The Cradle of the Christ: A Study in Primitive Christianity

If this can be made apparent without over-stating the facts, everything in the New Testament, from the character of Jesus, and the constitution of the primitive church, to the later development by Paul, and the latest by John, must be subjected to a revision, which though fatal to Christianity's claim to be a special revelation, will restore dignity to the Semitic character, and consistency to the development of historic truth. Better still, it will heal the breach between two great religions, and will contribute to that disarmament of faiths from which good hearts anticipate most important results. Of all this hints only can be given in a short essay like this; but if the hints are suggestive in themselves or from their arrangement, a service will be rendered to the cause of truth that may deserve recognition.

II.

THE MESSIAH

The period of the captivity in Babylon, which is commonly regarded as a period of sadness and desolation, a blank space of interruption in the nation's life, was, in reality, a period of intense mental activity; probably the highest spiritual moment in the history of the people. Dispossessed of their own territory, relieved of the burden and freed from the distraction of politics, their disintegrating tribal feuds terminated by foreign conquest, living, as unoppressed exiles, in one of the world's greatest cities, with opportunities for observation and reflection never enjoyed before, having unbroken leisure in the midst of material and intellectual opulence, the true children of Israel devoted themselves to the task of rebuilding spiritually the state that had been politically overthrown. The writings that reflect this period, particularly the later portions of Isaiah, exhibit the soul of the nation in proud resistance against the unbelief, the disloyalty, the worldliness, that were demoralizing the less noble part of their countrymen. The duty was laid on them to support the national character, revive the national faith, restore the national courage, and rebuild the national purpose. To this end they collected the traditions of past glory, gathered up the fragments of legend and song, reanimated the souls of their heroes and saints, developed ideas that existed only in germ, arranged narratives and legislation, and constructed an ideal state. There is reason to believe that the real genius of the people was first called into full exercise, and put on its career of development at this time; that Babylon was a forcing nursery, not a prison cell; creating instead of stifling a nation. The astonishing outburst of intellectual and moral energy that accompanied the return from the Babylonish captivity attests the spiritual activity of that "mysterious and momentous" time. When the hour of deliverance struck, the company of defeated, disheartened, crushed, to all seeming, "reckless, lawless, godless" exiles came forth "transformed into a band of puritans." The books that remain from those generations, Daniel, the Maccabees, Esdras, are charged with an impetuous eloquence and a frenzied zeal.

The Talmud, that vast treasury of speculation on divine things, had its origin about this period. Recent researches into that wilderness of thought reveal wonders and beauties that were never till recently divulged. The deepest insights, the most bewildering fancies, exist there side by side. The intellectual powers of a race exhausted themselves in efforts to penetrate the mysteries of faith. The fragments of national literature that had been rescued from oblivion, were pondered over, scrutinized, arranged, classified, with a superstitious veneration that would not be satisfied till all the possibilities of interpretation had been tried. The command to "search the scriptures" for in them were the words of eternal life, was accepted and faithfully obeyed. "The Talmud" says Emanuel Deutsch, "is more than a book of laws, it is a microcosm, embracing, even as does the Bible, heaven and earth. It is as if all the prose and poetry, the science, the faith and speculation of the old world were, though only in faint reflections, bound up in it in nuce." The theme of discussion, conjecture, speculation, allegory was, from first to last, the same, – the relation between Jehovah and his people, the nature and conditions of salvation, the purport of the law, the bearing of the promises. The entire field of investigation was open, reaching all the way from the number of words in the Bible to the secret of infinite being. No passage was left unexposed with all the keenness that faith aided by culture could supply; and when reason reached the end of its tether, fancy took up the work and threaded with unwearied industry the mazes of allegory.

Among the problems that challenged solution was the one touching the Messiah, his attributes and offices, his nature and his kingdom. This theme had inexhaustible capacities and infinite attraction, for it was but another form of the theme of national deliverance which was uppermost in the Hebrew mind.

The history of the Messianic idea is involved in the obscurity that clouds the early history of Israel; and this again is embarrassed with the extreme difficulty of deciding the antiquity of the Hebrew scriptures. At what moment was Israel fully persuaded of its providential destiny? That is the question. For the germs of the Messianic idea were contained in the bosom of that persuasion. That the idea was slow in forming must be conceded under any estimate of its antiquity; for its development depended on the experiences of the nation, and these experiences underwent in history numerous and violent fluctuations. The hope of a deliverer came with the felt need of deliverance, and the consciousness of this need grew with the soreness of the calamity under which the nation groaned, as the character of it was determined by the character of the calamity. The national expectation was necessarily vague at first. It rested originally on the tradition of a general promise given to Abraham that his descendants should be a great and happy nation, blessing and redeeming the nations of the earth; that their power should be world-wide, their wealth inexhaustible, their peace undisturbed, their moral supremacy gladly acknowledged. "The Lord shall cause thine enemies that rise up against thee to be smitten before thy face; they shall come out against thee one way, and flee before thee seven ways. The Lord shall command the blessing upon thee in thy storehouses, and in all that thou settest thy hand unto; and he shall bless thee in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee. The Lord shall establish thee an holy people unto himself, as he hath sworn unto thee, if thou shalt keep the commandments of the Lord, and walk in his ways; and all people of the earth shall see that thou art called by the name of the Lord."

As a promise made by Jehovah must be kept, the anticipation of its fulfilment became strong as the prospect of it grew dim. The days of disaster were the days of expectation. The prophets laid stress on the condition, charged the delay upon lukewarmness, and urged the necessity of stricter conformity with the divine will; but the people, oblivious of duty, held to the pledge and cherished the anticipation. When the national hope assumed the concrete form of faith in the advent of an individual, when the conception of the individual became clothed in supernatural attributes, is uncertain. Probably the looked-for deliverer was from the first regarded as more than human. It could hardly be otherwise, as he was to be the representative and agent of Jehovah, an incarnation of his truth and righteousness. The Hebrews easily confounding the human with the super-human, were always tempted to ascribe supernatural qualities to their political and spiritual leaders, believing that they were divinely commissioned, attested and furthered; and the person who was to accomplish what none of them had so much as hopefully undertaken, would naturally be clothed by an enthusiastic imagination, with attributes more than mortal. The poets depicted the stories of the future restoration in language of extraordinary splendor. Joel, some say eight hundred years before Jesus, two hundred years before the first captivity, foreshadows the restoration, but without any portraiture of the victorious Prince. A century and a half later we will suppose, the first Isaiah speaks of the providential child of the nation, on whose shoulder the government shall rest, whose name shall be called Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty Potentate, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace; whose dominion shall be great, who shall fix and establish the throne and kingdom of David, through justice and equity for ever, and in peace without end; a lineal descendant from David, a sprout from his root.

"The spirit of Jehovah shall rest upon him,"The spirit of wisdom and understanding,"The spirit of counsel and might,"The spirit of knowledge and fear of Jehovah."Righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins,"And faithfulness the girdle of his reins;"To him shall the nation repair,"And his dwelling place shall be glorious."

The second Isaiah, supposed to have written during the exile and not long before its termination, associates the hope of restoration and return with king Cyrus, on whose clemency the Jews built great expectations, intimating even that he might be the promised deliverer. "He saith of Cyrus: 'He is my shepherd; he shall perform all my pleasure.' He saith of Jerusalem: 'She shall be built;' and of the temple: 'Her foundation shall be laid.'"

In the book of Daniel, by some supposed to have been written during the captivity, by others as late as Antiochus Epiphanes (B. C., 175), the restoration is described in tremendous language, and the Messiah is portrayed as a supernatural personage, in close relation with Jehovah himself. He is spoken of as a man, yet with such epithets as only a Jewish imagination could use in describing a human being. Heinrich Ewald, in the fifth volume of his history of the people of Israel, devotes twenty-three pages to an account of the development of the national expectation of a Messiah, which he calls "the second preparatory condition of the consummation in Jesus." After alluding to Joel's fervent anticipation, and Isaiah's description of the glory that was to come through the King, in whom the spirit of pure divinity penetrated, animated and glorified everything, so that his human nature was exalted to the God-like power, whose actions, speech, breath even attested deity, he says: "It is not to be questioned that this most exalted form of the conception of the anticipated Messiah appeared in the midst of the latter period of this history, when before the great victory of the Maccabees, the eternal hopes of Israel were disturbed in their foundations along with its political prospects, and the advent of a King of David's line seemed wholly impossible. At this time the deathless hope became more interior and imperishable in this new, glorious, celestial idea, and the Messiah presented himself before prophetic vision as existing from all eternity, along with the indestructible prerogatives of Israel, which were thought of as existing in an ideal realm, ready to manifest themselves visibly when the hour of destiny should come. And we are able, on historical grounds, to assume that the deep-souled author of the book of Daniel, was the man who first sketched the splendid shape of the Messiah, and the superb outline of his kingdom, in his far-reaching, keen, suggestive, luminous phrases; while immediately after him the first composer of our book of Enoch developed the traits furnished him, with an equal warmth of language and a spiritual insight, not deeper perhaps, but quieter and more comprehensive." Ewald supposes the book of Enoch to have been written at various intervals between 144 and 120 (B. C.) and to have been completed in its present form in the first half of the century that preceeded the coming of Christ. The book was regarded as of authority by Tertullian, though Origen and Augustine classed it with apocryphal writings. In it the figure of the Messiah is invested with super-human attributes. He is called "The Son of God," "whose name was spoken before the sun was made;" "who existed from the beginning in the presence of God," that is, was pre-existent. At the same time his human characteristics are insisted on. He is called "Son of Man," even "Son of Woman," "The Anointed," "The Elect," "The Righteous One," after the style of earlier Hebrew anticipation. The doctrines of angelic orders and administrations, of Satan and his legions, of resurrection and the final judgment, though definitely shaped, perhaps by association with Persian mythologies, lay concealed in possibility within the original thought of ultimate supremacy which worked so long and so actively, though so obscurely, in the mind of the Jewish race.

The books of Maccabees, belonging, according to Ewald, to the last half century before Christ, contain significant hints of the future beliefs of Israel. In the second chapter of II. Maccabees, verses 4-9, we read: "It is also found in the records that Jeremy the prophet, being warned of God, commanded the tabernacle and the ark to go with him, as he went forth into the mountain where Moses climbed up and saw the heritage of God. And when Jeremy came thither he found a hollow cave wherein he laid the tabernacle and the ark and the altar of incense, and then stopped the door. And some of those that followed him came to mark the way, but they could not find it; which, when Jeremy perceived, he blamed them, saying: As for that place it shall be unknown until the time that God gather his people again together, and receive them unto mercy. Then shall the Lord show them these things, and the glory of the Lord shall appear, and the cloud also, as it was showed unto Moses." Is it a stretch of conjecture on the tenuous thread of fancy to find this reappearance described in Revelations XI., 19, in these words: "And the temple of God was opened in heaven, and there was seen in the temple the ark of his covenant; and there were lightnings, and voices, and thunderings, and an earthquake, and great hail?" In the twenty-first chapter the seer describes himself as "carried away in the spirit to a great and high mountain" and shown "that great city the Holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven, from God." And he heard a great voice out of heaven, saying: "Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men; He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people, and God himself shall be with them, their God." The heavenly Jerusalem that came from the clouds is the heavenly city, the germ whereof was carried up and hidden in the cloud by Jeremy, the prophet. The apocryphal books of the Old Testament lodge the ancient Hebraic idea in the very heart of the New.

The earliest phases of the Messianic hope were the most exalted in spirituality. As the fortunes of the people became entangled with those of other states, and the heavy hand of foreign oppression was laid upon them, the anticipation lost its religious and assumed a political character. The Messiah assumed the aspect of a temporal prince, no other conception of him meeting the requirements of the time. The dark days had come again, and were more threatening than ever. Sixty-three years before the birth of Jesus, Pompey the Great, returning from the East, flushed with victory, approached Jerusalem. The city shut its gates against him, but the resistance, though stubborn, was overcome at last, and Judæa was, with the rest of the world, swept into the mass of the Roman empire. The conqueror, proud but magnanimous, spared the people the last humiliation. He respected no national scruples, perhaps made a point of disregarding them; he even penetrated into the Holy of Holies, a piece of sacrilegious audacity that no Gentile had ventured on before him; but he was considerate of the national spirit in other respects, and left the State, in semblance at least, existing. He quelled the factions that distracted the country, repaired the ruin caused in the city by the siege, restored the injured temple, and departed leaving the country in the hands of native rulers, the Empire being thrown into the background. In the background, however, it lurked, a vast power, holding Judæa dependent and tributary. The Jewish state was closely bounded and sharply defined; a portion of its wealth was absorbed in taxes. An iron arm repressed the insurgent fanaticism that ever and anon broke out in zeal for Jehovah. The loyalty that was kept alive by religious traditions and was only another name for religious enthusiasm, was not allowed expression. Still the even pressure of imperial power was not cruelly felt, and by the better portion of the people was preferred to ceaseless discord and anarchy. The lower orders, easily roused to fanaticism, provoked the Roman rule to more evident and stringent dominion. Julius Cæsar, passing by on his way to Egypt, paused, saw the situation, and increased the authority of Antipater, his representative, whom he raised to the dignity of Procurator of Judæa. The rule of Antipater was, in the main, just, and commended itself to the rational friends of the Jewish State. He rebuilt the wall which the assaults of war had thrown down, pacified the country, and earned by his general moderation the praise of the patriotic. But Antipater, besides being the representative of a Gentile despotism, was of foreign race, an Idumæan, of the abhorred stock of Edom. Spiritual acquiescence in the rule of such a prince was not to be expected.

Antipater was the founder of the Herodian dynasty. Whatever may have been the ulterior designs which the princes of this dynasty had at heart, whether they meditated an Eastern Empire centering in Palestine, Jerusalem being the great metropolis, a purpose kept secret in their breasts till such time as events might justify them in throwing off the dominion of Rome which they had used as an assistance in their period of weakness; or whether they hoped to combine Church and State in Judæa in such a way that each might support the other; or whether, in their passion for splendor, they plotted the subversion of religion by the pomp of pagan civilization; the practical result of their dominion was the exasperation of the Hebrew spirit.

Herod, the son of Antipater, deserved, on several accounts, the title of Great that history has bestowed on him. He was great as a soldier, great as a diplomatist, great as an administrator. Made king in his youth; established in his power by the Roman senate; confirmed in his state by Augustus; entrusted with all but unlimited powers; absolved from the duty to pay tribute to the empire; his long reign of more than forty years was of great moment to the Jewish state. Internally he corrupted it, but externally he beautified it. The superb temple, one of the wonders and ornaments of the Eastern world, was of his building, and so delicately as well as munificently was it done, that the shock of removing the old edifice to make room for the new was quite avoided. He adorned the city besides, with sumptuous monuments and structures. His palaces, theatres, tombs were of unexampled magnificence. Nor was his attention confined to the city of Jerusalem; Cæsarea was enriched with marble docks and palaces; Joppa was made handsome; Antonia was fortified. Games and feasts relieved the monotony of Eastern life, and gratified the Greek taste for splendid gaiety. But this was all in the interest of paganism. If he rebuilt the temple at Jerusalem, he rebuilt also the temple at Samaria. If he made superb the worship of Jehovah in the holy city, he encouraged heathen worship in the new city of Cæsarea. This introduction of Roman customs deeply offended the religious sense of the nation. Outside the city walls he had an amphitheatre for barbarous games. Inside, he had a theatre for Greek plays and dances. The castle, Antonia, well garrisoned, a castle and a palace combined, commanded the temple square. The Roman eagle, fixed upon the front of the temple, was an affront that no magnificence or munificence could atone for. His private life was not calculated to win the favor of a severely puritanical people, or persuade them of the advantage of being under imperial dominion. The Greek legends on his coins, his ostentatious encouragement of foreign usages and people, his rude treatment of Hebrew prejudices, and his haughty bearing towards the "first families" added bitterness to the misery of foreign sway.

Yet the situation became worse at his death. For his successors had his audacity without his prudence, and were disposed, as he was, to be oppressive, without being, as he was, magnificent. He did keep the nation at peace by his tyranny, if by his cruelty he undermined security and provoked the disaffection that made peace impossible after him. The last acts ascribed to him, the order that the most eminent men of the nation should be put to death at his decease, and that the infants of Bethlehem, the city of David, should be massacred, attest more than the vulgar belief in his cruelty; they bear witness to a conviction that the spirit of the people was not dead, that the despotism of Rome had failed to crush the hope of Israel. The death of Herod, which occurred when Jesus was a little child, was followed by frightful social and political convulsions. For two or three years all the elements of disorder were afoot. Between pretenders to the vacant throne of Herod, and aspirants to the Messianic throne of David, Judæa was torn and devastated. Revolt assumed the wildest form, the higher enthusiasm of faith yielded to the lower fury of fanaticism; the celestial visions of a kingdom of heaven were completely banished by the smoke and flame of political hate. Claimant after claimant of the dangerous supremacy of the Messiah appeared, pitched a camp in the wilderness, raised the banner, gathered a force, was attacked, defeated, banished or crucified; but the frenzy did not abate. Conservative Jews, in their despair, sent an embassy to Rome, praying for tranquility under the equitable reign of law. They wanted no king like Herod, or of Herod's line; they prayed to be delivered from all kings who were not themselves subject to imperial responsibility. The governor of Syria they would acknowledge. The petition was not granted. Herod's three sons, Archelaus, Antipas and Philip divided their father's dominion between them; Judæa was made a Roman province, subject to taxation like any other.

The best of the three kings was Philip, who received as his portion the North Eastern division, the most remote from the centre of disturbance. He was a quiet, well-disposed man, who staid at home, attended to his own business, developed the resources of his dominion, and showed himself a father to his people. Cæsarea Philippi was built by him; Bethsaida was rebuilt. Antipas, called also Herod, was appointed ruler over Galilee and Peræa; a cunning, unprincipled man, nicknamed "the fox;" despotic and wilful, like his father, and like his father, fond of display. He built Dio Cæsarea, as it was afterwards called, and Tiberias, on the sea of Galilee. He too was a good deal of a pagan, and deeply outraged the Hebrew conscience by repudiating his wife, the daughter of Aretas, an Arabian king, and marrying the wife of his half-brother, Philip. He was an oriental despot, superstitious, luxurious, sensual, wilful and weak; quite destitute of the statesmanship required in the ruler of a turbulent province, where special care and skill were necessary to reconcile the order of civil government with the aspiration after theocratic supremacy. The spiritual fear, which compelled him to stand in awe of religious enthusiasm, put him on more than half earnest quest of prophetic messengers, made him curious about miracles and signs, and anxious not to offend needlessly the higher powers, was incessantly at war with the self-regarding policy which resented the smallest encroachment on his own authority. To maintain his ducal state, and meet the cost of his public and private extravagance, he imposed heavy taxes, and collected them in an unscrupulous fashion, which made him and the empire he represented extremely unpopular. Jealous of his prerogative, and ambitious of regal rank, he brought himself into disagreeable collision with the aspirations of the people he governed. His immediate neighborhood to the centres of Jewish enthusiasm, – he lived in the very heart of it, for Galilee was the seat and head-quarters of Hebrew radicalism – made his every movement felt. In him the spirit of the Roman empire was, in the belief of the people, incarnate.

The oldest brother, Archelaus, held the chief position, bore the highest title, received the largest tribute, more than a million of dollars, and resided in Judæa, nearer the political centre of the country. His reign was short. His cruelty and lawlessness, his disregard of private and public decencies raised his subjects against him. Augustus, on an appeal to Rome for redress, summoned him to his presence, listened to the charges and the defence, and banished him to Gaul. This was in the year 6 of our era, only three years after the death of Herod. The reign of his brothers, Philip and Antipas, covered the period of the life of Jesus.