[3005] Is. xlii. 3.
[3006] The reading which accordingly seems best is that adopted by Westcott and Hort, Taleith kom. The Aramaic or Rabbinic for maiden is either Talyetha or Talyutha ({hebrew}). In the second Targum on Esther ii. 7, 8, the reading is {hebrew} (Talutha), where Levy conjectures the reading {hebrew} (Talitha) or else Talyetha. The latter seems also the proper equivalent of taleith, while the reading Talitha' is very uncertain. As regards the second word, qum [pronounced kum], most writers have, without difficulty, shown that it should be qumi, not qum. Nevertheless, the same command is spelt {hebrew} in the Talmud (as it is pronounced in the Syriac) when a woman is addressed. In Shabb. 110 b, the command qum, as addressed to a woman suffering from a bloody flux, occurs not less than seven times in that one page ({hebrew}).
[3007] St. Mark vii. 37.
[3008] We cannot call the trivial objections urged other than cavils.'
[3009] According to Eusebius (Hist. Eccl. vii. 18) there was a statue in Paneas in commemoration of this event, which was said to have been erected by this woman to Christ.
[3010] Jesu v. Nazar. ii. 2, p. 475.
[3011] The passage which Strauss quotes from Bertholdt (Christol. Jud. p. 179), is from a later Midrash, that on Proverbs. No one would think of deriving purely Jewish doctrine either from the Sohar or from IV. Esdras, which is of post-Christian date, and strongly tinged with Christian elements. Other passages, however, might be quoted in favour of this view (comp. Weber, Altsynagog. Theol. pp. 351, 352), and on the other side, Hamburger, Real-Encykl. (II. Abth. Belebung der Todten'). The matter will be discussed in the sequel.
[3012] 2 Tim. i. 10. __________________________________________________________________
CHAPTER XXVII. SECOND VISIT TO NAZARETH - THE MISSION OF THE TWELVE.
(St. Matt. xiii. 54-58; x. 1, 5-42; xi. 1; St. Mark vi. 1-13; St. Luke ix. 1-6.)
It almost seems, as if the departure of Jesus from Capernaum marked a crisis in the history of that town. From henceforth it ceases to be the center of His activity, and is only occasionally, and in passing, visited. Indeed, the concentration and growing power of Pharisaic opposition, and the proximity of Herod's residence at Tiberias [3013] would have rendered a permanent stay there impossible at this stage in our Lord's history. Henceforth, His Life is, indeed, not purely missionary, but He has no certain dwelling-place: in the sublime pathos of His own language, He hath not where to lay His Head.'
The notice in St. Mark's Gospel, [3014] that His disciples followed Him, seems to connect the arrival of Jesus in His own country' (at Nazareth) with the departure from the house of Jairus, into which He had allowed only three of His Apostles to accompany Him. The circumstances of the present visit, as well as the tone of His countrymen at this time, are entirely different from what is recorded of His former sojourn at Nazareth. [3015] [3016] The tenacious narrowness, and the prejudices, so characteristic of such a town, with its cliques and petty family-pride, all the more self-asserting that the gradation would be almost imperceptible to an outsider, are, of course, the same as on the former visit of Jesus. Nazareth would have ceased to be Nazareth, had its people felt or spoken otherwise than nine or ten months before. That His fame had so grown in the interval, would only stimulate the conceit of the village-town to try, as it were, to construct the great Prophet out of its own building materials, with this additional gratification that He was thoroughly their own, and that they possessed even better materials in their Nazareth. All this is so quite according to life, that the substantial repetition of the former scene in the Synagogue, so far from surprising us, seems only natural. What surprises us is, what He marvelled at: the unbelief of Nazareth, which lay at the foundation of its estimate and treatment of Jesus.