for his sake did they gladly break on that Sabbath the sacred rest. Nor do we think of him, as tradition fables him, the descendant of David, [a Ber. R. 98] possessed of every great quality of body, mind, and heart; nor yet as the second Ezra, whose learning placed him at the head of the Sanhedrin, who laid down the principles afterwards applied and developed by Rabbinism, and who was the real founder of traditionalism. Still less do we think of him, as he is falsely represented by some: as he whose principles closely resemble the teaching of Jesus, or, according to certain writers, were its source. By the side of Jesus we think of him otherwise than this. We remember that, in his extreme old age and near his end, he may have presided over that meeting of Sanhedrin which, in answer to Herod's inquiry, pointed to Bethlehem as the birthplace of the Messiah, [b St.Matt. ii. 4.] [1 On the chronology of the life of Hillel &c, see also Schmilg, Ueb. d. Entsteh. &c. der Megillath Taanith, especially p. 34. Hillel is said to have become Chief of the Sanhedrin in 30 B.C., and to have held the office for forty years. These numbers, however, are no doubt somewhat exaggerated.] We think of him also as the grandfather of that Gamaliel, at whose feet Saul of Tarsus sat. And to us he is the representative Jewish reformer, in the spirit of those times, and in the sense of restoring rather than removing; while we think of Jesus as the Messiah of Israel, in the sense of bringing the Kingdom of God to all men, and opening it to all believers.
And so there were two worlds in Jerusalem, side by side. On the one hand, was Grecianism with its theatre and amphitheatre; foreigners filling the Court, and crowding the city; foreign tendencies and ways, from the foreign King downwards. On the other hand, was the old Jewish world, becoming now set and ossified in the Schools of Hillel and Shammai, and overshadowed by Temple and Synagogue. And each was pursuing its course, by the side of the other. If Herod had everywhere his spies, the Jewish law provided its two police magistrates in Jerusalem, the only judges who received renumeration. [c Jer, Kethub. 35 c; Kethub. 104 b] [2 The police laws of the Rabbis might well serve us as a model for all similar legislation.] If Herod
judged cruelly and despotically, the Sanhedrin weighed most deliberately, the balance always inclining to mercy. If Greek was the language of the court and camp, and indeed must have been understood and spoken by most in the land, the language of the people, spoken also by Christ and His Apostles, was a dialect of the ancient Hebrew, the Western or Palestinian Aramaic. [3 At the same time I can scarcely agree with Delitzsch and others, that this was the dialect called Sursi. The latter was rather Syriac. Comp. Levy, ad voc] It seems strange, that this could ever have been doubted. [4 Professor Roberts has advocated, with great ingenuity, the view that Christ and His Apostles used the Greek language. See especially his 'Discussions on the Gospels.' The Roman Catholic Church sometimes maintained, that Jesus and His disciples spoke Latin, and in 1822 a work appeared by Black to prove that the N.T. Greek showed a Latin origin.] A Jewish Messiah Who would urge His claim upon Israel in Greek, seems almost a contradiction in terms. We know, that the language of the Temple and the Synagogue was Hebrew, and that the addresses of the Rabbis had to be 'targumed' into the vernacular Aramaean, and can we believe that, in a Hebrew service, the Messiah could have risen to address the people in Greek, or that He would have argued with the Pharisees and Scribes in that tongue, especially remembering that its study was actually forbidden by the Rabbis? [1 For a full statement of the arguments on this subject we refer the student to Bohl, Forsch. n. e. Volksbibel z. Zeit Jesu, pp. 4-28; to the latter work by the same writer (Aittestam. Citate im N. Test.); to a very interesting article by Professor Delitzsch in the 'Daheim' for 1874 (No. 27); to Buxtorf, sub Gelil; to J. D. Goldberg, 'The Language of Christ'; but especially prop, di Cristo (Parma 1772).]
Indeed, it was a peculiar mixture of two worlds in Jerusalem: not only of the Grecian and the Jewish, but of piety and frivolity also. The devotion of the people and the liberality of the rich were unbounded. Fortunes were lavished on the support of Jewish learning, the promotion of piety, or the advance of the national cause. Thousands of votive offerings, and the costly gifts in the Temple, bore evidence of this, priestly avarice had artificially raised the price of sacrificial animals, a rich man would bring into the Temple at his own cost the number requisite for the poor. Charity was not only open-handed, but most delicate, and one who had been in good circumstances would actually be enabled to live according to his former station. [2 Thus Hillel was said to have hired a horse, and even an outrunner, for a decayed rich man.] Then these Jerusalemites, townspeople, as they called themselves, were so polished, so witty, so pleasant. There was a tact in their social intercourse, and a considerateness and delicacy in their public arrangements and provisions, nowhere else to be found. Their very language was different. There was a Jerusalem dialect, [aBemid. R. 14; ed. Warsh. p. 59a.] quicker, shorter, 'lighter' (Lishna Qalila). [b BabaK.] And their hospitality, especially at festive seasons, was unlimited. No one considered his house his own, and no stranger or pilgrim but found reception. And how much there was to be seen and heard in those luxuriously furnished houses, and at those sumptuous entertainments! In the women's apartments, friends from the country would see every novelty in dress, adornment, and jewellery, and have the benefit of examining themselves in looking-glasses. To be sure, as being womanish vanity, their use was interdicted to men, except it were to the members of the family of the President of the Sanhedrin, on account of their intercourse with those in authority, just as for the same reason they were allowed to learn Greek, [a Jer.Shabb. 7 d] Nor might even women look in theglass on the Sabbath, [b Shabb. 149 a] But that could only apply to those carried in the hand, since one might be tempted, on the holy day, to do such servile work as to pull out a grey hair with the pincers attached to the end of the glass; but not to a glass fixed in the lid of a basket; [c Kel. xiv. 6] nor to such as hung on the wall, [d Tos. Shabb.xiii. ed. Zuckerm. p. 130] And then the
lady-visitor might get anything in Jerusalem; from a false tooth to an Arabian veil, a Persian shawl, or an Indian dress!
While the women so learned Jerusalem manners in the inner apartments, the men would converse on the news of the day, or on politics. For the Jerusalemites had friends and correspondents in the most distant parts of the world, and letters were carried by special messengers, [e Shabb. x.4] in a kind of post-bag. Nay, there seem to have been some sort of receiving-offices in towns, [f Shabb. 19a] and even something resembling our parcel-post, [g Rosh haSh. 9 b] And, strange as it may sound, even a species of newspapers, or broadsheets, appears to have been circulating (Mikhtabhin), not allowed, however, on the Sabbath, unless they treated of public affairs, [h Tos. Shabb. xviii.]
Of course, it is difficult accurately to determine which of these things were in use in the earliest times, or else introduced at a later period. Perhaps, however, it was safer to bring them into a picture of Jewish society. Undoubted, and, alas, too painful evidence comes to us of the luxuriousness of Jerusalem at that time, and of the moral corruption to which it led. It seems only too clear, that such commentations as the Talmud [i Shabb. 62 b] gives of Is. iii. 16-24, in regard to the manners and modes of attraction practised by a certain class of the female population in Jerusalem, applied to a far later period than that of the prophet. With this agrees only too well the recorded covert lascivious expressions used by the men, which gives a lamentable picture of the state of morals of many in the city, [k Comp. Shabb. 62 b, last line and first of 63 a] and the notices of the indecent dress worn not only by women, [1 Kel. xxiv. 16; xxviii. 9] but evenby corrupt High-Priestly youths. Nor do the exaggerated descriptions of what the Midrash on Lamentations [m On ch. iv 2] describes as the dignity of the Jerusalemites; of the wealth which they lavished on their marriages; of the ceremony which insisted on repeated invitations to the guests to a banquet, and that men inferior in rank should not be bidden to it; of the dress in which they appeared; the manner in which the dishes were served, the wine in white crystal vases; and the punishment of the cook who had failed in his duty, and which was to be commensurate to the dignity of the party, give a better impression of the great world in Jerusalem.
And yet it was the City of God, over whose destruction not only the Patriarch and Moses, but the Angelic hosts, nay, the Almighty Himself and His Shekhinah, had made bitterest lamentation. [1 See the Introduction to the Midrash on Lamentations. But some of the descriptions are so painful, even blasphemous , that we do not venture on quotation.] The City of the Prophets, also, since each of them whose birthplace had not been mentioned, must be regarded as having sprung from it. [aMeg. 15 a] Equally, even more, marked, but now for joy and triumph, would be the hour of Jerusalem's uprising, when it would welcome its Messiah. Oh, when would He come? In the feverish excitement of expectancy they were only too ready to listen to the voice of any pretender, however coarse and clumsy the imposture. Yet He was at hand, even now coming: only quite other than the Messiah of their dreams. 'He came unto His own, and His own received Him not. But as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become children of God, even to them that believe on His Name.'
FROM THE MANGER IN BETHLEHEM TO THE BAPTISM IN JORDAN
