4. No amount of detached words of wisdom constitute an organic system of ethics any, more than a heap of marble blocks constitute a palace or temple; and the best system of ethics is unable to produce a holy life, and is worthless without it.
We may admit without hesitation that Hillel was "the greatest and best of all Pharisees" (Ewald), but he was far inferior to John the Baptist; and to compare him with Christ is sheer blindness or folly. Ewald calls such comparison "utterly perverse" (grundverkehrt, v. 48). Farrar remarks that the distance between Hillel and Jesus is "a distance absolutely immeasurable, and the resemblance of his teaching to that of Jesus is the resemblance of a glow-worm to the sun" (II. 455). "The fundamental tendencies of both," says Delitzsch (p. 23), "are as widely apart as he and earth. That of Hillel is legalistic, casuistic, and nationally contracted; that of Jesus is universally religious, moral and human. Hillel lives and moves in the externals, Jesus in the spirit of the law." He was not even a reformer, as Geiger and Friedlander would make him, for what they adduce as proofs are mere trifles of interpretation, and involve no new principle or idea.
Viewed as a mere human teacher, the absolute originality of Jesus consists in this, "that his words have touched the hearts of all men in all ages, and have regenerated the moral life of the world" (Farrar, II. 454). But Jesus is far more than a Rabbi, more than a sage and saint more than a reformer, more than a benefactor; he is the author of the true religion, the prophet, priest and king, the renovator, the Saviour of men, the founder of a spiritual kingdom as vast as the race and as long as eternity.
[162] Well says Hausrath (Preface to 2nd ed. of vol. I. p. ix) against the mythical theory: "Für die poëtische Welt der religiösen Sage ist innerhalb einer rein historischen Darstellung kein Raum; ihre Gebilde verbleichen vor einem geschichtlich hellen Hintergrund .... Wenn wir die heilige Geschichte als Bruchstück einer allgemeinen Geschichte nachweisen und zeigen können, wie die Ränder passen, wenn wir die abgerissenen Fäden, die sie mit der profanen Welt verbanden, wieder aufzufinden vermögen, dann ist die Meinung ausgeschlossen, diese Geschichte sei der schöne Traum eines späteren Geschlechtes gewesen."
[163] The average length of Palestine is 150 miles, the average breadth east and west of the Jordan to the Mediterranean, from 80 to 90 miles, the number of square miles from 12,000 to 13,000. The State of Maryland has 11,124, Switzerland 15,992, Scotland 30,695 English square miles.
[164] The tradition, which locates the Temptation on the barren and dreary mount Quarantania, a few miles northwest of Jericho, is of late date. Paul also probably went, after his conversion, as far as Mount Sinai during the three years of repose and preparation "in Arabia,"Gal. 1:17, comp. 4:24.
[165] W. Hepworth Dixon (The Holy Land, ch. 14) ingeniously pleads for the traditional cave, and the identity of the inn of the Nativity with the patrimony of Boaz and the home of David.
[166] We add the vivid description of Renan (Vie de Jésus, Ch. II. p. 25) from personal observation: "Nazareth was a small town, situated in a fold of land broadly open at the summit of the group of mountains which closes on the north the plain of Esdraëlon. The population is now from three to four [probably five to six] thousand, and it cannot have changed very much. It is quite cold in winter and the climate is very healthy. The town, like all the Jewish villages of the time, was a mass of dwellings built without style, and must have presented the same poor and uninteresting appearance as the villages in Semitic countries. The houses, from all that appears, did not differ much from those cubes of stone, without interior or exterior elegance, which now cover the richest portion of the Lebanon, and which, in the midst of vines and fig-trees, are nevertheless very pleasant. The environs, moreover, are charming, and no place in the world was so well adapted to dreams of absolute happiness (nul endroit du monde ne fut si bien fait pour les rêves de l'absolu bonheur). Even in our days, Nazareth is a delightful sojourn, the only place perhaps in Palestine where the soul feels a little relieved of the burden which weighs upon it in the midst of this unequalled desolation. The people are friendly and good-natured; the gardens are fresh and green. Antonius Martyr, at the end of the sixth century, draws an enchanting picture of the fertility of the environs, which he compares to paradise. Some valleys on the western side fully justify his description. The fountain about which the life and gayety of the little town formerly centered, has been destroyed; its broken channels now give but a turbid water. But the beauty of the women who gathered there at night, this beauty which was already remarked in the sixth century, and in which was seen the gift of the Virgin Mary, has been surprisingly well preserved. It is the Syrian type in all its languishing grace. There is no doubt that Mary was there nearly every day and took her place, with her urn upon her shoulder, in the same line with her unremembered countrywomen. Antonius Martyr remarks that the Jewish women, elsewhere disdainful to Christians, are here full of affability. Even at this day religious animosities are less intense at Nazareth than elsewhere." Comp. also the more elaborate description in Keim, I. 318 sqq., and Tobler's monograph on Nazareth, Berlin, 1868.
[167] Josephus no doubt greatly exaggerates when he states that there were no less than two hundred and four towns and villages in Galilee (Vita, c. 45, diakosiai kai tessares kata ten Galilaian eisi poleis kai komai), and that the smallest of those villages contained above fifteen thousand inhabitants (Bell. Jud. III. 3, 2). This would give us a population of over three millions for that province alone, while the present population of all Palestine and Syria scarcely amounts to two millions, or forty persons to the square mile (according to Bädeker, Pal. and Syria, 1876, p. 86).
[168] Matt. 11:20-24; Luke 10:13-15.
[169] Comp. Fr. Delitzsch: Ein Tag in Capernaum, 2d ed. 1873; Furrer: Die Ortschaften am See Genezareth, in the "Zeitschrift des deutschen Palaestina-Vereins," 1879, pp. 52 sqq.: my article on Capernaum, ibid. 1878, pp. 216 sqq. and in the "Quarterly Statement of the Palestine Exploration Fund" for July, 1879, pp. 131 sqq., with the observations thereon by Lieut. Kitchener, who agrees with Dr. Robinson in locating Capernaum Khan Minyeh, although there are no ruins there at all to be compared with those of Tell Hum.
[170] The present mongrel population of Jerusalem--Moslems, Jews, and Christians of all denominations, though mostly Greek--scarcely exceeds 30,000, while at the time of Christ it must have exceeded 100,000, even if we make a large deduction from the figures of Josephus, who states that on a Passover under the governorship of Cestius Gallus 256,500 paschal lambs were slain, and that at the destruction of the City, a.d. 70, 1,100,000 Jews perished and 97,000 were sold into slavery (including 600,000 strangers who had crowded into the doomed city). Bell. Jud. vi. 9, 3.
[171] Matt. 28:6.
[172] Matt. 24:2; Mark 13:2; Luke 19:44.
[173] Renan sums up the results of his personal observations as director of the scientific commission for the exploration of ancient Phoenicia in 1860 and 1861, in the following memorable confession (Vie de Jêsus, Introd. p. liii.)."J'ai traversê dans tous les sens la province évangelique; j'ai visitê Jérusalem, Hêbron et la Samarie;presque aucune localité importante de l'histoire de Jésus ne m'a échappé. Toute cette histoire qui, à distance, semble flotter dans les nuages d'un monde sans réalité, prit ainsi un corps, une solidité qui m'étonnèrent. L'accord frappant des textes et des lieux, la merveilleuse harmonie de l'idéal évangélique avec le paysage qui lui servit de cadre furent pour moi comme une révélation. J'eus devant les yeux un cinquième évangile, lacéré, mais lisible encore, et désormais, à travers les récits de Matthieu et de Marc, au lieu d'un être abstrait, qu'on dirait n'avoir jamais existé, je vis une admirable figure humaine vivre, se mouvoir." His familiarity with the Orient accounts for the fact that this brilliant writer leaves much more historical foundation for the gospel history than his predecessorStrauss, who never saw Palestine.
[174] Matt. 8:5-13; 15:21-28; Luke 7:1-9.
[175] John 4:5-42; Luke 10:30-37.
[176] John 12:20-32
[177] Matt. 10:5, 6; 15:14.
[178] Josephus, Bell. Jud. III. c. 3, § 2: "These two Galilees, of so great largeness, and encompassed with so many nations of foreigners, have been always able to make a strong resistance on all occasions of war; for the Galileans are inured to war from their infancy, and have been always very numerous; nor hath the country ever been destitute of men of courage, or wanted a numerous set of them: for their soil is universally rich and fruitful, and full of the plantations of trees of all sorts, insomuch that it invites the most slothful to take pains in its cultivation by its fruitfulness: accordingly it is all cultivated by its inhabitants, and no part of it lies idle. Moreover, the cities lie here very thick, and the very many villages there are so full of people, by richness of their soil, that the very least of them contained above fifteen thousand inhabitants (?)."
[179] John 1:46;.7:52; Matt. 4:16. The Sanhedrists forgot in their blind passion that Jonah was from Galilee. After the fall of Jerusalem Tiberias became the headquarters of Hebrew learning and the birthplace of the Talmud.
[180] rhabbi from vr or with the suff ybr My prince, lord, kurios) sixteen times in the N. T.,. rhabboni orrhabbouni twice; didaskalos (variously rendered in the E. V. teacher, doctor, and mostly master) about forty times; epistates(rendered master) six times, kathegetes (rendered master) once in Matt. 23:10 (the text rec. also 10:8, where didaskalos is the correct reading). Other designations of these teachers in the N. T. are grammateis , nomikoi, nomodidaskaloi. Josephus calls them sophistai, hierogrammateis, patrion exegetai nomon-i, -ithe Mishna symkch and syrphvs scholars. See Schürer, p. 441.
[181] Matt. 23:8; comp. Mark 12:38, 39; Luke 11:43; 20:46.
[182] The same, however, was the case with Greek and Roman teachers before Vespasian, who was the first to introduce a regular salary. I was told in Cairo that the professors of the great Mohammedan University likewise teach gratuitously.
[183] Ecclesiasticus 38:24-34: "The wisdom of a learned man cometh by opportunity of leisure; and he that hath little business shall become wise. How can he get wisdom that holdeth the plough," etc.
[184] See FR. Delitzsch: Jüdisches Handwerkerleben zur Zeit Jesu. Erlangen, third ed. revised, 1879. He states (p. 77) that more than one hundred Rabbis who figure in the Talmud carried on a trade and were known by it, as R. Oshaja the shoemaker, R. Abba the tailor, R. Juda the baker, R. Abba Josef the architect, R. Chana the banker, R. Abba Shaul the grave-digger, R. Abba Oshaja the fuller, R. Abin the carpenter, etc. He remarks (p. 23): "The Jews have always been an industrious people and behind no other in impulse, ability and inventiveness for restless activity; agriculture and trade were their chief occupations before the dissolution of their political independence; only in consequence of their dispersion and the contraction of their energies have they become a people of sharpers and peddlers and taken the place of the old Phoenicians." But the talent and disposition for sharp bargains was inherited from their father Jacob, and turned the temple of God into "a house of merchandise." Christ charges the Pharisees with avarice which led them to "devour widows' houses." Comp. Matt. 23:14; Mark 12:40; Luke 16:14; 20:47.
[185] Mark 6:3 Jesus is called, by his neighbors, "the carpenter"ho tekton), Matt. 13:55 "the carpenter's son."