jesus which Peter had been accustomed to relate in his apostolic preaching. The work of the apostle Matthew, while much richer in the sayings of Jesus, lacked the completeness that characterizes a narrative; hence it occurred to some early disciple to blend together these two primitive gospel records, adding such other items of knowledge as came to his hand from oral tradition or written memoranda. As his aim was practical rather than historical, he added such editorial comments as would make of the new gospel an argument for the Messiahship of Jesus, as we have seen. Since the most precious element in this new gospel was the apostolic record of the teachings of the Lord, the name of Matthew and not of his literary successor, was given to the book.

The third gospel is ascribed, by a probably trustworthy tradition, to Luke, the companion of Paul. The author himself says that he made use of such earlier records as were accessible, among which the chief seem to have been the writings of Mark and the apostle Matthew. To Luke's industry, however, we owe our knowledge of many incidents and teachings from the life of Jesus which were not contained in these two records, and with which we could ill afford to part. Some of these he doubtless found in written form, and some he gathered from oral testimony. His close agreement with Mark in the arrangement of his narrative suggests that he found no clear evidence of a ministry of wider extent in time and place. He therefore used Mark as his narrative framework, and of the rich materials which he had gathered made a gospel, the completest of any written up to his time.

Such in the main is the conclusion of modern study of our first three gospels; it explains the general identity of their picture of Jesus and of their report of his teaching; it leaves room for those individual characteristics which give them so much of their charm; and it traces the materials of the gospels far back of the writings as we have them, bringing us nearer to the events which they describe. The dates of these documents can be only approximately known. It is probable that the "logia" collected by the apostle Matthew were written not later than 60 to 65 A.D., while the Gospel of Mark dates from before the fall of Jerusalem in 70. Our first gospel must have been made between 70 and 100, and the Gospel of Luke may be dated about the year 80,--all within sixty or seventy years after the death of Jesus.

The fourth gospel gives us a picture of Jesus in striking contrast to that of the other three. These present chiefly the works of the Master and his teachings concerning the kingdom of God and human conduct, leaving the truth concerning the teacher himself to be inferred. John opens the heart of Jesus and makes him disclose his thought about himself in a remarkable series of teachings of which he is the prime topic. This gospel is avowedly an argument (xx. 30, 31); its selection of material is confessedly partial; its aim is to confirm the faith of Christians in the heavenly nature and saving power of their Lord; and its method is that of appeal to testimony, to signs, and to his own self-disclosures. The opening verses of the gospel have a somewhat abstract theological character; the body of the book, however, consists of a succession of incidents and teachings which follow each other in unstudied fashion like a collection of annals. This impression is not compromised by the recognition, at some points, of accidental displacements, like that which has placed xiv. 30, 31 before xv. and xvi., or that which has left a long gap between vii. 23 and the incident of v. 1-9, to which it refers. The theme of the gospel is the self-disclosure of Jesus. This seems to have determined the evangelist's choice of material, and, as the gospel is an argument, he does not hesitate to mingle his own comments with his report of Jesus' words, for example (iii. 16-21, 30-36; xii. 37-43). The book is characterized by a vividness of detail which indicates a clear memory of personal experience. While it is evident that the author has the most exalted conception of the nature of his Lord, this seems to have been the result of loving meditation on a friend who had early won the mastery over his heart and life, and who through long years of contemplation had forced upon his disciple's mind the conviction of his transcendent nature. The book discloses a profoundly objective attitude; the Christ whom John portrays is not the creature of his speculations, but the Master who has entered into his experience as a living influence and has compelled recognition of his significance. The Son of God is for John the human Jesus who, though named at the outset the Word--the Logos,--is the Word who was made flesh, that men through him might become the sons of God.

The contrast which the Gospel of John presents to the other three concerns not only the teaching of Jesus, but the scene of his ministry and its historic development as well. Whatever may be the final judgment concerning the fourth gospel, it is manifestly constructed as a simple collection of incidents following each other in what was meant to appear a chronological sequence. It has been seen that the biographical framework of the first three gospels is principally Mark's report of Peter's narrative. Now it is a fact that in portions of Matthew and Luke, derived elsewhere than from Mark, there are various allusions most easily understood if it be assumed that Jesus visited Jerusalem before his appearance there at the end of his ministry. Such, for instance, are the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke x. 25-37), the story of the visit to Mary and Martha (Luke x. 38-42), and the lamentation of Jesus over Jerusalem (Luke xiii. 34, 35; Matt, xxiii. 37-39). All three gospels, moreover, agree in attributing to emissaries from Jerusalem much of the hostility manifested against Jesus in his Galilean ministry (Luke v. 17; Mark iii. 22; Matt. xv. 1; Mark vii. 1), and presuppose such an acquaintance of Jesus with households in and near Jerusalem as is not easy to explain if he never visited Judea before his passion (Mark xi. 2, 3; xiv. 14; xv. 43 and parallels; compare especially Matt, xxvii. 57; John xix. 38). These all suggest that the narrative of Mark does not tell the whole story, a conclusion quite in accordance with the account of his work given by Papias. It has been assumed that Peter was a Galilean, a man of family living in Capernaum. It is not impossible that on some of the earlier visits of Jesus to Jerusalem he did not accompany his Master, and in reporting the things which he knew he naturally confined himself to his own experiences. If this can explain the predominance of Galilean incidents in the ministry as depicted in Mark, it will explain the predominance of Galilee in the first three gospels, and the contradiction between John and the three is reduced to a divergence between two accounts of Jesus' ministry written from two different points of view.

The question of the trustworthiness of the fourth gospel is greatly simplified by the consideration of the one-sidedness of Mark's representation. It is further relieved by the fact that a ministry by Jesus in Jerusalem must have been one of constant self-assertion, for Jerusalem represented at its highest those aspects of thought and practice which were fundamentally opposed to all that Jesus did and taught. Whenever in Galilee, in the ministry pictured by the first three gospels, Jesus came in contact with the spirit and feeling characteristic of Jerusalem, we find him meeting it by unqualified assertion of his own independence and exalted claim to authority, altogether similar to that emphasis of his own significance and importance which is the chief characteristic of his teachings in the fourth gospel. If it be remembered that that gospel was avowedly an argument written to commend to others the reverent conclusion concerning the Lord reached by a disciple whose thought had dwelt for long years on the marvel of that life, and if we recognize that for such an argument the author would select the instances and teachings most telling for his own purpose, and would do this as naturally as the magnet draws to itself iron filings which are mingled with a pile of sand, the exclusively personal character of the teachings of Jesus in this gospel need cause little perplexity. Nor need it seem surprising that the words of Jesus as reported in John share the peculiarities of style which mark the work of the evangelist in the prologue to the gospel and in his epistles. His purpose was not primarily biographical but argumentative, and he has set forth the picture of his Lord as it rose before his own heart, his memory of events being interwoven with contemplation on the significance of that life with which his had been so blessedly associated. In a gospel written avowedly to produce in others a conviction like his own, the evangelist would not have been sensible of any obligation to draw sharp lines between his recollection of his Lord's words and his own contemplations upon them and upon their significance for his life. If these considerations be kept in mind we may accept the uniform tradition of antiquity, confirmed by the plain intimation of the gospel itself, that it is essentially the work of John, the son of Zebedee, written near the close of his life in Ephesus, in the last decade of the first century.

We have in our gospel records, therefore, two authorities for the general course of the ministry of Jesus,--Mark and John. Even if the fourth gospel should be proved not to be the work of John, its picture of the ministry of Jesus must be recognized as coming from some apostolic source. A forger would hardly have invited the rejection of his work by inventing a narrative which seems to contradict at so many points the tradition of the other gospels. The first and third gospels furnish us from various sources rich additions to Mark's narrative, and it is to these two with the fourth that we turn chiefly for the teachings of Jesus. Each gospel should be read, therefore, remembering its incompleteness, remembering also the particular purpose and individual enthusiasm for Jesus which produced it.

A word may be due to two other claimants to recognition as original records from the life of Jesus. One class is represented by that word of the Lord which Paul quoted to the Ephesian elders at Miletus (Acts xx. 35). Scattered here and there in writings of the apostolic and succeeding ages are other sayings attributed to Jesus which cannot be found in our gospels. A few of these so-called Agrapha seem worthy of him, and are recognized as probably genuine. The most important of them is the story of the woman taken in adultery (John vii. 53 to viii. 11), which, though not a part of the gospel of John, doubtless gives a true incident from Jesus' life. They represent the "many other" things which John and the other gospels have omitted, but their small number proves that our gospels have preserved for us practically all that was known of Jesus after the first witnesses fell asleep. It is certainly surprising that so little exists to supplement the story of the gospels, for they are manifestly fragmentary, and leave much of Jesus' public life without any record. The other class of claimants is of a quite different character,--the so-called Apocryphal Gospels. These consist chiefly of legends connected with the birth and early years of Jesus, and with his death and resurrection. They are for the most part crude tales that have entirely mistaken the real character of him whom they seek to exalt, and need only to be read to be rejected.

III

The Harmony of the Gospels

The church early appreciated the value and the difficulty of having four different pictures of the life and teachings of the Lord. Irenæus at the close of the second century felt it to be as essential that there should be four gospels as that there should be "four zones of the world, four principal winds, and four faces of the cherubim" (Against Heresies III. ii. 8).

Before Irenæus, however, another had sought to obviate the difficulty of having four records which seem at some points to disagree, by making a combination of the gospels, to which he gave the title "Diatessaron." Tatian, the author of this work, was converted from paganism about 152 A.D., and prepared his unified gospel, probably for the use of the Syrian churches, sometime after 172. His work is one of the treasures of the early Christian literature recovered for us within the last quarter-century. It seems to have won great popularity in the Syrian churches, having practically displaced the canonical gospels for nearly three centuries, when, owing to its supposed heretical tendency, it was suppressed by the determined effort of the church authorities. It is a continuous record of Jesus' ministry, beginning with the first six verses of the Gospel of John, passing then to the early chapters of Luke. It closes with an account of the resurrection interwoven from all four gospels, concluding with John xxi. 25. The arrangement follows generally the order of Matthew, additional matter from the other gospels being inserted at places which approved themselves to Tatian's judgment. Some portions--in particular the genealogies of Jesus--were omitted altogether, in accordance with views held by the compiler.

From Tatian's time to the present there have been repeated attempts to construct a harmonious representation of events and teachings in the ministry of Jesus, generally by setting the parallel accounts side by side, following such a succession of events as seemed most probable. Our evangelists cared little, if they thought at all, about the requirements of strict biography, and they have left us records not easy to arrange on any one chronological scheme. Concerning the chief events, however, the gospels agree. All four report, for instance, the beginning of the work in Galilee (Matt. iv. 12, 17; Mark i. 14, 15; Luke iv. 14, 15; John iv. 43-45); the feeding of the five thousand when Jesus' popularity in Galilee passed its climax (Matt. xiv. 13-23; Mark vi. 30-46; Luke ix. 10-17; John vi. 1-15); the departure from Galilee for the final visit to Jerusalem (Matt. xix. 1, 2; Mark x. 1; Luke ix. 51; John vii. 1-10); and the week of suffering and victory at the end (Matt. xxi. 1 to xxviii. 20; Mark xi. 1 to xvi. 8 [20]; Luke xix. 29 to xxiv. 53; John xii. 1 to xxi. 25).

These facts are enough to give us a clear and unified impression of the course of Jesus' ministry. When, however, we seek to fill in the details given in the different gospels, difficulties at once arise. Thus, first, what shall be done with the long section which John introduces (i. 19 to iv. 42) before Jesus' withdrawal into Galilee? The other gospels make that withdrawal the beginning of his public work. A second difficulty arises from the unnamed feast of John v. 1. By one or another scholar this feast has been identified with almost every Jewish festival known to us. Another problem is furnished by the long section in Luke which is so nearly peculiar to his gospel (ix. 51 to xviii. 14). If the section had no parallels in the other gospels we might easily conclude that it all belongs to a time subsequent to the final departure for Jerusalem; but it contains at least one incident from the earlier ministry in Galilee (Luke xi. 14-36; compare Mark iii. 19-30), and many teachings of Jesus given by Matthew in an earlier connection appear here in Luke. Furthermore, the section has to be adjusted to that portion of the Gospel of John which deals with the same period and yet reports none of the same details.

If Mark has furnished the narrative framework adopted in the main by the first and third gospels, the problem of the order of events in Jesus' life becomes a question of the chronological value of Mark, and of the estimate to be placed on the narrative of John. If the fourth gospel is held to be of apostolic origin and trustworthy, the task of the harmonist is chiefly that of combining these two records of Mark and John. The testimony of the Baptist, with which the fourth gospel opens, must have been given some time after he had baptized Jesus, and the ministry which preceded Jesus' return to Galilee (i. 19 to iv. 42) belongs to a period ignored by the other gospels. The first three gospels contain indications that Jesus must have visited Judea before the close of his life. They give no hint, however, of the time or circumstances of such earlier Judean labor. In giving the emphasis they do to the work in Galilee, they present a one-sided picture. When, therefore, we find in John a narrative of work in Judea, confirmed by hints in the other gospels, we may justly assume that the arrangement which fills out the ministry of Jesus by inserting at the proper places in Mark's record the events found in John is essentially true.

The consideration of the one-sidedness of Mark's narrative simplifies the problem of harmony, but it does not solve all of the perplexities. Matthew and Luke have much matter, some of it narrative, which Mark has not, and for which he suggests no place. Where shall we put, for instance, the cure of the centurion's servant (Matt. viii. 5-13; Luke vii. 1-10), or John the Baptist's last message (Matt. xi. 2-19; Luke vii. 18-35)? It would simplify matters if we could take Luke's statement that he had "traced the course of all things accurately from the first" (Luke i. 3), as indicating that he had arrived at exact certainty concerning the order of events of Jesus' life. It is probable, however, that his statement was simply a claim that he had carefully gathered material for a record of the whole life of Jesus, from the annunciation of his birth to his ascension. While we may believe that some trustworthy tradition led him to give the place he has to many of the incidents which he adds to Mark's story, it seems impossible to follow him in all respects; for instance, in severing the account of the blasphemy of the Pharisees (xi. 14-36) from the place which it holds in Mark (iii. 19-30).

Still more uncertainty exists concerning the historic connection of teachings of Jesus to which Matthew and Luke give different settings; for example, the Lord's Prayer (Matt. vi. 9-15; Luke xi. 1-4), and the exhortations against anxiety (Matt. vi. 25-34; Luke xii. 22-31). We have seen that much of the teaching common to these gospels is probably derived from the collection of the "oracles" of the Lord made by the apostle Matthew. Everything that we can infer concerning such a collection of oracles indicates that, while some of the teachings may have been connected with particular historic situations (compare Luke xi. 1), many would altogether lack such introductory words. A later example of what such a collection may have been has come to light recently in the so-called "Sayings of Jesus," discovered in Egypt and published in 1897. In these the occasion for the teaching has been quite lost; the sole interest centres in the fact that Jesus is supposed to have said the things recorded. If Matthew's book contained such "logia" or "oracles," it is probable that the original connection in which most of them were spoken was a matter of no concern to the apostle, and consequently has been lost This in no way compromises the genuineness of these sayings of Jesus. The treatment of Luke ix. 51 to xviii. 14 is much simplified by this consideration. To Luke's industry (i. 1-4) we owe the preservation of some events and very many teachings which no other evangelist has recorded. Some of this new material (for instance, vii. 11-17, 36-50) he has assigned a place in the midst of Mark's narrative. Most of it, however, he has gathered together in what seems to be a sort of appendix, which he has inserted between the close of the ministry in Galilee and the final arrival in Judea. For many of the teachings it is now impossible to assign a time or place. That this is so will cause no surprise or difficulty if we remember that in the earliest days the report of what Jesus said and did circulated in the form of oral tradition only. It was the knowledge that first-hand witnesses were passing away that led to the writing of the gospels. During the period of oral tradition many teachings of the Lord were doubtless kept clearly and accurately in memory after the historic situations which led to their first utterance were quite forgotten.

This fact helps to explain another perplexity in our gospel narratives. A comparison of the two accounts of the cure of the centurion's servant reveals differences of detail most perplexing, if we ask for minute agreement in records of the same events. When we see that of two accounts evidently reporting the same incident, one can say that the centurion himself sought Jesus and asked the cure of his servant (Matt. viii. 5, 8), while the other makes him declare himself unworthy to come in person to the Lord (Luke vii. 7), the question arises whether other accounts, similar in the main but differing in detail, should not be identified as independent records of one event. Were there two cleansings of the temple (John ii. 13-22; Mark xi. 15-19), two miraculous draughts of fishes (Luke v. 4-11; John xxi. 5-8), two rejections at Nazareth (Mark vi. 1-6; Luke iv. 16-30), two parables of the Leaven, of the Mustard Seed (Matt. xiii. 31-33; Luke xiii. 18-21), and of the Lost Sheep (Matt, xviii. 12-14; Luke xv. 4-7)? Such similar records are often called doublets, and the question of identity or distinctness can be answered only after a special study of each case. It is important to notice that a given teaching, particularly if it took the form of an illustration, would naturally be used by Jesus on many different occasions. When, on the other hand, we find two accounts of specific doings of Jesus similar in detail it is needful to recognize that definite historic situations do not so often repeat themselves as do occasions for similar or identical teachings.

All these considerations show that while the general order of events in the life of Jesus may be determined with a good degree of probability, we must be content to remain uncertain concerning the place to be given to many incidents and to more teachings. Such uncertainty is of small concern, since our unharmonized gospels have not failed during all these centuries to produce one fair picture, to the total impression of which each teaching and deed make definite contribution quite independently of our ability to give to each its particular place in relation to the whole. The degree of certainty attainable justifies, however, a continued interest in the old study of harmony, because of the more comprehensive idea it gives of the ministry depicted in the partial narratives of our several gospels.

IV

The Chronology

The length of the public ministry of Jesus was one of the earliest questions which arose in the study of the four gospels. In the second and third centuries it was not uncommon to find the answer in the passage from Isaiah (lxi. 1, 2), which Jesus declared was fulfilled in himself. "The acceptable year of the Lord" was taken to indicate that the ministry covered little more than a year. The fact that the first three gospels mention but one Passover (that at the end), and but one journey to Jerusalem, seems at first to be favorable to this conclusion, and to make peculiarly significant the care taken by Luke to give the exact date for the opening of Jesus' ministry (iii. 1, 2). In fact, the second century Gnostics, relying apparently on Luke, assigned both the ministry and death of Jesus to the fifteenth year of Tiberius Cæsar,--an interpretation which may have given rise to the widely spread, early tradition, found, for example, in Tertullian (Ante-nicene Fathers, in. 160), which placed the death of Jesus in A.D. 29, during the consulship of L. Rubellius Geminus and C. Fufius Geminus.

The theory that the ministry of Jesus extended over but little more than one year is beset, however, by difficulties that seem insuperable. The first is presented by the three Passovers distinctly mentioned in the Gospel of John (ii. 13; vi. 4; xii. 1). The last of these is plainly identical with the one named in the other gospels. The second gives the time of year for the feeding of the five thousand, and agrees with the mention of "the green grass" in the account of Mark and Matthew (Mark vi. 39; Matt. xiv. 19). John's first Passover falls in a section which demands a place before Mark i. 14 (compare John iii. 24). Hence it must be shown that this first Passover is chronologically out of order in the Gospel of John, or the one year ministry advocated by the second century Gnostics, by Clement of Alexandria, by Origen, and of late years by Keim and others, is seen to be impossible. The fact that at this Passover Jesus cleansed the temple, and that the other gospels assign such a cleansing to the close of the ministry, suggests the possibility that John has set it at the opening of his narrative for reasons connected with his argument. This interpretation falls, however, before the perfect simplicity of structure of John's narrative. The transitions from incident to incident in this gospel are those of simple succession, and indicate, on the writer's part, no suspicion that he was contradicting notions concerning the ministry of Jesus familiar to his contemporaries. Whatever the conclusion reached concerning the authorship of the gospel, the fact that it gained currency very early as apostolic would seem to prove that its conception of the length of Jesus' ministry was not opposed to the recognized apostolic testimony. It is safe to conclude, therefore, that time must be allowed in Jesus' ministry for at least three Passover seasons.

With this conclusion most modern discussions of the question rest, and it is possible that it may finally win common consent. The order of Mark's narrative, however, challenges it. This gospel records near the beginning (ii. 23) a controversy with the Pharisees occasioned by the fact that Jesus' disciples plucked and ate the ripening grain as they passed on a Sabbath day through the fields. As Mark places much later (vi. 30-34) the feeding of the five thousand, which occurred at a Passover, that is the beginning of the harvest (Lev. xxiii. 5-11), his order suggests the necessity of including two harvest seasons in the ministry in Galilee, and consequently four Passovers in the public life of Jesus. Two considerations are urged against this conclusion. (1) Papias in his reference to the Gospel of Mark criticises the order of the gospel; (2) Mark ii. 1 to iii. 6 contains a group of five conflicts with the critics of Jesus, which represents a massing of opposition that seems unlikely at the outset of his Galilean work. The remark of Papias must remain obscure until his standard of comparison is known. Some suggest that he knew John's order and preferred it, others that he agreed with that adopted by Tatian in his Diatessaron. Mark is in accord with neither of these. No one, however, knows what order Papias preferred. The early conflict group does appear like a collection drawn from different parts of the ministry. Yet the nucleus of the group--the cure of the paralytic (ii. 1-12) and the call of Levi (ii. 13-17)--is clearly in its right place in Mark (see Holtzmann, Hand-commentar, I. 10). The question about fasting (ii. 18-22) may have been asked much later, and its present place may be due to association in tradition with the criticism of Jesus' fellowship with publicans (ii. 16). In like manner the cure of the withered hand (iii. 1-6) may have become artificially grouped with the incident of the cornfields. It is possible, also, that both Sabbath controversies owe their early place in the gospel to traditional association with the early conflicts (ii. 1-17). If so, the plucking of the grain actually occurred some weeks after the feeding of the five thousand, and probably after the controversy about tradition (vii. 1-23), with which, according to Mark, Jesus' activity in Galilee practically closed. It is not clear, however, what principle of association drew forward to the early group the Sabbath conflict, and left in its place the controversy about tradition. It is thus possible that the incident of the cornfields belongs also to the early nucleus of the group; and in this case the longer ministry, including four Passovers, must be accepted. The decision of the question is not of vital importance, but it affects the determination of the sequence of events in Jesus' life. Whatever the explanation of the remark of Papias, the more the gospels are studied the more does Mark's order of events commend itself in general as representing the probable fact. Many students have inferred the three year ministry from the Gospel of John alone, identifying the unnamed feast in John v. 1 with a Passover. But John's allusion to that feast is so indefinite that the length of Jesus' ministry must be determined quite independently of it.

So long a ministry as three years presents some difficulties, for all that is told us in the four gospels would cover but a small fraction of this time. John's statement (xx. 30) that he omitted many things from Jesus' life in making his book is evidently true of all the evangelists, and long gaps, such as are evident in the fourth gospel, must be assumed in the other three. Recalling the character of the gospels as pictures of Jesus rather than narratives of his life, we may easily acknowledge the incompleteness of our record of the three years of ministry, and wonder the more at the vividness of impression produced with such economy of material. This meagreness of material is not decisive for the shorter rather than the longer ministry, for it is evident that to effect such a change in conviction and feeling as Jesus wrought in the minds of the ardent Galileans who were his disciples, required time. Three years are better suited to effect this change than two.

Closely related to the question of the length of Jesus' ministry is another: Can definite dates be given for the chief events in his life? For the year of the opening of his public activity the gospels furnish two independent testimonies: the remark of the Jews on the occasion of Jesus' first visit to Jerusalem, "Forty and six years was this temple in building" (John ii. 20), and Luke's careful dating of the appearance of John the Baptist, "in the fifteenth year of Tiberius Cæsar" (iii. 1, 2). John ii. 20 leads to the conclusion that the first Passover fell in the spring of A.D. 26 or 27, since we learn from Josephus (Ant. xv. 11. 1) that Herod began to rebuild the temple in the eighteenth year of his reign, which closed in the spring of B.C. 19. Luke iii. 1 gives a date contradictory to the one just found, if the fifteenth year of Tiberius is to be counted from the death of his predecessor, for Augustus died August 19, A.D. 14. Reckoned from this time the opening of John's work falls in the year A.D. 28, and the first Passover of Jesus' ministry could not be earlier than the spring of 29. This is at least two years later than is indicated by the statement in John. The remark in John is, however, so incidental and so lacking in significance for his argument that its definiteness can be explained only as due to a clear historic reminiscence; but it does not follow that Luke has erred in the date given by him. Although Augustus did not die until A.D. 14, there is evidence that Tiberius was associated with him in authority over the army and the provinces not later than January, A.D. 12. One who lived and wrote in the reign of Titus may possibly have applied to the reign of Tiberius a mode of reckoning customary in the case of Titus, as Professor Ramsay has shown (Was Christ born at Bethlehem, 202). If this is the fact, Luke reckoned from the co-regency of Tiberius; hence the fifteenth year would be A.D. 25 or 26, according as the co-regency began before or after the first of January, A.D. 12. This would place the first Passover of Jesus' ministry in the spring of 26 or 27, in agreement with the hint found in John.

If the public ministry of Jesus began with the spring of 26 or 27, the close of three years of activity would, come at the Passover of 29 or 30. The former of these dates agrees with the early Christian tradition already mentioned. But before accepting that traditional date another matter must be considered. Jesus was crucified on the Friday at the opening of the feast of the Passover. Whether it was the day of the sacrifice of the Passover (14 Nisan) or the day following (15 Nisan), is not essential for the present question. As the Jewish month began with the first appearance of the new moon, it is evident that, in the year of Jesus' death, the month of Nisan must have begun on a day that would make the 14th or the 15th fall on Friday. Now it can be shown that in the year 30 the 14th of Nisan was Thursday (April 6) or Friday (April 7), for at best only approximate certainty is attainable. The tradition which assigns the passion to 29, generally names March 25 as the day of the month. This date is impossible, because it does not coincide with the full moon of that month. The choice of March 25 by a late tradition may be explained by the fact that it was commonly regarded as the date of the spring equinox, the turning of the year towards its renewing. Mr. Turner has shown (HastBD. I. 415) that another date found in an early document cannot be so explained. Epiphanius was familiar with copies of the Acts of Pilate, which gave March 18 as the date of the crucifixion; and it is remarkable that this date coincides with the full moon, and also falls on Friday. Such a combination gives unusual weight to the tradition, particularly as there is no ready way to account for its rise, as in the case of March 25. From this supplementary tradition the year 29 gains in probability as the year of the passion. Without attempting to arrive at a final conclusion,--a task which must be left for chronological specialists,--it is safe to assume that Jesus died at the Passover of A.D. 29 or 30.

Concluding that Jesus' active ministry fell within the years A.D. 26 to 30, is it possible to determine the date of his birth? Four hints are furnished by the gospels: he was born before the death of Herod (Matt. ii. 1; Luke i. 5); he was about thirty years of age at his baptism (Luke iii. 23); he was born during a census conducted in Judea in accordance with the decree of Augustus at a time when Quirinius was in authority in Syria (Luke ii. 1, 2); after his birth wise men from the East were led to visit him by observing "his star" (Matt. ii. 1, 2). From these facts it follows that the birth of Jesus cannot be placed later than B.C. 4, since Herod died about the first of April in that year (Jos. Ant. xvii. 6. 4; 8. 1, 4). The awkwardness of having to find a date Before Christ for the birth of Jesus is due to the miscalculation of the monk, Dionysius the Little, who in the sixth century introduced our modern reckoning from "the year of our Lord."

But is it impossible to determine the time of Jesus' birth more exactly? Luke (ii. 1, 2) offers what seems to be more definite information, but his reference to the decree of Augustus and the enrolment under Quirinius are among the most seriously challenged statements in the gospels. It has been said (1) that history knows of no edict of Augustus ordering a general enrolment of "the world;" (2) that a Roman census could not have been taken in Palestine before the death of Herod; (3) that if such an enrolment had been taken it would have been unnecessary for Joseph and Mary to journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem; (4) that the census taken when Quirinius was governor of Syria is definitely assigned by Josephus to the year after the deposition of Archelaus, A.D. 6 (Ant. xviii. 1. 1; see also Acts v. 37); (5) that if Luke's reference to this census as the "first" be appealed to, it must be replied that Quirinius was not governor of Syria at any time during the lifetime of Herod. This array of difficulties is impressive, and has persuaded many conservative students to concede that in his reference to the census Luke has fallen into error. Some recent discoveries in Egypt, however, have furnished new information concerning the imperial administration of that province. Inferring that a policy adopted in Egypt may have prevailed also in Syria, Professor Ramsay has recently put forth a strong argument for Luke's accuracy in respect of this census (Was Christ born at Bethlehem, 95-248). That argument may be condensed as follows: We have evidence of a system of Roman enrolments in Egypt taken every fourteen years, and already traced back to the time of Augustus, the earliest document so far recovered belonging, apparently, to the census of A.D. 20. It is at least possible that this system of Egyptian enrolments may have been part of an imperial policy, of which all other trace is lost excepting the statement of Luke. It is significant that the date of the census referred to by Josephus (A.D. 6) fits exactly the fourteen-year cycle which obtained in Egypt. If the census of A.D. 6 was preceded by an earlier one its date would be B.C. 8; that is, it would be actually taken in B.C. 7, in order to secure the full acts for B.C. 8.

The statement of Tertullian (Against Marcion, iv. 19) that a census had been taken in Judea under Augustus by Sentius Saturninus, who was governor of Syria about 9 to 7 B.C., certainly comes from some source independent of the gospels, and tends to confirm Luke's account of a census before the death of Herod. That a Roman census might have been taken in Palestine during Herod's life is seen from the fact that in A.D. 36 Vitellius, the governor of Syria, had to send Roman forces into Cilicia Trachæa to assist Archelaus, the king of that country, to quell a revolt caused by native resistance to a census taken after the Roman fashion (Tacitus, Ann. vi. 41). Herod would almost certainly resent as a mark of subjection the order to enrol his people; and the fact that he was in disfavor with Augustus during the governorship of Saturninus (Josephus, Ant. xvi. 9. 1-3), suggests to Professor Ramsay that he may have sought to avoid obedience to the imperial will in the matter of the census. If after some delay Herod was forced to obey, the enrolment may have been taken in the year 7-6. Since it is probable that the Romans would allow Herod to give the census as distinctly Jewish a character as possible, it is easy to credit the order that all Jews should be registered, so far as possible, in their ancestral homes. Hence the journey of Joseph to Bethlehem; and if Mary wished to have her child also registered as from David's line, her removal with Joseph to Bethlehem is explained. Such a delay in the taking of the census would have postponed it until after the recall of Saturninus. The statement of Tertullian may therefore indicate simply that he knew that a census was taken in Syria by Saturninus.

The successor of Saturninus was Varus, who held the governorship until after the death of Herod. How then does Luke refer to the enrolment as taken when Quirinius was in authority? It has for a long time been known that this man was in Syria before he was there as legate of the emperor in A.D. 6. There seems to be evidence that Quirinius was in the East about the year B.C. 6, putting down a rebellion on the borders of Cilicia, a district joined with Syria into one province under the early empire. Varus was at this time governor, but Quirinius might easily have been looked upon as representing for the time the power of the Roman arms. If Herod was forced to yield to the imperial wish by the presence in Syria of this renowned captain, the statement of Luke is confirmed, and the census at which Jesus was born was taken, according to a Jewish fashion, during the life of Herod, but under compulsion of Rome exacted by Quirinius, while he was in command of the Roman forces in the province of Syria-Cilicia. This gives as a probable date for the birth of Jesus B.C. 6, which accords well with the hints previously considered, inasmuch as it is earlier than the death of Herod, and, if born in B.C. 6, Jesus would have been thirty-two at his baptism in A.D. 26.

The account given in Matthew of "the star" which drew the wise men to Judea gives no sure help in determining the date of the birth of Jesus, but it is at least suggestive that in the spring and autumn of B.C. 7 there occurred a remarkable conjunction of the planets Jupiter and Saturn. This was first noticed by Kepler in consequence of a similar conjunction observed by him in A.D. 1603. Men much influenced by astrology must have been impressed by such a celestial phenomenon, but that it furnishes an explanation of the star of the wise men is not clear. If it does, it confirms the date otherwise probable for the nativity, that is, not far from B.C. 6.

Can we go further and determine the time of year or the month and day of the nativity? It should be borne in mind that our Christmas festival was not observed earlier than the fourth century, and that the evidence is well-nigh conclusive that December 25th was finally selected for the Nativity in order to hallow a much earlier and widely spread pagan festival coincident with the winter solstice. If anything exists to suggest the time of year it is Luke's mention of "shepherds in the field keeping watch by night over their flock" (ii. 8). This seems to indicate that it must have been the summer season. In winter the flocks would be folded, not pastured, by night.

It therefore seems probable that Jesus was born in the summer of B.C. 6; that he was baptized in A.D. 26; that the first Passover of his ministry was in the spring of 26 or 27; and that he was crucified in the spring of 29 or 30.

V

The Early Years of Jesus

Matt. i. 1 to ii. 23; Luke i. 5 to ii. 52; iii. 23-38

It is surprising that within a century of the life of the apostles, Christian imagination could have so completely mistaken the real greatness of Jesus as to let its thirst for wonder fill his early years with scenes in which his conduct is as unlovely as it is shocking. That he who in manhood was "holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners" (Heb. vii. 26), could in youth, in a fit of ill-temper, strike a companion with death and then meet remonstrance by cursing his accusers with blindness (Gospel of Thomas, 4, 5); that he could mock his teachers and spitefully resent their control (Pseudo-Matthew, 30, 31); that it could be thought worthy of him to exhibit his superiority to common human conditions by carrying water in his mantle when his pitcher had been broken (same, 33), or by making clay birds in play on the Sabbath and causing them to fly when he was rebuked for naughtiness (same, 27);--these and many like legends exhibit incredible blindness to the real glory of the Lord. Yet such things abound in the early attempts of the pious imagination to write the story of the youth of Jesus, and the account of the nativity and its antecedents fares as ill, being pitifully trivial where it is not revolting.

How completely foreign all this is to the apostolic thought and feeling is clear when we notice that excepting the first two chapters of Matthew and Luke the New Testament tells us nothing whatever of the years which preceded John the Baptist's ministry in the wilderness. The gospels are books of testimony to what men had seen and heard (John i. 14); and the epistles are practical interpretations of the same in its bearing on religious life and hope. The apostles found no difficulty in recognizing the divinity and sinlessness of their Lord without inquiring how he came into the world or how he spent his early years; it was what he showed himself to be, not how he came to be, that formed their conception of him. Yet the early chapters of Matthew and Luke should not be classed with the later legends. Notwithstanding the attempts of Keim to associate the narratives of the infancy in the canonical and apocryphal gospels, a great gulf separates them: on the one side there is a reverent and beautiful reserve, on the other indelicate, unlovely, and trivial audacity.

The gospel narratives have, however, perplexities of their own, for the two accounts agree only in the main features,--the miraculous birth in Bethlehem in the days of Herod, Mary being the mother and Joseph the foster-father, and Nazareth the subsequent residence. In further details they are quite different, and at first sight seem contradictory. Moreover, while Matthew sheds a halo of glory over the birth of Jesus, Luke draws a picture of humble circumstances and obscurity. These differences, taken with the silence of the rest of the New Testament concerning a miraculous birth, constitute a real difficulty. To many it seems strange that the disciples and the brethren of Jesus did not refer to these things if they knew them to be true. But it must not be overlooked that any familiar reference to the circumstances of the birth of Jesus which are narrated in the gospels would have invited from the Jews simply a challenge of the honor of his home. Moreover, as the knowledge of these wonders did not keep Mary from misunderstanding her son (Luke ii. 19, 51; compare Mark in. 21, 31-35), the publication of them could hardly have helped greatly the belief of others. The fact that Mary was so perplexed by the course of Jesus in his ministry makes it probable that even until quite late in her life she "kept these things and pondered them in her heart."

No parts of the New Testament are challenged so widely and so confidently as these narratives of the infancy. But if they are not to be credited with essential truth it is necessary to show what ideas cherished in the apostolic church could have led to their invention. That John and Paul maintain the divinity of their Lord, yet give no hint that this involved a miraculous birth, shows that these stories are no necessary outgrowth of that doctrine. The early Christians whether Jewish or Gentile would not naturally choose to give pictorial form to their belief in their Lord's divinity by the story of an incarnation. The heathen myths concerning sons of the gods were in all their associations revolting to Christian feeling, and, while the Jewish mind was ready to see divine influence at work in the birth of great men in Israel (as Isaac, and Samson, and Samuel), the whole tendency of later Judaism was hostile to any such idea as actual incarnation. Some would explain the story of the miraculous birth as a conclusion drawn by the Christian consciousness from the doctrine of the sinlessness of Jesus. Yet neither Paul nor John, who are both clear concerning the doctrine, give any idea that a miraculous birth was essential for a sinless being. Some appeal to the eagerness of the early Christians to exalt the virginity of Mary, This is certainly the animus of many apocryphal legends. But the feeling is as foreign to Jewish sentiment and New Testament teaching as it is contradictory to the evidence in the gospels that Mary had other children born after Jesus.

Moreover, the songs of Mary (Luke i. 46-55) and Zachariah (Luke i. 68--79) bear in themselves the evidence of origin before the doctrine of the cross had transformed the Christian idea of the Messiah. That transformed idea abounds in the Epistles and the Acts, and it is difficult to conceive how these songs (if they were later inventions) could have been left free of any trace of specifically Christian ideas. A Jewish Christian would almost certainly have made them more Christian than they are; a Gentile Christian could not have made them so strongly and naturally Jewish as they are; while a non-Christian Jew would never have invented them. Taken with the evidence in Ignatius (Ad Eph. xviii., xix.) of the very early currency of the belief in a miraculous birth, they confirm the impression that it is easier to accept the evidence offered for the miracle than to account for the origin of the stories as legends. The idea of a miraculous birth is very foreign to modern thought; it becomes credible only as the transcendent nature of Jesus is recognized on other grounds. It may not be said that the incarnation required a miraculous conception, yet it may be acknowledged that a miraculous conception is a most suitable method for a divine incarnation.

These gospel stories are chiefly significant for us in that they show that he in whom his disciples came to recognize a divine nature began his earthly life in the utter helplessness and dependence of infancy, and grew through boyhood and youth to manhood with such naturalness that his neighbors, dull concerning the things of the spirit, could not credit his exalted claims. He is shown as one in all points like unto his brethren (Heb. ii. 17). Two statements in Luke (ii. 40, 52) describe the growth of the divine child as simply as that of his forerunner (Luke i. 80), or that of the prophet of old (I. Sam. ii. 26). The clear impression of these statements is that Jesus had a normal growth from infancy to manhood, while the whole course of the later life as set before us in the gospels confirms the scripture doctrine that his normal growth was free from sin (Heb. iv. 15).

The knowledge of the probable conditions of his childhood is as satisfying as the apocryphal stories are revolting. The lofty Jewish conception of home and its relations is worthy of Jesus. The circumstances of the home in Nazareth were humble (Matt. xiii. 55; Luke ii. 24; compare Lev. xii. 8). Probably the house was not unlike those seen to-day, of but one room, or at most two or three,--the tools of trade mingling with the meagre furnishings for home-life. We should not think it a home of penury; doubtless the circumstances of Joseph were like those of his neighbors. In one respect this home was rich. The wife and mother had an exalted place in the Jewish life, notwithstanding the trivial opinions of some supercilious rabbis; and what the gospel tells of the chivalry of Joseph renders it certain that love reigned in his home, making it fit for the growth of the holy child.

Religion held sway in all the phases of Jewish life. With some it was a religion of ceremony,--of prayers and fastings, tithes and boastful alms, fringes and phylacteries. But Joseph and Mary belonged to the simpler folk, who, while they reverenced the scribes as teachers, knew not enough of their subtlety to have substituted barren rites for sincere love for the God of their fathers and childlike trust in his mercy. Jesus knew not only home life at its fairest, but religion at its best. A father's most sacred duty was the teaching of his child in the religion of his people (Deut. vi. 4-9), and then, as ever since, the son learned at his mother's side to know and love her God, to pray to him, and to know the scriptures. No story more thrilling and full of interest, no prospect more rich and full of glowing hope, could be found to satisfy the child's spirit of wonder than the story of Israel's past and God's promises for the future. Religious culture was not confined to the home, however. The temple at Jerusalem was the ideal centre of religious life for this Nazareth household (Luke ii. 41) as for all the people, yet practically worship and instruction were cultivated chiefly by the synagogue (Luke iv. 16); there God was present in his Holy Word. Week after week the boy Jesus heard the scripture in its original Hebrew form, followed by translation into Aramaic, and received instruction from it for daily conduct. The synagogue probably influenced the boy's intellectual life even more directly. In the time of Jesus schools had been established in all the important towns, and were apparently under the control of the synagogue. To such a school he may have been sent from about six years of age to be taught the scriptures (compare II. Tim. iii. 15), together with the reading (Luke iv. 16-19), and perhaps the writing, of the Hebrew language. Of his school experience we know nothing beyond the fact that he grew in "wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man" (Luke ii. 52),--a sufficient contradiction of the repulsive legends of the apocryphal gospels.

The physical growth incident to Jesus' development from boyhood to manhood is a familiar thought. The intellectual unfolding which belongs to this development is readily recognized. Not so commonly acknowledged, but none the less clearly essential to the gospel picture, is the gradual unfolding of the child's moral life under circumstances and stimulus similar to those with which other children meet (Heb. iv. 15). The man Jesus was known as the carpenter (Matt. xiii. 55). The learning of such a trade would contribute much to the boy's mastery of his own powers. Far more discipline would come from his fellowship with brothers and sisters who did not understand his ways nor appreciate the deepest realities of his life. Without robbing boyhood days of their naturalness and reality, we may be sure that long before Jesus knew how and why he differed from his fellows he felt more or less clearly that they were not like him. The resulting sense of isolation was a school for self-mastery, lest isolation foster any such pride or unloveliness as that with which later legend dared to stain the picture of the Lord's youth. Four brothers of Jesus are named by Mark (vi. 3),--James, and Joses, and Judas, and Simon,--the gospel adds also that he had sisters living at a later time in Nazareth. They were all subject with him to the same home influences, and apparently were not unresponsive to them. The similarity of thought and feeling between the sermon on the mount and the Epistle of James is not readily explained by the influence of master over disciple, since the days of James's discipleship began after the resurrection of Jesus. In any case there is no reason to think that the companions of Jesus' home were uncommonly irritating or in any way irreligious, only Jesus was not altogether like them (John vii. 5), and the fact of difference was a moral discipline, which among other things led to that moral growth by which innocence passed into positive goodness. If the home was such a school of discipline, its neighbors, less earnest and less favored with spiritual training, furnished more abundant occasion for self-mastery and growth. The very fact that in his later years Jesus was no desert preacher, like John, but social, and socially sought for, indicates that he did not win his manhood's perfection in solitude, but in fellowship with common life and in victory over the trials and temptations incident to it (Heb. ii. 17, 18).

Yet he must have been familiar with the life which is in secret (Matt. vi. 1-18). He who in his later years was a man of much prayer, who began (Luke iii. 21) and closed (Luke xxiii. 46) his public life with prayer, as a boy was certainly familiar not only with the prayers of home and synagogue, but also with quiet, personal resort to the presence of God. It would be unjust to think of any abnormal religious precocity. Jesus was the best example the world has seen of perfect spiritual health, but we must believe that he came early to know God and to live much with him.

It is instructive in connection with this inwardness of Jesus' life to recall the rich familiarity with the whole world of nature which appears in his parables and other teachings. The prospect which met his eye if he sought escape from the distractions of home and village life, has been described by Renan: "The view from the town is limited; but if we ascend a little to the plateau swept by a perpetual breeze, which stands above the highest houses, the landscape is magnificent. On the west stretch the fine outlines of Carmel, terminating in an abrupt spur which seems to run down sheer to the sea. Next, one sees the double summit which towers above Megiddo; the mountains of the country of Shechem, with their holy places of the patriarchal period; the hills of Gilboa, the small picturesque group to which is 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 gap between the mountains of Shunem and Tabor are visible the valley of the Jordan and the high plains of Perea, which form a continuous line from the eastern side. On the north, the mountains of Safed, stretching towards the sea, conceal St. Jean d'Acre, but leave the Gulf of Khaifa in sight. Such was the horizon, of Jesus. This enchanted circle, cradle of the kingdom of God, was for years his world. Indeed, during his whole life he went but little beyond the familiar bounds of his childhood. For yonder, northwards, one can almost see, on the flank of Hermon, Cæsarea-Philippi, his farthest point of advance into the Gentile world; and to the south the less smiling aspect of these Samaritan hills foreshadows the dreariness of Judea beyond, parched as by a burning wind of desolation and death." In the midst of such scenes we are to understand that, with the physical growth, and opening of mind, and moral discipline which filled the early years of Jesus, there came also the gradual spiritual unfolding in which the boy rose step by step to the fuller knowledge of God and himself.

That unfolding is pictured in an early stage in the story given us from the youth of Jesus. It was customary for a Jewish boy not long after passing his twelfth year to come under full adult obligation to the law. The visit to Jerusalem was probably in preparation for such assumption of obligation by Jesus. All his earlier training had filled his mind with the sacredness of the Holy City and the glory of the temple. It is easy to feel with what joy he would first look upon Zion from the shoulder of the Mount of Olives, as he came over it on his journey from Galilee; to conceive how the temple and the ritual would fill him with awe in his readiness not to criticise, but to idealize everything he saw, and to think only of the significance given by it all to the scripture; to imagine how eagerly he would talk in the temple court with the learned men of his people about the law and the promises with which in home and school his youth had been made familiar. Nor is it difficult to appreciate his surprise, when Joseph and Mary, only after long searching for him, at last found him in the temple, for he felt that it was the most natural place in which he could be found. In his wondering question to Mary, "Did not you know that I must be in my Father's house?" (Luke ii. 49), there is a premonition of his later consciousness of peculiarly intimate relation to God. The question was, however, a sincere inquiry. It was no precocious rebuke of Mary's anxiety. The knowledge of himself as Son of God was only dawning within him, and was not yet full and clear. This is shown by his immediate obedience and his subjection to his parents in Nazareth through many years. It is safe, in the interpretation of the acts and words of Jesus, to banish utterly as inconceivable anything that savors of the theatrical. We must believe that he was always true to himself, and that the subjection which he rendered to Joseph and Mary sprang from a real sense of childhood's dependence, and was not a show of obedience for any edifying end however high.

That question "Did not you know?" is the only hint we possess of Jesus' inner life before John's call to repentance rang through the land. Meanwhile the carpenter's son became himself the carpenter. Joseph seems to have died before the opening of Jesus' ministry. For Jesus as the eldest son, this death made those years far other than a time of spiritual retreat; responsibility for the home and the pressing duties of trade must have filled most of the hours of his days. This is a welcome thought to our healthiest sentiment, and true also to the earliest Christian feeling (Heb. iv. 15). John the Baptist had his training in the wilderness, but Jesus came from familiar intercourse with men, was welcomed in their homes (John ii. 2), knew their life in its homely ongoing, and was the friend of all sorts and conditions of men. After that visit to Jerusalem, a few more years may have been spent in school, for, whether from school instruction, or synagogue preaching, or simple daily experience, the young man came to know the traditions of the elders and also to know that observance of them is a mockery of the righteousness which God requires. Yet he seems to have felt so fully in harmony with God as to be conscious of nothing new in the fresh and vital conceptions of righteousness which he found in the law and prophets. We may be certain that much of his thought was given to Israel's hope of redemption, and that with the prophets of old and the singer much nearer his own day (Ps. of Sol. xvii. 23), he longed that God, according to his promise, would raise up unto his people, their King, the Son of David.

He must also have read often from that other book open before him as he walked upon the hills of Nazareth. The beauty of the grass and of the lilies was surely not a new discovery to him after he began to preach the coming kingdom, nor is it likely that he waited until after his baptism to form his habit of spending the night in prayer upon the mountain. We may be equally sure that he did not first learn to love men and women and long for their good after he received the call, "Thou art my beloved son" (Mark i. 11). He who in later life read hearts clearly (John ii. 25) doubtless gained that skill, as well as the knowledge of human sin and need, early in his intercourse with his friends and neighbors in Nazareth; while a clear conviction that God's kingdom consists in his sovereignty over loyal hearts must have filled much of his thought about the promised good which God would bring to Israel in due time. Thus we may think that in quietness and homely industry, in secret life with God and open love for men, in study of history and prophecy, in longing for the actual sway of God in human life, Jesus lived his life, did his work, and grew in "wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man" (Luke ii. 52).

VI

John The Baptist

Matt. iii. 1-17; iv. 12; xiv. 1-12; Mark i. 1-14; vi. 14-29; Luke i. 5-25, 57-80; iii. 1-22; ix. 7-9; John i. 19-37; iii. 22-30.

The first reappearance of Jesus in the gospel story, after the temple scene in his twelfth year, is on the banks of the Jordan seeking baptism from the new prophet. One of the silent evidences of the greatness of Jesus is the fact that so great a character as John the Baptist stands in our thought simply as accessory to his life. For that the prophet of the wilderness was great has been the opinion of all who have been willing to seek him in his retirement. One reason for the common neglect of John is doubtless the meagreness of information about him. But though details are few, the picture of him is drawn in clearest lines: a rugged son of the wilderness scorning the gentler things of life, threatening his people with coming wrath and calling to repentance while yet there was time; a preacher of practical righteousness heeded by publicans and harlots but scorned by the elders of his people; a bold and fearless spirit, yet subdued in the presence of another who did not strive, nor cry, nor cause his voice to be heard in the streets. When the people thought to find in John the promised Messiah, with unparalleled self-effacement he pointed them to his rival and rejoiced in that rival's growing success. Side by side they worked for a time; then the picture fails, but for a hint of a royal audience, with a fearless rebuke of royal disgrace and sin; a prison life, with its pathetic shaking of confidence in the early certainties; a long and forced inaction, and the question put by a wavering faith, with its patient and affectionate reply; then a lewd orgy, a king's oath, a girl's demands, a martyr's release, the disciples' lamentation and their report to that other who, though seeming a rival, was known to appreciate best the greatness of this prophet. Such is the picture in the gospels.

John, unlike his greater successor, has a highly appreciative notice from Josephus: "Now some of the Jews thought that the destruction of Herod's army came from God, and that very justly, as a punishment for what he did against John, who was called the Baptist. For Herod had had him put to death though he was a good man, and commanded the Jews to exercise virtue, both as to justice towards one another, and piety towards God, and so to come to baptism; for baptism would be acceptable to God, if they made use of it not in order to expiate some sin, but for the purification of the body, provided that the soul was thoroughly purified beforehand by righteousness. Now, as many flocked to him, for they were greatly moved by hearing his words, Herod, fearing that the great influence, John had over the people might lead to some rebellion (for the people seemed likely to do anything he should advise), thought it far best, by putting him to death, to prevent any mischief he might cause, and not bring himself into difficulties by sparing a man who might make him repent of his leniency when it should be too late. Accordingly he was sent a prisoner, in consequence of Herod's suspicious temper, to Machaerus, the fortress before mentioned, and was there put to death. So the Jews had the opinion that the destruction of this army [by Aretas] was sent as a punishment upon Herod and was the mark of God's displeasure at him" (Ant. xviii. 5. 2). This section is commonly accepted as trustworthy. Superficially different from the gospel record and assigning quite another cause for John's imprisonment and death, it correctly describes his character and his influence with the people, and leaves abundant room for a more intimately personal motive on the part of Antipas for the imprisonment of John. If the jealousy of Herodias was the actual reason for John's arrest, it is highly probable that another cause would be named to the world, and a likelier one than that given by Josephus could not be found.

The first problem that offers itself in the study of this man is the man himself. Whence did he come? Everything about him is surprising. He appears as a dweller in the desert, an ascetic, holding aloof from common life and content with the scanty fare the wilderness could offer; yet he was keenly appreciative of his people's needs, and he knew their sins,--the particular ones that beset Pharisees, publicans, soldiers. If a recluse in habit, he was far from such in thought; he was therefore no seeker for his own soul's peace in his desert life. His dress was strikingly suggestive of the old prophet of judgment on national infidelity (I. Kings xvii. 1; II. Kings i, 8), the Elijah whom John would not claim to be. His message was commanding, with its double word "Repent" and "The kingdom is near." His idea of the kingdom was definite, though not at all developed; it signified to him God's dominion, inaugurated by a divine judgment which should mean good for the penitent and utter destruction for the ungodly; hence the prophet's call to repentance. His ministry was one of grace, but the time was drawing near when the Greater One would appear to complete by a swift judgment the work which his forerunner was beginning. That Greater One would hew down the fruitless tree, winnow the wheat from the chaff on the threshing floor, baptize the penitent with divine power, and the wicked with the fire of judgment, since his was to be a ministry of judgment, not of grace.

Whence, then, came this strange prophet? Near the desert region where he spent his youth and where he first proclaimed his message of repentance and judgment was the chief settlement of that strange company of Jews known as Essenes. It has long been customary to think that during his early years John was associated with these fellow-dwellers in the desert, if he did not actually join the order. He certainly may have learned from them many things. Their sympathy with his ascetic life and with his thorough moral earnestness would make them attractive to him, but he was far too original a man to get from them more than some suggestions to be worked out in his own fashion. The simplicity of his teaching of repentance and the disregard of ceremonial in his preaching separate him from these monks. John may have known his desert companions, may have appreciated some things in their discipline, but he remained independent of their guidance.

The leaders of religious life and thought in his day were unquestionably the Pharisees. The controlling idea with them, and consequently with the people, was the sanctity of God's law. They were conscious of the sinfulness of the people, and their demand for repentance was constant. It is a rabbinic commonplace that the delay of the Messiah's coming is due to lack of repentance in Israel. But near as this conception is to John's, we need but to recall his words to the Pharisees (Matt. iii. 7) to realize how clearly he saw through the hollowness of their religious pretence. With the quibbles of the scribes concerning small and great commandments, Sabbaths and hand-washings, John shows no affinity. He may have learned some things from these "sitters in Moses' seat," but he was not of them.

John's message announced the near approach of the kingdom of God. It is probable that many of those who sought his baptism were ardent nationalists,--eager to take a hand in realizing that consummation. Josephus indicates that it was Herod's fear lest John should lead these Zealots to revolt that furnished the ostensible cause of his death. But similar as were the interests of John and these nationalists, the distance between them was great. The prophet's replies to the publicans and to the soldiers, which contain not a word of rebuke for the hated callings (Luke iii. 13, 14), show how fundamentally he differed from the Zealots.

But there was another branch of the Pharisees than that which quibbled over Sabbath laws, traditions, and tithes, or that which itched to grasp the sword; they were men who saw visions and dreamed dreams like those of Daniel and the Revelation, and in their visions saw God bringing deliverance to his people by swift and sudden judgment. There are some marked likenesses between this type of thought and that of John,--the impending judgment, the word of warning, the coming blessing, were all in John; but one need only compare John's words with such an apocalypse as the Assumption of Moses, probably written in Palestine during John's life in the desert, to discover that the two messages do not move in the same circle of thought at all; there is something practical, something severely heart-searching, something at home in every-day life, about John's announcement of the coming kingdom that is quite absent from the visions of his contemporaries. John had not, like some of these seers, a coddling sympathy for people steeped in sin. He traced their troubles to their own doors, and would not let ceremonies pass in place of "fruits meet for repentance." He came from the desert with rebuke and warning on his lips; with no word against the hated Romans, but many against hypocritical claimants to the privileges of Abraham; no apology for his message nor artificial device of dream or ancient name to secure a hearing, but the old-fashioned prophetic method of declaration of truth "whether men will hear or whether they will forbear." "All was sharp and cutting, imperious earnestness about final questions, unsparing overthrow of all fictitious shams in individual as in national life. There are no theories of the law, no new good works, no belief in the old, but simply and solely a prophetic clutch at men's consciences, a mighty accusation, a crushing summons to contrite repentance and speedy sanctification" (KeimJN. II. 228). We look in vain for a parallel in any of John's contemporaries, except in that one before whom he bowed, saying, "I have need to be baptized of thee."

John had, however, predecessors whose work he revived. In Isaiah's words, "Wash you, make you clean" (Isa. i 16), one recognizes the type which reappeared in John. The great prophetic conception of the Day of the Lord--the day of wrath and salvation (Joel ii. 1-14)--is revived in John, free from all the fantastic accompaniments which his contemporaries loved. The invitations to repentance and new fidelity which abound in Isaiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, and Joel; the summons to simple righteousness, which rang from the lips of Micah (vi. 8), and of the great prophet of the exile (Isa. lviii.), these tell us where John went to school and how well he learned his lesson. It is hard for us to realize how great a novelty such simplicity was in John's day, or how much originality it required to attain to this discipleship of the prophets. From the time when the curtain rises on the later history of Israel in the days of the Maccabean struggle to the coming of that "voice crying in the wilderness," Israel had listened in vain for a prophet who could speak God's will with authority. The last thing that people expected when John came was such a simple message. He was not the creature of his time, but a revival of the older type; yet, as in the days of Elijah God had kept him seven thousand in Israel that had not bowed the knee to Baal, so, in the later time, not all were bereft of living faith. These devout souls furnished the soil which could produce a life like John's, gifted and chosen by God to restore and advance the older and more genuine religion.

If John was thus a revival of the older prophetic order, a second question arises: Whence came his baptism, and what did it signify? The gospels describe it as a "baptism of repentance for the remission of sins" (Mark i. 4). John's declaration that his greater successor should baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire (Matt. iii. 11) shows that he viewed his baptism as a symbol, rather than as a means, of remission of sin. But it was more than a sign of repentance, it was a confession of loyalty to the kingdom which John's successor was to establish. It had thus a twofold significance: (a) confession of and turning from the old life of sin, and (b) consecration to the coming kingdom. Whence, then, came this ordinance? Not from the Essenes, for, unlike John's baptism, the bath required by these Jewish ascetics was an oft-repeated act. Further, John's rite had a far deeper religious significance than the Essene washings. These performed their ablutions to secure ritual cleanness as exemplary disciples of the Mosaic ideal. The searching of heart which preceded John's baptism, and the radical change of life it demanded, seem foreign to Essenism. The baptism of John, considered as a ceremony of consecration for the coming kingdom, was parallel rather to the initiatory oaths of the Essene brotherhood than to their ablutions. Their custom may have served to suggest to John a different application of the familiar sacred use of the bath; indeed John could hardly have been uninfluenced by the usage of his contemporaries; yet in this, as in his thought, he was not a product of their school.

John's baptism was equally independent of the pharisaic influence. The scribes made much of "divers washings," but not with any such significance as would furnish to John his baptism of repentance and of radical change of life. That he was not following a pharisaic leading appears in the question put to him by the Pharisees, "Why, then, baptizest thou?" (John i. 25). They saw something unique in the ceremony as he conducted it.

Many have held that he derived his baptism from the method of admitting proselytes into the Jewish fellowship. It is clear, at least, that the later ritual prescribed a ceremonial bath as well as circumcision and sacrifice for all who came into Judaism from the Gentiles, and it is difficult to conceive of a time when a ceremonial bath would not seem indispensable, since Jews regarded all Gentile life as defiling. While such an origin for John's baptism would give peculiar force to his rebuke of Jewish confidence in the merits of Abraham (Matt. iii. 9), it is more likely, as Keim has shown (JN. II. 243 and note), that in this as in his other thought John learned of his predecessors rather than his contemporaries. Before the giving of the older covenant from Sinai, it is said that Moses was required "to sanctify the people and bid them wash their garments" (Ex. xix. 10). John was proclaiming the establishment of a new covenant, as the prophets had promised. That the people should prepare for this by a similar bath of sanctification seems most natural. John appeared with a revival of the older and simpler religious ideas of Israel's past, deriving his rite as well as his thought from the springs of his people's religious life.

This revival of the prophetic past had nothing scholastic or antiquarian about it. John was a disciple, not an imitator, of the great men of Israel; his message was not learned from Isaiah or any other, though he was educated by studying them. What he declared, he declared as truth immediately seen by his own soul, the essence of his power being a revival, not in letter but in spirit, of the old, direct cry, "Thus saith the Lord." Inasmuch as John's day was otherwise hopelessly in bondage to tradition and the study of the letter, by so much is his greatness enhanced in bringing again God's direct message to the human conscience. John's greatness was that of a pioneer. The Friend of publicans and sinners also spoke a simple speech to human hearts; he built on and advanced from the old prophets, but it was John who was appointed to prepare the people for the new life, "to make ready the way of the Lord" (Mark i. 3). The clearness of his perception of truth is not the least of his claims to greatness. His knowledge of the simplicity of God's requirements in contrast with the hopeless maze of pharisaic traditions, and his insight into the characters with whom he had to deal, whether the sinless Jesus or the hypocritical Pharisees, show a man marvellously gifted by God who made good use of his gift. This greatness appears in superlative degree in the self-effacement of him who possessed these powers. Greatness always knows itself more or less fully. It was not self-ignorance that led John to claim to be but a voice, nor was it mock humility. The confession of his unworthiness in comparison with the mightier one who should follow is unmistakably sincere, as is the completed joy of this friend of the bridegroom rejoicing greatly because of the bridegroom's voice, even when the bridegroom's presence meant the recedence of the friend into ever deepening obscurity (John iii. 30).

But John had marked limitations. He knew well the righteousness of God; he knew, and, in effect, proclaimed God's readiness to forgive them that would turn from their wicked ways; he knew the simplicity as well as the exceeding breadth of the divine commandment; but beyond one flash of insight (John i. 29-36), which did not avail to remould his thought, he did not know the yearning love of God which seeks to save. It is not strange that he did not. Some of the prophets had more knowledge of it than he, his own favorite Isaiah knew more of it than he, but it was not the thought of John's day. The wonder is that the Baptist so far freed himself from current thought; yet he did not belong to the new order. He thundered as from Sinai. The simplest child that has learned from the heart its "Our Father" has reached a higher knowledge and entered a higher privilege (Matt. xi. 11). John's self-effacement, wonderful as it was, fell short of discipleship to his greater successor; in fact, at a much later time there was still a circle of disciples of the Baptist who kept themselves separate from the church (Acts xix. 1-7). He was doubtless too strenuous a man readily to become a follower. He could yield his place with unapproachable grace, but he remained the prophet of the wilderness still. He seemed to belong consciously to the old order, and, by the very circumstances ordained of God who sent him, he could not be of those who, sitting at Jesus' feet, learned to surrender to him their preconceptions and hopes, and in heart, if not in word, to say, "To whom shall we go, thou hast the words of eternal life?" (John vi. 68).

VII

The Messianic Call

Matt. iii. 13 TO iv. 11; Mark i. 9-13; Luke iii. 21, 22; iv. 1-13; John i. 30-34

In the circle about John all classes of the people were represented: Pharisees and Sadducees, jealous of innovation and apprehensive of popular excitement; publicans and soldiers, interested in the new preacher or touched in conscience; outcasts who came in penitence, and devout souls in consecration. The wonder of the new message was carried throughout the land and brought great multitudes to the Jordan. Jesus in Nazareth heard it, and recognized in John a revival of the long-silent prophetic voice. The summons appealed to his loyalty to God's truth, and after the multitudes had been baptized (Luke iii. 21) he too sought the prophet of the wilderness.

The connection which Luke mentions (i. 36) between the families of Jesus and John had not led to any intimacy between the two young men. John certainly did not know of his kinsman's mission (John i. 31), nor was his conception of the Messiah such that he would look for its fulfilment in one like Jesus (Matt. iii. 10-12). One thing, however, was clear as soon as they met,--John recognized in Jesus one holier than himself (Matt. iii. 14). With a prophet's spiritual insight he read the character of Jesus at a glance, and although that character did not prove him to be the Messiah, it prepared John for the revelation which was soon to follow.

The reply of Jesus to the unwillingness of John to give him baptism (Matt. iii. 15) was an expression of firm purpose to do God's will; the absence of any confession of sin is therefore all the more noticeable. In all generations the holiest men have been those most conscious of imperfection, and in John's message and baptism confession and repentance were primary demands; yet Jesus felt no need for repentance, and asked for baptism with no word of confession. But for the fact that the total impression of his life begat in his disciples the conviction that "he did no sin" (I. Pet. ii. 22; compare John viii. 46; II. Cor. v. 21), this silence of Jesus would offend the religious sense. Jesus, however, had no air of self-sufficiency, he came to make surrender and "to fulfil all-righteousness" (Matt. iii. 15). It was the positive aspect of John's baptism that drew him to the Jordan. John was preaching the coming of God's kingdom. The place held by the doctrine of that kingdom in the later teaching of Jesus makes it all but certain that his thought had been filled with it for many years. In his reading of the prophets Jesus undoubtedly emphasized the spiritual phases of their promises, but it is not likely that he had done much criticising of the ideas held by his contemporaries before he came to John. As already remarked he seems to have been quicker to discover his affinity with the older truth than to be conscious of the novelty of his own ways of apprehending it (Matt. v. 17). When, then, Jesus heard John's call for consecration to the approaching kingdom he recognized the voice of duty, and he sought the baptism that he might do all that he could to "make ready the way of the Lord."

This act of consecration on Jesus' part was one of personal obedience. There were no crowds present (Luke iii. 21), and his thoughts were full of prayer. It was an experience which concerned his innermost life with God, and it called him to communion with heaven like that in which he sought for wisdom before choosing his apostles (Luke vi. 12), and for strength in view of his approaching death (Luke ix. 28, 29). His outward declaration of loyalty to the coming kingdom was thus not an act of righteousness "to be seen of men," but one of personal devotion to him who is and who sees in secret (Matt. vi. 1, 6). As the transfiguration followed the prayer on Hermon, so this initial consecration was answered from heaven. A part of the answer was evident to John, for he saw a visible token of the gift of the divine Spirit which was granted to Jesus for the conduct of the work he had to do, and he recognized in Jesus the greater successor for whom he was simply making preparation (Mark i. 10; John i. 32-34). To Jesus there came also with the gift of the Spirit a definite word from heaven, "Thou art my beloved Son, in thee I am well pleased" (Mark i. 11). The language in Mark and Luke, and the silence of the Baptist concerning the voice from heaven (John i. 32-34), indicate that the word came to Jesus alone, and was his summons to undertake the work of setting up that kingdom to which he had just pledged his loyalty. The expression "My beloved Son" had clear Messianic significance for Jesus' contemporaries (comp. Mark xiv. 62), and the message can have signified for him nothing less than a Messianic call. It implied more than that child-relation to God which was the fundamental fact in his religious life from the beginning: it had an official meaning.

For Jesus the sense of being God's child was normally human, and in his ministry he invited all men to a similar consciousness of sonship. Yet his early years must have brought to him a realization that he was different from his fellows. That in him which made a confession at the baptism unnatural and which led to John's word, "I have need to be baptized by thee," was ready to echo assent when God said, "Thou art my Son." He accepted the call and the new office and mission which it implied, and he must have recognized that it was for this moment that all the past of his life had been making preparation.

The gift of the Spirit to Jesus, which furnished to John the proof that the Greater One had appeared, was not an arbitrary sign. The old prophetic thought (Isa. xi. 2; xlii. 1; lxi. 1) as well as a later popular expectation (Ps. of Sol. xvii. 42) provided for such an anointing of the Messiah; and in the actual conduct of his life Jesus was constantly under the leading of this Spirit (see Matt. xii. 28 and John iii. 34). The temptation which followed the baptism, and in which he faced the difficulties in his new task, was the first result of the Spirit's control. Its later influence is not so clearly marked in the gospels, but they imply that as the older servants of God were guided and strengthened by him, so his Son also was aided,--with this difference, however, that he possessed completely the heavenly gift (John iii. 34). Jesus' uniform confession of dependence on God confirms this teaching of the gift of the divine Spirit; and his uniform consciousness of complete power and authority confirms the testimony that he had the Spirit "without measure."

The temptation to which the Spirit "drove" Jesus after his baptism gives proof that the call to assume the Messianic office came to him unexpectedly; for the three temptations with which his long struggle ended were echoes of the voice which he had heard at the Jordan, and subtle insinuations of doubt of its meaning. Some withdrawal to contemplate the significance of his appointment to a Messianic work was a mental and spiritual necessity. As has often been said, if the gospels had not recorded the temptation, we should have had to assume one. Jesus being the man he was, could not have thought that his call was a summons to an entire change in his ideals and his thoughts about God and duty. Yet he must have been conscious of the wide differences between his conceptions of God's kingdom and the popular expectation. Those differences, by the measure of the definiteness of the popular thought and the ardor of the popular hope, were the proof of the difficulty of his task. The call meant that the Messiah could be such as he was; it meant that the kingdom could be and must be a dominion of God primarily in the hearts of men and consequently in their world; it meant that his work must be religious rather than political, and gracious rather than judicial. These essentials of the work which he could do contradicted at nearly every point the expectations of his people. How could he succeed in the face of such opposition? His long meditation during forty days doubtless showed him the difficulty of his task in all its baldness, yet it did not shake his certainty that the call had come to him from God, nor his faith that what God had called him to do he could accomplish.

The gospels show no hesitation in calling the experience of these days a temptation, nor had the Christian feeling of the first century any difficulty in thinking of its Lord as actually suffering temptation (Heb. ii. 18; iv. 15). A temptation to be real cannot be hypothetical; evil must actually present itself as attractive to the tempted soul. A suggestion of evil that takes no hold concretely of the heart is no temptation, nor is the resistance of it any victory. The sinlessness of him who sought baptism with no confession on his lips nor sense of penitence in his heart offers no barrier to his experience of genuine temptation, unless we think him incapable of sin, and therefore not "like unto his brethren." Not only do the gospels repeatedly refer to his temptations (Luke iv. 13; Mark viii. 31-33; Luke xxii. 28; compare Heb. v. 7-9), but they also depict clearly the reality of these initial testings. The account as given in Matthew and Luke represents the experience with which the forty days' struggle culminated. The absorption of Jesus' mind had been so complete that he had neglected the needs of his body, and when he turned to think of earthly things he was pressed by hunger. A popular notion at a later time, and probably also in Jesus' day, was that the Messiah would be able to feed his people as Moses had given them manna in the wilderness (John vi. 30-32; see EdersLJM. I. 176). He had just been endowed with the divine Spirit for the work before him; it was therefore no fantastic idea when the suggestion came that he should use his power to supply his own needs in the desert. Nor was the temptation without attractiveness; his own physical nature urged its need, and Jesus was no ascetic who found discomfort a way of holiness. The evil in the suggestion was that it asked him to use his newly given powers for the supply of his own needs, as if doubting that God would care for him as for any other of his children. There was more than distrust of God suggested; the temptation came with a hint of another doubt,--"If thou art God's Son." A miracle would prove to himself his appointment and his power. The suggested doubt of his call he passed unnoticed; distrust of God he repudiated instantly, falling back on his faith in the God he had served these many years (Deut. viii. 3). His victory is remarkable because his spirit conquered unhesitatingly after a long ecstasy which would naturally have induced a reaction and a surrender for the moment to the demand of lower needs.

This firmness of trust opened the way for another evil suggestion. In the work before him as God's Anointed many difficulties were on either side and across his path. He knew his people, their prejudices, and their hardness of heart; and he knew how far he was from their ideal of a Messiah. He knew also the watchful jealousy of Rome. Others before him, like Judas of Galilee, had tried the Messianic rôle and had failed. He, however, was confident of his divine call: should he not, therefore, press forward with his work, heedless of all danger and regardless of the dictates of prudence,--as heedless as if, trusting God's promised care, he should cast himself down from a pinnacle of the temple to the rocks in Kidron below? A fanatic would have yielded to such a temptation. Many another than Jesus did so,--Theudas (Acts v. 36), the Egyptian (Acts xxi. 38); and Bar Cochba (Dio Cassius, lxix. 12-14; Euseb. Ch. Hist. iv. 6). Jesus, however, showed his perfect mental health, repudiating the temptation by declaring that while man may trust God's care, he must not presumptuously put it to the test (Matt. iv. 7). The after life of Jesus was a clear commentary on this reply. He constantly sought to avoid situations which would compromise his mission or cut short his work (see John vi. 15), and when at the end he suffered the death prepared for him by his people's hatred, it was because his hour had come and he could say, "I lay down my life of myself" (John x. 18). His marvellous control of enthusiasm and his self-mastery in all circumstances separate Jesus from all ecstatics and fanatics. Yet presumption must have seemed the easier course, and could readily wear the mask of trust. He was tempted, yet without sin.

As the refusal to doubt led to the temptation to presume, so the determination to be prudent opened the way for a third assault upon his perfect loyalty to God. The world he was to seek to save was swayed by passions; his own people were longing for a Messiah, but they must have their kind of a Messiah. If he would acknowledge this actual supremacy of evil and self-will in the world, the opposition of passion and prejudice might be avoided. If he would own the evil inevitable for the time, and accommodate his work to it, he might then be free to lead men to higher and more spiritual views of God's kingdom. His knowledge of his people's grossness of heart and materialism of hope made a real temptation of the suggestion that he should not openly oppose but should accommodate himself to them. Jesus did not underestimate the opposition of "the kingdoms of the world," but he truly estimated God's intolerance of any rivalry (Matt. iv. 10), and he was true to God and to his own soul. Again, in this as in the preceding temptations, Jesus conquered the evil suggestions by appropriating to himself truth spoken by God's servants to Israel. Tempted in all points like his brethren, he resisted as any one of them could have resisted, and won a victory possible, ideally considered, to any other of the children of men.

It is not idle curiosity which inquires whence the evangelists got this story of the temptation of Jesus. Even if the whole transaction took place on the plane of outer sensuous life, and Jesus was bodily carried to Jerusalem and to the mountain-top, there is no probability that any witnesses were at hand who could tell the tale. But the fact that in any case the vision of the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time (Luke iv. 5) could have been spiritual only, since no mountain, however high (Matt. iv. 8), could give, physically, that wide sweep of view, suggests that the whole account tells in pictorial language an intensely real, inner experience of Jesus. This in no respect reduces the truthfulness of the narratives. Temptation never becomes temptation till it passes to that inner scene of action and debate. Since Jesus shows in all his teaching a natural use of parabolic language to set forth spiritual truth, the inference is almost inevitable that the gospels have in like manner adopted the language of vivid picture as alone adequate to depict the essential reality of his inner struggle. In any case the narrative could have come from no other source than himself. How he came to tell it we do not know. On one of the days of private converse with his disciples after the confession at Cæsarea Philippi he may have given them this account of his own experience, in order to help his loyal Galileans to understand more fully his work and the way of it, and to prepare them for that disappointment of their expectations which they were so slow to acknowledge as possible.

From this struggle in the wilderness Jesus came forth with the clear conviction that he was God's Anointed, and in all his after life no hesitation appeared. The kingdom which he undertook to establish was that dominion of simple righteousness which he had learned to know and love in the years of quiet life in Nazareth. He set out to do his work fearlessly, but prudently, seeking to win men in his Father's way to acknowledge that Father's sovereignty. There is no evidence that, beyond such firm conviction and purpose, he had any fixed plan for the work he was to do, nor that he saw clearly as yet how his earthly career would end. The third temptation, however, shows that he was not unprepared for seeming defeat. The struggle had been long and serious,--for the three temptations of the end are doubtless typical of the whole of the forty days,--and the victory was great and final. With the light of victory as well as the marks of warfare on his face, he took his way back towards Galilee.

VIII

The First Disciples

John i. 19 TO ii. 12

After the withdrawal of Jesus into the wilderness, John the Baptist continued his ministry of preaching and baptizing, moving northward up the Jordan valley to Bethany, on the eastern side of the river, near one of the fords below the Sea of Galilee (John i. 28). Here Galilee, doubtless, contributed more to his audience than Judea. It is certain that some from the borders of the lake were at this time among his constant attendants: Andrew and Simon of Bethsaida, John the son of Zebedee, and perhaps his brother James, probably also Philip of Bethsaida and Nathanael of Cana (John i. 40, 41, 43-45; compare xxi. 2).

The leaders in Jerusalem, becoming apprehensive whither this work would lead, sent an embassy to question John. They chose for this mission priests and Levites of pharisaic leaning as most influential among the people. The impression John and his message were making on the popular mind is seen in the questions put to him, "Art thou the Messiah?" "Elijah?" "The prophet?" (see Deut. xviii. 15), and in the challenge, "Why, then, baptizest thou?" when John disclaimed the right to any of these names. John's reply is the echo of his earlier proclamation of the one mightier than he who should baptize with the Spirit (Mark i. 7, 8), only now he added that this one was present among them (John i. 26, 27).

This interview occurred several weeks after Jesus' baptism, for upon the next day John saw Jesus (John i. 29), now returned from the temptation, and pointed him out to a group of disciples. Something in Jesus' face or in his bearing, as he came from his temptation, must have impressed John even more than at their first meeting; for he was led to think of a prophetic word for the most part ignored by the Messianic thought of his day, "He was brought as a lamb to the slaughter" (Isa. liii. 7). As he looked on Jesus the mysterious oracle was illuminated for him, and he cried, "Behold the lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world." Once again on the next day the same thought rushed to his lips when, with two disciples, he saw Jesus passing by (John i. 35, 36). Then as Jesus left John's neighborhood and took up again the round of ordinary life, John seems to have reverted to his more ordinary Messianic thought, his momentary insight into highest truth standing as a thing apart in his life. Such a moment's insight, caused by extraordinary circumstances, no more requires that John should retain the high thought constantly than does Peter's confession of Christ at Cæsarea Philippi exclude his later rebuke of his Lord (Mark viii. 32, 33), or his denials (Mark xiv. 66-72).

The disciples who heard these testimonies from John understood them to be Messianic (John i. 30-34), though their later consternation, when the cross seemed to shatter their hopes (John xx. 9, 10, 24, 25), shows that they did not comprehend their deeper meaning. Two of these disciples at once attached themselves to Jesus, and one of them, Andrew of Bethsaida, was so impressed by the new master that, having sought out his brother Simon, he declared that they had found the Messiah. The other of these earliest followers was John the son of Zebedee, and it is possible that he also found his brother and introduced James from the very first into the circle of the disciples. Jesus was about to take his departure for Galilee, and on the next day, as he was leaving, added Philip of Bethsaida to the little company of followers. Philip, impressed as Andrew had been, brought Nathanael of Cana to Jesus. The undefined something about Jesus which drew noble hearts irresistibly to himself, and his marvellous knowledge of this new comer, produced the same effect in Nathanael, as was seen earlier in Andrew and Philip, and he acknowledged the new master as "Son of God, King of Israel" (John i. 49).

These early confessions in the fourth gospel present a difficulty in view of Jesus' warm approval of Peter's acknowledgment of him at Cæsarea Philippi (Matt. xvi. 13-20). Jesus saw in that confession a distinct advance in the disciples' thought and faith. Yet the religious feeling which early questioned whether the Baptist even were not the Messiah (Luke iii. 15) would almost certainly have concluded that John's greater successor must be God's anointed. The very fact that men's thoughts about the Messiah were varied and complex made them ready for some modifications of their preconceptions. One with such subtle personal power as Jesus had exercised was almost sure to be hailed by some with enthusiasm as the looked-for representative of God. In fact, it is probable that at any time in the early days of his ministry Jesus could have been proclaimed Messiah, provided he had accepted the people's terms. Such a confession would have been merely the outcome of enthusiasm. The people, even the disciples, did not know Jesus. They all had high hopes and somewhat fixed ideas about the Messiah, nearly every one of which was destined to rude shock. How little they knew him Jesus realized (John i. 51), and his self-mastery is manifest in his attitude to this early enthusiasm. He was no visionary; he had a great work to do and a long lesson to teach, and he was patient enough to teach it little by little. He did not rebuke the ill-informed faith of a Nathanael, but sought gradually to supplant the old thought of the Messiah and of the kingdom by new truth, and to bind men's affections to himself for his own sake and the truth's sake, not simply for the idea which he impersonated to them.

The visit to Cana seems to have found a place in the fourth gospel, because there the new disciples discovered in their master miraculous powers which were to them a sign that he was in truth God's anointed. It is probable that at the time of this miracle the disciples thought only of the power and the marvel, yet the sharp contrast between John's ascetic habit and Jesus' use of his divine resources to relieve embarrassment at a wedding feast must have impressed every man among them. Their minds, however, were as yet too full of Messianic hopes to leave much room for reflection. They were content to have a sign, for in the view of Jesus' contemporaries signs were essential marks of the Messiah (John vi. 30; vii. 31; Mark viii. 11). They did their reflecting later (John ii. 22).

Miracles are as great a stumbling-block to modern thought as they were a help to the contemporaries of Jesus. The study of Jesus' life cannot ignore this fact, nor make little of it. It is fair to insist, however, that the question is one of evidence, not of metaphysical possibility. Men are wisely slow to-day to claim that they can tell what are the limits of the possible. If the question is one of evidence, it is in an important sense true that the evidence for miracle in the life of Jesus is appreciable only when that life is viewed in its completeness. The miracles attributed to Jesus may be studied, however, for the disclosure which they give of his character, and of his relation to common human need. So it is with this first sign at Cana. Jesus had just heard the call to be Messiah, and in his lonely struggle in the wilderness had given a loyal answer to that call, and had set out to do his Father's business in his Father's way. He who by the Jordan still carried the marks of struggle, so that the Baptist saw in him the suffering Saviour of Isaiah liii., now returned to the ordinary daily life in Galilee, and as a guest at a wedding feast he commenced that ministry of simple human friendliness (Matt. xi. 19; compare Mark ii. 15-17; Luke xv. 1, 2), which set him in sharp contrast alike with John's asceticism and with the ritualism and pedantry of the Pharisees.

His human friendliness is all the more worthy of note, inasmuch as on his return to Cana Jesus did not take up again the old relations of life as they existed before his baptism. This is clear from his reply to his mother when she reported the scarcity of wine (John ii. 3-5). While it is true that the title by which Jesus addressed Mary was neither disrespectful nor unkind (John xix. 26), the reply itself was a warning that now he was no longer hers in the old sense. A new mission had been given him, which henceforth would determine all his conduct, and in that mission she could not now share. Here is one of the many indications (compare Mark iii. 21, 31-35; Luke ii. 48) that Mary did not understand her son nor his work until much later (John xix. 25; Acts i. 14). That with such a clear sense of his new and serious mission Jesus' first official act was one of kindly relief for social embarrassment is most significant. He chose to show his divine authority to his new disciples in a way that brought joy to a festal company. Little as the disciples were likely to appreciate it at the time, it was beautifully indicative of the simplicity and everyday lovableness of Jesus' idea of the earnest service of God.

With the disciples thus strengthened in faith, and the mother not separated from him though unable to know his deepest thoughts, and the brethren who could not yet nor later understand their kinsman and his work, Jesus went down to Capernaum (John ii. 12), which proved thenceforth to be the centre of his greatest work and teaching. There for a time, how long cannot be known, he continued in quiet fellowship with his new friends, until the approach of the Passover drew him to Jerusalem to make formal opening of his Messianic work in that centre of his people's religious life.

Part II

The Ministry

I

General Survey of the Ministry

The attempt to arrange an orderly account of the way in which Jesus set about the work to which he was called at his baptism is met at the outset by a problem. The vivid and familiar words of Mark (i. 14), seconded by the representation in both Matthew (iv. 12) and Luke (iv. 14), indicate the imprisonment of John as the occasion, and Galilee as the scene of the inauguration of Jesus' public ministry. The fourth gospel, on the other hand, tells of a work of Jesus and his disciples in Judea prior to the imprisonment of John (in. 24), and makes this work follow at some interval after the inauguration of the Messianic ministry in Jerusalem. The minuteness of detail of time and place in the early chapters of John (i. 19 to iv. 43), together with the vividness of their narrative, give them strong claim to credence. They thus record a ministry earlier than that narrated in the other gospels, proving that the actual inauguration of Jesus' work occurred in Jerusalem at a Passover season previous to the imprisonment of John. This is known as the Early Judean Ministry.

The fact that Peter was wont to tell the story of Jesus' life in such a way as to lead Mark to set the opening of the ministry after the close of John's activity, indicates that that beginning of work in Galilee seemed to the disciples to be in a way the actual inauguration of Jesus' constructive and successful work. Peter cannot have been ignorant of the labors in Judea, though he may not himself have accompanied Jesus to the Passover. A new stage in the life of Jesus began, therefore, with his withdrawal to Galilee.

The story of the Galilean ministry is given chiefly by the first three gospels, John contributing but two incidents to the period covered by that ministry,--a second miracle at Cana (iv. 46-54), and a visit to Judea (v. 1-47),--and relating more fully the story of the feeding of the multitudes (vi. 1-71). The journey from Judea through Samaria (John iv. 1-45) should be identified with the removal to Galilee which stands at the beginning of Mark's record (i. 14; Matt. iv. 12; Luke iv. 14). Mark's account of the Galilean activity of Jesus (i. 14 to ix. 50) is one of such simple and steady progress that the whole period must be considered as a unit.

In the use which Matthew (iv. 12 to xviii. 35) and Luke (iv. 14 to ix. 50) make of Mark's record this unity is emphasized. Their treatment of the matter which they add, however, makes it best to study the period topically rather than attempt to follow closely a chronological sequence. As it is probable that the early writing ascribed by Papias to the apostle Matthew failed to preserve in many cases any record of the time and place of the teachings of Jesus, so is it certain that the first and third evangelists have distributed quite differently the material which they seem to have derived from that apostolic document. Mention need only be made of the exhortation against anxiety which Matthew places in the sermon on the mount (vi. 19-34), and which Luke has given after the close of the Galilean activity (xii. 22-34). It is possible to form some judgment of the general relations of such discourses from the character of their contents, but in the absence of positive statement by the evangelists it is hopeless to seek to give them a more definite historical setting. A topical study can consider them as contributions to the period to which they belong, while a chronological study would be lost in uncertain conjectures. A topical study may, however, disclose the fact that sequence of time was identical with development of method. This is, in general, the case with the Galilean ministry. The new lesson which Jesus began to teach after the confession at Cæsarea Philippi marked the supreme turning point in his whole public activity. Before that crisis the work of Jesus was a constructive preparation for the question which called forth Peter's confession. Subsequently his work was that of making ready for the end, which from that time on he foretold. As has been stated, the Galilean ministry is the story of the first three gospels, except for two incidents and a discourse added by John. The visit to the feast of Tabernacles (John vii. 1 to viii. 59) stands on the border between the work in Galilee and that which followed. It was one of Jesus' many attempts to win Jerusalem, and is evidence that the author of the fourth gospel--either because of special interest in the capital, or because of superior knowledge of the work of his Master in Judea--gave emphasis to a side of the life of Jesus which the other gospels have neglected.

With the close of the constructive ministry in Galilee, the account of Mark (x. 1; compare Matt xix. 1; Luke ix. 51) turns towards Jerusalem and the cross. The journey was not direct, but traversed Perea, the domain of Antipas beyond Jordan, and was accompanied by continued ministry of teaching and healing (Mark x. 1-52; Matt. xix. 1 to xx. 34). It is at this point that Luke has inserted the long section peculiar to his gospel (ix. 51 to xviii. 14), becoming again parallel with Mark as Jesus drew near to Jerusalem (xviii. 15 to xix. 28; compare Mark x. 13-52). Much of that which Luke adds gives evidence that in all probability it should be placed before the change in method at Cæsarea Philippi, while much of it undoubtedly belongs to the last months of Jesus' life. Since the last journey to Jerusalem is reported with considerable fulness, it is natural in a study of Jesus' life to treat that journey by itself. At this point John contributes important additions to the record (ix. 1 to xi. 57) showing that the journey was not continuous, but was interrupted by several more or less hurried visits to the capital, renewed efforts of Jesus to win the city.

With the final arrival in Jerusalem the four gospels come together in a record of the last days and the crucifixion (Mark xi. 1 to xv. 47; Matt, xxi 1 to xxvii. 66; Luke xix. 29 to xxiii. 56; John xi. 55 to xix. 42). The evangelists, in their accounts of the last week, seem to have had access to completer and more varied information than for any other part of the ministry. This causes some difficulties in constructing an ordered conception of the events, yet it greatly adds to the fulness of our knowledge. It is easier, therefore, to consider the period in three parts,--the final controversies in Jerusalem, the Last Supper, and the betrayal, trial, and crucifixion.

In a sense the resurrection and ascension form the conclusion of the final visit to Jerusalem, and should be treated with the last week. In a larger sense, however, they form the culmination of the whole ministry, and therefore constitute a final stage in the study of Jesus' life. At this point the record of the gospels is supplemented by the first chapter of the Acts and by Paul's concise report of the appearances of the risen Christ (I. Cor. xv. 3-8). The various accounts exhibit perplexing independence of each other. In total impression, however, they agree, and show that the tragedy, by which the enemies of Jesus thought to end his career, was turned into signal triumph.

Outline of Events in the Early Judean Ministry

The first Passover of the public ministry: Cleansing of the temple--John ii. 13-22.

Early results in Jerusalem: Discourse with Nicodemus--John ii. 23 to iii. 15.

Withdrawal into rural parts of Judea to preach and baptize--John in. 22-30; iv. 1, 2.

Imprisonment of John the Baptist--Matt. iv. 12; Mark i. 14.

Withdrawal from Judea through Samaria--John iv. 1-42.

Unlooked-for welcome in Galilee--John iv. 43-45.

? Second sign at Cana: Cure of the Nobleman's son--John iv. 46-54 (see sect. [A 41]).

[Retirement at Nazareth, the disciples resuming their accustomed calling. Inferred from Matt. iv. 13; Luke iv. 31; Matt. iv. 18-22 and ∥s.]

Events marked ? should possibly be given a different place; ∥s stands for "parallel accounts;" for sections marked A--as [A 41]--see Appendix.

II

The Early Ministry in Judea

We owe to the fourth gospel our knowledge of the fact that Jesus began his general ministry in Jerusalem. The silence of the other records concerning this beginning cannot discredit the testimony of John. For these other records themselves indicate in various ways that Jesus had repeatedly sought to win Jerusalem before his final visit at the end of his life (compare Luke xiii. 34; Matt. xxiii. 37). Moreover, the fourth gospel is confirmed by the probability, rising almost to necessity, that such a mission as Jesus conceived his to be must seek first to win the leaders of his people. The temple at Jerusalem was the centre of worship, drawing all Jews sooner or later to itself--even as Jesus in early youth was accustomed to go thither at the time of feasts (Luke ii. 41). Worshippers of God throughout the world prayed with their faces towards Jerusalem (Dan. vi. 10). Moreover, at Jerusalem the chief of the scribes, as well as the chief of the priests, were to be found. Compared with Jerusalem all other places were provincial and of small influence. A Messiah, who had not from the outset given up hope of winning the capital, cannot have long delayed his effort to find a following there.

Arriving at Jerusalem at the Passover season, in the early spring, Jesus remained in Judea until the following December (John iv. 35). Evidently the record which John gives of these months is most fragmentary, and from his own statement (xx. 30, 31) it seems highly probable that it is one sided, emphasizing those events and teachings in which Jesus disclosed more or less clearly his claim to be the Messiah. Doubtless the full record would show a much closer similarity between this early work in Judea and that later conducted in Galilee than a comparison of John with the other gospels would suggest; yet it is evident that Jesus opened his ministry in Jerusalem with an unrestrained frankness that is not found later in Galilee.

It is a mistake to think of the cleansing of the temple as a distinct Messianic manifesto. The market in the temple was a licensed affront to spiritual religion. It found its excuse for being in the requirement that worshippers offer to the priests for sacrifice animals levitically clean and acceptable, and that gifts for the temple treasury be made in no coin other than the sacred "shekel of the sanctuary." The chief priests appreciated the convenience which worshippers coming from a distance would find if they could obtain all the means of worship within the temple enclosure itself. The hierarchy or its representatives seem also to have appreciated the opportunity to charge good prices for the accommodation so afforded. The result was the intrusion of the spirit of the market-place, with all its disputes and haggling, into the place set apart for worship. In fact, the only part of the temple open to Gentiles who might wish to worship Israel's God was filled with distraction, unseemly strife, and extortion (compare Mark xi. 17). Such despite done the sanctity of God's house must have outraged the pious sense of many a devout Israelite. There is no doubt of what an Isaiah or a Micah would have said and done in such a situation. This is exactly what Jesus did. His act was the assumption of a full prophetic authority. In itself considered it was nothing more. In his expulsion of the traders he had the conscience of the people for his ally. There is no need to think of any use of miraculous power. His moral earnestness, coupled with the underlying consciousness on the part of the traders themselves that they had no business in God's house, readily explains the confusion and departure of the intruders. Even those who challenged Jesus' conduct did not venture to defend the presence of the market in the temple. They only demanded that Jesus show his warrant for disturbing a condition of things authorized by the priests.

The temple cleansing is recorded in the other gospels at the end of Jesus' ministry, just before the hostility of the Jews culminated in his condemnation and death. Inasmuch as these gospels give no account of a ministry by Jesus in Jerusalem before the last week of his life, it is easy to see how this event came to be associated by them with the only Jerusalem sojourn which they record. The definite place given to the event in John, together with the seeming necessity that Jesus should condemn such authorized affront to the very idea of worship, mark this cleansing as the inaugural act of Jesus' ministry of spiritual religion, rather than as a final stern rebuke closing his effort to win his people. Against the conclusion commonly held that Jesus cleansed the temple both at the opening and at the close of his course is the extreme improbability that the traders would have been caught twice in the same way. The event fits in closely with the story of the last week, because it actually led to the beginning of opposition in Jerusalem to the prophet from Galilee. At the first the opposition was doubtless of a scornful sort. Later it grew in bitterness when it saw how Jesus was able to arouse a popular enthusiasm that seemed to threaten the stability of existing conditions.

The reply of Jesus to the challenge of his authority for his high-handed act shows that he offered it to the people as an invitation; he would lead them to a higher idea and practice of worship (compare John iv. 21-24). When they demanded the warrant for his act, he saw that they were not ready to follow him, and could not appreciate the only warrant he needed for his course. He cleansed the temple because they were destroying it as a place where men could worship God in spirit. In reply to the challenge, he who later taught the Samaritan woman that the worship of God is not dependent on any place however sacred, answered that they might finish their work and destroy the temple as a house of God, yet he would speedily re-establish a true means of approach to the Most High for the souls of men. He clothed his reply in a figurative dress, as he was often wont to do in his teaching,--"Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." To his unsympathetic hearers it must have been completely enigmatic. Even the disciples did not catch its meaning until after the resurrection had taught them that in their Master a new chapter in God's dealing with men had begun.

The unreadiness of the Jewish leaders to receive the only kind of message he had to offer produced in Jesus a decided reserve. He did not lack a certain kind of success in Jerusalem. His cures of the sick won him many followers who seemed ready to believe almost anything of him. But the attitude taken by the leaders made it evident that Jesus must make disciples who should understand in some measure at least his idea of God's kingdom, and, understanding, must be ready to be loyal to it through good report and evil. For the position taken by the leaders of the people had an ominous significance. It could mean but one thing for Jesus,--unrelenting conflict. If they could not be won, they who would so legalize the desecration of God's house would not hesitate at any extreme in opposing his messenger. This possibility confronted Jesus at the very outset; therefore he held the popular enthusiasm in check, knowing that as yet it had little of that kind of faith which could endure seeming defeat.

One of those who were drawn to him, however, gave Jesus opportunity to lay aside his reserve and speak clearly of the truth lie came to publish. He was a member of the Jewish sanhedrin, a rabbi apparently held in high regard in Jerusalem. While his associates were dismissing the claims of Jesus with a wave of the hand, Nicodemus sought out the new teacher by night, and showed his desire to learn what Jesus held to be truth concerning God's kingdom. Jesus first reminded the teacher of Israel of the old doctrine of the prophets, that Israel must find a new heart before God's kingdom can come (Jer. xxxi. 31-34; Ezek. xxxvi. 25-27), and then declared that the heavenly truth which God now would reveal to men is that all can have the needed new life as freely as the plague-stricken Israelites found relief when Moses lifted up the brazen serpent. This conversation serves to introduce the evangelist's interpretation of Jesus as the only begotten Son of God sent in love to redeem the world (John iii. 16-21).

John's record suggests that Jesus left Jerusalem shortly after the conversation with Nicodemus. His work there was not without success, for Nicodemus seems to have been henceforth his loyal advocate (compare John vii. 50-52; xix. 39); and it may be that at the time of this sojourn he won the hearts of his friends in Bethany, for the first picture the gospels give of this household seems to presuppose a somewhat intimate relation of Jesus to the family (Luke x. 38-42). It would be idle to speculate whether it was at this time or later that he became acquainted with Joseph of Arimathea, or the friends who during the last week of his life showed him hospitality (Mark xi. 2-6; xiv. 12-16).

For a time after his withdrawal from Jerusalem he lingered in Judea, carrying on a simple ministry of preparation like that of John the Baptist. In this way the summer and early autumn seem to have passed, Jesus growing more popular as a prophet than John himself had been. The fact that Jesus' disciples administered baptism in connection with his work roused the jealousy of some of John's followers, and attracted again the attention of Jerusalem to the new activity of the bold disturber of the temple market. John's disciples complained to him of Jesus' rivalry, and received his self-effacing confession, "He must increase, I must decrease." The Pharisees, on the other hand, made Jesus feel that further work in Judea was for the time unwise, and he withdrew into Galilee for retirement, since "a prophet has no honor in his own country" (John iv. 1-3, 44). Baffled in his first effort to win his people, this journey back from the region of the holy city must have been one of no little sadness for Jesus. Some urgency for haste led him by the direct road through despised Samaria. A seemingly chance conversation with a woman at Jacob's well, where he was resting at noonday, gave him an opportunity for ministry which was more ingenuously received than any which he had been able to render in Judea; and to this woman he declared himself even more plainly than to Nicodemus, and preached to her that spiritual idea of worship which he had sought to enforce by cleansing Jerusalem's temple. Samaria was so isolated from all Jewish interest that Jesus felt no need for reserve in this "strange" land. The few days spent there must have been peculiarly welcome to his heart, fresh from rejection in Judea.

One reason why he wished to hasten from Judea seems to have been his knowledge of the hostile movement which was making against John the Baptist. Either before or soon after Jesus started for Galilee Herod had arrested John, ostensibly as a measure of public safety owing to John's undue popularity (Jos. Ant. xviii. 5. 2). Herod may have been encouraged to take this step by the hostility of the Pharisees to the plain-spoken prophet of the desert (see John iv. 1-3). The fourth gospel leaves its readers to infer that the imprisonment took place somewhere about this time (compare iii. 24 and v. 35), while the other gospels unite in giving this arrest as the occasion for Jesus' withdrawal into Galilee.

Arrived in Galilee, Jesus seems to have returned to his home at Nazareth, while his disciples went back to their customary occupations, until he summoned them again to join him in a new ministry (see sect. 125). John assigns to this time the cure of a nobleman's son. The father sought out Jesus at Cana, having left his son sick at Capernaum. At first Jesus apparently repelled his approach, even as he had dealt with seekers after marvels at Jerusalem; but on hearing the father's cry of need and trust, he at once spoke the word of healing. This event is in so many ways a duplicate of the cure of a centurion's servant recorded in Matthew and Luke, that to many it seems but another version of the same incident. Considering the variations in the story reported by Matthew and Luke, it is clearly not possible to prove that John tells of a different case. Yet the simple fact of similarity of some details in two events should not exclude the possibility of their still being quite distinct. The reception which Jesus gave the two requests for help is very different, and the case reported in John is in keeping with the attitude of Jesus before he began his new ministry in Galilee. On his arrival in Galilee he wished to avoid a mere wonder faith begotten of the enthusiasm he excited in Jerusalem, yet this wish yielded at once when a genuine need sought relief at his hands.

The apparent result of this first activity in Judea was disappointment and failure. He had won no considerable following in the capital. He had definitely excited the jealousy and opposition of the leading men of his nation. Even such popular enthusiasm as had followed his mighty works was of a sort that Jesus could not encourage. The situation in Judea had at length become so nearly untenable that he decided to withdraw into seclusion in Galilee, where, as a prophet, he could be "without honor." He had gone to Jerusalem eager to begin there, where God should have had readiest service, the ministry of the kingdom of God. Challenge, cold criticism, and superficial faith were the results. A new beginning must be made on other lines in other places. Meanwhile Jesus retired to his home and his followers to theirs.

Outline of Events in the Galilean Ministry (Chapters [III.] and [IV.])

The imprisonment of John and the withdrawal of Jesus into Galilee--Matt. iv. 12-17; Mark i. 14, 15; Luke iv. 14, 15.

Removal from Nazareth to Capernaum--Matt. iv. 13-16; Luke iv. 31.

The call of Simon and Andrew, James and John--Matt. iv. 18-22; Mark i. 16-20; Luke v. 1-11.

First work in Capernaum--Matt. viii. 14-17; Mark i. 21-34; Luke iv. 31-41.

First circuit of Galilee--Matt. iv. 23; viii. 2-4; Mark i. 35-45; Luke iv. 42-44; v. 12-16.

Cure of a paralytic in Capernaum--Matt. ix. 2-8; Mark ii. 1-12; Luke v. 17-26.

The call of Matthew--Matt. ix. 9-13; Mark ii. 13-17; Luke v. 27-32.

? The question about fasting--Matt ix. 14-17; Mark ii. 18-22; Luke v. 33-39 (see sects. 47; [A 54]).

? Sabbath cure at Jerusalem at the unnamed feast--John v. 1-47 (see sect. [A 53]).

? The Sabbath controversy in the Galilean grain fields--Matt. xii. 1-8; Mark ii. 23-28; Luke vi. 1-5 (see sects. 47; [A 54]).

? Another Sabbath controversy: cure of a withered hand--Matt. xii. 9-14; Mark iii. 1-6; Luke vi. 6-11 (see sects. 47; [A 54]).

Jesus followed by multitudes from all parts--Matt. iv. 23-25; xii. 15-21; Mark iii. 7-12; Luke vi. 17-19.

The choosing of the twelve--Matt. x. 2-4; Mark iii. 13-19; Luke vi. 12-19.

The sermon on the mount--Matt. v. 1 to viii. 1; Luke vi. 20 to vii. 1 (see sect. [A 55]).

The cure of a centurion's servant--Matt. viii. 5-13; Luke vii. 1-10; John iv. 46-54.

The restoration of the widow's son at Nain--Luke vii. 11-17.

The message from John in prison--Matt. xi. 2-19; Luke vii. 18-35.

The anointing of Jesus by a sinful woman--Luke vii. 36-50.

The companions of Jesus on his second circuit of Galilee--Luke viii. 1-3.

Cure of a demoniac in Capernaum and blasphemy by the Pharisees--Matt. xii. 22-45; Mark iii. 19^a-30; Luke xi. 14-36.

The true kindred of Jesus--Matt. xii. 46-50; Mark iii. 31-35; Luke viii. 19-21.

The parables by the sea--Matt. xiii. 1-53; Mark iv. 1-34; Luke viii. 4-18 (see sect. [A 56]).

The tempest stilled--Matt. viii. 18, 23-27; Mark iv. 35-41; Luke viii. 22-25.

Cure of the Gadarene demoniac--Matt. viii. 28-34; Mark v. 1-20; Luke viii. 26-39.

The restoration of the daughter of Jairus and cure of an invalid woman--Matt. ix. 1, 18-26; Mark v. 21-43; Luke viii. 40-56.

Cure of blind and dumb--Matt. ix. 27-34.

Rejection at Nazareth--Matt. xiii. 54-58; Mark vi. 1-6^a; Luke iv. 16-30 (see sect. [A 52]).

Third circuit of Galilee--Matt. ix. 35; Mark vi. 6^b.

The mission of the twelve--Matt. ix. 36 to xi. 1; Mark vi. 7-13; Luke ix. 1-6 (see sect. [A 57]).

The death of John the Baptist--Matt. xiv. 1-12; Mark vi. 14-29; Luke ix. 7-9.

Withdrawal of Jesus across the sea and feeding of the five thousand--Matt. xiv. 13-23; Mark vi. 30-46; Luke ix. 10-17; John vi. 1-15.

Return to Capernaum, Jesus walking on the water--Matt. xiv. 24-36; Mark vi. 47-56; John vi. 16-21.

Teaching about the Bread of Life in the synagogue at Capernaum--John vi. 22-71 (see sect. [A 59]).

Controversy concerning tradition: handwashing, etc.--Matt. xv. 1-20; Mark vii. 1-23.

Withdrawal to regions of Tyre and Sidon: the Syrophœnician woman's daughter--Matt. xv. 21-28; Mark vii. 24-30.

Return through Decapolis--Matt. xv. 29-31; Mark vii. 31-37.

? The feeding of the four thousand--Matt. xv. 32-38; Mark viii. 1-9 (see sect. [A 58]).

Pharisaic challenge in Galilee, and warning against the leaven of the Pharisees--Matt xv. 39 to xvi. 12; Mark viii. 10-21.

Cure of blind man near Bethsaida--Mark viii. 22-26.

Peter's confession of Jesus as Christ near Cæsarea Philippi--Matt. xvi. 13-20; Mark viii. 27-30; Luke ix. 18-21.

The new lesson, that the Christ must die--Matt. xvi. 21-28; Mark viii. 31 to ix. 1; Luke ix. 22-27.

The transfiguration--Matt. xvii. 1-13; Mark ix. 2-13; Luke ix. 28-36.

Cure of the epileptic boy--Matt. xvii. 14-20; Mark ix. 14-29; Luke ix. 37-43^a.

Second prediction of approaching death and resurrection--Matt. xvii. 22, 23; Mark ix. 30-32; Luke ix. 43^b-45.

Return to Capernaum: the temple tax--Matt. xvii. 24-27; Mark ix. 33^a.

Teachings concerning humility and forgiveness--Matt. xviii. 1-35; Mark ix. 33-50; Luke ix. 46-50.

Visit of Jesus to Jerusalem at the feast of Tabernacles--John vii. 1-52; viii. 12-59 (see sect. [A 60]).

? The woman taken in adultery--John vii. 53 to viii. 11 (see sect. 163).

The following probably belong to the Galilean ministry before the confession at Cæsarea Philippi (see sect. 168):--

The disciples taught to pray--Matt. vi. 9-15; vii. 7-11; Luke xi. 1-13.

The cure of an infirm woman on the Sabbath--Luke xiii. 10-17.

Two parables: mustard-seed and leaven--Matt. xiii. 31-33; Luke xiii. 18-21 (see sect. [A 56]).

The parable of the rich fool--Luke xii. 13-21.

Cure on a Sabbath and teaching at a Pharisee's table--Luke xiv. 1-24.

Five parables--Luke xv. 1 to xvi. 31.

Certain disconnected teachings--Luke xvii. 1-4.

III

The Ministry In Galilee--Its Aim and Method

The work of Jesus in Galilee, which is the principal theme of the first three gospels, began with a removal from Nazareth to Capernaum, and the calling of four fishermen to be his constant followers. The ready obedience which Simon and Andrew and James and John gave to this call is an interesting evidence that they did not first come to know Jesus at the time of this summons. The narrative presupposes some such earlier association as is reported in John, followed by a temporary return to their old homes and occupations, while Jesus sought seclusion after his work in Judea. The first evangelist has most vividly indicated the development of the Galilean ministry, directing attention to two points of beginning,--the beginning of Jesus' preaching of the kingdom (Matt. iv. 17) and the beginning of his predictions of his own sufferings and death (xvi. 21). Between these two beginnings lies the ministry of Jesus to the enthusiastic multitudes, the second of them marking his choice of a more restricted audience and a less popular message. Within the first of these periods two events mark epochs,--the mission of the twelve (Matt. ix. 36; x. I) to preach the coming kingdom of God and to multiply Jesus' ministry of healing, and the feeding of the five thousand when the popular enthusiasm reached its climax (John vi. 14, 15). These events fall not far apart, and mark two different phases of the same stage of development in his work. The first is emphasized by Matthew, the second by John; both help to a clearer understanding of the narrative which Mark has furnished to the other gospels for their story of the Galilean ministry. The table at the head of this chapter indicates in outline the probable succession of events in the Galilean period. The order adopted is that of Mark, supplemented by the other gospels. Luke's additions are inserted in his order where there is not some reason for believing that he himself disregarded the exact sequence of events. Thus the rejection at Nazareth is placed late, as in Mark. Much of the material in the long section peculiar to Luke is assigned in general to this Galilean period, since all knowledge of its precise location in time and place has been lost for us, as it not unlikely was for Luke. Although Matthew is the gospel giving the clearest general view of the Galilean work, it shows the greatest disarrangement of details, and aids but little in determining the sequence of events. The material from that gospel is assigned place in accordance with such hints as are discoverable in parallel or associated parts of Mark or Luke. Of John's contributions one--the feeding of the multitudes--is clearly located by its identity with a narrative found in all the other gospels. The visit to Jerusalem at the unnamed feast can be only tentatively placed.

Viewing this gospel story as a whole, the parallel development of popular enthusiasm and official hostility at once attracts attention. Jesus' first cures in the synagogue at Capernaum roused the interest and wonder of the multitudes to such an extent that he felt constrained to withdraw to other towns. On his return to Capernaum he was so beset with crowds that the friends of the paralytic could get at him only by breaking up the roof. It was when Jesus found himself followed by multitudes from all parts of the land that he selected twelve of his disciples "that they might be with him and that he might send them forth to preach," and addressed to them in the hearing of the multitudes the exacting, although unspeakably winsome teaching of the sermon on the mount. This condition of things continued even after Herod had killed John the Baptist, for when Jesus, having heard of John's fate, sought retirement with his disciples across the sea of Galilee, he was robbed of his seclusion by throngs who flocked to him to be healed and to hear of the kingdom of God.

The popular enthusiasm was not indifferent to the question who this new teacher might be. At first Jesus impressed the people by his authoritative teaching and cures. After the raising of the widow's son at Nain the popular feeling found a more definite declaration,--"a great prophet has risen up among us." The cure of a demoniac in Capernaum raised the further incredulous query, "Can this be the Son of David?" The notion that he might be the Messiah seems to have gained acceptance more and more as Jesus' popularity grew, for at the time of the feeding of the multitudes the enthusiasm burst into a flame of determination to force him to undertake the work for which he was so eminently fitted, but from which for some inexplicable reason he seemed to shrink (John vi. 15).

Parallel with the growth of popular enthusiasm, and in part because of it, the religious leaders early assumed and consistently maintained an attitude of opposition. The gospels connect the critics of Jesus now and again with the Pharisees of the capital--the Galilean Pharisees being represented as more or less friendly. At the first appearance of Jesus in Capernaum even the Sabbath cure in the synagogue passed unchallenged; but on the return from his first excursion to other towns, Jesus found critics in his audience (Luke connects them directly with Jerusalem). From time to time such censors as these objected to the forgiveness by Jesus of the sins of the paralytic (Mark ii. 6, 7), criticised his social relations with outcasts like the publicans (Mark ii. 16), took offence at his carelessness of the Sabbath tradition in his instruction of his disciples (Mark ii. 24), and sought to turn the tide of rising popular enthusiasm by ascribing his power to cure to a league with the devil (Mark iii. 22). Baffled in one charge, they would turn to another, until, after the feeding of the multitudes, Jesus showed his complete disregard of all they held most dear, replying to a criticism of his disciples for carelessness of the ritual of hand-washing by an authoritative setting aside of the whole body of their traditions, as well as of the Levitical ceremonial of clean and unclean meats (Mark vii. 1-23).

The wonder is, not that popular enthusiasm for Jesus was great, but that it was so hesitating in its judgment about him. The province which provided a following to Judas of Galilee a generation earlier than the public ministry of Jesus, and which under John of Gischala furnished the chief support to the revolt against Rome a generation later, could have been excited to uncontrollable passion by the simple idea that a leader was present who could be made to head a movement for Jewish liberty. But there was something about Jesus which made it impossible to think of him as such a Messiah. He was much more moved by sin lurking within than by wrong inflicted from without. He looked for God's kingdom, as did the Zealots, but he looked for it within the heart more than in outward circumstances. Even the dreamers among the people, who were as unready as Jesus for any uprising against Rome, and who waited for God to show his own hand in judgment, found in Jesus--come to seek and to save that which was lost--something so contradictory of their idea of the celestial judge that they could not easily think of him as a Messiah. Jesus was a puzzle to the people. They were sure that he was a prophet; but if at any time some were tempted to query, "Can this be the Son of David?" the incredulous folk expected ever a negative reply.

This was as Jesus wished it to be. An unreasoning enthusiasm could only hinder his work. When his early cures in Capernaum stirred the ardent feelings of the multitudes, he took occasion to withdraw to other towns and allow popular feeling to cool. When later he found himself pressed upon by crowds from all quarters of the land, by the sermon on the mount he set them thinking on strange and highly spiritual things, far removed from the thoughts of Zealots and apocalyptic dreamers.

The manifest contradiction of popular Messianic ideas which Jesus presented in his own person usually served to check undue ardor as long as he was present. But when some demoniac proclaimed the high station of Jesus, and thus seemed to the people to give supernatural testimony; or when some one in need sought him apart from the multitudes, Jesus frequently enjoined silence. These injunctions of silence are enigmas until they are viewed as a part of Jesus' effort to keep control of popular feeling. In his absence the people might dwell on his power and easily come to imagine him to be what he was not and could not be. Jesus was able by these means to restrain unthinking enthusiasm until the multitudes whom he fed on the east side of the sea determined to force him to do their will as a Messiah. Then he refused to follow where they called, and that happened which would doubtless have happened at an earlier time but for Jesus' caution,--the popular enthusiasm subsided, and his active work with the common people was at an end. But he had held off this crisis until there were a few who did not follow the popular defection, but rather clung to him from whom they had heard the words of eternal life (John vi. 68).

Jesus' caution brings to light one aspect of his aim in the Galilean ministry,--he sought to win acceptance for the truth he proclaimed. His message as reported in the synoptic gospels was the near approach of the kingdom of God. Any such proclamation was sure of eager hearing. At first he seems to have been content to gather and interest the multitudes by this preaching and the works which accompanied it. But he early took occasion to state his ideas in the hearing of the multitudes, and in terms so simple, so concerned with every-day life, so exacting as respects conduct, and so lacking in the customary glowing picture of the future, that the people could not mistake such a teacher for a simple fulfiller of their ideas. In this early sermon in effect, and later with increasing plainness, he set forth his doctrine of a kingdom of heaven coming not with observation, present actually among a people who knew it not, like a seed growing secretly in the earth, or leaven quietly leavening a lump of meal. By word and deed, in sermon and by parable, he insisted on this simple and every-day conception of God's rule among men. With Pharisee, Zealot, and dreamer, he held that "the best is yet to be," yet all three classes found their most cherished ideals set at nought by the new champion of the soul's inner life in fellowship with the living God. In all his teaching there was a claim of authority and a manifest independence which indicate certainty on his part concerning his own mission. Yet so completely is the personal question retired for the time, that in his rebuke of the blasphemy of the Pharisees he took pains to declare that it was not because they had spoken against the Son of Man, that they were in danger, but because they had spoken against the Spirit of God, whose presence was manifest in his works. He wished, primarily, to win disciples to the kingdom of God.

Yet Jesus was not indifferent in Galilee to what the people thought about himself. The question at Cæsarea Philippi shows more fully the aim of his ministry. During all the period of the preaching of the kingdom he never hesitated to assert himself whenever need for such self-assertion arose. This was evident in his dealing with his pharisaic critics. He rarely argued with them, and always assumed a tone of authority which was above challenge, asserting that the Son of Man had authority to forgive sins, was lord of the Sabbath, was greater than the temple or Jonah or Solomon. Moreover, in his positive teaching of the new truth he assumed such an authoritative tone that any who thought upon it could but remark the extraordinary claim involved in his simple "I say unto you." He wished also to win disciples to himself.

The key to the ministry in Galilee is furnished in Jesus' answer to the message from John the Baptist. John in prison had heard of the works of his successor. Jesus did so much that promised a fulfilment of the Messianic hope, yet left so much undone, contradicting in so many ways the current idea of a Messiah by his studied avoidance of any demonstration, that the older prophet felt a momentary doubt of the correctness of his earlier conviction. It is in no way strange that he experienced a reaction from that exalted moment of insight when he pointed out Jesus as the Lamb of God, particularly after his restless activity had been caged within the walls of his prison. Jesus showed that he did not count it strange, by his treatment of John's quesestion and by his words about John after the messengers had gone. Yet in his reply he gently suggested that the question already had its answer if John would but look rightly for it. He simply referred to the things that were being done before the eyes of all, and asked John to form from them a conclusion concerning him who did them. One aid he offered to the imprisoned prophet,--a word from the Book of Isaiah (xxxv. 5f., lxi. 1f.),--and added a blessing for such as "should find nothing to stumble at in him." Here Jesus emphasized his works, and allowed his message to speak for itself; but he frankly indicated that he expected people to pass from wonder at his ministry to an opinion about himself. At Cæsarea Philippi he showed to his disciples that this opinion about himself was the significant thing in his eyes. Throughout the ministry in Galilee, therefore, this twofold aim appears. Jesus would first divert attention from himself to his message, in order that he might win disciples to the kingdom of God as he conceived it. Having so attached them to his idea of the kingdom, he desired to be recognized as that kingdom's prince, the Messiah promised by God for his people. He retired behind his message in order that men might be drawn to the truth which he held dear, knowing that thus they would find themselves led captive to himself in a willing devotion.

This aim explains his retirement when popularity pressed, his exacting teaching about the spirituality of the kingdom of God, and his injunctions of silence. He wished to be known, to be thought about, to be accepted as God's anointed, but he would have this only by a genuine surrender to his leadership. His disciples must own him master and follow him, however much he might disappoint their misconceptions. This aim, too, explains his frank self-assertions and exalted personal claims in opposition to official criticism. He would not be false to his own sense of masterhood, nor allow people to think him bold when his critics were away, and cowardly in their presence. Therefore, when needful, he invited attention to himself as greater than the temple or as lord of the Sabbath. This kind of self-assertion, however, served his purpose as well as his customary self-retirement, for it forced people to face the contradiction which he offered to the accepted religious ideas of their leaders.

The method which Jesus chose has already been repeatedly indicated,--teaching and preaching on the one hand, and works of helpfulness to men on the other. The character of the teaching of this period is shown in three discourses,--the Sermon on the Mount, the Discourse in Parables, and the Instructions to the Twelve. The sermon on the mount is given in different forms in Matthew and Luke, that in Matthew being evidently the more complete, even after deduction has been made of those parts which Luke has assigned with high probability to a later time. This address was spoken to the disciples of Jesus found among the multitudes who flocked to him from all quarters. It opened with words of congratulation for those who, characterized by qualities often despised, were yet heirs of God's kingdom. The thought then passed to the responsibility of such heirs of the kingdom for the help of a needy world. Next, since much in the words and works of Jesus hitherto might have suggested to men that he was indifferent to the older religion of his people, he carefully explained that he came, not to set aside the old, but to realize the spiritual idea for which it stood, by establishing a more exacting standard of righteousness. This more exacting righteousness Jesus illustrated by a series of restatements of the older law, and then by a group of criticisms of current religious practice. The sermon closed with warnings against complacent censoriousness in judging other men's failures, and a solemn declaration of the vital seriousness of "these sayings of mine." The righteousness required by this new law is not only more exacting but unspeakably worthier than the old, being more simply manifested in common life, and demanding more intimate filial fellowship with the living God.

The teachings included in the sermon by the first gospel, but placed later by Luke, supplement the sermon by bidding God's child to lead a trustful life, knowing that the heavenly Father cares for him. That Luke has omitted much which from Matthew's account clearly belonged to the original sermon may be explained by the fact that Gentile readers did not share the interest which Jesus' hearers had, and which the readers of the first gospel had, in the relation of the new gospel to the older law. Hence the restatement of older commands and the criticism of current practice was omitted. Similar to the teachings which the first gospel has included in the sermon, are many which Luke has preserved in the section peculiar to himself. It is not unlikely that they belong also to the Galilean ministry. They urge the same sincere, reverent life in the sight of God, the same trust in the heavenly Father, the same certainty of his love and care; and they do not have that peculiar note of impending judgment which entered into the teachings of Jesus after the confession at Cæsarea Philippi.

In the story of Mark, which is reproduced in the first and third gospels, the use of parable was first introduced in a way to attract the attention of the disciples, after pharisaic opposition to Jesus had become somewhat bitter and there was need of checking a too speedy culmination of opposition. He chose at that time a form of parable which was enigmatic to his disciples, and could but further puzzle hearers who had no sympathy with him and his message. Mark (iv. 12) states that this perplexity was in accordance with the purpose of Jesus. But it is equally clear that Jesus meant to teach the teachable as well as to perplex the critical by these illustrations, for in explaining the Sower he suggested that the disciples should have understood it without explanation (Mark iv. 13). Many of Jesus' parables, however, had no such enigmatic character, but were intended simply to help his hearers to understand him. He made use of this kind of teaching from first to last. The pictures of the wise and foolish builders with which the sermon on the mount concludes show that it was not the use of illustration which surprised the disciples in the parables associated with the Sower, but his use of such puzzling illustrations. Some of the parables of Luke's peculiar section may belong to the Galilean ministry, and even to the earlier stages of it. These have none of the enigmatic character; the parables of the last days of Jesus' life also seem to have been simple and clear to his hearers. The Oriental mind prefers the concrete to the abstract, and its teachers have ever made large use of illustration. Jesus stands unique, not in that he used parables, but in the simplicity and effective beauty of those which he used. These illustrations, whether Jesus intended them for the moment to enlighten or to confound, served always to set forth concretely some truth concerning the relation of men to God, or concerning his kingdom and their relation to it. The form of teaching was welcome to his hearers, and served as one of the attractions to draw men to him.

The first gospel assigns another extended discourse to this Galilean period,--the Instructions to the Twelve. The mission of the twelve formed a new departure as Jesus saw the Galilean crisis approaching. He sought thereby to multiply his own work, and commissioned his disciples to heal and preach as he was doing. The restriction of their field to Israel (Matt. x. 5, 6) simply applied to them the rule he adopted for himself during the Galilean period (Matt. xv. 24). Comparison with the accounts in Mark and Luke, as well as the character of the instructions found in Matthew, show that here the first evangelist has followed his habit of gathering together teachings on the same general theme from different periods in Jesus' life. Much in the tenth chapter of Matthew indicates clearly that the ministry of Jesus had already passed the period of popularity, and that his disciples could now look for little but scorn and persecution. This was the situation at the end of Jesus' public life, and parallel sayings are found in the record of the last week in Jerusalem.

When the teaching of the sermon and the parables is compared with Jesus' self-assertion in his replies to pharisaic criticism and blasphemy, the difference is striking. Ordinarily he avoided calling attention to himself, wishing men to form their opinion of him after they had learned to know him as he was. Yet when one looks beneath the surface of his teaching, the tone of authority which astonished the multitudes is identical with the calm self-confidence which replied to pharisaic censure: "The Son of Man hath authority on the earth to forgive sins."

Jesus drew the multitudes after him not only by his teachings, but also by his mighty works. He certainly was for his contemporaries a wonder-worker and healer of disease, and, in order to appreciate the impression which he made, the miracles recorded in the gospels must be allowed to reveal what they can of his character. The mighty works which enchained attention in Galilee were chiefly cures of disease, with occasional exhibitions of power over physical nature,--such as the stilling of the tempest and the feeding of the five thousand. The significant thing about them is their uniform beneficence of purpose and simplicity of method. Nothing of the spectacular attached itself to them. Jesus repeatedly refused to the critical Pharisees a sign from heaven. This was not because he disregarded the importance of signs for his generation,--witness his appeal to his works in the reply to John (Matt. xi. 4-6); but he felt that in his customary ministry to the needy multitudes he had furnished signs in abundance, for his deeds both gave evidence of heavenly power and revealed the character of the Father who had sent him.

One of the commonest of the ailments cured by Jesus is described in the gospels as demoniac possession, the popular idea being that evil spirits were accustomed to take up their abode in men, speaking with their tongues and acting through their bodies, at the same time afflicting them with various physical diseases. Six specific cures of such possession are recorded in the story of the Galilean ministry, besides general references to the cure of many that were possessed. Of these specific cases the Gadarene demoniac shows symptoms of violent insanity; the boy cured near Cæsarea Philippi, those of epilepsy; in other cases the disease was more local, showing itself in deafness, or blindness, or both. In the cures recorded Jesus addressed the possessed with a command to the invading demon to depart. He was ordinarily greeted, either before or after such a command, with a loud outcry, often accompanied with a recognition of him as God's Holy One.

The record of such maladies and their cure is not confined to the New Testament. The evil spirit which came upon King Saul is a similar case, and Josephus tells of Jewish exorcists who cured possessed persons by the use of incantations handed down from King Solomon. The early Christian fathers frequently argued the truth of Christianity from the way in which demons departed at the command of Christian exorcists, while in the middle ages and down to modern times belief in demoniac possession has been common, particularly among some of the more superstitious of the peasantry in Europe. Moreover, from missionaries in China and other eastern lands it is learned that diseases closely resembling the cases of possession recorded in the New Testament are frequently met with, and are often cured by native Christian ministers.

The similarity of the symptoms of so-called possession to recognized mental and physical derangements such as insanity, epilepsy, and hysteria, suggests the conclusion that possession should be classed with other ailments due to ill adjustment of the relations of the mental and physical life. If this conclusion is valid, the idea of actual possession by evil spirits becomes only an ancient effort to interpret the mysterious symptoms in accordance with wide-spread primitive beliefs. This explanation would doubtless be generally adopted were it not that it seems to compromise either the integrity or the knowledge of Jesus. The gospels plainly represent him as treating the supposed demoniac influence as real, addressing in his cures not the invalid, but the invading demon. If he did this knowing that the whole view was a superstition, was he true to his mission to release mankind from its bondage to evil and sin? If he shared the superstition of his time, had he the complete knowledge necessary to make him the deliverer he claimed to be? These questions are serious and difficult, but they form a part of the general problem of the extent of Jesus' knowledge, and can be more intelligently discussed in connection with that whole problem (sects. 249-251). It is reasonable to demand, however, that any conclusion reached concerning the nature of possession in the time of Jesus must be considered valid for similar manifestations of disease in our own day.

What astonished people in Jesus' cures was not so much that he healed the sick as that he did it with such evidence of personal authority. His cures and his teachings alike served to attract attention to himself and to invite question as to who he could be. Yet a far more powerful means to the end he had in view was the subtle, unobtrusive, personal influence which without their knowledge knit the hearts of a few to himself. In reality both his teaching and his cures were only means of self-disclosure. His permanent work during this Galilean period was the winning of personal friends. His chief agency in accomplishing his work was what Renan somewhat too romantically has called his "charm." It was that in him which drew to his side and kept with him the fishermen of Galilee and the publican of Capernaum, during months of constant disappointment of their preconceived religious ideas and Messianic hopes; it was that which won the confidence of the woman who was a sinner, and the constant devotion of Mary Magdalene and Susanna and the others who followed him "and ministered to him of their substance." The outstanding wonder of early Christianity is the complete transformation not only of life but of established religious ideas by the personal impress of Jesus on a Peter, a John, and a Paul. The secret of the new element of the Christian religion--salvation through personal attachment to Jesus Christ--is simply this personal power of the man of Nazareth. The multitudes followed because they saw wonderful works or heard wonderful words; many because they hoped at length to find in the new prophet the champion of their hopes in deliverance from Roman bondage. But these sooner or later fell away, disappointed in their desire to use the new leader for their own ends. It was only because from out the multitudes there were a few who could answer, "To whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life," when Jesus asked, "Will ye also go away?" that the work in Galilee did not end in complete failure. These few had felt his personal power, and they became the nucleus of a new religion of love to a personal Saviour.

The test of the personal attachment of the few came shortly after the execution of John the Baptist by Antipas. Word of this tragedy was brought to Jesus by John's disciples about the time that he and the twelve returned to Capernaum from their tour of preaching. At the suggestion of Jesus they withdrew to the eastern side of the lake in search of rest. It is not unlikely that the little company also wished to avoid for the time the territory of the tyrant who had just put John to death, for Jesus was not yet ready for the crisis of his own life. Such a desire for seclusion would be intensified by the continued impetuous enthusiasm of the multitudes who flocked about him again in Capernaum. In fact, so insistent was their interest in Jesus that they would not allow him the quiet he sought, but followed around the lake in great numbers when they learned that he had taken ship for the other side. He who came not to be ministered unto but to minister could not repel the crowds who came to him, and he at once "welcomed them, and spake to them of the kingdom of God, and them that had need of healing he healed" (Luke ix. 11). The day having passed in this ministry, he multiplied the small store of bread and fish brought by his disciples in order to feed the weary people. This work of power seemed to some among the multitudes to be the last thing needed to prove that Jesus was to be their promised deliverer, and they "were about to come and take him by force and make him king" (John vi. 15), when he withdrew from them and spent the night in prayer.

This sudden determination on the part of the multitudes to force the hand of Jesus was probably due to the prevalence of an idea, found also in the later rabbinic writers, that the Messiah should feed his people as Moses had provided them manna in the desert. The rebuff which Jesus quietly gave them did not cool their ardor, until on the following day, in the synagogue in Capernaum, he plainly taught them that they had quite missed the significance of his miracle. They thought of loaves and material sustenance. He would have had them find in these a sign that he could also supply their spirits' need, and he insisted that this, and this alone, was his actual mission. From the first the popular enthusiasm had had to ignore many contradictions of its cherished notions. But his power and the indescribable force of his personality had served hitherto to hold them to a hope that he would soon discard the perplexing rôle which he had chosen for the time to assume, and take up avowedly the proper work of the Messiah. This last refusal to accept what seemed to them to be his evident duty caused a revulsion in the popular feeling, and "many of his disciples turned back and walked no more with him" (John vi. 66). The time of sifting had come. Jesus had known that such a rash determination to make him king was possible to the Galilean multitudes, and that whenever it should come it must be followed by a disillusionment. Now the open ministry had run its course. As the multitudes were turning back and walking no more with him, he turned to the twelve with the question, "Will ye also go away?" and found that with them his method had borne fruit. They clung to him in spite of disillusionment, for in him they had found what was better than their preconceptions.

It is the fourth gospel that shows clearly the critical significance of this event. The others tell nothing of the sudden determination of the multitude, nor of the revulsion of feeling that followed Jesus' refusal to yield to their will. Yet these other gospels indicate in their narratives that from this time on Jesus avoided the scenes of his former labors, and show that when from time to time he returned to the neighborhood of Capernaum he was met by such a spirit of hostility that he withdrew again immediately to regions where he and his disciples could have time for quiet intercourse.

The months of toil in Galilee show results hardly more significant than the grain of mustard seed or the little leaven. Popular enthusiasm had risen, increased, reached its climax, and waned. Official opposition had early been aroused, and had continued with a steadily deepened intensity. The wonderful teaching with authority, and the signs wrought on them that were sick, had been as seed sown by the wayside or in thorny or in stony ground, except for the little handful of hearers who had felt the personal power of Jesus and had surrendered to it, ready henceforth to follow where he should lead, whether or not it should be in a path of their choice. These, however, were the proof that those months had been a time of rewarded toil.

IV

The Ministry in Galilee--The New Lesson

With the crisis in Capernaum the ministry in Galilee may be said in one sense to have come to an end. Yet Jesus did not immediately go up to Jerusalem. Once and again he was found in or near Capernaum, while the time between these visits was spent in regions to the north and northwest. In fact, the disciples were far from ready for the trial their loyalty was to meet before they had seen the end of the opposition to their Lord. The time intervening between the collapse of popularity and Jesus' final departure from Galilee may well be thought of, then, as a time of further discipline of the faith of his followers and of added instruction concerning the truth for which their Master stood. The length of this supplementary period in Galilee is not definitely known. It extended from the Passover to about the feast of Tabernacles (April to October, see John vi. 4 and vii. 2). The record of what Jesus did and said in this time is meagre, only enough being reported to show that it was a time of repeated withdrawals from Galilee and of private instruction for the disciples.

The disciples were trained in faith by further exhibitions of the complete break between their Master and the leaders of the people. This break appeared most clearly, soon after the feeding of the multitudes, in his reply to a criticism of the disciples for disregard of pharisaic traditions concerning hand-washing (Mark vii. 1-23). The critics insisted on the sacredness of their traditions. Jesus in reply scored them for disregard for the plain demands of God's law, and with a word freed men from bondage to the whole ritual of ceremonial cleanness and uncleanness (Mark vii. 19), thus attacking Judaism in its citadel.

It was immediately after this that he withdrew with his disciples to the regions of Tyre. On his return a little later to the west side of the sea of Galilee he was met by hostile Pharisees with a demand for a sign (Mark viii. 11-13), and after refusing to satisfy the unbelieving challenge,--signs in plenty having been before their eyes since the opening of his work among them,--he and his disciples withdrew again from Galilee towards Cæsarea Philippi. As they went on their way, Jesus distinctly warned them against the influence of their leaders, religious and political (Mark viii. 14f.). So far as our records tell us Jesus was but once again in Capernaum. Then he was met with the demand that he pay the temple tax (Matt. xvii. 24-27). This tax was usually collected just before the Passover. As this last visit to Capernaum was probably not far from the feast of Tabernacles, Jesus seems to have been in arrears. This may have been due to his absence from Capernaum at the time of the collection. The prompt answer of Peter may indicate that he knew that in other years Jesus had paid this tax, as it is altogether probable that he did. The question, however, implies official suspicion that Jesus was seeking to evade payment, and exhibits further the straining of the relations between him and the Jewish leaders. The conversation of Jesus with Peter served to show his clear consciousness of superiority, and was a further summons to the disciples to choose between him and his opponents.

Within the limits of the Holy Land the faith of the disciples had been constantly tested by the increasing opposition between their master and their old leaders. When the little company withdrew to Gentile regions, however, Jesus had regard for their Jewish feeling. The time would come when he would send them forth to make disciples of all the nations. For the present he made it his business to nurture their faith in him, and when appealed to for help by one of these foreigners, he refused to "take the children's bread and cast it to the dogs" (Mark vii. 27). Jesus had assumed a different attitude to the Samaritans before the opening of his work in Galilee, and in general had shown ready sympathy for all in distress. In fact it seems as if he welcomed the Syrophœnician woman's great faith with a feeling of relief from a restriction that he had felt it wise to adopt for his work in Phœnicia. It appears from his later attitude in the Gentile regions of the Decapolis (Mark vii. 31-37; Matt. xv. 21-31) that, having once shown his regard for the limitations of his disciples' faith in the case of the Syrophœnician, he felt no longer obliged to check his natural readiness to help the needy who sought him out. Although in one instance, for reasons no longer known to us, Jesus charged a man whom he had cured to keep it secret (Mark vii. 32-37), in general his work in these heathen regions seems, after the visit to Phœnicia, to have been quite unrestrained, and to have produced the same enthusiasm that had earlier brought the multitudes to him in Galilee (Mark viii. 1f.).

This continued activity of healing must have served greatly to strengthen the determination of the disciples to cling to Jesus, let the leaders say what they would. We can only conjecture what various teachings filled the days, and what personal fellowship the disciples had with him who spake as never man spake. There was need for advance in the faith of these loyal friends. Their enthusiastic declaration when the multitudes turned away could easily have been followed by reaction. Each new exhibition of the irrevocableness of the break between Jesus and the leaders was a severe test of their loyalty. These weeks of withdrawal were doubtless filled, therefore, with new proofs that Jesus had the words of eternal life.

Before he put to his disciples the crucial question, he who knew what was in man (John ii. 25) was confident that they were ready for it. It was after the rebuff in Galilee, when the unbelieving Pharisees had again demanded a sign of his authority, and after he had definitely warned the disciples against the influence of their leaders, that Jesus led his little company far to the north towards the slopes of Hermon. There, near the recently built Cæsarea Philippi, Jesus plainly asked his disciples what the people thought of him (Mark viii. 27-30). We have seen how gradually sentiment in Galilee concerning the new teacher crystallized until, from thinking him a prophet, the people, first timidly, then boldly, concluded that such a teacher and worker of signs must be the promised king. We have seen also how the popular estimate changed when Jesus refused to be guided by the popular will. Now, after the lapse of a few weeks, in answer to his inquiry concerning the common opinion of him, he is told that the people look on him as a prophet, in whom the spirit of the men of old had been revived; but not a whisper remains of the former readiness to hail him as the Messiah. It was in the face of such a definite revulsion in the popular feeling, in the face, too, of the increasing hostility of all the great in the nation, that Peter answered for the twelve that they believed Jesus to be the Messiah, God's appointed Deliverer of his people (Matt. xvi. 16 ff.). In form this confession was no more than Nathanael had rendered on his first meeting with Jesus (John i. 49), and was practically the same as the report made by Andrew to Simon his brother, and by Philip to Nathanael (John i. 41, 45). In both idea and expression the reply to Jesus' question, "Will ye also go away?" (John vi. 68, 69), was virtually equivalent to this later confession of Peter. Yet Jesus found in Peter's answer at Cæsarea Philippi something so significant and remarkable that he declared that the faith that could answer thus could spring only from a heavenly source (Matt. xvi. 17). The early confessions were in fact no more than expressions of more or less intelligent expectation that Jesus would fulfil the confessor's hopes. The confession at Capernaum followed one of Jesus' mightiest exhibitions of power, and was given before the disciples had had time to consider the extent of the defection from their Master. Here at Cæsarea Philippi, however, the word was spoken immediately after an acknowledgment that the people had no more thought of finding in Jesus their Messiah. It was spoken after the disciples had had repeated evidence of the determined hostility of the leaders to Jesus. All the disappointment he had given to their cherished ideas was emphasized by the isolation in which the little company now found itself. One after another their ideas of how a Messiah should act and what he should be had received contradiction in what Jesus was and did. Yet after the weeks of withdrawal from Galilee, Peter could only in effect assert anew what he had declared at Capernaum,--that Jesus had the words of eternal life. It was a faith chastened by perplexity, and taught at length to follow the Lord let him lead where he would. It was an actual surrender to his mastery over thought and life. Here at length Jesus had won what he had been seeking during all his work in Galilee,--a corner-stone on which to build up the new community of the kingdom of God. Peter was the first to confess openly to this simple surrender to the full mastery of Jesus. He was the first stone in the foundation of the new "building of God."

In his commendation of Peter Jesus revealed the secret of his method in the work which, because of this confession, he could now proceed to do more rapidly. He cuts loose utterly from the method of the scribes. He, the new teacher, commits to them no body of teaching which they are to give to others as the key to eternal life. The salvation they are to preach is a salvation by personal attachment; that is, by faith. The rock on which he will build his church is personal attachment, faith that is ready to leave all and follow him. Peter, not the substance of his confession, was its corner-stone, but Peter, as the first clear confessor of a faith that is ready to leave all, a faith whose very nature it is to be contagious, and associate with itself others of "like precious faith." His faith was as yet meagre, as he showed at once; but it was genuine, the surrender of his heart to his Lord's guidance and control. This was the distinctive mark of the new religious life inaugurated by Jesus of Nazareth.

If anything were needed to prove that the idea that he was the Messiah was no new thought to Jesus, it could be found in the new lesson which he at once began to teach his disciples. The confession of Peter indicated to him simply that the first stage in his work had been accomplished. He immediately began to prepare the disciples for the end which for some time past he had seen to be inevitable. He taught them more than that his death was inevitable; he declared that it was divinely necessary that he should be put to death as a result of the hostility of the Jews to him ("the Son of Man must suffer"). All the contradictions which he had offered to the Messianic ideas of his disciples paled into insignificance beside this one. When they saw how he failed to meet the hopes that were commonly held, they needed only to urge themselves to patience, expecting that in time he would cast off the strange mask and take to himself his power and reign. But it was too much for the late confessed and very genuine faith of Peter to hear that the Messiah must die. So unthinkable was the idea, that he assumed that Jesus had become unduly discouraged by the relentlessness of the opposition which had driven him first out of Judea and later out of Galilee. Accordingly Peter sought to turn his Master's mind to a brighter prospect, asserting that his forebodings could not be true. It is hard for us to conceive the chill of heart which must have followed the glow of his confession when he heard the stern rebuke of Jesus, who found in Peter's later words the voice of the Evil One, as before in his confession he had recognized the Spirit of God.

The sternness of Jesus' rebuke escapes extravagance only in view of the fact that the words of Peter had greatly affected Jesus himself. At the outset of his public life he had faced the difficulty of doing the Messiah's work in his Father's way, and had withstood the temptation to accommodate himself to the ideas of his world, declaring allegiance to God alone (Matt. iv. 10). Yet once and again in the course of his ministry he showed that this allegiance cost him much. Luke reports a saying in which Jesus confessed that, in view of this prospect of death which Peter was opposing so eagerly, he was greatly "straitened" (xii. 50), and at the near approach of the end "his soul was exceeding sorrowful" (Mark xiv. 34). It should never be forgotten that Jesus was a Jew, and heir to all the Messianic ideas of his people. In these, glory, not rejection and death, was to be the Messiah's portion. That he was always superior to current expectations is no sign that he did not feel their force. They quite mistake who find the bitterness of Jesus' "cup" simply in his physical shrinking from suffering. The temptation was ever with him to find some other way to the goal of his work than that which led through death. What Peter said hid a force greater than any word of the disciple's. It voiced the crucial temptation of Jesus' life. The answer addressed to Peter showed that his words had drawn the thought of Jesus away from the disciple to that earlier temptation which was never absent from him more than "for a season" (Luke iv. 13).

Jesus was not content with a mere rebuke of his impulsive disciple. In his first announcement of his death as necessary he had also declared that it would not be a tragedy, but would be followed by a resurrection. This the disciples could not appreciate, as they found the idea of the Messiah's death unthinkable. Jesus, however, saw in it the general law, that life must ever win its goal by disregard of itself, and called his disciples also to walk in the path of self-sacrifice. In order that the new lesson might not quite overwhelm the yet feeble faith of these followers, Jesus assured them that after his death and resurrection he would come as Messianic Judge and fulfil the hopes which his prediction of death seemed to blot out utterly (Mark viii. 34 to ix. 1).

That this new lesson was a difficult one for master as well as disciple seems to be shown by the experience which came a few days later to Jesus and his three closest friends. He had withdrawn with them to a "high mountain" for prayer (Luke ix. 28f.). While he prayed the light of heaven came into his face, and his disciples were granted a vision of him in celestial glory, conversing with Moses and Elijah, representatives of Old Testament law and prophecy. The theme of the discourse was that death which had so troubled the disciples, and which then and later weighed heavily on Jesus' own spirit (Luke ix. 31). At the conclusion of the vision came a divine injunction to hear him who now was superseding law and prophets. The effect of the transfiguration can only be inferred. It doubtless brought strengthening to Jesus for his difficult task (compare Heb. v. 7), and at least a silencing of remonstrance when he spoke again to his disciples of his approaching death. This he did while the little company was making its way back towards Capernaum (Mark ix. 30-32), and repeatedly later before the end came (Mark x. 32-34; Matt. xxvi. 1f.).

On Jesus' return from the mountain, he was met by the despairing plea of a father and healed his epileptic son, out of whom the disciples were unable to cast the demon (Mark ix. 14-29; compare vi. 7, 13). It may have been the shock which the new lesson had given the disciples that accounted for the reproof of their lack of faith. The new evidence of Jesus' power, coupled with this reproof, seems to have restored their confidence in him. Perhaps, too, there was something contagious about the spirit of hope with which the three came from their vision of the Master's glory. For, although they were not free to tell what they had seen (Mark ix. 9), they could not have concealed the fact that their faith had received great encouragement. Whatever the cause, hope revived for the disciples, for on the way back to Capernaum a dispute arose among them concerning personal precedence in the kingdom which their Master should soon set up. In this rapid reaction from unbelief to faith the disciples seem to have forgotten the lesson of self-denial recently given them (Mark viii. 34, 35). In Peter's confession the corner-stone of the church was laid; but the superstructure was yet far out of sight. Although his own soul, taking its way down into the valley of shadows, might rightly have asked for sympathy and complained of its lack, Jesus simply set a little child in the midst of them, and taught them again the first lessons of faith,--gentle humility and trust. Thereby he rebuked the spirit of rivalry and asked of his disciples a generous, unselfish, and forgiving spirit (Matt, xviii. 1-35).

It was possibly at this time, certainly near the end of the Galilean ministry, that Jesus was approached by his own brethren, who urged him to try to win the capital. Their attitude was not one of indifference, though clearly not one of actual faith in his claim (John vii. 2-5). They seem to have felt that Jesus had not made adequate effort to secure a following in Jerusalem, and that he could not hope for success in his work if he continued to confine his attention to Galilee. Jesus knew conditions in Jerusalem far better than they did, and had no idea as yet of resuming a general ministry there. He therefore dismissed the suggestion, and left his brethren to go up to the feast disappointed in their desire that he make a demonstration at that time. Yet Jesus still yearned over Jerusalem. He knew in what organized opposition a general demonstration would result. There were some, however, in the capital who had real faith in him. His repeated efforts to win Jerusalem mean nothing if we do not recognize that he hoped against hope that many of the people might yet turn and let him lead them. With some such purpose, therefore, he went up a little later without ostentation, and quietly appeared in the temple teaching. The effect of this unannounced arrival was that the opposition was not ready for him. The multitude was compelled to form an opinion of him for itself, and he had opportunity to make his own impression for a time, independently of official suggestion as to what ought to be thought of him. This course resulted in a division of sentiment among the people, so much so that when the leaders, both secular and religious, sought to compass his arrest, the officers sent to take Jesus were themselves entranced by his teaching. In spite of the wish of the leaders Jesus continued to teach, and many of the people began to think of him with favor. When, however, he tried to lead them on to become "disciples indeed," they took offence, and showed that they were not ready yet to follow him. This effort to "gather the children of Jerusalem" resulted in new proof that they preferred his death to his message (John vii. 2 to viii. 59).

Interesting evidence of the fact that "Jesus did many other signs which are not written" in our accepted gospels is found in the story of his dealing with an adulteress whom the Pharisees brought to him for judgment (John vii. 53 to viii. 11). This narrative had no secure place in any of the gospels in the earliest days, yet was so highly regarded that men would not let it go. Hence in the manuscripts which contain it, it is found in various places. Some give it in Luke after chapter xxi., some at the end of the Gospel of John, one placing it after John vii. 36. Many considerations combine to prove that it was no part of the Gospel of John, but as many show that it preserves a true incident in the ministry of Jesus. In scene it belongs to the temple, therefore in time to one of the Jerusalem visits. To which of those visits it should he assigned is not now discoverable. The ancient copyists who assigned it to this feast of Tabernacles, chose as well as later students can. If the incident belongs to this visit, it illustrates the patience and the keen insight of Jesus in his effort to win self-satisfied Jerusalem.

John is silent concerning the doings of Jesus after the feast of Tabernacles. In x. 22 he notes that Jesus was at Jerusalem at the feast of Dedication, which followed two months later. It seems probable that after his hurried and private journey to the feast of Tabernacles (John vii. 10) he returned to Galilee and gathered to himself again the little company of his loyal followers, preparatory to that final journey to Jerusalem which should bring the end foreseen, unless, perchance, Israel should yet repent and turn unto the Lord. As the shadow deepened over his own life, and the persistency of the unbelief of his people appeared more and more clearly, the teachings of Jesus took on a new note of tragedy which was not characteristic of the earlier preaching in Galilee. Even when his topic was similar and his treatment of it not unlike some earlier discourse, there appeared in it here and there a warning of impending judgment. This is seen as early as the reply to the criticism of the disciples for disregard of traditions (Matt. xv. 13f.). Many discourses in the section peculiar to Luke show by the presence of this note of doom that they belong to this later time rather than to the Galilean period proper. (See the table prefixed to Chapter V.)

Two years had nearly passed since Jesus withdrew from Judea to start his ministry anew in a different region and following a different method. The fruit of that ministry was small, but significant. His proclamation of the coming kingdom and his call to a deeper righteousness, coupled as they were with his works of heavenly power, had won at first an enthusiastic following. Realizing that an uncontrolled enthusiasm would thwart his purpose to introduce a kingdom of the spirit, Jesus had kept his Messianic claim in the background, seeking first to win disciples to the kingdom that he was proclaiming. Yet emphasize his message as he would, he could not conceal his personal significance. In fact he wished by winning disciples to his doctrine of the kingdom to attach followers to himself, the bearer of the words of eternal life. The great development of popular enthusiasm did not deceive him, nor did he hesitate, when the multitude would force him to do its will, to show clearly how far he was from being a fulfiller of their desires. By successive disappointments of the popular ideas he sifted his followers until a few were ready to follow him whithersoever he might lead. With these he allowed time for the fact of his unpopularity to appear, giving them opportunity to consider the relentless hostility of their national leaders to the teacher from Galilee. Then when the time was ripe he drew from the loyal few their declaration that they would follow him in spite of disappointments and unpopularity, their confession that he had come to be to them more than their cherished preconceptions, that he had won the mastery over their thought and life. He began then to prepare them for the end he had long foreseen, and at length, after giving them time for that perplexing mystery to find place in their hearts, he was ready to move on toward the crisis which he knew his public appearance in Jerusalem would precipitate. Before setting out on this journey his desire still to seek to win Jerusalem, if perchance it would repent, led him to visit the capital unannounced at the feast of Tabernacles. This taught him that, however ready some might be superficially to believe in him, he could as yet win in Jerusalem only hatred and plots against his life, and he returned to his faithful friends in Galilee.

The Life of Jesus of Nazareth: A Study

The Life of Jesus of Nazareth

A Study

Rush Rhees

1902

To

Preface

Contents

Part I

[Preparatory]

Part II

[The Ministry]

Part III

[The Minister]

Part I

Preparatory

I

The Historical Situation

II

Sources of Our Knowledge Of Jesus

III

The Harmony of the Gospels

IV

The Chronology

V

The Early Years of Jesus

Matt. i. 1 to ii. 23; Luke i. 5 to ii. 52; iii. 23-38

VI

John The Baptist

Matt. iii. 1-17; iv. 12; xiv. 1-12; Mark i. 1-14; vi. 14-29; Luke i. 5-25, 57-80; iii. 1-22; ix. 7-9; John i. 19-37; iii. 22-30.

VII

The Messianic Call

Matt. iii. 13 TO iv. 11; Mark i. 9-13; Luke iii. 21, 22; iv. 1-13; John i. 30-34

VIII

The First Disciples

John i. 19 TO ii. 12

Part II

The Ministry

I

General Survey of the Ministry

Outline of Events in the Early Judean Ministry

II

The Early Ministry in Judea

Outline of Events in the Galilean Ministry (Chapters [III.] and [IV.])

III

The Ministry In Galilee--Its Aim and Method

IV

The Ministry in Galilee--The New Lesson

Outline of Events in the Journey through Perea to Jerusalem