feast of tabernacles is typical, I believe it points to the second advent of Christ much more than to the first.
[Jesus went up. ..temple.'] This means the outer court of the temple, where pious Jews were in the habit of assembling in order to hear the doctors of the law and others, and to discuss religious subjects. This is the place where our Lord was, when Joseph and Mary found Him, at twelve years of age, "in the temple." (Luke ii. 46.) It was probably a large open court yard, with piazzas or verandas around it, for shelter against heat and cold.
[Taught."] What our Lord taught we are not told. Exposi- tions of Scripture, as Luke iv. 17 — 21, and such lessons as those contained in the Sermon on the Mount, and the parables, were most likely the kind of things that He "taught" first, on such occasions as this. It admits of doubt whether He taught such deep things as those contained in the 5th and 6th chapters of St. John, unless publicly attacked, or put on His defence.
Alford thinks this was " the first time " that our Lord "taught publicly at Jerusalem." Yet this seems at least ques- tionable when we consider the 2nd and 5th chapters of John.
15. — [The Jews marvelled.] The wisdom and knowledge of Scrip- ture which our Lord showed must have been the principal cause of wonder. Yet, we may well believe, there was something wonderful in His manner and style of speaking.
[How knoweth this man letters?] The word rendered " letters " here, must probably be taken in the sense of " learn- ing." It is so used in Acts xxvi. 24. In John v. 47 it is ren- dered "writings." In 2 Tim. iii. 11 it is "Scriptures." The original idea is a " written character," a letter of an alphabet. It is thus used in Luke xxiii. 38 of the inscription on the cross, written " in letters of Greek," etc.
[Having never learned.] The Jews must have meant by this, that our Lord had never attended any of the great theological schools which the Scribes and Pharisees kept up in Jerusalem, — to which St. Paul refers, when he says, he was " brought up in this city at the feet of Gamaliel." (Acts xxii. 3.) They did not of course mean that any one brought up at Nazareth must necessarily have been totally ignorant. That our Lord could read and write is clear from Luke iv. 16, and John viii. 6. But the Jeru- salem Jews, in their pride aud self-conceit, set down any one as comparatively ignorant who had uot been trained in their great metropolitan schools. People are very apt to condemn any one as " ignorant " who disagrees with them in religion.
According to Tholuck, it was a nils of the Talmud, " that no
man could appear as a teacher, who had not for some years been
a colleague of a Eabbi."
\G.—[M(j doctrine is not mine, but his that sent me.] Our Lord
meant by these words, " My doctrine is not mine only. The