A Jewish view of Jesus

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PRINCETON • NEW JERSEY
PRESENTED BY

John Stuart Conning, D.D,

BM 620 .E6 1920 c.l j

Enelow, H. G. 1877-1934. !
A Jewish view of Jesus

A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

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A JEWISH VIE
OF JESUS

BY

H. G. ENELOW

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

1920

All rights reserved

COPTEIGHT, 1920.

BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

Set up and electrotyped. Published May, 1920.

TO
MRS. HENRY BURNETT

WITH GRATEFUL RECOLLECTION

OF THE

MONDAY MORNING BIBLE CLASS

IN KENTUCKY

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I The Jewish Interest of Jesus . i
II The Jewish Heritage of Jesus . ii

III The Jewish Environment of Jesus 28

IV The Jewish Characteristics of

Jesus 44

V The Jewish Element in the

Teachings of Jesus .... 63

VI Jesus and His Contemporaries . . 84

VII The Jewish Messiah Idea and

Jesus 106

VIII The Jews and the Death of Jesus 133

IX Jesus AND Jewish History . . .151

X The Modern Jewish Attitude to

Jesus 167

A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

THE JEWISH INTEREST OF JESUS

A STUDY of the relation of Jesus to the
Jews, from the Jewish point of view, is still
a somewhat hazardous undertaking, exciting
suspicion or fear of one kind or another.
Orthodox Christians will suspect an element
of Irreverence in a Jew's treatment of Jesus.
The old-fashioned Jew, on the other hand,
may object altogether to such a discussion,
as giving undue attention to a forbidden sub-
ject. Consideration of Jesus on the part of
a Jew is regarded as a sign of weakness, if
not disloyalty, as a leaning in the wrong di-
rection, particularly if it shows symptoms of
admiration for Jesus.

Suspicion and prejudice, however, should
not keep us aloof from a subject, which, as

2 A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

a matter of fact, is of vital interest to the
modern Jew. Until the nineteenth century,
Jews, for various reasons, maintained silence
in regard to Jesus. One reason, no doubt,
was that it was not safe for them to discuss
him. Jews were denied political rights in the
Western world, and, by implication, the priv-
ilege of free comment on the dominant re-
ligion and its chief hero. Whenever they
broke the rule of silence — even when forced
into religious disputations — they had to pay
a heavy penalty.

A unique exception was " The Fortifica-
tion of Faith," a Hebrew work issued in the
year 1593 by Isaac of Troki, a Karaite. It
contains a defense of Judaism and a criticism
of Christian dogmas, and it resulted from the
author's friendly intercourse with Christians
of all schools, trinitarians as well as uni-
tarians, the latter having just then found
shelter in Poland from the persecutions of
other countries. A Latin translation of this

THE JEWISH INTEREST OF JESUS 3

work, published by a German scholar in 1 68 1 ,
under the title of " Satan's Fiery Arrows,"
introduced It to the Christian world and
made it popular with eighteenth-century skep-
tics, Voltaire remarking that It contained
all the difficulties which latter-day unbeliev-
ers had propagated.

This book, however, sprang from un-
usually favorable circumstances. As a rule,
Jews were silent on the subject of Jesus.
Besides, as long as they lived apart, it was
of no particular moment whether they had
any clear idea of Jesus, or no.

Nowadays the situation is different. The
Jews are free, civilly as well as intellectually.
They live in close contact with the rest of the
world; they read the same books, they hear
the same lectures, they breathe the same at-
mosphere. It is, therefore, impossible for
them to Ignore a subject which is part of the
very fabric of the life round about them.
Moreover, in venturing to express his views

4 A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

on this subject, the Jew has no more serious
obstacle to face than custom or prejudice.

There are many reasons why a Jew should
be interested in Jesus.

First of all, Jesus has become the most
popular, the most studied, the most influen-
tial figure in the religious history of man-
kind. This alone should be enough to com-
pel the Jew's attention.

The Jew is a religious being. All Jewish
history is the result of religious passion and
purpose, and, whatever is said to the con-
trary, the continuity of the Jew is bound up
with the retention of his religion. Wipe
out the rehgious element from the equation
of his hfe, and the Jew would cease automat-
ically. It is just because the Jew is so
wholly bound up with his religion, that he
can tolerate, or digest, all the indifference
and atheism found in his midst. They are
a foreign substance not strong enough to af-
fect the general character and endurance of

THE JEWISH INTEREST OF JESUS 5

his people. Had the Jewish religion been
obliterated, for example, when Christianity
arose, there would be no Jews to-day — no
Jews of any kind. Religion belongs to the
Jewish substance; all the rest Is accident.

As a religious being, however, the Jew
cannot help taking an interest in the man who
above all others has played a part in religious
history — at least In so far as the latter has
touched the Western world. There may be
more Mohametans and Hindus in the world
than Christians and Jews. But no Mo-
hametan prophet nor Hindu saint has exer-
cised the same sway on the heart and imag-
ination of the world as Jesus. Whether we
like it or no, Jesus has fascinated mankind.
Even in circles which have discarded Chris-
tian dogmas and creeds, Jesus has preserved
his influence. Indeed, in many cases admira-
tion for Jesus has grown In proportion to the
abandonment of the dogmas of traditional
Christianity.

6 A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

This is illustrated by the large number of
lives of Jesus that have appeared in recent
years. In the second half of the nineteenth
century, we know, there were many attacks
upon traditional religion. Criticism of every
kind, historical and philosophical, was di-
rected against it. Many thought that the
fortress of faith could not possibly endure.
One thing, however, is remarkable. Amid
all these assaults, the world kept on study-
ing Jesus, and regarding him from every
conceivable angle. New biographies of
Jesus were produced from most diverse
points of view: from the physiological, the
psychological, and the pathological point of
view, as well as from the orthodox. When,
several years ago, the theory was revived
that Jesus never existed — that he was a
myth — it only served as an incentive to the
production of new biographies of Jesus.

The creation of this literature is not con-
fined to specialists or theologians. Jesus

THE JEWISH INTEREST OF JESUS 7

has continued to occupy the pen of literary
authors, who have approached him from the
human end, rather than as theological stu-
dents. Recently, we have been given, for
Instance, Mary Austin's book on Jesus,
George Moore's novel, "The Brook Ker-
Ith," Mr. Masefield's poem, " Good Friday,"
and Mr. Shaw's brilliant dissertation In his
Preface to " Androcles and the Lion."
These Instances show how fascinating and
fecund a theme the life of Jesus offers to
modern students and poets.

Now, it would be foolish for any one to
affirm that all such writings are of no In-
terest to the Jew. They must be of supreme
interest, if the Jew cares at all for his spirit-
ual Integrity and honor, and for the general
determination of religious truth. It Is im-
possible for any writer to discuss Jesus, with-
out touching upon the Jew and the Jew's
religion, and upon the relation of Jesus to
the Jews. When Mr. Wells, for Instance,

8 A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

in " Mr. Brltling Sees it Through," avers
that the real God of the modern world is
Christ, and that God the Creator, whom
Mr. Wells finds uncongenial, is a survival
of ^' the Jew Gbd," whom Christianity has
rejected, he makes affirmations which the
Jewish reader cannot ignore, and which even
an intelligent Christian should not leave un-
challenged. Similarly, Mr. Shaw's facile
differentiation between Jesus and the Jews,
with its conventional disparagement of the
Jews, is of import to the Jewish reader.
Even such brilliant men as Mr. Shaw and
Mr. Moore, unfortunately, do not know
enough about the Jews and the Jewish re-
ligion, either of the age of Jesus or of any
other age, to be able to speak of them ac-
curately. That their assertions perpetuate
error in Christian minds is bad enough; that
they make confusion worse confounded for
uninformed Jewish readers, is worse.

I have spoken of the interest that the

THE JEWISH INTEREST OF JESUS 9

Jew, as a religious being, must take in Jesus.
Another reason, however, is that Jesus was
a Jew. No sensible Jew can be indifferent
to the fact that a Jew should have had such
a tremendous part in the religious education
and direction of the human race.

We often speak of the religious mission
of the Jewish people. We speak of the
wonderful influence of Moses, of the Proph-
ets, not only upon Israel, but upon the world
at large. How can we ignore the work of
Jesus? It matters not, for the moment,
whether we consider him original or no,
right or wrong; the fact of his influence
cannot be blinked, nor his connection with
the Jewish people. " The origins of Chris-
tianity," says Renan, " are in Judaism: they
have to be set at least seven hundred and
fifty years before Jesus. In that early age
there appeared the great prophets, creators
of an entirely new idea in rehgion." Hence,
in order to explain the rise of Christianity,

lo A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

Renan wrote a history of the Jewish people.
Similarly, no intelligent Jew can fail to be
interested in the one Jew whose name is so
intimately linked with the origin of Chris-
tianity and the evolution of the rehgious
life of mankind.

Nor is the actual attitude of modern Jews
to Jesus of any less importance. Historical
considerations apart, there is the practical
question. What do modern Jews think of
Jesus? It is a query we cannot put aside.
We cannot shut ourselves up in the silence
of past centuries. Be our answer what it
may, we should try to frame one.

THE JEWISH HERITAGE OF JESUS

In her book on Jesus, Mary Austin justly
emphasizes the fact that Jesus was a Jew.
Yet, recent years have witnessed attempts to
set Jesus apart from the Jewish people.

This practice originated with people an-
tagonistic to the Jew and so convinced of
the inferiority of his race and religion, as
to find it hard to treat Jesus as a Jew. Thus,
Houston Stewart Chamberlain, a fanatic on
raciaHsm, and yet an admirer of Jesus, in his
work on " The Foundations of the Nine-
teenth Century," sought to show that Jesus,
being a Galilean, was not a Semite at all,
but an Aryan, as Galilee contained a con-
siderable Aryan element. On the other
hand, others more interested in religion than
in race, but equally loath to leave Jesus to
II

12 A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

the Jews, have sought to demonstrate that
though Jesus may have sprung from the
Jews, in religion he differed from them to-
tally,— one might say miraculously. That
neither of these views is based on the truth,
any fair reader of the story of Jesus must
realize.

No matter how long after the death of
Jesus the story of his life, as we have it,
was written, and what guided its authors,
one thing stands out clearly, namely, that not
only did Jesus belong to the Jews in every
way, but also that to the very last he was
fully conscious of that kinship and of what it
implied.

In theological writings of the past century,
much has been made of the question of the
self-consciousness of Jesus. There has been
all manner of debate as to what Jesus
thought of himself and his mission. In
other words, a real effort has been made
to penetrate beyond the portrayal of Jesus

THE JEWISH HERITAGE OF JESUS 13

by the creeds and the churches to his own
conception of himself and his task.

Now, If anything seems to be clear about
the self-consciousness of Jesus, as far as we
can gather from the gospels. It is this : that
he was conscious of his Jewish derivation,
as well as of his debt to his Jewish heritage
and his duty to the Jewish people. His
noblest teachings were Illustrated by citations
from the Jewish Scriptures, his most solemn
admonitions were addressed to the Jewish
people, and his most tender words were
spoken concerning the Jewish people. " Oh,
Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that klllest the
prophets and stonest them which are sent
unto thee, how often would I have gathered
thy children together!" Jesus would not
have been Jesus if he had not loved first
and last the people from which he sprang
and from whose heart his life-blood was
drawn — if he had not been gratefully con-
scious of his heritage.

14 A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

Unfortunately, this fact has been obscured
by the latter-day quarrel about the originality
of Jesus. This combat was the natural off-
spring of the historical or comparative
method of study so dear to the modern mind.
Jesus, it is argued by some, was not original
at all; his teachings were borrowed from
Hindu and Egyptian sources. The chief
controversy, however, has turned about Ju-
daism. Jewish writers have tried to prove
that everything taught by Jesus may be
found in Jewish literature, and that there-
fore he could not be called original; while
Christians have deemed it necessary to de-
fend Jesus against the charge of borrowing
or reproducing from Jewish sources, lest his
originality be impugned.

This controversy may seem momentous to
the learned disputants. But it has very little
to do with the character of Jesus or the
worth of his work, and one is almost sure
that he himself would have cared very little

THE JEWISH HERITAGE OF JESUS 15

about It. It springs from a peculiar con-
ception as to what really constitutes origin-
ality, particularly in the spiritual and ethical
sphere, which was preeminently the sphere of
Jesus' life and work.

What is originality? We could do no bet-
ter than accept a definition offered by Haz-
litt. " Genius or originality," he says, " is
for the most part some strong quality in the
mind, answering to and bringing out some
new and striking quality in nature." " This,"
he adds, " is the test and triumph of or-
iginality, not to show us what has never been,
and what we may therefore very easily never
have dreamt of, but to point out to us what
is before our eyes and under our feet, though
we have had no suspicion of its existence,
for want of sufficient strength of intuition,
of determined grasp of mind, to seize and
retain it."

This Is the true nature of originality, par-
ticularly in the domain of spiritual percep-

i6 A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

tion and instruction. That is why the Jew-
ish Prophets never pretended to teach any-
thing new. What they taught, they felt,
was but a renewal, a fresh proclamation or
revelation, of what had been revealed and
proclaimed long ago. " The Lord, the God
of your fathers," Moses was to say to Israel,
'' the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac,
and the God of Jacob, hath sent me unto you ;
this is My name for ever, and this is My
memorial unto all generations." The pro-
phetic successors of Moses never deviated
from his example of addressing their people
in the name of the God and the faith of the
fathers. " When Israel was a child," we
read in Hosea,

" When Israel was a child, then I loved him,
And out of Egypt I called My son.
The more they called them, the more they went

from them;
They sacrificed unto the Baalim,
And offered to graven images.
And I, I taught Ephraim to walk,

THE JEWISH HERITAGE OF JESUS 17

Taking them by their arms;

But they knew not that I healed them.

I drew them with cords of a man

With bands of love.

How shall I give thee up, Ephraim?

How shall I surrender thee, Israel? "

In Jeremiah, the Lord says:

** I remember for thee the affection of thy youth.
The love of thine espousals;

How thou wentest after Me in the wilderness,
In a land that was not sown."

And in Malachi we read:

** From the days of your fathers ye have turned aside
From Mine ordinances, and have not kept them.
Return unto Me, and I will return unto you,
Saith the Lord of hosts."

In his own way Jesus did what the Proph-
ets had done : he gave a fresh interpretation
of the laws governing the spiritual life, a
fresh message concerning the meaning and
the purpose of religion, a new illumination
of the sense and the object of the old law

i8 A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

and of the old prophetic utterances. Here
lay his genius and originality. Moreover,
he sought to teach his hearers and disciples
the need of gaining, each for himself, such
a fresh and personal appreciation of religion.
Even in this very important matter Jesus did
not profess to say anything that had never
been said before: he could not have pro-
fessed it in view of what he had read in
Jeremiah and the Psalms. But he did try
to teach these essential truths and central
beauties of the religious life in his own way,
and through his own experience, and by
means of his own personal life. And wher-
ever we find true personality, we have orig-
inality. Supreme personality is greatest or-
iginality.

To realize this, however, does not mean
to lessen the value to Jesus of his Jewish
spiritual heritage. Mary Austin is certainly
right when she Insists that Jesus was a Jew

THE JEWISH HERITAGE OF JESUS 19

born and bred, and that " always, to his
death, Judaism was there about the roots
of his Hfe." Indeed, in order to appreciate
his ideal and his work fully, we must con-
sider what ideals and thoughts he inherited
from the Jewish people that had produced
him.

One impression we cannot help gaining of
Jesus, is that he was not a bookish man. His
denunciation of the scribes, the scholars of
the time, we need hardly take Hterally. He
probably was not as bitter against the scribes
as sometimes he is made out to be, though
undoubtedly he detested the pedants and the
hypocrites among them. None the less, we
may be sure that his habits were not those
of the professional scholar. They were
those of the man of the people, rather than
the studious recluse, of the lover of the out
of doors, rather than of the study. Yet,
to learn what sort of spiritual and intellect-
ual heritage Jesus got from his people, there

20 A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

Is but one thing for us to do, namely, con-
sider the Jewish literature that existed at
the time. For, In that literature are stored
up the Ideas that helped mold his mind,
and through It we get an Idea of the mental
and spiritual atmosphere that surrounded
him.

Now, the first and foremost part of his
heritage was the Jewish Bible. We must
recall, however, that the Bible was not as
ancient a book then as it Is now. It was
not as antique, as remote, as detached a
book. It was still a recent creation or com-
pilation. Parts of It were less than two
hundred years old; and as a final compilation
It was even younger. It had not become
as petrified a book as to many people It Is
to-day. To Jesus, no doubt. It was a live
book. He had his preferences in it (as.
Indeed, had every Intelligent Jew of his day
and of every other day) and he read In It,
and chose from It, according to his prefer-

THE JEWISH HERITAGE OF JESUS 21

ences, and according to what appealed most
to his ethical sense and spiritual nature. We
have no reason to think that he discarded
the Pentateuch; on some important occasions
he quoted from it, and he took from it his
famous summary of the substance of religion.
But he was particularly fond of certain por-
tions of the Prophets and of the Psalms,
probably because in them he found closest
kinship to his own spirit. In this regard, as
I have said, he did what spiritual and en-
lightened Jews have done more or less in
all ages. The Jews have not been bibliola-
ters; and the individual Jew, despite the can-
onization of the Bible, has always exercised
the privilege of choice and preference in the
Bible.

But the Bible was not the whole of the
Jewish heritage of Jesus. One still meets
with people that think of the Bible as the
product of a single period. They do not
realize that the Bible was the product of

22 A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

many centuries of Jewish spiritual activity
and creation, and that in the Bible itself
nothing is so clear as the process of spiritual
development — of the growth, the evolution
of religious and ethical ideas. Nor do they
realize that when the Bible was closed, it
meant, indeed, the close of a period in Jewish
life and thought, but by no means the cessa-
tion of the spiritual development of the Jew-
ish people. None the less, there is no doubt
that that spiritual development went on, just
as vigorously and just as vitally as before
the Bible had been compiled. And of this
spiritual activity we find records in a very
important part of Jewish literature : first, in
what is known as the Apocrypha and the
Pseudo-Epigrapha, and secondly, in such
works as those of the Jewish philosopher
Philo, who lived in Alexandria during the
very century of Jesus.

I shall not undertake to say that Jesus
directly or indirectly was acquainted with

THE JEWISH HERITAGE OF JESUS 23

any of those works. But this may be said
and ought not to be lost sight of: It Is In
those works that we find a picture of the
development of Jewish thought In the cen-
turies between the close of the Jewish Bible
and the birth of Jesus, and whether or no
Jesus himself had any actual contact with
them, they formed part of the thought-life
Into which he was born, part of the spiritual
atmosphere that he breathed. As it would
be Impossible to understand him fully with-
out knowledge of the Jewish Bible, so it is
Impossible to understand him fully — or
shall I say to explain him fully? — without
familiarity with those other parts of Jewish
literature and without proper appreciation
of their content.

And what do those parts of Jewish litera-
ture teach us?

First, that the centuries between the close
of the Old Testament and Jesus were not

24 A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

dead centuries, but full of life and activity,
producing a rich and varied literature of
their own.

Secondly, that no less than previous pe-
riods they were a period of religious develop-
ment for the Jewish people : that the old re-
ligious ideas were not carried along merely
as the dead luggage of the past, but that
they were interpreted and amplified accord-
ing to the deeper insight and fuller knowl-
edge of the times.

Thirdly, that certain religious ideas, found
in the Old Testament not at all, or merely
in embryo, first grew up during that period,
or found their full and conscious expression:
as, for example, the idea of immortality.

And, finally, we are taught by this litera-
ture that during this period, as at all other
times, there was no spiritual uniformity in
Israel, there being room and recognition
within its household for men of different
spiritual temperaments and religious views.

THE JEWISH HERITAGE OF JESUS 25

The essentials were the same; in particulars,
they differed.

It is necessary to consider this part of
the Jewish heritage of Jesus in order to
understand aright his relation to it. He
was not hostile in his attitude to it. He was
very little of a controversialist. I doubt
whether he willingly would have said a word
against a single law, except insofar as it was
used to thwart rather than to advance true
religion. " If ye had known what this mean-
eth, ' I desire mercy and not sacrifice,' ye
would not have condemned the guiltless."
It was not his habit to go about carping at
the commandments, or their abuses. He
did not bother much about the tares in the
garden of life. His concern was for the
wheat, and his eye on the final harvest, and
how to help it grow.

" The kingdom of heaven," he taught, " is likened
unto a man that sowed good seed in his field: but
while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares
also among the wheat, and went away. But when

26 A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

the blade sprang up, and brought forth fruit, then
appeared the tares also. And the servants of the
householder came and said unto him, Sir, didst thou
not sow good seed in thy field? whence then hath
it tares? And he said unto them. An enemy hath
done this. And the servants say unto him. Wilt
thou then that we go and gather them up ? But he
saith. Nay; lest haply while ye gather up the tares,
ye root up the wheat with them. Let both grow
together until the harvest: and in the time of the
harvest I will say to the reapers. Gather up first
the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them:
but gather the wheat into my bam." {Matt. 13,
24-30)

And therein lay the originality of Jesus.
He made religion a personal matter. Re-
ligion and personality with him became one.
Religion, he said, could be something real
only when expressed through a person. One
cannot know God save one knows man, or,
as he was fond of putting it, with the thought
of the fatherly relation between man and
God ever In his mind, one cannot know the
Father save one knows the Son. " I do

THE JEWISH HERITAGE OF JESUS 27

nothing of myself, but as the Father taught
me.'' Moreover, a similar personal experi-
ence and expression of Religion he asked
of others. " He that hath ears, let him
hear!" His message was not, Make me,
or my words, the means of your religion. It
was. Let religion be to you and with you
what it is to me and with me, a means of
personal Hfe, an expression of personal ex-
perience, a token of personal relationship
with God, of filial self-identification with
God. " The kingdom of Heaven," he said,
according to the Sayings of Jesus, discovered
recently, " is within you, and whosoever him-
self shall know shall find it; and having found
ye shall know yourselves, that sons and
daughters are ye of the Father Almighty, and
ye shall know that ye are in His precincts,
and ye are the city."

It is thus that Jesus through his own per-
sonality interpreted, transmitted, and trans-
fused his Jewish heritage.

THE JEWISH ENVIRONMENT OF
JESUS

" If you would understand the poet,"
Goethe has said, *' go to the poet's coun-
try." His counsel has been seconded by the
best modern criticism and psychology. No
lesson of science is accepted more generally
than this: that two main factors enter into
the making of the individual, namely, hered-
ity and environment. Of course, both to-
gether do not explain completely any real
personality. Wherever we find true person-
ality, we find something added to the sum
total, to the resultant, of both heredity and
environment. It is this addition that often
forms the unique personality — a source of
wonder and an object of admiration. Abra-
ham Lincoln, for example, was something
28

JEWISH ENVIRONMENT OF JESUS 29

more than the product of antecedent and sur-
rounding forces. None the less, heredity
and environment are surely active in the crea-
tion of even the most independent and un-
explainable individuals, though their work-
ing may not always be patent. To under-
stand the character and the work of even the
greatest, most unique, men we must take
these factors into account.

We cannot do otherwise in the case of
Jesus. We have seen how essential an ap-
preciation of his Jewish heritage is to an
understanding of his personality and his doc-
trine. Who can hope to understand Jesus
without a proper estimate of those spiritual
treasures of the Jewish people that Jesus
loved, of those spiritual fountains from
which he drank from beginning to end?
Nor can one possibly hope to grasp the mean-
ing of Jesus's work and the secret of his per-
sonality— with its fusion of diverse quali-
ties, tenderness and passion, mildness and

30 A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

vehemence, eloquence and eluslveness, fervor
and reticence — without some appreciation
of the environment In which he lived and
moved and taught.

That an uncommon scene witnessed the
growth and work of Jesus, we all know. It
may be said, however, that It was one of
the most unique and dramatic scenes in all
human history — a scene of spiritual unrest,
among a people accustomed by nature and
habit to spiritual striving, a scene of feverish
agitation and excitement, of political and
religious ferment. " Outside of the French
Revolution," says Renan, " no historic milieu
was so well adapted as the one In which Jesus
was formed to develop those hidden forces
which humanity holds In reserve and which
it discloses only In its days of fever and
peril." It was a time of wars and rumors
of war, of Roman oppression and Jewish
rebellion, a period of political ambitions and
intrigue; in such an age arose Jesus with

JEWISH ENVIRONMENT OF JESUS 31

his gospel of gentleness, of love, of a dreamy
detachment from the material world, with
his affirmation of the supremacy of spirit-
ual intuitions, discernments, and devotions.
This very contrast between himself and the
mad whirl of his times, no doubt, served to
arrest attention and to gain for him a hear-
ing and a following; it gave dramatic dis-
tinctness to his personality, and invested it
with the originality about the genuineness of
which so many of late have taken to quarrel-
ing. A glimpse of his environment we must
therefore try to get, in order to perceive
both his origin and orginality.

What was the character of this environ-
ment? It was Jewish from beginning to
end, and it lay between Galilee and Jeru-
salem. Galilee and Jerusalem, with all they
signified in point of ideals, customs, contem-
porary struggles and hopes, with all their
pecuHarities of Nature and of people: these
two formed the environment of Jesus. We

32 A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

can understand him better, if we take this
into account.

First, there was Galilee, the northern Jew-
ish province, with Nazareth as one of its
numerous and densely peopled towns. It is
commonly accepted nowadays that Jesus was
born in Nazareth, though the old tradition
represents him as a native of Bethlehem of
Judea, in order to conform his place of birth
to an ancient prophecy (which in reality is
irrelevant). No matter, however, where he
was born, in Nazareth he grew up and in
Galilee he spent almost all his life. Even
when in the closing years of his life he en-
tered upon what is called his pubhc ministry
and appeared in Judea, he was wont to re-
turn as quickly and as frequently as possible
to the Galilee he knew and loved.

Now, Galilee was a beautiful country, the
very country for the life, the thought, the
love of a dreamer and poet — a poet of
Nature and of human life. It was a land of

JEWISH ENVIRONMENT OF JESUS 33

superb situation and enchanting scenery. It
was full of hills and dales. From any lofty
spot the eye could travel to the mountains
round about: to the West, Mount Carmel,
dropping gently to the sea; further away,
the mountains of Shechem and Gilboa and
Tabor, with their wonderful historic asso-
ciations. Through a gap between the hills
of Shunem and Tabor, one saw the Valley of
Jordan and the high plains of Perea, forming
a straight line to the East. To the north
there were the mountains of Safed, and fur-
ther on, Hermon, with the life of large cities
teeming behind its peaks, while to the south
stretched the hills of Judea, with the beauty
of Jerusalem beyond. Such was GaHlee,
and such in particular the situation of Naz-
areth. Renan, who visited it himself, dwells
on the fascination of Nazareth and its sur-
roundings. " No place in the world," he
says, " was made so well for dreams of
perfect happiness."

34 A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

Nor must we forget the people. Galilee
was one of the most populous provinces of
the land. At the time of Jesus It was under
Roman rule, and Its population was the most
mixed In Israel. It contained Phoenicians,
Arabs, Syrians, and Greeks, as well as Jews.
Besides, It had suffered all kinds of admix-
tures In the course of its variegated history.
Nevertheless, the life of Galilee was Jewish,
though in many ways It differed from that
of Judea. At no time was there complete
uniformity in all things throughout Israel — ■
neither during the period of the Bible nor
after. The Galileans were more Informal
than the Judeans, less bound by rules and
regulations, more spontaneous, less learned
and more poetic, less legaHstlc and more
lyrical. Certain customs and ceremonies of
theirs differed from Judea. Their language
was not as accurate nor as pure as In Jeru-
salem, which the men of the latter attributed
to lack of good teachers and to Indifference.

JEWISH ENVIRONMENT OF JESUS 35

Yet, the Galileans did not fail to produce
some illustrious rabbis, who had a share in
the making of the Talmud. Jose the GaU-
lean, the learned and magnanimous rabbi of
the first century, was one of them.

The Galileans cared more for the Agada
than the Halakha — for the poetic, ethical,
and spiritual interpretation of Scripture
rather than the legalistic. Withal, they
were, according to the testimony of Josephus,
brave, courageous, and industrious. They
knew no cowardice. For several centuries
they gave heroes and martyrs to the cause
of Jewish emancipation from the yoke of
Rome. They were a temperamental people,
according to the Talmud, excitable and en-
thusiastic, capable of profound hate as well
as of ardent love and devotion. Moreover,
they learnt the lessons of tolerance from
their relation with the outside world — with
Greek speech and Roman officials. In a
word, they combined the quahties bred by

36 A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

contact with the mountains, on the one
hand, and with a cosmopolitan life, on the
other.

Amid such scenes Jesus grew up. If we
understand the Galileans, it is easier to un-
derstand him; if we understand Galilee, with
its mountains and lakes and rivers, and far-
off sea, it is easier to realize the inspiration
of his thought and far-off dream.

To no people in the world have the moun-
tains meant and said just the things they
meant and said to the Jews; nor the sea.
They were reminders of the grandeur and
of the deep mystery of life, and of its divin-
ity. " Thy righteousness is like the mighty
mountains; Thy judgments are the great
deep."

Meditating amid the mountains and on
the shore of the sea, Jesus realized the mean-
ing of Righteousness and the depth and
power of the Spirit. He perceived the
transiency and unimportance of material

JEWISH ENVIRONMENT OF JESUS 37

things, and the sovereign significance of God.
He realized his own unity with his Father;
and that that unity was really the only thing
that mattered. To know God was to know
himself, and to know himself was to know
God. " As the Father knoweth me, even
so know I the Father." " No man knoweth
the son, but the Father; neither knoweth
any man the Father, save the son." " I do
nothing of myself, but as the Father taught
me, I speak these things." To understand
man was to understand God; to understand
God was to understand man: neither could
be understood fully without the other.

*' 'Tis the sublime of man,
Our noontide Majesty, to know ourselves
Parts and proportions of one wondrous whole!
This fraternizes man, this constitutes
Our charities and bearings. But 'tis God
Diffused through all, that doth make all one
whole! "

The modern poet perceives in the little

38 A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

flower In the crannied wall an intimation of
the secret of existence : Jesus was taught by
the mountains and the sea of Galilee, as well
as by the lily and the sparrow. " Ye ask,"
we read in the New Sayings of Jesus, " who
are they that draw us up to heaven, if the
kingdom Is in heaven? Verily I say, the
fowls of the heaven, and every creature that
is under the earth or upon the earth, and the
fishes of the sea, these are they that draw
you!"

Moreover, to know the Galileans, I said,
is to understand better the personality of
Jesus. He, too, is a man of temperament.
He Is capable of love and of hate, of devo-
tion and of detachment; a man of fervid
friendships and of solitude. His mood is
not always the same. He Is lyrical, rather
than legalistic. He does not set out to break
the laws, but he knows that character is
greater than conformity. He is loyal and
devout, true to the past, but also to himself.

JEWISH ENVIRONMENT OF JESUS 39

He is now tolerant and now contemptuous
of the Gentiles. A true Galilean!

Some would have us believe that Jesus was
an Essene, and that he learnt his lessons
from the Essenes. On this idea is founded
Mr. Moore's imaginative novel about Jesus.
The Essenes were one of the three parties
then known among the Jews, the others being
the Pharisees and the Sadducees. They
were mystics, ascetics, and communists — a
brotherhood scattered through various cities,
according to Josephus, though it is commonly
held that they lived apart in some one place.

In reality, however, we have no right to
identify Jesus with the Essenes. Like all
great personalities, Jesus was no party man;
he was himself: he never really belonged to
a crowd, nor could he attach himself to one;
time and again we see him leave the multi-
tude for the mountains or the sea. Insofar,
however, as he belonged to any group, it
was the Pharisees, whom he is said to have

40 A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

denounced repeatedly, but whose schools he
attended and In whose synagogues he prayed,
studied, and preached.

The Pharisees were the teachers of the
people; they were the spiritual leaders; they
were the heads of the schools and of the
synagogues; they were the true friends of
the people. And though in Galilee their ac-
tivity was not as vigorous as In Judea, the
synagogues and the schools, there as else-
where, were under their influence and direc-
tion. The Sadducees were the priests and
aristocrats, and their domain was Jerusalem.

What did Jesus know of Jerusalem, and
in what way did Jerusalem form part of his
environment ?

Like every loyal Galilean, Jesus was de-
voted to Jerusalem. It was part of every
good Jew's hfe to make periodic pilgrim-
ages to the capital and the Temple. No
doubt, Jesus, in his youth, made such pil-
grimages, and we can imagine what a deep

JEWISH ENVIRONMENT OF JESUS 41

impression the life of the capital must have
made on his quick, poetic mind. At first,
the glory of it may well have captivated him.
But as his knowledge grew fuller, as his
perception deepened, as he realized the mean-
ing of the intrigues, and ambitions, and ri-
valries, and hypocrisies that centered about
the Temple, how keen must have been the
pang of his disappointment! And when
from the riotous and pompous whirl of Je-
rusalem he returned to the quiet hills of
Galilee, how must his heart have mourned
over the corruption of the capital! Such
experience — the revolt of the dreamer at
the violation of his dream — led finally to
his clash with the Temple forces and de-
nunciation of the pompous and hypocritical
Temple piety. It was like the indignation
of Elijah at the court of Ahab, like that of
Amos at Bethel — or of Jeremiah at the
Jerusalem of his day. It was not the de-
nunciation of hate, but the denunciation of

42 A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

love — of the idealist against the corruptors
of the city he had loved and dreamed about
and ideahzed from afar. " Oh, Jerusalem,
Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets,
and stonest them which are sent unto thee,
how often would I have gathered thy chil-
dren together, even as a hen gathereth her
chickens under her wings, and ye would
not I"

What was the character and the great
work of Jesus? He was a man of vision,
a revealer, a spiritual perceiver and dreamer,
a man who sought to point out the eternal
things of life — the things that mean most
in the universe. More and more he real-
ized the insignificance of the outward and the
temporary, and the supremacy of the spirit.
And that conviction and realization he ex-
pressed through his own life and death.
That Is what has made him the fascinating
figure he has formed In human history.

JEWISH ENVIRONMENT OF JESUS 43

That is what still gives him a place in the
hearts of men — weary, as were many round
about him, of plotting and plodding for ex-
ternal things, for things of little worth.

This Jesus we can understand only in con-
nection with his environment. One to whom
Jesus is but a miracle-monger, a controver-
sialist on the oMigatoriness or futiHty of the
law, or a metaphysical concept, might neg-
lect the study of his Jewish environment.
But he to whom Jesus is the great dreamer,
the spokesman of the spiritual ideal, the
appraiser of the essential values of life, the
man who discerned the difference between
show and reality, between the fleeting and
the eternal, and tried to fix the eyes of his
fellow-men on the real and the eternal, — to
such, an appreciation of the environment of
Jesus is an inevitable prerequisite to an ap-
preciation of Jesus himself.

THE JEWISH CHARACTERISTICS
OF JESUS

A STUDY of the Jewish characteristics of
JeSus is compHcated by the pecuHar notion
the world still has of the character of the
Jew. Nothing would look more incongruous
than a collocation of the diverse estimates
of the Jewish character.

Suffice to say that extremes have met in
the appraisal of the Jew. To some, the
Jewish character is all gold, to others it is
all dross. Some see In the Jew the proto-
type of Idealism and faith; to others he is
a monument of materialism and calculation.
To some, he is the typical anarchist; to
others, he is legalism incarnate. To some,
he is the world's leader of progress, to
others, he is the predestined conservative.
44

JEWISH CHARACTERISTICS 45

Thus, there are no two opposltes of virtue
and vice which, at one time or another, have
not been attributed to the Jew.

As a matter of fact, the Jew, as such, is
neither the one extreme, nor the other. The
Jew represents, as such, neither the gold of
Idealism, nor the dross of materialism, al-
together. Like the rest of human life, Jew-
ish life has formed a mixture, a skein of
tangled yarn, good and ill together, though
certain forces have from the very start sought
to make the soul of goodness and Idealism
prevail In Israel. The Jew has been a com-
posite; and the Jew knows it, if no one else.

Among the ancient rabbis, close to the age
of Jesus, we find true descriptions of the
character of the Jew. " A peculiar people,
this," said one rabbi, referring to the Jews,
"their character is hard to fathom; when
Aaron asked them to give for the golden
calf, they did so, and when Moses asked for
the tabernacle, they also gave." " The

46 A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

Jews," said another rabbi, " are likened in
Scripture to the stars and the dust; and so
they are: when they ascend, they go up to
the stars; and when they descend, they go
down to the dust."

Thus the old teachers sought to describe
the contrary characteristics of their people.
Some Jews to them were disciples of Abra-
ham, others disciples of Balaam. Jeremiah
had hkened Israel to two baskets of figs:
" the good figs, very good; and the bad, very
bad, that cannot be eaten, they are so bad."
A variety of opposite dispositions and traits,
indeed, have made up the Jewish character.
Men who know the Jewish people from
within have time and again recognized its
twofoldness, its duahty, as does Mr. Zang-
will In one of his penetrating poems.

Perhaps this is why it might be said that
no one can understand Jesus so well as the
sympathetic Jew. There are those who
imagine that a study of Jesus requires chiefly

JEWISH CHARACTERISTICS 47

a knowledge of languages and exegesis.
Thus they set about interpreting and disen-
tangling the gospels. But what is needed
even more than Greek and hermeneutics is
psychology — the sort of knowledge, sym-
pathy, and imagination that help one to un-
derstand a soul. For that reason, a sympa-
thetic and imaginative student like Renan
and a novelist like Mr. Moore, despite their
errors, are apt to get closer to the true story
of Jesus than many a man whose chief aim
is not the reading of a soul but the amassing
of theological and linguistic footnotes. Un-
fortunately, neither Mr. Moore nor Renan
have known the Jew from within, and Renan
particularly is often led astray by his racial
theory, according to which the Semitic race
differed radically from the Aryan race and
produced spiritual characteristics, founded
on racial peculiarities, common to all Semites,
including the Jews. This was the error of
Renan, which unwittingly made him the

48 A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

father of modern anti-Semitism, and for
which he has been reproved both by bibhcal
students conversant with the spiritual differ-
ence that existed between the Jews and other
Semites, and by such a critic as Ferdinand
Brunetiere, who hated the racial theory as
subversive of all religion.

A man like Mr. Claude G. Montefiore,
in his study of Jesus, escapes the psychologic
mistakes of Moore and Renan, being himself
a Jew, and therefore able to view, to realize,
Jesus from within. His enthusiasm may
carry him too far; but not often.

" We others," says Charles Peguy, the
French poet, " are also Jesus's brothers, we
are his brothers through Adam, through our
father Adam; we are brothers of Jesus in
our humanity. But you, Jews, you were his
brothers through his very family — brothers
of his race and Hneage."

Indeed, whatever has been said to the con-
trary, Jesus was a Jew. Strange, indeed,

JEWISH CHARACTERISTICS 49

are the ways of anti-Semitism. For thou-
sands of years the world has had a grievance
against the Jews for not acknowledging Jesus
as their messiah. He had come unto his
own, they argued, and his own not only re-
jected him, but they continue to reject him.
Yet, what some learned men of late have
sought to impress on our minds is that Jesus
was not a Jew after all, not even an Israelite,
nor even a Semite. What Christians have
beheved for nineteen centuries, what the
writers of the gospels unanimously affirmed
and took pains to prove, what all these years
the Jews have heen blamed for not sufficiently
appreciating, it took some learned leaders
of modern anti-Semitism to seek to wipe out.
Chamberlain, Dehtzsch, Haupt, Haeckel —
whether conscious or unconscious anti-Se-
mites—and their outspoken anti-Semitic
followers are now affirming that Jesus was
not really a Jew.

They have their reasons. Of course, the

50 A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

fundamental, sub-conscious argument prob-
ably is this: Jesus was a good man; a good
man cannot be thought of as a Jew; there-
fore, Jesus was not a Jew. I have already
referred to Houston Stewart Chamberlain's
lucubrations on the subject. According to
him, Jesus, a native of Galilee, could not
possibly be a Jew by race. The more Cham-
berlain thinks about it, the more ecstatic his
conviction grows and the profounder his con-
tempt for those that still hold that a Galilean,
and especially a good Galilean, could have
been a Jew.

Professor Haupt is not satisfied with the
mere negations of Chamberlain. He goes
further. Jesus, according to his gospel, is
an Aryan, an Indo-German, nothing less blue
than Greek blood flows in the veins of Jesus,
and the Greek spirit dwells in him. Thus
alone Professor Haupt can account for the
universalism and spiritual liberty of Jesus.

Other writers of the same school have

JEWISH CHARACTERISTICS 51

made the final summary on the subject.
*' Not from Judea," says one of them, " but
from Galilee, the heathen country, came the
man who to the base materialism of the He-
brew opposed the loftiest idealism and who,
realizing the perversity of Jewish thinking,
preached a doctrine that marked a complete
reversal of Jewish ideas." Thus runs the
latter-day message. And again : '' While
the Jew saw his chief goal in earthly gain
and enjoyment, the Galilean taught disdain
of all earthly goods and sought happiness in
poverty and in spiritual satisfaction, in the
cultivation of all the virtues, in selflessness
and in purity of thought. He sought the
weal of the soul in the dominion of the ideals,
which he designated as the kingdom of God.
The spiritual world of Christ and that of the
Jews are as far apart as two suns." No
wonder we are told that " it marks a perfect
blindness to psychologic facts for one to find
it possible to regard Jesus as a Jew."

52 A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

There are so many inaccuracies in these
statements that it would take more than one
chapter to point them out in detail. Pro-
fessor Koenig has both cited and refuted
them in his httle book on " The Chief
Dogma of Anti-Semitism" (concerning
which, written in German, we should have
heard more had it not appeared just before
the outbreak of the war) . But it is this very
bhndness to psychologic facts that is behind
the efforts of those who have been trying to
tear the story of Jesus out of the history
of the Jewish people, as well as of those who
find it hard to reconcile the character of Jesus
with that of the Jewish people. Better
knowledge of Jewish psychology, of the soul
of the Jewish people, would remove many a
difficulty.

As a matter of fact, the student of the
Jewish people knows that throughout history
there have been two leading types of Jews;
on the one hand, the physical Jew, on the

JEWISH CHARACTERISTICS 53

other, the spiritual Jew. The Jew belonging
to the first class has Identified Jewry with
racialism. To him, Jewish aflihatlon Is a
matter solely of descent, with Its accidents
and prerogatives. Not Infrequently this
Idea has gone with a certain pride of race,
and even degenerated, as such things will,
into chauvinism. The Jew of the second
type, on the other hand, has Identified Juda-
ism with spiritual distinction and purpose.
He also has been proud of his descent, of the
Jewish past; but all this has spelt for him
spiritual obHgatlon and responsibility, with-
out which physical appurtenances would
mean nothing. There has never been a time
when these two classes have not been repre-
sented In Israel, and their concurrence ex-
plains many a Jewish conflict and tragedy.
But it is from the second class I have de-
scribed that have sprung all the Idealists of
Israel, with their passions and exaltations,
with their spiritual visions and valor; out

54 A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

of It has come the Immortal and unequaled
Idealism of the Jewish people.

Needless to say, the supreme representa-
tives of this latter class were the men known
as the Prophets of Israel. They were the
chief idealists of the people, which means
that they interpreted in terms of spiritual
Idealism both the past and the purpose of
Israel. It Is they that gave to the people
the true meaning of the choice of Israel,
and namely, in ideal terms, in terms of con-
secration and of righteousness, and they con-
strued the religious tasks of the people in
terms of spiritual elevation and ethical prac-
tice. To them everything else was as noth-
ing in the balance against the moral and
spiritual ends : the sacrifices, the temple, the
state, the priests, kings, and politicians were
nothing as against the people's consecration
to spiritual and ethical ends. Such, on the
whole, was the attitude and activity of the
Prophets. And that is why, after the fash-

JEWISH CHARACTERISTICS 55

Ion of Idealists, the Prophets criticized their
people so often and so severely. But did
they hate their people? Never! They
loved it even unto death. They beheved in
It. That is why they sought to correct it.
And they comforted it, and wonderful pic-
tures they drew of its future restoration and
its fixed part in the future glories of man-
kind. Such were the Prophets. They were
the pattern Jews of the spiritual type.

This type of Jew Jesus, in his own way and
In his own age, exempHfied. It is folly to
fasten on minor points of Jesus' teaching as
the distinctive parts of his message. What-
ever he taught about religion and ethics,
about godliness and the virtues, about broth-
erliness and unlversalism, may be found in
the Jewish teachings of his predecessors and
contemporaries and independent successors.
It is not what he taught about humility or
compassion or chastity that gave him dls-
tinction, or made him important. Any Jew-

56 A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

ish teacher worthy his name no doubt taught
the same. The importance of Jesus lay in
that he gave another expression and was an-
other incarnation of that great principle
which the Jewish soul at its best has contin-
ually impressed upon the world — the pro-
phetic principle, the principles of ideahsm
and spirituality, of godhness and goodness,
as against materialism and earthiness. In
Jesus we find a fresh exemplification of Jew-
ish characteristics, of those traits which the
Prophets eternalized, and which have made
for the immortality of the Jew. Thus, he
exemplified the eternal struggle in Israel be-
tween what Charles Peguy, with remarkable
insight, has called the mysticism and the poli-
tics of Israel. " There is a Jewish poHtics,"
says Peguy, " but there is also a Jewish mys-
ticism. And the whole mysticism of Israel
is that Israel pursues in the world his tena-
cious and tragic mission. Hence, the an-
guish, the most doleful of antagonisms that

JEWISH CHARACTERISTICS 57

can exist between politics and mysticism. A
people of merchants, and also a people of
prophets. The ones know for the others
what calamity means."

In this light we can understand the atti-
tude of Jesus to the Jews. He criticized his
people. He chastised It. He sought to cor-
rect It. But he did not hate It. And he
would not have been he, If he had hated It.
" It means to leave humanity," says Pascal,
" for a man to leave his own milieu: the
grandeur of the human soul consists In know-
ing how to cling to the latter; the more it
would seem to be the part of greatness to
leave one's milieu, the more it is true great-
ness not to leave it." Jesus did not hate his
people. He did not leave It. He loved It.
Hence he pitied It, and comforted it, and
sought to help it, as did the Prophets before
him, and as every Jew belonging to the same
type has tried to do ever since, according
to his powers. All this served not to eclipse

58 A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

or efface the Jewish characteristics of Jesus
but rather to accentuate them.

What, then, are these characteristics?
They are as follows :

Jesus was not only born a Jew, but con-
scious of his Jewish descent.

Jesus realized the spiritual distinction of
the Jewish people, and regarded himself as
sent to teach and help his people.

Jesus, like other teachers, severely criti-
cized his people for their spiritual short-
comings, seeking to correct them, but at the
same time he loved and pitied them. His
whole ministry was saturated with love for
his people, and loyalty to it.

Jesus, like all other of the noblest type
of Jewish teachers, taught the essential les-
sons of spiritual religion — love, justice,
goodness, purity, holiness — subordinating
the material and the poHtical to the spiritual
and the eternal.

JEWISH CHARACTERISTICS 59

Is not this the Inward meaning of the story
of Jesus' temptation In the wilderness? *

" Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the
wilderness to be tempted of the devil. And when
he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he after-
ward hungered. And the tempter came and said
unto him, If thou art the Son of God, command
that these stones become bread. But he answered
and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread
alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the
mouth of God. Then the devil taketh him into
the holy city; and he set him on the pinnacle of
the temple, and saith unto him. If thou art the Son
of God, cast thyself down: for it is written,

He shall give his angels charge concerning thee:
And on their hands they shall bear thee up,
Lest haply thou dash thy foot against a stone.

Jesus said unto him. Again it is written. Thou
shalt not tempt the Lord thy God. Again, the
devil taketh him into an exceeding high mountain,
and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world,
and the glory of them; and he said unto him. All
these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down
and worship me. Then saith Jesus unto him. Get
thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt
worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou

6o A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

serve. Then the devil leaveth him ; and behold,
angels came and ministered unto him." {Mat.
4:1-10.)

The facts of faith and of life — all of them,
Jesus reads in the manner of the spiritual
teachers of Israel. No wonder Professor
Santayana has called the teaching of Jesus
" pure Hebraism reduced to its spiritual
essence."

In one other respect Jesus showed himself
the true Jew. He was ready to die for his
ideal, for his teaching, for his belief. His
death has since meant a great deal of suffer-
ing to the Jew. The Jew has been blamed
foT it. But as a matter of fact, Jesus never
was more the Jew than when he was willing
quietly to die for his teaching and belief.

He was not the only Jew so to do. The
story of martyrdom in Israel began several
centuries before he came into the world.
Suffering for religion's sake had become the
badge and the business of the Jew. About

JEWISH CHARACTERISTICS 6i

the time Jesus lived, a Jewish author pro-
duced as noble a panegyric of martyrdom as
was ever written, the so-called " Fourth
Book of the Maccabees." In Jesus' own
day many a Jew died for trying to liberate
their people, and particularly Galilean Jews,
who were among the most loyal and zealbus,
and during the subsequent period Jews by
the thousands took the same heroic course.
It is a fate Jewish martyrs have shared
throughout the ages, and their last words,
when bidden to deny their faith or their
teaching, invariably were: "Hear, O
Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One ! "
— the very words which, according to Jesus,
were the essence of true Religion.

That Jesus died as he did was destined to
bring endless agony to the Jew; but, on the
other hand, it is something to make the Jew
proud that Jesus was wiUing and ready so
to die. It proved him the true Jew, show-
ing forth in his dying moment that fidehty

62 A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

to faith which has formed the chief glory
of the Jewish character.

The words addressed by the author of
the Fourth Book of the Maccabees to the
martyr-mother of the seven sons slain by
the cruel tyrant of the Greeks, are true of
Israel:

" As the Ark of Noah, with the whole living
world for her burden in the world-whelming
Deluge, did withstand the mighty surges, so thou,
the keeper of the Law, beaten upon every side by
the surging waves of the passions, and strained as
with strong blasts by the tortures of thy sons, didst
nobly weather the storms that assailed thee for
religion's sake."

THE JEWISH ELEMENT IN THE
TEACHINGS OF JESUS

Latter-day lives of Jesus have brought
out one point above all others — the univer-
sal readiness to treat Jesus as a spiritual and
ethical teacher, if nothing else. Even those
who decline to accept the figure of Jesus as
drawn by traditional Christianity, are ready
to pay him tribute as a unique teacher. In-
deed, there are such as affirm that the true
greatness of Jesus can be appreciated only
when dissociated from the dogmas and pe-
culiar concepts gathered by the churches. In
Mr. George Moore's novel, " The Brook
Kerith," there is the subtle suggestion that
as a teacher Jesus was impressive and fas-
cinating, but it required Paul's peculiar illu-
sions about Jesus to make him the hero he
63

64 A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

became; otherwise he might have ended his
days in the obscure seclusion of an Essene
monastery. Be that as it may, the modern
disposition is certainly to treat Jesus less as
a metaphysical personage than as a religious
and ethical teacher. Regarding him thus,
we cannot fail to reahze how much of the
Jewish element pervaded the teaching of
Jesus, particularly that part of it which Is
permanent and not merely a reflex of the
circumstances of his time.

In a study of the teachings of Jesus, the
unbiased student encounters one inevitable
difficulty. It is not easy to determine what
parts of the Gospels represent the authentic
utterances of Jesus, as distinguished from
those attributed to him by his disciples and
by the founders of the early Christian com-
munities. All the Gospels were written
years after the death of Jesus — at least
from thirty to sixty years after that event,
and It Is very doubtful whether we have them

JEWISH ELEMENT IN TEACHINGS 65

in the original form. There are differences
among them, not only in details but in the
general treatment of the subject. The
Fourth Gospel, for instance, though com-
monly accepted as the work of Jesus' favor-
ite disciple, John, gives by no means the
most attractive picture of its hero, mingling^
as it does, mystical teaching of profound
beauty with a story of constant querulous-
ness. If John did write it, he wrote it as
an old man, influenced by the memory of
many a controversy and strife which occurred
in the estabhshment of the early Christian
communities rather than in the life of Jesus.
Thus, in all the Gospels it is by no means
easy to fix the actual utterances of Jesus.
This much, however, the sympathetic and un-
prejudiced student can do. He can sense
those teachings and those sayings that most
surely represent the spirit of Jesus.

I say, he can sense them. It might be ob-
jected that this means the introduction of too

66 A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

much intuition into historic study — too
much subjective treatment. Yet, is not this
what we have to do, and are wont to do, in
the study of any personality? There are
certain central, fundamental facts on which
every personality is built. A sincere and
consistent personality is an expression of such
central facts. They form the spirit of the
personality. They form its core, its char-
acter, and we can usually guess particulars
from those central truths, from that spirit.
In the case of Jesus that was supremely true.
No one was ruled more completely by the
central truth of his life than he, and it does
not require overmuch wisdom to determine
what is likely to have expressed his spirit,
to have harmonized with the ethical and
spiritual purpose of his life — in a word,
what in all likelihood formed an authentic
part of his teaching.

In order to understand the teaching of
Jesus, we must abandon, first of all, the com-

JEWISH ELEMENT IN TEACHINGS 67

mon notion that the purpose of Jesus was to
overthrow the Jewish religion, or the old
law, and to found a new one. This notion
he himself sought to uproot when first it
cropped up among his contemporaries. The
words in which he tried to do it now form
part of the Sermon on the Mount, and prob-
ably were spoken early in his ministry.
" Think not that I am come to destroy the
Law, or the Prophets; I am not come to de-
stroy, but to fulfill. For verily I say unto
you. Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or
one tittle shall in no wise pass from the Law,
till all be fulfilled."

What do these words mean? If anything,
it is this: first, that Jesus does not mean to
say or to do anything that might destroy
or damage the inherited law and doctrine of
his people; then, that the welfare of the
world depends upon the observance and the
fulfillment of those teachings; and, finally,
that it is his purpose and conscious mission

68 A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

to advance the fulfillment of the old law
and the old Prophets.

But what does he mean by fulfillment?
That we must seek to understand in order
to grasp the relation of Jesus to those proph-
ecies and precepts. By fulfillment he does
not mean merely a mechanical fulfillment;
he means a spiritual fulfillment; he means
a grasp of the full content and aim of the
Law, an absorption and application of its
spirit, an inward apprehension of its content,
and the unfoldment of its purpose in actual
life.

That this is what fulfillment of the Law
meant to Jesus, we are moved to believe by
the general Jewish attitude. This the best
Jewish teachers sought to teach at the time
of Jesus, as well as before and after it.

It is commonly said that the life of the
Jewish people in the age of Jesus was gov-
erned by the Law. Of course, it was; but
the Law that did so govern it, was not a

JEWISH ELEMENT IN TEACHINGS 69

dead law. It was a living law, though come
down from the past, and all the efforts of the
teachers were directed toward discovering
the ethical contents and the spiritual Impli-
cates of the Law. That formed the chief
task of the teachers, and gave birth to the
enormous literature of the age. For the
rabbis, as for Jesus, the letter did not suffice.
What lay behind and within the letter their
eyes sought continually, and every teacher
tried to find In it more than his predecessors
and colleagues had found. There was ri-
valry among them in the discovery of the
ethical and spiritual implications of tradition
— so much so that they came to regard wis-
dom as the result of the rivalry of Scribes
(or teachers). Mechanical conformity was
not enough. The Law demanded spiritual
discernment and realization.

No doubt, this is what Jesus meant when
he spoke about having come to fulfill the
Law and the Prophets, and when he admon-

70 A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

ished his hearers not only to fulfill every
tittle and iota of the Law, but to do more;
to go farther and deeper than all formal
teaching and academic interpretation. ^' Ex-
cept your righteousness shall exceed the
Scribes and the Pharisees, ye shall in no
case enter into the kingdom of heaven."

Such teaching was Jewish. It was
founded on Jewish precepts and precedents.
Its effort to penetrate and amplify the Law
was in harmony with the practice and meth-
ods of Jewish teachers. Its motive as well
as its aims were Jewish. Even where Jesus
offered something in a new form or in a new
way, it accorded with his general aim to
disclose the ethical and spiritual contents of
the old Law.

This idea underlies two of the most preg-
nant parables of Jesus.

First, we have it in the parable of the new
wine and the old bottles. Questioned as to
why his disciples violated some old forms.

JEWISH ELEMENT IN TEACHINGS 71

Jesus replies that the new wine of Religion
requires new bottles. This parable is often
cited as indicative of Jesus' hostility to the
old forms of Judaism. It is accepted as
authentic. But there is another parable
which is not quoted so frequently, and yet
supplements it, nor is there any reason for
regarding it as less authentic. After ex-
plaining his parables to the disciples, it is
related that he asked, " Have ye understood
all these things? " " Yes," they answered.
Then he said unto them:

"Therefore every scribe which Is in-
structed unto the kingdom of heaven is hke
unto a man that is a householder, which
bringeth forth out of his treasures things
new and old." {Mat. 13:51-52.)

In other words, the wise teacher of
spiritual and ethical truth, hke the good
householder, will use and cherish both new
things and old, according to their worth to
the promotion of his aim.

72 A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

There Is no more reason for denying the
authenticity of this parable than of the one
about the new wine and the old bottles. On
the contrary, it represents the very spirit
of the method of teaching used by Jesus.
It is the more comprehensive, though not the
more familiar, of the two parables. Out of
his spiritual treasures Jesus brought forth
things old and new, as they served the great
purpose of his ministry. In this respect, he
did what every great Jewish teacher of his
time sought to do.

What formed the essential teaching of
Jesus? We may sum it up briefly. He be-
gan with the idea of the Divine judgment
that was at hand. That led on to the idea
of repentance, as the one great need of his
people. From that he was led to an affirma-
tion of the essential character of religion —
the spiritual fulfillment of the law, rather
than mere outward conformity. And from

JEWISH ELEMENT IN TEACHINGS 73

that he pushed on, quite naturally, to an
exposition of how the spiritual side of re-
ligion can be expressed in conduct — in the
particulars of everyday conduct. These lat-
ter points are developed in his various par-
ables and sentences on love and forbearance
and faith and humility, on service and godli-
ness. But the quintessence of his teaching
is summed up pithily in the opening chapter
of Mark.

" After that John was put in prison, Jesus
came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of
the kingdom of God, and saying, The time
is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is
at hand: repent ye, and believe the gos-
pel."

Now, it means no denial of the power, nor
of the originahty, of Jesus to recognize in
this teaching a new expression of what the
religious leaders of Israel, and particularly
the Prophets, had sought to teach. The
Prophets time and again spoke of the com-

74 A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

ing of the Divine judgment — the Doom.
" Hear, ye peoples," cried Micah,

" Hear, ye peoples, all of you ;
Hearken, O earth, and all that therein is;
And let the Lord God be witness against you,
The Lord from His holy temple.
For, behold, the Lord cometh forth out of His

place.
And will come down, and tread upon the high

places of the earth.
And the mountains shall be molten under Him.
And the valleys shall be cleft,
As wax before the fire.

As waters that are poured down a steep place.
For the transgression of Jacob is all this,
And for the sins of the house of Israel."

Again and again the Prophets pleaded for
repentance, as a means of moral improve-
ment and of recovery of relationshp with
God; and namely, for spiritual, rather than
outward, repentance. " Yet even now," we
read in Joel,

" Yet even now, saith the Lord,
Turn ye unto Me with all your heart,

JEWISH ELEMENT IN TEACHINGS 75

And with fasting, and with weeping and with

lamentation ;
And rend your heart, and not your garments,
And turn unto the Lord your God;
For He is gracious and compassionate,
Long-suffering, and abundant in mercy,
And repenteth Him of the evil."

Without ceasing the Prophets pointed out
the uselessness of a mere formal religion
and the paramountcy of the spiritual and
ethical element In all religious profession and
practice. Who does not recall Isaiah's
burning words concerning it?

" Hear the word of the Lord,
Ye rulers of Sodom ;
Give ear unto the law of our God,
Ye people of Gomorrah.
To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices

unto Me?
Saith the Lord;

I am full of the burnt-offerings of rams,
And the fat of fed beasts;
And I delight not in the blood
Of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he-goats.

76 A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

When ye come to appear before Me,

Who hath required this at your hand,

To trample my courts?

Bring no more vain oblations ;

It is an offering of abomination unto Me;

New moon and sabbath, the holding of convoca-
tions —

I cannot endure iniquity along with the solemn
assembly.

Your new moons and your appointed seasons

My soul hateth;

They are a burden unto Me;

I am weary to bear them.

And when ye spread forth your hands,

I will hide Mine eyes from you;

Yea, when ye make many prayers,

I will not hear;

Your hands are full of blood.

Wash you, make you clean,

Put away the evil of your doings

From before Mine eyes.

Cease to do evil ;

Learn to do well:

Seek justice, relieve the oppressed.

Judge the fatherless, plead for the widow."

Conditions may have changed from age to

JEWISH ELEMENT IN TEACHINGS 77

age, but the idea and the purpose of the
Prophet remained ever the same.

" By a prophet the Lord brought Israel up out of
Egypt,
And by a prophet was he kept."

That is the common link between Elijah and
Amos and Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel,
and the rest: thy all have the same ideal.
And the same purpose, under new conditions,
animated the teachings of Jesus, and found
in them a new expression.

Yet, there were certain things which
formed the unique power and fascination of
Jesus' teaching, and the secret of his popu-
larity.

First, Jesus put the personal element into
the heart of his teaching. He did not teach
in mere academic fashion, as did others. He
taught in a personal way, by means of per-
sonal appeal and through personal experi-
ence. He identified himself with his teach-
ing. He and his doctrine were one. He

78 A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

was part of the truth he felt and sought to
spread. It was of the very essence of his
outlook. Of course, other teachers also
made direct appeals and used personal experi-
ence. But in their case it was accidental,
a mere illustration of their teaching. In the
case of Jesus it was part of his very being.

The truth with which he was concerned
formed his sole passion, to which he sacri-
ficed, paradoxically, even his closest relations.
" Kinship," says Philo, the Jewish philoso-
pher of the first century, " is in truth not
reckoned merely by blood; it is rather doing
the same actions and seeking the same ends."
We hear little about Jesus' association with
his own family. Dearest to him were those
that felt and toiled with him, and understood
him.

"And there came his mother and his brethren;
and, standing without, they sent unto him, calling
him. And a multitude was sitting about him ; and
they say unto him. Behold thy mother and thy

JEWISH ELEMENT IN TEACHINGS 79

brethren without seek for thee! And he answered
them, and saith, Who is my mother and my breth-
ren? And looking round on them which sat round
about him, he saith, Behold, my mother and my
brethren ! For whosoever shall do the will of God,
the same is my brother, and sister, and mother."
{Mark 3:31-35.)

Similarly, those who would become his
friends, had to sacrifice everything to the
ideal he taught.

" And a certain ruler asked him, saying, Good
Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?
And Jesus said unto him. Why callest thou me
good? None is good save one, and that is God.
Thou knowest the commandments; Do not commit
adultery ; do not kill ; do not steal ; do not bear false
witness; honor thy father and thy mother. And
he said, all these have I kept from my youth up.
Now, when Jesus heard these things, he said unto
him: Yet, lackest thou one thing. Sell all that
thou hast and distribute it unto the poor, and thou
shalt have treasure in heaven ; and come follow me.
And when he heard this, he was very sorrowful,
for he was very rich. And when Jesus saw that
he was very sorrowful, he said, How hardly shall
they that have riches enter into the kingdom of

So A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

God, for it is easier for a camel to go through the
needle's eye than for a rich man to enter into the
kingdom of God. And they that heard it said,
Who, then, can be saved ? And he said, The things
which are impossible with men are possible with
God. And Peter said later, We have left all and
followed thee. And he said unto them. Verily, I
say unto you, there is no man that hath left house
or parents or brethren or wife or children for the
Kingdom of God's sake, who shall not receive mani-
fold more in this present time and in the world
to come life everlasting." (Luke i6: 18-30.)

Jesus beheld everything under the aspect of
the personal, as part of himself, and as re-
lated to himself: God, Nature, and his fel-
lowmen. It was Inevitable, therefore, that
all his teaching should be permeated with
his personality. His chief concern was not
discussion of academic questions, nor partici-
pation In learned disputes, but to help men
in the actualities of hfe by opening up to
their vision the world of spiritual truth.

Then, Jesus appealed with special force to
the poor, the lonely, the forlorn, and partlcu-

JEWISH ELEMENT IN TEACHINGS 8i

larly to those who had gone astray. Here,
again, it was not so much a matter of nov-
elty: the teaching was not new; the Prophets
were friends of the poor, defenders of the
oppressed, and so were the rabbis; but the
personal relation made a difference. Jesus
not only championed the poor, he lived their
life; he not only pitied sinners, but mingled
with them; he not only praised penitents,
as did every conventional rabbi, but he
showed his love for them in personal contact.

" And he went forth again by the sea side ; and
all the multitude resorted unto him, and he taught
them. And as he passed by, he saw Levi the son
of Alphaeus sitting at the place of toll, and he saith
unto him, Follow me! And he arose and followed
him. And it came to pass, that he was sitting at
meat in his house, and many publicans and sinners
sat down with Jesus and his disciples: for there
were many, and they followed him. And the
scribes of the Pharisees, when they saw that he was
eating with the sinners and publicans, said unto
his disciples. He eateth and drinketh with publi-
cans and sinners! And when Jesus heard it, he

82 A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

salth unto them, They that are whole have no need
of a physician, but they that are sick: I came not
to call the righteous, but sinners." {Mark 2: 13-
17.)

Jesus did not preach on the problems of
poverty and of penitence; he dealt tenderly,
lovingly, with the penitent and the poor.

As we study the ethical and religious teach-
ing of Jesus, we cannot help recognizing the
Jewish element in it, its Jewish authenticity,
its relationship to the best prophetic tradi-
tions and ideals. The merit of Jesus lay in
giving to those traditions and ideals a new
expression, a new emphasis, and in endowing
them with the perennial appeal of a fascinat-
ing personality. That he himself regarded
his teaching as a pure expression of the
Jewish religious ideal — as a fulfillment of
the Law and the Prophets — one can hardly
doubt. Indeed, we have it from his own
lips. When asked by a scribe what were the
essentials of Religion, he answered, it is said.

JEWISH ELEMENT IN TEACHINGS 83

with citations from the Jewish Law. The
scribe assented and evoked from Jesus the
remark: " Thou art not far from the king-
dom of God!"

*' And one of the scribes came, and heard them
questioning together, and knowing that he had an-
swered them well, asked him, What commandment
is the first of all? Jesus answered, The first is,
Hear, O Israel; the Lord our God, the Lord is one:
and thou shalt love thy God with all thy heart,
and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and
with all thy strength. The second Is this. Thou
shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. There is none
other commandment greater than these. And the
scribe said unto him. Of a truth. Master, thou hast
well said that He is one; and there is none other
but He; and to love Him with all the heart, and
with all the understanding, and with all the strength,
and to love his neighbor as himself is much more
than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices. And
when Jesus saw that he answered discreetly, he said
unto him, Thou art not far from the kingdom of
God." {Mark 12:28-34.)

JESUS AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES

A man's greatest treasures are his ideals.
They are the thoughts, the aims, the dream
by which his life is fashioned and directed.
They are his inward treasure, the light by
which he lives. A man's life is according to
his ideals, and according to their hold upon
him. When we speak of an idealist, we
mean a man to whom his ideals are the most
precious thing in life, and on whom they
have a hold above everything else — above
material possession and advancement, even
life itself.

" The kingdom of heaven is like unto a treasure
hidden in the field; which a man found and hid;
and in his joy he goeth and selleth all that he hath,
and buyeth that field.

" Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man
that is a merchant seeking goodly pearls: and hav-
84

HIS CONTEMPORARIES 85

ing found one pearl of great price, he went and
sold all that he had, and bought it." {Mat. 13:
44-45-)

Like other treasures, then, ideals cannot
be gotten nor held without a certain cost.
The idealist must be ready to pay the price
of his ideals, and usually it means facing
the opposition and misunderstanding of his
fellowmen. There is hardly an idealist who
has not been forced to endure the antago-
nism of the world, and particularly the un-
happiness of being misunderstood by it.
Had the world understood Its idealists, and
had it sought to put into effect their teach-
ings and visions, it would be different than
it is. But the world has hardly ever really
grasped what its ideal teachers meant to
convey and to accomplish. This has formed
the tragedy of ideahsts. Sooner or later it
is the fate of every ideaHst to realize the dis-
tance between himself and the world, the
difficulty of making himself understood, and

86 A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

the remote chance of his words and visions
finding fulfillment.

To this rule Jesus, the arch-idealist, was
no exception. If ever man spurned the ma-
terial and devoted himself to the promotion
of the spiritual, it was he, and it would have
been truly miraculous had his contemporaries
received his doctrine with unanimous com-
prehension and approval.

We cannot read the life of Jesus, how-
ever, without concluding that very early in
his ministry he realized the difliculty of his
task. It did not take him long to learn that
it was one thing to have discovered for one-
self the spiritual character of Religion, and
quite another thing to bring the truth home
to others, and particularly to the mass of the
people. Did all those that heard him really
grasp the purpose and the inwardness of his
words? His outward acts, his helpful per-
formances, the multitude understood; they
made him popular; but did they understand

HIS CONTEMPORARIES 87

his doctrine, which to him was the chief thing,
the real bread of life? The loaves they
appreciated; but how about the spiritual
food? Worst of all, Jesus was not long
In recognizing that even those closest to him,
his chosen disciples, could not be depended
upon for a real comprehension of what he
was trying to do and say. " Are ye so with-
out understanding also?" he demands.
" Hear and understand! " This is his con-
stant plea, and " Have ye understood all
these things?" is the question he is repeat-
edly moved to ask his disciples, in one form
or another. Time and again he has sought
to make his purpose clear; but whether they
have really understood is quite doubtful. It
makes for the sadness of Jesus — for the sad
undercurrent in many of his teachings and
experiences.

The longer Jesus taught, the more con-
vinced he grew of this futility — of this diffi-
culty to communicate his spirit to others,

88 A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

fully to share his ideal with others, to flood
with the Hght of his doctrine those souls that
had not received it themselves from the
Father. " No man can come to me except
the Father who hath sent me draw him."

In the early days of his teaching he cer-
tainly felt that it was possible for him, the
son, to make known God, the Father. He
conceived it his mission to do this. It is er-
roneous to think that Jesus was the first to
introduce into the vocabulary of Israel the
designation of God as Father. This ap-
pellation goes back to the Jewish Bible, and
to Jesus it had become familiar from the
Bible and many another Jewish writing, as
well as from the prayers that were in every-
day use among his people. " Our Father
who art in heaven " was part of many a Jew-
ish prayer of his day. But the designation
of God as Father was Jesus' favorite form,
expressing his basic and most intimate con-
ception of his own and other men's relation-

HIS CONTEMPORARIES 89

ship to God. He was convinced that there
was no such efficacious way of knowing God
as through His child, Man, and no such cer-
tain way of knowing Man as through his
Father, God. The conception was not new;
it was common among his people ; but it was
personalized in him and became his profound
conviction.

This conviction came to him from his own
experience, and, in his enthusiasm, he
dreamed of making this truth known to
others, felt by others. But the longer he
taught, the more deeply he realized that
while the truth was there, it was not easy
to make it clear to those to whom the Father
— God — Himself had not revealed It.
" Unto you it is given to know the mysteries
of the Kingdom of heaven, but to them It
is not given. For whosoever hath, to him
shall be given, and he shall have abundance :
but whosoever hath not, from him shall be
taken away even that which he hath." Jesus

90 A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

became more and more silent. Even his
speech was half-silence. He spoke in half-
words. He was convinced of the futility of
explanation to people who could not under-
stand, who could not perceive for themselves,
who were blind to the light.

Nowhere do we find this confirmed more
strongly than in the closing scenes of his life.
In his trial before the high-priest, in his stand
before Pilate, on the very cross — he does
nothing so little as explain. " Jesus held his
peace." He is the man of silence through-
out. *' He gave no answer, not even to one
word." He is the man who has learnt the
folly of trying to explain the incomprehen-
sible, who has learnt the sorrow of misun-
derstanding. " Thou hast said." " Thou
sayest." His final cry betrays it. It is ad-
dressed not to man, but to God — with
whom he has been communing, sharing his
thoughts — the Father whom it had been his
aim to make known to others. " My God,

HIS CONTEMPORARIES 91

my God, why hast Thou forsaken me? " It
is a cry out of the depths of a silent soul
— a soul forced into the regions of silence
by the misunderstanding, the incomprehen-
sion, of the world.

What we should bear in mind, however,
Is that it was natural for Jesus to have .been
misunderstood and opposed by his contem-
poraries, allowing for those peculiarities of
human nature which have always existed and
have not yet ceased.

At first, the public appearance of Jesus
created surprise amon'g those that knew
him.

'' Coming into his own country, he taught them
in their Synagogue inasmuch that they were aston-
ished and said, Whence hath this man this wisdom
and these powers? Is not this the carpenter's son?
Is not his mother called Mary and his brethren
James and Joseph and Simon and Judas, and his
sisters, are they not all with us? Whence, then,
hath this man all these things? And they were
surprised in him." {Mat. 13:54-57-)

92 A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

Presently, however, surprise turned to re-
sentment and antipathy. Jesus stood for
something that differed radically from the
conventional religion of the masses : he stood
for prophetic religion as against mechanical
religion, for a spiritual and not a material
faith: he stood for Jewish mysticism rather
than for Jewish politics. What more natu-
ral than that he should have aroused all
kinds of discussion and opposition (which
is the natural offspring of discussion) ?
"Some said he is a good man; others said
nay, he deceiveth the people." To some he
was a prophet, to others an imposter. Some
thought him inspired, others queer. Some
considered him a saint, others a doubtful
character, a glutton and wine-bibber, hardly
respectable, because he associated with pub-
licans and was charitable to sinners.

"Whereunto shall I liken this generation? It is
like unto children sitting in the market places which
call unto their fellows and say: We piped unto

HIS CONTEMPORARIES 93

ye and ye did not dance, we wailed and ye did not
mourn. For John came neither eating nor drinking,
and they say he hath a devil. The son of man
came' eating and drinking, and they say. Behold, a
gluttonous man and a wine bibber, a friend of pub-
licans and sinners! " {Mat. 11: 16-19.)

Indeed, there was so much doubt of Jes-us'
worth, and aspersion of his motives, that
there were moments when the worst thing
happened that can possibly befall the ideal-
ist: he began to question himself, trying to
determine what his real character and com-
mission were, and seeking an answer to those
crucial questions from friends and disciples.
It is a sad moment for the idealist when
conflict and mistrust have served so to con-
fuse him as to send him to others for a de-
termination of his individuality.

As for the various leaders of the people,
it was, again, quite natural for them to
treat him either with aloofness or with hos-
tility. The heads of the schools, who were

94 A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

Pharisees, no doubt regarded him as an en-
thusiast, a detached preacher of ethical and
spiritual religion, which In itself coincided
with the ethical and spiritual purposes of the
authorized teachers, notwithstanding his oc-
casional attacks on old and commonly ac-
cepted laws. And as for the priestly class
and the aristocrats, they treated him with
the suspicion and hostihty which his attitude
to them, and his utterances, could not but
provoke.

Since Jesus sought to teach and to do what
he did, I say. It was natural that he should
have encountered misunderstanding, suspi-
cion, and hostihty. But we ought not to
forget that in this regard Jesus shared what
thus far has proved the Inevitable fate of all
IdeaHsts, and what particularly had to be
endured by most. If not all, the Prophets
of Israel. Amos, Jeremiah, Ehjah, Moses,
and many others had to face no less a
measure of misunderstanding and abuse.

HIS CONTEMPORARIES 95

Jeremiah depicts their common experience
when he laments his own.

" O Lord, Thou hast enticed me, and I was enticed,
Thou hast overcome me, and hast prevailed ;
I am become a laughing-stock all the day,
Every one mocketh me.
Because the word of the Lord is made
A reproach unto me, and a derision, all the day,
And if I say : ' I will not make mention of Him
Nor speak any more in His name,'
Then there is in my heart as it were a burning fire
Shut up in my bones.
And I weary myself to hold it in,
But cannot."

Yet, it is just here that we witness one
of the paradoxes of Jewish history, and, per-
haps, of Jewish character. While the Jews
persecuted and tormented their Prophets,
they none the less, by some peculiar procliv-
ity or predestination, respected them and
their mission. There was always enough
regard for the Prophet to make it possible
for him to proclaim his message, no matter

96 A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

how bitter a denunciation of the people it
carried. The Jews were accustomed to the
freedom of prophesying, and they preserved
the prophetic castigations as part of their
sacred literature.

This Jewish toleration of the Prophet,
and of the ethical critic, attended Jesus. It
made it possible for him to go about teaching
in the synagogues and the Temple, and ar-
guing with scribes and priests, despite the
opposition he aroused. As a teacher of re-
ligion and morality, no one could interfere
with him, even had his teachings been more
revolutionary than they were. If later on
Jesus died for his utterances or enterprises,
it was certainly not because of anything he
taught in connection with religion or ethics.

But Jesus was not merely tolerated by his
Jewish contemporaries. By many of them
he was treated with love, friendship, and
tenderness.

One of the great errors usually commit-

HIS CONTEMPORARIES 97

ted Is the assumption that from his Jewish
contemporaries Jesus received nothing but
hatred and perescution. The Jews are sup-
posed to have made his life miserable and
continually to have plotted to kill him. Of
course, this peculiar notion dates back to
the age of the Gospels. It is a strange pe-
culiarity of the Gospels that the word
" Jews " is constantly used in contrast to
Jesus and his followers. But were not the
latter also Jews? It betrays the anti-Jewish
bias of the Gospels, the fact that they re-
ceived their present form when antagonism
already existed between the churches and the
Jews, as well as an effort to please the non-
Jewish world, for whom the Gospels were
chiefly written, at the expense of the Jews.
This peculiar notion has been perpetuated to
this day. The Jews are all supposed to have
been arrayed against Jesus.

As a matter of fact, the contrary is true.
For an ideahst, Jesus found more than the

98 A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

common measure of appreciation among his
Jewish contemporaries. As a teacher, he
was not merely tolerated. By many he was
lov^ed. First, there were the crowds of
which we hear repeatedly as thronging to
him and hailing him as teacher and friend.
They were all Jews. Then, there were his
disciples : they were Jews. Then, there were
his intimate friends, apart from those said
to have been officially appointed as apostles.
And, finally, there were the women who were
devoted and ministered to him, and brought
their children to be touched and blessed by
him.

Was any teacher ever surrounded by so
large a number of loving and loyal friends?
And that in spite of the complete surrender
he exacted. To be his disciple one had to
give up everything, even kith and kin.
Everything had to be sacrificed to the ideal.

" Why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the
things which I say? "

HIS CONTEMPORARIES 99

" Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord,
shall enter into the kingdom of heaven ; but he that
doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven."

" If any man cometh unto me, and hateth not
his own father, and mother, and wife, and children,
and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also,
he cannot be my disciple. Whosoever doth not bear
his own cross, and come after me, cannot be my
disciple."

" There is no man that hath left house, or breth-
ren, or sisters, or mother, or father, or children, or
lands, for my sake, and for the gospel's sake, but he
shall receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses,
and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and chil-
dren, and lands, with persecutions; and in the
world to come eternal life."

Notwithstanding the severe test, the circle
of Jesus' friends, apart from his official
disciples, is both varied and interesting:
Lazarus, Nicodemus, Joseph of Arimathea,
Zaccheus; and among the women, Mary and
Martha (sisters of Lazarus) , Mary of Mag-
dala (out of whom went seven devils),
Joanna (wife of Herod's steward), Susanna,

loo A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

Salome : surely an array of friends, loyal and
true, as has seldom been excelled; and they
were all Jews. To think of this is to realize
the foolishness of the assumption that Jesus
failed to receive appreciation and love from
his Jewish contemporaries.

" And Jesus went about in all Galilee, teaching in
their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the
kingdom, and healing all manner of disease and all
manner of sickness among the people. And the
report of him went forth into all Syria; and they
brought unto him all that were sick, holden with
diverse sicknesses and torments, possessed with devils,
and epileptics, and palsied, and he healed them.
And there followed him great multitudes from
Galilee and Decapolis and Jerusalem and Judea and
from beyond the Jordan."

Nor is it strange that Jesus should have
gained such a following.

It was due, first of all, to the personal
character of his teaching and work. Jesus
differed in this respect from the majority of
Jewish teachers. The latter, as a rule, were

HIS CONTEMPORARIES loi

interested in principles, in doctrines, In Ideals;
they taught Impersonally: this Is true from
the Prophets down. Some regard It as the
special merit of the Jewish method — this
spiritual and ethical objectivity. Jesus
taught personally. He pointed to himself
not merely as an illustration of his teaching,
but as an incarnation of it. When Moses
addressed the Israelites, and wished to bring
the thought of God home to them, he said:
" The God of your fathers has sent me unto
you ! " Jesus, on the other hand, always
spoke of his own God, his own Father. It
was not a different idea; it was a change of
emphasis, and the change was toward the ac-
centuation of the personal element, Jesus'
own personal interfusion with his teaching.
The natural consequence was his personal ap-
peal to his hearers, and the personal response
of not a few.

There must be added, of course, the help-
ful healing power which Jesus exercised, and

I02 A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

which gained for him the gratitude and good-
will of many, as well as the ultimate repu-
tation of a worker of miracles.

Moreover, that such a teacher should have
won the friendship of Jewish women is also
easy to understand, particularly if one thinks
of the remarkable part that women played
in the Jewish life of the time.

Some think that the presence of women In
the story of Jesus marks a complete change
In the position of woman in Israel. That,
of course, Is an error. One must not forget
the great women of the Old Testament, nor
of the Talmud, nor the fact that the pages
of Josephus are crowded with references to
women, and to their conspicuous part in the
religious and political agitations of the time.
Jewish women took part in the activity of
Jesus, because they were accustomed to take
part In the religious and political life of the
people.

HIS CONTEMPORARIES 103

It is these friendships, of both men and
women, that put sweetness and satisfaction
into the life of Jesus. Always humble and
unpretentious, always tolerant and human,
always sensible of the mixture of frailty and
divinity in human nature, he was grateful for
signs of friendship, whatever their form.
The hardest thing Jesus had to bear, as
Padraic Pearse, the Irish poet, has pointed
out, was the scattering of his friends. " Is
it not a sad thing," asks the poet, " that every
good fellowship is broken up? Even that
little league of twelve in Gahlee was broken
full soon." Having learnt that it is the lot
of the idealist to be misunderstood by most,
Jesus was the more grateful for the few who
were likely to understand — whose soul was
likely to prove a good and fertile soil for the
seed he was seeking to sow.

" Behold, the sower went forth to sow ; and as
he sowed, some seeds fell by the way side, and the

I04 A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

birds came and devoured them: and others fell upon
the rocky places, where they had not much earth:
and straightway they sprang up, because they had
no deepness of earth: and when the sun was risen,
they were scorched; and because they had no root,
they withered away. And others fell upon the
thorns; and the thorns grew up, and choked them:
and others fell upon the good ground, and yielded
fruit, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.
He that hath ears, let him hear." {Mat. 13 : 3-9.)

In the parable of the sower, we have a com-
plete picture of the reception Jesus expected
and found among his contemporaries.
*' Know ye not this parable, and how shall
ye know all the parables? "

" Hear then ye the parable of the sower. When
any one heareth the word of the kingdom, and
understandeth it not, then cometh the evil one, and
snatcheth away that which hath been sown in his
heart. This is he that was sown by the way side.
And he that was sown upon the rocky places, this
is he that heareth the word, and straightway with
joy receiveth it; yet hath he not root in himself,
but endureth for a while; and w^hen tribulation
or persecution ariseth because of the word, straight-

HIS CONTEMPORARIES 105

way he stumbleth. And he that was sown among
the thorns, this is he that heareth the word; and
the care of the world, and the deceitfulness of
riches, choke the word, and he becometh unfruitful.
And he that was sown upon the good ground, this
is he that heareth the word, and understandeth
it; who verily beareth fruit, and bringeth forth,
some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty."
{Mat. 13: 18-23.)

THE JEWISH MESSIAH IDEA
AND JESUS

*' How did Jesus become the Messiah?
Here," says a French author, " is the para-
mount, the essential question in the concep-
tion of Jesus."

It is certainly true that with the idea of
Jesus as the Messiah is bound up most of his
history. Jesus may have been a unique per-
sonaHty and a unique religious teacher, but
to the great majority of those who have
accepted him through the ages he has been
chiefly the Messiah, the Christ. Even to-
day the question in regard to Jesus upper-
most in the average mind is whether or no
one acknowledges him as the Messiah.
Equally true it is that it is impossible to un-
derstand the causes that led to the death of
Jesus without considering the Jewish idea
io6

MESSIAH IDEA AND JESUS 107

of the Messiah and the relation of Jesus to
It.

There are those who regard the messianic
idea as the most beneficent contribution of
the Jew to human Hfe. Others try to prove
that the idea of a Messiah, a redeemer, a
final restorer and joy-bringer, was not con-
fined to the Jewish people, but that, in one
form or another, it existed among other
early races. Certain it is that nowhere the
idea of a Messiah came to play as important
a part as in Israel. Among the Jews it
assumed a central place in the order of life
and faith. Moreover, from Israel it was
taken over by others, serving as the core
of religion to uncounted millions. With
non-Jews the idea has undergone many modi-
fications, some of a radical nature. But it
originated among the Jews, and among them
also it passed through a process of develop-
ment before it received the form and the
force it possessed in the age of Jesus.

io8 A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

It Is Important to understand the Influ-
ence the Jewish Idea of the Messiah exercised
on Jesus, and the attitude he took to It. But
we can hope to understand It only by tracing
its development among the Jews.

The origin of the Idea of a Messiah we
find In the teachings and visions of the Jewish
Prophets.

We know that the Prophets were first and
last . teachers of Righteousness. As such
they frequently had to perform the unpleas-
ant task of criticizing their people, of rebuk-
ing It severely for moral and spiritual trans-
gressions. Sometimes we are told that the
Prophets were pohtlcal leaders. But their
Interest In pohtlcs was Inspired altogether by
religious and ethical motives. To the
Prophets the chief concern of life was Right-
eousness and their Intercession In the political
life of their people was for the purpose of
vindicating or advancing the demands of
Righteousness. An unrighteous Israel to

MESSIAH IDEA AND JESUS 109

them was a disloyal and treacherous Israel,
for the reason that God was the true king
of Israel, and God was a God of Righteous-
ness, or of Holiness, who expected the same
qualities of His people, and particularly of
the rulers, the kings of the people, regarded
as God's representatives on earth and
anointed as such. For this reason the
Prophets were moved to castigate their peo-
ple, and even to predict its fall and destruc-
tion, because of its unfaithfulness.

On the other hand, however, the Prophets
loved their people and were convinced that
God's choice and love, once bestowed upon
Israel, were everlasting.

'* How shall I give thee up, Ephraim?
How shall I surrender thee, Israel?
My heart Is turned within Me,
My compassions are kindled together! "

God's love was stronger than His wrath.
Even after periods of faithlessness and for-
saking, there was bound to be a renewal of

no A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

the old love, the old faith, the old cove-
nant.

"And I will betroth thee unto Me for ever;

Yea, I will betroth thee unto Me,
In righteousness, and in justice.

And in lovingkindness, and in compassion.
And I will betroth thee unto Me

In faithfulness :
And thou shalt know the Lord ! "

This conviction of the Prophets inspired
them with hope, and, amid visions of de-
struction and desolation, it caused them to
raise sanguine eyes to the future, however
distant. " In the end of days it shall come
to pass " — this vision ever and anon formed
for the Prophets a wondrous antidote to
the bitterness of the present.

"In the end of days!" What was to
happen in the end of days? In those days
there would be a restoration of Israel, a res-
toration of the rule of righteousness, a res-
toration of the covenant between God and

MESSIAH IDEA AND JESUS iii

His people, a renewal of the reign of peace,
justice, charity, and happiness. The ruler
of those days would be the true king, the
true representative of God, the true Anointed
.(or, Messiah). Before the advent of that
messianic age, the world would witness much
suffering and tribulation, there would be the
day of Judgment — the Day of the Lord —
many would be sifted out and only a residue
would remain, but the glorious age in the
end would compensate for all the troubles
and miseries of the past, and, as its blessings
will extend to all nations, Israel will by his
afflictions and bruises have benefited not only
himself but all mankind. It is in some such
way as this that the Prophets thought and
dreamed of the future, and thus they created
the messianic idea, which came to play so
vital a part In Jewish history.

One cannot help realizing that with the
Prophets this Idea was almost .unconscious.
It was a natural sequel of their belief in

112 A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

the future of their people, In the eternity of
the Divine Covenant. This Covenant was
bound to reassert Itself when the people had
suffered sufficiently for — had expiated —
Its faithlessness. It was part of the Inevit-
able triumph of love, as Hosea conceived It,
over temporary estrangement and Infidelity.
Granted the faith and the vision of the
Prophets, we can see how natural to them
was the messianic hope.

Of course, to each of the Prophets, ac-
cording to temperament, certain features of
the future stood out most conspicuous and
alluring. To Isaiah It was the coming of
a perfect ruler, different from the timid, va-
cillating, and Inconfident king with whom he
dealt at the Court of Jerusalem; to Jeremiah,
one of the most spiritual and subjective —
one of the most lyrical — of Prophets, It
meant the actualization of personal religion,
religion as an Inward revelation and power,
as a covenant not taught by man to man, but

MESSIAH IDEA AND JESUS 113

written deep in every man's heart; to MIcah
It signified the consummation of the real
meaning of religion in all Its moral grandeur
and simplicity and the Interlinking of nations
In the chains of peace and good will : and so
forth for each of the Prophets, according
to his particular predisposition and, perhaps,
according to the peculiar conditions of his
age. But to every one of them the messianic
hope and conviction as such was a natural,
a wellnigh If not wholly unconscious, result
of his faith in the indestructible character
of his people and of the Divine Covenant
with it.

In the course of time, however, the mes-
sianic idea became the subject of conscious
speculation and minute discussion. As peo-
ple began to realize that Israel had suffered
beyond measure and none the less the perfect
age and final restoration had not arrived,
they began to employ their minds on the old
prophecies. They began to calculate when

114 A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

the messianic age finally would come, to spec-
ulate as to just what its nature would be,
and to look for the man who might bring
It about.

It Is easy to conceive the conditions likely
to engender such studies and to stimulate
such speculation. Such conditions arose In
times of persecution, of warfare, of uncom-
mon struggle and distress. No wonder,
then, that the first extant result of such spec-
ulations we have in the book of Daniel, which
was probably written In the days of the Mac-
cabean revolt. This book is not only itself
an attempt to forecast the messianic age, but
it started a whole literature similarly em-
ployed. In this literature — the apocalyptic
books — and In the subsequent rabbinical
writings we find traces of the several forms
that the messianic idea gradually assumed in
Israel.

It Is a mistake to think that all Jews had
the same idea on the subject. Uniformity

MESSIAH IDEA AND JESUS 115

was never an Intellectual or spiritual char-
acteristic of the Jews. They all hoped for
a messianic time; all beheved in it, yearned
for it. But as to its character, there was
variation.

There were, at least, three different in-
terpretations. First, there was the purely
political expectation — that of a perfect
emancipator and ruler of Israel. Then,
there was the construction of those who,
tired of waiting for an earthly paradise,
transferred their hopes for the future to
heaven, to the hereafter. And, finally, there
was the view of those who attached little
importance to political schemes and fastened
their whole attention on Rehgion and its
tasks, regarding them as the whole and sole
concern of man. All these groups were
hoping for the Kingdom of God, as the mes-
sianic age was designated, but to the different
groups the Kingdom of God connoted differ-
ent things, though no doubt there were some

ii6 A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

to whom they meant all these things together.
The messianic hope envisaging a perfect
ruler we find expressed, for example, in the
Psalms of Solomon, which were probably
composed about a half century before Jesus.

" Behold, O Lord, and raise up unto them their

king, the son of David,
At the time in which Thou seest, O God, that he

may reign over Israel Thy servant.
And gird him with strength, that he may shatter

unrighteous rulers.
And that he may purge Jerusalem from nations

that trample her down to destruction.
Wisely, righteously he shall thrust out sinners

from the inheritance.
He shall destroy the pride of the sinner as a

potter's vessel.
With a rod of iron he shall break in pieces all

their substance.
He shall destroy the godless nations with the

word of his mouth;
At his rebuke nations shall flee before him,
And he shall reprove sinners for the thoughts of

their heart.

MESSIAH IDEA AND JESUS 117

" And he shall gather together a holy people, whom

he shall lead in righteousness.
And he shall judge the tribes of the people that

has been sanctified by the Lord his God.
And he shall not suffer unrighteousness to lodge

any more in their midst,
Nor shall there dwell with them any man that

knoweth wickedness,
For he shall know them, that they are all sons

of their God.
And he shall divide them according to their tribes

upon the land.
And neither sojourner nor alien shall sojourn

with them any more.
He shall judge peoples and nations in the wisdom

of his righteousness.

'' And he shall have the heathen nations to serve

him under his yoke;
And he shall glorify the Lord in a place to be

seen of all the earth;
And he shall purge Jerusalem, making it holy as

of old:
So that nations shall come from the ends of the

earth to see his glory.
Bringing as gifts her sons who had fainted.

ii8 A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

And to see the glory of the Lord, wherewith God

hath glorified her.
And he shall be a righteous king, taught of God,

over them,
And there shall be no unrighteousness in his days

in their midst.
For all shall be holy and their king the anointed

of the Lord.
For he shall not put his trust in horse and rider

and bow,
Nor shall he multiply for himself gold and silver

for war.
Nor shall he gather confidence from a multitude

for the day of battle,
The Lord Himself is his king, the hope of him

that is mighty through his hope in God.

" For he will smite the earth with the word of his

mouth for ever.
He will bless the people of the Lord with wisdom

and gladness,
And he himself will be pure from sin, so that he

may rule a great people.
He will rebuke rulers, and remove sinners by

the might of his word ;
And relying upon his God, throughout his days

he will not stumble;

MESSIAH IDEA AND JESUS 119

For God will make him mighty by means of His

holy spirit,
And wise by means of the spirit of understanding,

with strength and righteousness.
And the blessing of the Lord will be with him:

he will be strong and stumble not;
His hope will be in the Lord : who then can pre-
vail against him?
He will be mighty in his works, and strong in the

fear of God,
He will be shepherding the flock of the Lord

faithfully and righteously.
And will suffer none among them to stumble in

their pasture.
He will lead them aright,
And there will be no pride among them that any

among them should be oppressed.

This will be the majesty of the king of Israel

whom God knoweth;
He will raise him up over the house of Israel to

correct him.
His words shall be more refined than costly gold,

the choicest ;
In the assemblies he will judge the peoples, the

tribes of the sanctified.

I20 A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

His words shall be like the words of the holy
ones in the midst of sanctified peoples.

Blessed be they that shall be in those days,

In that they shall see the good fortune of Israel
which God shall bring to pass in the gather-
ing together of the tribes.

May the Lord hasten His mercy upon Israel!

May He deliver us from the uncleanness of un-
holy enemies! "

A good illustration of the messianic de-
spair of the material world and a withdrawal
into the spiritual realm, we find in the Fourth
Book of Ezra, which was probably written
in the first century of the Christian era.

*' For the world has lost its youth,

The times begin to wax old.

Now, therefore, set in order thy house, and re-
prove thy people;

Comfort the lowly among them, and instruct
those that are wise.

Now do thou renounce the life that is corruptible,
let go from thee the cares of mortality; cast
from thee the burdens of man, put off now
the weak nature; lay aside thy burdensome
cares, and hasten to remove from these times!

MESSIAH IDEA AND JESUS 121

For still worse evils than those which thou hast
seen happen shall yet take place. For the
weaker the world grows through age, so much
the more shall evils increase upon the dwellers
on earth.

Truth shall withdraw further off, and falsehood
be nigh at hand."

Again :

*' Behold the days come, and it shall be.

When I am about to draw nigh to visit the dwell-
ers upon earth,

And when I require from the doers of iniquity the
penalty of their iniquity;

And when the Age which is about to pass away
shall be sealed, then will I show these signs:
the books shall be opened before the face of
the firmament, and all see together.

And one-year-old children shall speak with their
voices ; pregnant women shall bring forth un-
timely births at three or four months, and
these shall live and dance. And suddenly
shall the sown places appear unsown, and the
full storehouses shall suddenly be found
empty. And the trumpet shall sound aloud,
at which all men, when they hear it, shall
be struck with sudden fear. And at that

122 A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

time friends shall war against friends like
enemies, the earth shall be stricken with fear
together with the dwellers thereon, and the
springs of the fountains shall stand still so
that for three hours they shall not run.

And it shall be whosoever shall have survived all
these things that I have foretold unto thee,
he shall be saved and shall see my salvation
and the end of my world. And the men
who have been taken up, who have not tasted
death from their birth, shall appear. Then
shall the heart of the inhabitants of the world
be changed, and be converted to a different
spirit.
For evil shall be blotted out, and deceit extin-
guished ;

Faithfulness shall flourish, and corruption be van-
quished ;

And truth which for so long a time has been
without fruit, shall be made manifest."

Finally, in the Book of Enoch, composed
in the first century before Jesus, we have
a good picture of the heavenly Messianic
Kingdom.

MESSIAH IDEA AND JESUS 123

" And there I saw another vision, the dwelling-
places of the holy,
And the resting-places of the righteous.

" Here mine eyes saw their dwellings with His right-
eous angels.
And their resting-places with the holy.

" And they petitioned and interceded and prayed
for the children of men,
And righteousness flowed before them as water,
And mercy like dew upon the earth:
Thus it is amongst them for ever and ever.

And in that place mine eyes saw the Elect One
of righteousness and of faith,

And I saw his dwelling-place under the wings
of the Lord of Spirits,

And righteousness shall prevail in his days.

And the righteous and elect shall be without num-
ber before Him for ever and ever.

And all the righteous and elect before Him shall
be strong as fiery lights,

And their mouth shall be full of blessing.

124 A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

" And their lips extol the name of the Lord of

Spirits,
And righteousness before Him shall never fail,
And uprightness shall never fail before Him.
There I wished to dwell,

And my spirit longed for that dwelling-place:
And there heretofore hath been my portion.
For so has it been established concerning me before

the Lord of Spirits."

Now, the thing to bear in mind Is that
the age of Jesus was a time when all these
Interpretations of the messianic idea were
found side by side and fought for recogni-
tion. For that there was ample reason.
For centuries the Jews had suffered all kinds
of political persecution and tribulation. One
after the other, their own rulers failed them,
their most brilliant hopes were extinguished.
The Maccabean dynasty, first hailed as mes-
sianic, deteriorated disgracefully. The reign
of Herod was a mixture of cruelty and scan-
dal. The rule of Rome was Intolerable. It
was a time of Intrigue and tyranny. No

MESSIAH IDEA AND JESUS 125

wonder the hope for the messianic day be-
came intense, and no wonder different men
held different ideas as to what it would be.
Some waited for the poHtical redeemer;
others said, Oh, no, it means scorn of mate-
rial things and engrossment in spiritual real-
ities, while still others turned their eyes to
heaven, hoping there to find reward, har-
mony, and peace.

A time came, some years after Jesus, when
the Jews grew weary of speculation and left
the coming of the Messiah to God. The
failure of numerous attempts at poUtical
emancipation had worn them out. There
was nothing to do but wait for God's own
time. Faith took the place of human effort.
Indeed, certain rabbis declared it sinful to
try by human effort to hasten the advent of
the Messiah. " I adjure you, O daughters
of Jerusalem," they quoted from The Song
of Songs, " that ye awaken not, nor stir up
love, until it please." This they interpreted

126 A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

as a Divine protest against hastening the
Messiah by human means. " When Divine
Justice considers the time ripe, I shall cause
the day of Love to come with many voices,
and I shall not delay." Such redemption,
held the rabbis, would be permanent. " Said
the Holy One blessed be He, Hitherto ye
have been redeemed by flesh and blood, and
ye have been returned time and again to
servitude In exile, but in the days to come
you shall be redeemed by the Holy One with
an everlasting redemption after which there
shall be no servitude. As it Is written:

' And the ransomed of the Lord shall return,
And come with singing unto Zion,
And everlasting joy shall be upon their heads;
They shall obtain gladness and joy,
And sorrow and sighing shall flee away ; '
and also :

** ' Israel shall be helped by the Lord with an
everlasting redemption.' "

The relegation of the Messianic day to the

remote realm of faith, however, occurred

MESSIAH IDEA AND JESUS 127

after the age of Jesus. In the days of Jesus,
the different currents of messianic expecta-
tion met together — they formed the mes-
sianic whirlpool of the times.

What attitude did Jesus take to those
ideas? Of one thing, no doubt, he was con-
vinced from the outset, namely, that the king-
dom of God was at hand. It was this teach-
ing of John the Baptist that inspired him to
enter upon his public ministry, having hith-
erto Hved and taught more or less privately
— preferably privately. (He never quite
outgrew the reluctance to reach " the multi-
tude.") When he began to teach broad-
cast, this was his message: "The time is
fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand:
repent ye, and beheve the good tidings!"
Nor did his message fail of a hearing. For
many reasons he drew multitudes. His own
personality, as well as the temper of the
times, gained him hearers.

128 A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

Ere long, however, he was called upon to
answer two questions of vital import. First,
what was to be the nature of the kingdom
that was at hand, as he said it was? And,
secondly, what was his own relation to the
kingdom that he forecast, his own place in
it? It is easy enough to ridicule the people
of the time for having asked such questions,
to scorn them as men of little faith, and such-
like; but no reasonable person will deny that
they were most natural questions from people
as vitally concerned as were the Jews of the
time.

Jesus himself felt that he had to answer
those questions. He had to decide — not
only for others, but for himself. A private
person might harbor vague notions about
vital questions. But the public teacher may
not. He must decide. It was the necessity
of decision on that vital point of his ministry
that created the crisis in the life of Jesus.

He began to wonder — to reasfon — to

MESSIAH IDEA AND JESUS 129

ask others. What did the Messiah mean?
What did the Kingdom mean? And what
was he himself with respect to It? "Who
do men say that I am? Who say ye that
I am?" Simon Peter (one of his closest
disciples) answered, " Thou art the Mes-
siah ! " We do not know whether that an-
swer at first pleased Jesus or no, or whether
the suggestion that he was the Messiah first
came from his disciples, or whether he made
It to them. Certain It Is that he was reticent
about It and asked his disciples at first to
say nothing about It.

" And Jesus went forth, and his disciples, into the
village of Caesarea Philippi: and in the way he
asked his disciples, saying unto them, Who do men
say that I am? And they told him, saying, John
the Baptist: and others, Elijah; but others, One
of the prophets. And he asked them, But who say
ye that I am? Peter answereth and saith unto
him, Thou art the Christ. And he charged them
that they should tell no man of him." {Mark 8,
27-30)

I30 A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

When finally Jesus reached a decision, it
was true to the ruling thought of his life.
It was spiritual. The Kingdom of God, he
decided, was not political, it was not of this
world: It was spiritual.

" And when he was demanded of the Pharisees
when the kingdom of God should come, he an-
swered them and said: The kingdom of God
Cometh not with observation : neither shall they say,
Lo! here; or Lo! there. For, behold, the kingdom
of God is within you ! "

The Kingdom of God is already here —
for those that understand, and for those that
do not understand, why, one must pray for
its coming. " Thy kingdom come. Thy will
be done, as in heaven, so on earth!"
As for himself, he decided, if to realize in-
wardly the kingdom of God meant to be the
Messiah, the Anointed of God, God's Son,
he was the Messiah.

" And he began to teach them, that the Son of
man must suffer many things, and be rejected by

MESSIAH IDEA AND JESUS 131

the elders, and the chief priests, and the scribes,
and be killed, and after three days rise again. And
he spake the saying openly. And Peter took him,
and began to rebuke him. But he turning about,
and seeing his disciples, rebuked Peter, and saith.
Get thee behind me, Satan: for thou mindest not
the things of God, but the things of men. And he
called unto him the multitude with his disciples,
and said unto them, If any man would come after
me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross,
and follow me. For whosoever would save his
life shall lose it; and whosoever shall lose his life
for my sake and the gospel's shall save it. For what
doth it profit a man to gain the whole world, and
forfeit his life? " {Mark 8, 31-36)

No doubt it meant a great relief for Jesus
to harmonize his inmost convictions with the
messianic passion of the age. But, on the
other hand, it involved him in the most tragic
misunderstanding of his career. If his other
teachings were so often misunderstood — at
times even by his closest disciples — how
much more likely was this one to be misun-
derstood, touching as it did the most sensi-

132 A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

tive spot In the life of the age ! The multi-
tude that had been fired to believe that here
at last was a true deliverer, the Messiah they
had hoped for, turned away from him, dis-
appointed, disillusioned, embittered. One
of his own disciples turned against him —
betrayed him. On the other hand, the
rulers, hearing that he had proclaimed him-
self Messiah, and having had experience with
other self-styled messiahs, decided to hand
him over to the Roman authorities, lest the
whole people be charged with rebeUion.
They were not in a mood — perhaps they
had no taste — for fine spiritual analysis.
Thus, Jesus lost his life in the messianic mael-
strom of his age.

THE JEWS AND THE DEATH OF
JESUS

Professor Graetz has said that Jesus is
the only human being of whom it may be
said without exaggeration that he achieved
more by his death than by his Ufe.

It is certainly remarkable to what extent
the world's attention has been focused on
the death, rather than the Ufe, of Jesus.
Among Christians there is no doubt a much
larger number of such as regard the death
of Jesus as the core of their faith than of
those who concentrate on his life and teach-
ings. Moreover, none will deny that a great
deal of the world's feehng against the Jews
has been fed by the behef that they were
responsible for the death of Jesus. It is
paradoxical, but true that even those who
treat the self-sacrifice of Jesus as essential
133

134 A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

to the universal scheme of salvation, are
yet hostile to the Jews, because they are held
to have brought about that self-sacrifice. It
Is therefore important to determine the part
that the Jews had In the death of Jesus and
also to what It was due.

Unfortunately, It Is far from easy to do
so. If most of the Incidents of Jesus' life
are known but vaguely. If the greater part
of his life Is practically unknown, what we
know about the causes that led up to his
death is equally uncertain and based to a
large extent on conjecture. And this for
the very simple reason that the accounts we
possess are obscure, conflicting, and incom-
plete.

It Is peculiar and regrettable that there is
no reference to Jesus In the literature of his
own age. Neither his life nor his death Is
mentioned In the Talmudic portions of his
period. What references there are In the
Talmud to Jesus originated later on, and

THE DEATH OF JESUS 135

are In themselves so obscure and doubtful as
to be of very little historic value. There
Is no reference to Jesus In the works of the
Jewish philosopher Phllo, nor In the histori-
cal writings of Josephus, though both lived
in the first century, the former In Alexandria
and the latter In Jerusalem and In Rome,
and both were well-informed. It Is well-
known that one sentence on the subject In
Josephus Is universally considered a later
interpolation, made no doubt by a Christian
writer eager to remedy the obnoxious omis-
sion. Whatever the cause, the silence of
contemporary Jewish literature in regard to
Jesus is unfortunate for the study of the
subject.

Our only source of Information on the
death of Jesus are the Gospels. But the
accounts contained in them vary. There are
differences between the Synoptic Gospels, on
the one hand, and the Gospel of John, on
the other. Minor differences occur even In

136 A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

the Synoptic Gospels, particularly In the de-
scription of the trials of Jesus. Evidently
the accounts were written many years after
the Crucifixion. None of the writers had
himself been present at the trials, at least
not at the Jewish trial, though perhaps John
(if he was the beloved disciple) was present
at the Crucifixion. What they wrote about
the Jewish trial of Jesus — or the circum-
stances leading up to the Crucifixion — was
based on hearsay, opinion, and tradition.
By the time they committed their accounts
to writing, moreover, the church had already
been founded, dogmas on the subject of the
character and the fate of Jesus had been
formulated, and many a controversy between
the Jews and the founders of the new sect
had taken place. The narration of the
death of Jesus no longer was a mere question
of history, but of religious Interpretation and
argument. What wonder that the diverse
accounts should be more or less at variance,

THE DEATH OF JESUS 137

obscure, and incomplete, and that we of to-
day should find it difficult to determine just
what really happened to bring about the
death of Jesus?

One thing seems certain. Jesus, within a
few days before his death, suffered a most
complete change of fortune. I have had oc-
casion to point out that the strange thing
in the Ufe of Jesus is not that he encountered
so much misunderstanding and hostility, but
rather that he enjoyed such great popularity
with the multitude.

Jesus was an idealist. He interpreted life
in terms of spirit. He scorned and smashed
the idols of the masses. Such a man could
scarcely hope for universal recognition and
approval. Jesus himself felt it. He was
constantly haunted by the apprehension that
even those that hung on his lips did not really
perceive the inner meaning of his words.
Time and again he questioned his closest
disciples as to whether they understood what

138 A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

he was trying to say, and more than once
disciples left him as a result of his scrutiny.
All this is perfectly in accord with the usual
fate of the idealist.

The strange thing about Jesus, however,
is that he should have gained such marked
popularity. It is an indication of what
power of attraction his personaHty possessed,
and, also, of the strong appeal of his mes-
sage to his age, with its unusual spiritual
and political unrest. This popularity seems
to have increased particularly in the closing
days of his life.

Perhaps it was due to his self-association
with the messianic movement. No matter
what construction he put on the word Mes-
siah, and on the idea of the Kingdom of
Heaven : those were the things the people
dreamed of, desired, and discussed more than
any other, and the self-identification of a
young, enthusiastic, and cherished leader
with them was bound to enhance his popu-

THE DEATH OF JESUS 139

larlty. Was he thinking of one thing when
he spoke of the Kingdom of Heaven, and
was the multitude thinking of another?
That is what formed the tragedy. But that
identification with the Messianic thought in-
creased his hold on the people, we cannot
doubt.

Jesus' last entry into Jerusalem was
triumphal. It was different from that of
the Galilean dreamer and enthusiast of for-
mer days. It was that of a hero ! The
people waved palm branches before him and
his followers, and hailed him leader.

*' And many spread their garments upon the way;
and others branches, which they had cut from the
fields. And they that went before, and they that
followed, cried, Hosanna ; Blessed is he that cometh
in the name of the Lord: Blessed Is the kingdom
that cometh, the kingdom of our father David:
Hosanna in the highest! "

Jesus was at the height of his power. It
was on the Sunday before Passover. The

I40 A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

city was full of pilgrims from all over the
country. Pilate, the governor, was there
with his soldiers, on the lookout for signs of
revolt, which had grown rather frequent.
Jesus was more outspoken and aggressive
than ever. He taught In the synagogue of
the city and In the Temple; he not only de-
nounced the merchants and moneychangers
that had their stalls In the Temple, but drove
them out; he affirmed his authority against
priests and scribes : In every way he showed
that he was In a state of excitement and the
hero of the hour.

Yet, within a couple of days, all this Is
changed. His own exultation gives way to
depression; he reahzes that the end of his
earthly career Is near; he catches wind of
a plot forming against him, with one of his
own disciples betraying him; and forthwith
he finds himself deserted by the multitude
that had but just hailed his coming; his ac-
tivity Is stopped, he Is seized, abused, and

THE DEATH OF JESUS 141

crucified, with the loud approval of the multi-
tude.

What was behind this terrible change?
What was the cause of it all? The answer
we must seek in the accounts of the Gospels
concerning the trial of Jesus. Were these
accounts clear and consistent, we should know
definitely why the people suddenly turned
against Jesus and why a few days after
his triumphal entry into Jerusalem he was
crucified. But there's the rub. The stories
of the Gospels are inadequate and confus-
ing.

Who tried Jesus? When was he tried?
Was he tried by the full Sanhedrin of sev-
enty-one, or by a smaller Sanhedrin of twen-
ty-three, or was there no trial by the Sanhe-
drin at all? Was he tried by the Sanhedrin
at night, or in early morning? What were
the charges against him, and by whom were
they brought? Of what was he convicted
by the Jewish court — of caUing himself

142 A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

Messiah, of blaspheming, or of what ? Was
he crucified on the eve of Passover or on the
first day of Passover?

The very fact that there has been no end
of debate of these crucial points shows how
doubtful and deficient are the accounts of
the Gospels. The author of the latest book
on the subject reaches the conclusion that
the Sanhedrin merely acted as an investigat-
ing body in regard to the charges brought
against Jesus, whereas the actual trial took!
place before Pilate, who, as Roman gover-
nor, had sole right of jurisdiction and punish-
ment, and that both the investigation and
the trial, as well as the execution, were per-
fectly legal and In accord with Roman pro-
cedure. But, on the other hand, is It not
noteworthy that the Gospel of John, which
is particularly full In the narration of the
last scenes of Jesus' life, has nothing to say
about a trial by a Jewish court? It is ex-

THE DEATH OF JESUS 143

tremely difficult to draw definite information
from the Gospels about the Jewish trial of
Jesus.

What we know of Jewish legal procedure
and religious observance makes it most im-
probable that Jesus was tried by the Sanhe-
drin. First, it would have been most unusual
that the Sanhedrin should have been sum-
moned in the middle of the night. Secondly,
no man could have been tried for his Hfe at
a night session, unless the trial had gone on
during the preceding day. Thirdly, the trial
and the Crucifixion are supposed to have
taken place on the night and the day of the
first day of Passover, which is quite out of
the question in view of the hoHness of the
day. The Jewish trial described in the Gos-
pels is so full of irregularities and improba-
bilities that we may well assume that it repre-
sents a later assumption rather than an actual
fact.

144 A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

On the other hand, it seems most probable
that Jesus was seized by the Roman govern-
ment and tried and executed by the orders
of Pilate. Indeed, this is all that Tacitus,
in his Annals, written in the closing years
of the first century, has to say about the
death of Jesus. Referring to the Christians,
he says that they are called thus from Christ,
who was executed by Pilate in the reign of
Tiberius.

When the Gospels, however, were com-
posed, Pilate had become an almost pious
figure — a wellnigh Christian soul : efforts
were made to exculpate him as far as possi-
ble, to minimize his share in the Crucifixion.
He is represented as trying to release Jesus,
and even his wife is brought in, pleading with
him to the same effect. He is made to wash
his hands, Jewish fashion, as a symbol of
his rejection of all responsibility.

There can be little doubt that this coloring
of the story of the Crucifixion was inspired

THE DEATH OF JESUS 145

by consideration for the Roman world and
by animosity to the Jews who so resolutely
declined to accept the new religion.

In reality, there seems no reason to doubt
that Pilate, hearing of Jesus, regarded him
as a new claimant to the part of Messiah,
of the kind he had learnt to fear as chiefs of
rebellion. As it was the season of Passover,
when the city was full of pilgrims and of
national enthusiasm, his fears grew the
worse. He, therefore, ordered the arrest of
the new leader and his immediate trial and
execution.

As portrayed in the Gospels, one would
think that Pilate was on the one hand a
saint, and, on the other, a coward. As a
saint, he discerns the innocence of Jesus and
tries to save him; as a coward, he is afraid
of the Jews, and yields to them. This de-
piction is altogether out of accord with the
characterization of Pilate given by contem-
porary historians. Both Philo and Josephus

146 A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

describe him as cruel, tyrannical, and arbi-
trary, and In most sacred matters heedless
of the traditions and pleadings of the Jew-
ish people. His rule of Palestine often led
to outbreaks and he did not hesitate to order
massacres of the people. It Is altogether Im-
probable that he should have so far deviated
from his customary conduct as to plead for
the release of a man charged with rebellion,
or that he should have been unable to re-
lease him had he chosen so to do. Of course,
it is quite likely that Jesus was denounced
to Pilate, or that Pilate was aided, by some
of the Jewish rulers. The priests and offi-
cers of the Jews had reason to oppose Jesus
and to fear his activity. But the actual ar-
rest and trial of Jesus were no doubt con-
ducted by Pilate In accordance with his usual
methods.

This assumption Is confirmed by the fol-
lowing circumstances.

First, the captors of Jesus are said not to

THE DEATH OF JESUS 147

have known him personally, and it required
the betrayal of one of his disciples to Identify
him. Is It possible that a man who had
grown so well known In Jerusalem, should
have remained a total stranger to Jewish
officers? It Is possible, however. If those
arresting him were Roman officers come to
the city for the occasion.

Secondly, the charge on which Pilate tries
Jesus Is that of being the Messiah — the
King of the Jews. It Is the only question
that Interested Pilate. On the other hand,
it could not form the cause for a criminal
trial from the Jewish point of view. It
might have been thought madness. It was no
crime, to call oneself a king or to represent
oneself as redeemer of one's people.

Thirdly, the form of Jesus' execution was
Roman, not Jewish. The Jews did not know
of crucifixion until the Romans brought It
to Palestine. Varus, according to Josephus,
crucified two thousand Jews at once, while

148 A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

Titus is said to have crucified so many that
" room was wanting for the crosses, and
crosses for the bodies." What the Jews
tried to do was to mitigate the horrors of
crucifixion by allaying its pain and hastening
death.

Fourthly, the Crucifixion was attended by
jeers of Roman soldiers, mocking Jesus for
playing the Messiah, while on the Cross
Pilate ordered the inscription : Jesus of Naz-
areth, King of the Jews, which he insisted
on keeping there even when the Jews pro-
tested against it and its implications.

Amid the uncertainties one thing stands
out, namely, the spirit in which Jesus met
both his trial and his death. Whatever
doubts and speculations the Messiah-idea
may have engendered within him, whatever
futile efforts he may have made as leader of
the people, at the last moment his old self
reasserted itself. He felt afresh, and more

THE DEATH OF JESUS 149

strongly than ever, that his kingdom was not
of this world, that true power was not ma-
terial but spiritual, and that he was at one
with his Father. Above all, he felt again
what his years of teaching had taught him
that it was useless to try to explain spiritual
truth to such as did not perceive it by them-
selves. When Pilate questions him about
his being King of the Jews, Jesus asks for
the source of his information. " Knowest
thou it of thyself or have others told thee
it of me?" It was not irony, as is com-
monly assumed: it was a reflection of Jesus'
inmost thought. The high-priest is an-
swered in the same way.

" The high priest therefore asked Jesus of his
disciples and of his teaching. Jesus answered him,
I have spoken openly to the world; I ever taught
in synagogues, and in the temple, where all the
Jews come together; and in secret spake I nothing.
Why askest thou me? ask them that have heard
me, what I spake unto them: behold, these know
the things which I said."

I50 A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

One's own knowledge is the only knowl-
edge that counts. It Is the only knowledge
that reveals the truth. And his last word is
that those that know the truth shall hear him.
Only his agony wrings from him the cry:
" My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken
me? " But He is his God still. And it cer-
tainly is in tune with his whole character
and course — with his sad realization of
people's Imperfect understanding, his exalta-
tion of the spirit, his ever-present sense of
union with his Father — to close his life with
the words: '' Father, forgive them: for
they know not what they do," and, with his
last breath, to call aloud those fine Hebrew
words: "Father, into Thy hands I com-
mend my spirit ! "

" Father."

" They know not."

" Into Thy hands I commend my spirit."
In these sentences we have a summary of the
life and death of Jesus.

JESUS AND JEWISH HISTORY

Often one wonders why Jesus has played
so small a part in Jewish history. In the
Jewish literature of his own time there is no
mention of him, and such references as are
found in later talmudic passages are meager
and of doubtful value. They are vague al-
lusions to Jesus, or traditions about him,
rather than direct citations of his work and
teachings. Some people grow indignant at
the thought that those sparse allusions are
not very appreciative or reverential. But
it is foolish wrath. Those passages in them-
selves were the result of controversy and
bitterness, and are no more hostile to Jesus
than many a passage found in the Gospels
and attributed to Jesus (as the result no
doubt of similar conditions) are to the Jews.
People also wonder why in subsequent ages
151

152 A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

the Jews had made so Httle of Jesus, seeing
that, after all, he was one of their own,
and had so continually addressed himself to
them and their spiritual welfare. This ques-
tion we can answer only by taking a look at
the course of Jewish history, insofar as Jesus
is related to it.

One thing must be clear to any one at
all acquainted with the history of Jewish
thought. Jesus could not possibly have been
excluded from Jewish history, nor ignored
by it, for the mere reason that he was a re-
former, or that he thought and taught about
religion in a way different from others, nor
because he criticized his contemporaries. In
that respect, he was not so unique among the
Jews as to have incurred the punishment of
silence at the hands of his contemporaries or
of history.

The Jews believed in individuality of
teaching, in freedom of expression, and,

JESUS AND JEWISH HISTORY 153

though they may not have accepted a teach-
er's opinion, they listened to what he had
to say. The whole Talmud owes its origin
and bulk to this very characteristic, and to
the extent to which it was applied.

Even excommunication for overmuch In-
dividuality of expression or eccentricity of
^practice could not have removed Jesus from
the history of his time. There are instances
of some of the greatest scholars of the Tal-
mud being excommunicated by their col-
leagues; one of the most eminent and most
popular of them all — Eleazer ben Hyr-
canos, in the first half of the second century
— died excommunicate; yet their names were
not blotted out, nor did they cease being cited
afterwards. Over three hundred and thirty
utterances of Eleazer ben Hyrcanos are
cited In the MIshnah, the basic portion of
the Talmud. His Illustrious contemporary,
Akabiah ben Mahalalel, also was excommu-
nicated for not yielding to the majority,

154 A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

which at that particular time formed a new
rule.

Neither could Jesus' self-declaration as
Messiah have blotted his name from the an-
nals of his people. Others have called them-
selves Messiah, and Jewish history has taken
account of them and their followers, even
though their enterprises and pretensions
proved pitiable failures. When in the sec-
ond century Bar Kochba announced himself
as the Messiah and led a revolt against
Rome, Akiba, one of the foremost rabbis of
the age (and no doubt others also), sup-
ported him — and though Bar Kochba's mes-
siahship collapsed, Jewish history has not
made it a reproach against Akiba that he
supported the temporary leader. There are
similar instances in later Jewish history.

If Jesus's appearance and disappearance
were followed by silence, it was due to two
causes.

JESUS AND JEWISH HISTORY 155

First of all, to the character of his own
personality. He himself was a silent man.
He was not a man of the multitude, save
through the necessity of his ideal and the
peculiar circumstances of his age that thrust
him into the public current. " Seeing the
multitudes he went up into a mountain."
*' Now when Jesus saw great multitudes
about him, he gave commandment to depart
unto the other side." Jesus was a man of
silence, and such a man is followed by silence
when he leaves the world. As soon as the
multitude observed that he was different than
they, that his words were different, that his
thoughts and purposes were different, they
turned away and left him to himself. He
was none of them, and little did they care
about finding out what he really meant. As
for the schools and their leaders, he never
had been one of them; though in teaching
he used at times their methods, he was apart
from them : no wonder they did not cite him.

156 A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

That was the first cause of silence. The
second lay in the conditions which put Jesus
forth as the founder and protagonist of a
new faith.

It is well to remember that Jesus died a
Jew, and not a Christian. His last prayers
were Jewish, hallowed by Jewish tradition
and usage. " My God, my God, why hast
Thou forsaken me? " " Into Thy hands I
commend my Spirit ! " He died a Jew, hav-
ing no idea that he was destined to be called
the founder of a new faith, to supersede or
destroy his own. That this part fell to him
was due entirely to the small group of men
and women that had followed him and stood
by him to the last, because they loved him.

If Christianity is a religion of love, as is
commonly affirmed, it is such for no reason
so truly as that which brought it into being.
Lovers of Jesus, in the literal sense, formed
the first band of Christians; simple folk, who
had followed Jesus with their hearts, rather

JESUS AND JEWISH HISTORY 157

than their heads, who probably knew little,
and cared less, about the doctrinal implica-
tions of his utterances, but who gave them-
selves to him because they loved him for
what he was, for himself, loved him with a
love that passeth understanding. And he
loved them for this very simplicity of trust,
for this very lack of pretense, having real-
ized the emptiness of pretense and the hypo-
crisy of priestly and academic pomp.

It is those simple, loving, devoted men
and women — some of whom had silently
wept at the Cross — that were first of all re-
sponsible for the perpetuation of the name of
Jesus. His death made their attachment the
more intense. That also is part of love.
True love is deepened and strengthened by
misfortune. True love is subHmated by suf-
fering. It feeds on tragedy, which is the
grave of false love.

** For love is strong as Death,
A very flame of the Lord ! '*

158 A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

The multitude — the mob — that had waved
palm branches before Jesus when they took
him for a king who was going to make them
free and happy, deserted him when they saw
him a martyr. But those that truly loved
him, loved him the more for his Passion.
Love said he was the true Messiah, the suf-
fering Messiah, the self-sacrificing Messiah.
It was this band of loyal men and women
that thus saved the name of Jesus from ob-
livion. Whether Jesus would have ap-
proved their conception of him as the Mes-
siah, or whether it meant to them what
later It came to mean. Is quite apart. It was
they who made the name of Jesus immortal.
Naturally their number grew, but the most
important addition to their ranks they gained
when joined by Paul.

Paul was the intellectual founder of the
Christian religion. His adoption of his pe-
culiar theory about Jesus and the nature of

JESUS AND JEWISH HISTORY 159

religion, marked one of the most significant
moments in the spiritual history of the
world. Paul was an intellectual giant.
Had he not founded the Christian church,
he might have become one of the greatest
rabbis. He had had the training of a rabbi,
had lived the life of one, and his entire
method of teaching and debate was that of
the brilliant rabbis of the time. He is all
intellect, though he speaks of love and grace.
With all the weapons of the Intellect, he
fights against the intellect in Religion. At
first, it would appear, that he was a zealous
opponent of the followers of Jesus. Contact
with them, though hostile, probably led him
to marvel at their devotion and thus to pon-
der on Jesus, and finally to his own conclusion
about Jesus.

Paul's conclusion was that Jesus was the
Messiah, that after the Crucifixion he was
resurrected, that his resurrection was a sign
of his messiahship, and that Jesus thus had

i6o A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

become the savior of the world. To believe
In Jesus was to be saved. It was the new
miracle, which heralded the abrogation of
the old Law. The old Law was dead. It
had become nothing but a stumbling-block.
Faith was to take Its place, and namely faith
in Jesus. Whoever believed In Jesus, was
saved, no matter whether he observed the
Law or no. Jesus Is first and last. Noth-
ing else counts. Once Paul had embraced
this theory, he brought to bear the power
of his intellect and the brilliancy of his style
on the task of persuading others. He be-
came the fanatic exponent of his Idea. He
traveled from place to place In pursuit of
converts. And it was by him and his disci-
ples that many Christian communities were
founded both In Palestine and elsewhere —
all the way to Athens and Rome.

It was perfectly natural that very serious
differences on the subject of Jesus should crop
up among those early Christian communities.

JESUS AND JEWISH HISTORY i6i

Paul's policy was to be all things to all men
— in other words, to connive at all manner
of unimportant differences, for the sake of
his chief object — the recognition of Jesus.
But some of the differences were fundamental
and were due to the origin of the several
communities.

On the one hand, there were the Christians
sprung from among the Jews; on the other,
there were the pagan converts. It would
have been idle to expect that all of them
should understand the character and function
of Jesus alike. Nor did they. The Jewish
Christians had one conception of Jesus; the
pagan Christians quite another. To the for-
mer Jews, Jesus was a great man, descended
of David, a noble teacher, a lover of the poor
and of poverty, who would some day return
and finish the work he had begun and inter-
rupted by his death. Their name, Ebionites,
from the Hebrew for " poor," probably indi-
cated both their class and character. They

i62 A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

came from among the lowly, the humble, the
needy, whose godliness the Psalmists had
sung — the poor in spirit whom Jesus had
called blessed. To the pagan converts, on
the other hand, what could a descendant of
David mean? To them Jesus became the
actual son of God, miraculously begotten, and
sacrificed for the redemption of the world.
It was such ideas as these that not only sepa-
rated the Ebionites (or Jewish Christians)
from the Hellenes (or pagan Christians),
but also soon gave rise to all manner of fric-
tion and controversy between the two groups.
And it is such controversies and differences
that found their expression both in the Gos-
pels, where we find traces of both sets of
views, as well as in other writings of the
times.

Whatever the merit of these differences,
the fact is that the Ebionites soon lost
ground. Both human nature and history
were against them. It was human nature

JESUS AND JEWISH HISTORY 163

for those that left the parent faith gradually
to be merged altogether In the extreme form
of the new faith. And, besides, just then
the Temple was destroyed, and Jerusalem
fell. That event served as an important
means of propaganda for the new faith, and
helped to consolidate the pagan-Christian
forces. It was thus that the CathoHc, or
non-Jewish, elements of Christianity gained
ascendancy over the Jewish, and that Jesus
was removed more and more from the sphere
and the sympathy of the Jews.

This estrangement, of course, was in-
creased when Christianity was adopted by
the Roman Empire, and entered upon a
policy of persecution against the Jews. I
shall not dwell on the difference that soon
arose between the teachings of Jesus and
those of the church organized under his
name. Others have pointed it out, though
the old habit has not yet died of attributing
everything that is bad in Christianity to Jew-

i64 A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

Ish Influence and precedent. But it Is easy
to see how the outrageous persecution of the
Jews on the part of the Christian world ne-
cessarily must have made for the neglect of
Jesus, and for the creating of antagonism to
him, among Jews. Montesquieu, in his great
work on the Spirit of the Laws, depicts the
effect on the Jews of Christian persecution in
the chapter called " A Remonstrance with the
Inquisitors of Spain and Portugal." " You
want us to become Christians," he makes the
Jews say, " but you do not want to be Chris-
tians yourselves. But If you do not want to
be Christian, be at least human." Robert
Browning satirizes the unchristian efforts to
convert the Jews in his grotesque poem,
'' Holy-Cross Day." The more remarkable
is the fact that even in the middle ages Jew-
ish teachers were not wanting who, with
Maimonides, pointed out the merits of Chris-
tianity as a divine factor In spreading the
ideals of Rehglon and Morality In the world.

JESUS AND JEWISH HISTORY 165

No student of the words of Jesus can pos-
sibly hold him responsible for such applica-
tion or construction of his utterances as led
to the excision of his name from Jewish his-
tory. Surely, his aim was to the contrary
effect. He spoke of himself as part of the
Jewish people, as sent to the,m as devoted
to them. Nor did he — while speaking of
himself as he did — arrogate any powers in
heaven or on earth that others might not at-
tain. Even to his favorite disciples he could
not, nor would, promise any special honors in
the Kingdom of God.

" And there come near unto him James and John,
the sons of Zebedee, saying unto him, Master, we
would that thou shouldest do for us whatsoever we
shall ask of thee. And he said unto them, What
would ye that I should do for you ? And they said
unto him, Grant unto us that we may sit, one on
thy right hand, and one on thy left hand, in thy
glory. But Jesus said unto them, Ye know not
what ye ask. Are ye able to drink the cup that I
drink? or to be baptized with the baptism that I am
baptized with? And they said unto him, We are

i66 A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

able. And Jesus said unto them, the cup that I
drink ye shall drink; and with the baptism that I
am baptized withal shall ye be baptized: but to sit
on my right hand or on my left hand is not mine
to give: but it is for them for whom it hath been
prepared." (M^r^ lo: 35-40.)

When we think of what doctrines were
founded on the hfe and the words of Jesus
subsequently, and to what treatment of the
Jews the religion named after him lent itself,
we can understand why so little attention
was paid to Jesus in the course of Jewish
history.

THE MODERN JEWISH ATTITUDE
TO JESUS

The attitude of the modern Jew to Jesus
is a subject of absorbing interest. Just be-
cause for many years there has been silence
and estrangement, one wants to know what
is the present-day attitude.

As a matter of fact, the interest of Jews
in Jesus was never dead. How could they
fail to have such an interest in one who had
sprung from their own midst and had become
the most dominant personality in history?
An illustration is offered by the legends about
Jesus that sprang up among the Jews and
were embodied in an apocryphal biography.
This biography enjoyed considerable popu-
larity throughout the Middle Ages and down
to modern times, while its origin goes back
167

i68 A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

to antiquity, perhaps to the third or fourth
century. Jewish curiosity about Jesus, how-
ever, was thwarted and directed into hostile
channels by those untoward conditions which
were responsible for the gradual elimination
of Jesus from the history of his own people:
on the one hand, by the ideas about Jesus
that were taken over from non-Jewish
sources and finally triumphed over the Jewish
ideas; and on the other, by the persecution
of the Jews on the part of the people that
called themselves followers of Jesus. It was
thus that the Jews' natural interest in Jesus
was either suppressed or misdirected.

One of the benefits of the modern age has
lain in bringing people of different races
and faiths closer together. The old bar-
riers have been lowered. If not removed, and
men have come to feel that the chief glory
and beauty of life lies not in polemics, but
In appreciation — not in antagonism, but in
sympathy. Though Religion has always

MODERN JEWISH ATTITUDE 169

been represented as men's relation to God,
their Father, and as the bond binding men
together. It Is only recently that men have
begun to feel the tragic disparity between
religious profession and the facts of human
strife and antagonism, particularly when the
latter are carried on in the name of ReHgion.
This new realization, which has gone hand In
hand with the latter-day attention to a com-
parative study of religions, has led to an
appreciation of the ideals common to all re-
ligions, and has engendered a larger measure
of sympathy and mutual understanding
among the followers of various faiths.

The spirit of enlightenment and sympathy
has brought about a new era in the relation
of the Jews to Jesus. On the one hand,
it has caused Christian scholars to revise
somewhat the ancient conventional interpre-
tation of the Jewish contemporaries of Jesus,
particularly the much-maligned Scribes and
Pharisees. On the other hand, It has made

I70 A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

it possible for the Christian believer to listen
to a Jew's appraisal of Jesus, and to treat
it with respect and without fear of the Jew's
eternal damnation, though it differ from his
own construction.

Of course, it must be stated that there is
no official attitude of modern Jews to Jesus.
Neither the Jewish people, nor any consid-
erable part of it, has made any formal dec-
laration on the subject. Such discussion of
Jesus as has taken place among modern Jews
has been individual and subjective, expressing
in each instance personal study and tempera-
ment. It is significant, however, that such
discussion has formed an important part of
modern Jewish thought. Modern writers
of Jewish history, such as Graetz and Jost,
have not failed to devote attention to Jesus
and the rise of Christianity. Similarly, the
French Jewish scholars Salvator and Darm-
stetter. The late Mr. Joseph Jacobs wrote
a charming study of Jesus under the title,

MODERN JEWISH ATTITUDE 171

" As Others Saw Him," and Mr. Claude G.
Montefiore has written both an appreciation
of the religious teachings of Jesus and a
learned commentary on the Synoptic Gospels.
Reform rabbis, from Rabbi Isaac M. Wise
down, have often discussed the personality
and the teachings of Jesus, for the reason
that they have felt the Importance of the
subject, and the Jew's legitimate Interest in
it, and not, as some would have It, because
of any leaning to sensationalism.

What conclusion, then, may we draw as
to the attitude of the modern Jew to Jesus?
Perhaps it is well, first of all, to dispose of
the question asked most often and most in-
stinctively by Christians, namely, whether
the modern Jew accepts Jesus as the Mes-
siah. That Jews, whether modern or an-
cient, Reform or Orthodox, do not acknowl-
edge the divinity of Jesus, is known to all.
It Is understood that Jews could not do that.

172 A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

and still remain Jews, as the very foundation
of all Judaism is the unity and the spiritual
nature of God, and the Jewish religion has
never in the least compromised on this funda-
mental principle. Only insofar as all hu-
manity is divine, formed in the divine image
and with divine possibilities, can the Jew
associate the idea of divinity with Jesus. It
is commonly understood that the acceptance
of Jesus as Divinity is quite out of the ques-
tion for the Jew. But do the Jews of to-
day, or any part of them, find it possible
to accept Jesus as the Messiah?

The answer is that they do not find it
possible so to do. And for the reason that
the ideas associated in the Jewish mind with
the Messiah not only were left unrealized
by Jesus, but have remained unfulfilled to
this day.

The Messiah-idea has been one of the
most valuable elements of Jewish life. Its
origin goes back to earliest times, and it has

MODERN JEWISH ATTITUDE 173

found an extensive and manifold develop-
ment in Israel. Nor can any one study the
history of this idea without realizing that
it underwent numerous changes. When
Jesus was born, there was no uniformity of
interpretation as to the character of the Mes-
siah and of the messianic kingdom. All this
we gather from a study of the idea of the
Messiah in Israel. But among all its varia-
tions, one thing always remained associated
In the Jewish mind with the messianic hope,
namely, that the messianic age would be an
age of human perfection, of human happi-
ness, of justice and peace, as drawn by Isaiah
and other Prophets.

" And there shall come forth a shoot out of the stock
of Jesse,
And a twig shall grow forth out of his roots.
And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him,
The spirit of wisdom and understanding.
The spirit of counsel and might.
The spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the
Lord.

174 A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

And his delight shall be in the fear of the Lord;
And he shall not judge after the sight of his

eyes,
Neither decide after the hearing of his ears;
But with righteousness shall he judge the poor,
And decide with equity for the meek of the land;
And he shall smite the land with the rod of his

mouth.
And with the breath of his lips shall he slay the

wicked.
And righteousness shall be the girdle of his

loins.
And faithfulness the girdle of his reins.
And the wolf shall dwell with the lamb.
And the leopard shall lie down with the kid;
And the calf and the young lion and the fatling

together ;
And a little child shall lead them.
And the cow and the bear shall feed;
Their young ones shall lie down together;
And the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
And the sucking child shall play on the hole of

the asp,
And the weaned child shall put his hand on the

basilisk's den.
They shall not hurt nor destroy
In all My holy mountain;

MODERN JEWISH ATTITUDE 175

For the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the

Lord,
As the waters cover the sea."

Every Jewish messianic hope is crowned
with that vision. At the time of Jesus, it
was often expressed in the literature of the
people. Be the Messiah whoever he be —
all man or half angel — be his origin earthly
or celestial — be his kingdom natural or su-
pernatural, one thing was inseparable from
the very idea of the Messiah, namely, that
his coming and his reign were to mark the
beginning of a period of human perfection
and peace.

Such a period not only failed to commence
for the Jews with Jesus, but to this day it
has not come. The Jews still hope for the
messianic age; it still forms the acme of
their religious ideal; they still wonder
when and how it may come; they still are
unable to believe that the Messiah had
come.

176 A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

On the other hand, the modern Jew real-
izes the ethical power and spiritual beauty of
Jesus. In this regard Jesus takes his place
among the noble teachers of morality and
heroes of faith Israel has produced. It mat-
ters not that Jesus dwelt on certain aspects
of the spiritual and the ethical life that other
Jewish teachers failed to treat with the same
stress or the same charm. That constituted
the originaHty of Jesus, and Judaism is not
averse to originality.

Every one of Israel's Prophets was or-
iginal in this sense. While all sought to
communicate the same truth, and to serve the
same divine end, each of them saw from his
own point of view and spoke with an em-
phasis peculiar to himself: Elijah in terms
of God's Unity, Amos of His Justice, Hosea
of His Love, and so forth. It would be
foolish to call the one or the other the more
original.

The precedent of the Prophets was fol-

MODERN JEWISH ATTITUDE 177

lowed by later Jewish teachers. There were
always different temperaments and tendencies
represented among them, often radically op-
posed to one another. In the very age of
Jesus there were the schools of Shammal
and of HlUel, the one known for severity
In the application of the Law, the other for
moderation and flexibility. The synthesis
of both schools made for true progress.

Touching the Judaism of Jesus, one must
bear this in mind. It does not mean that
Jesus was any less In harmony with Judaism
because he accented In his teaching the ele-
ments of love, of kindness, of brotherliness,
of Indifference to the material world with Its
cares and rewards. He thus taught a phase
of religion that was part of Judaism, and that
has formed the most precious part of It to
many a Jewish devotee. Nor Is It profitable
to debate as to whether those several teach-
ings of Jesus were duplicated or anticipated
by other Jewish teachers. The fact is that in

178 A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

him they found their most harmonious and
most complete expression, and that his whole
personality, as well as the story of his life,
served to impress them most memorably on
the mind of the world. The modern Jew,
therefore, cannot fail to appreciate Jesus as
a religious and ethical teacher.

Of course, the modern Jew deplores the
tragic death of Jesus. Yet, if it was not
inevitable — which perhaps it was — it cer-
tainly is irrevocable. Some say it was in-
evitable, as part of a universal scheme of sal-
vation. Others believe that insofar as it was
inevitable, it was due to the calamitous con-
ditions of the age, which destroyed many a
Jewish patriot and leader, and ended by de-
stroying the Jewish state, and also, in no
small measure, to Jesus' own character,
which made him choose rather to die than
try to disentangle the web of circumstance

MODERN JEWISH ATTITUDE 179

in which he was caught. Yet, Jesus died as
the true idealist is ever ready to die, with
his ideals untouched, uncomprehended but
uncowed, with a faith in that Spirit of which
he ever felt himself a child and a part, whose
sway he had sought to spread, and in whose
keeping he felt safe. And who knows
whether it was not by this very death that
Jesus gained his immortality, that he won
his ascendancy over human hearts, and an
imperishable place in the affections of man-
kind? The modern Jew would rather Jesus
had not died as he did; but, after all, physical
death is nothing compared to the eternal life
of the spirit, and, as for martyrs, Jewish
history has known them without number.

Nor can the modern Jew fail to glory in
what Jesus has done for the growth of the
ethical and spiritual life of humanity. A
great many peculiar notions about the nature
and the function of Jesus have accumulated

i8o A JEWISH VIEW OF JESUS

in the course of the ages. Almost all of
them are foreign to the Jewish conception,
and no doubt would have been equally for-
eign to Jesus himself. Jesus was neither a
Grecian philosopher nor a mediaeval meta-
physician, and many of the things attributed
to him he probably would have resented even
more vigorously than the squabbles of the
Scribes and the pedantic punctiliousness of
the Pharisees. I have repeatedly referred
to the misunderstanding of Jesus which pre-
vailed among his associates, in his audience,
and which he suspected and dreaded even in
his disciples. It was the cause of his sadness
and solitude. It made for his spiritual iso-
lation,— for that spiritual apartness, even
while among his companions, of which we get
a ghmpse in Leonardo da Vinci's '* Last
Supper." But is not this tragedy of mis-
understanding even increased by the construc-
tion which Jesus and his teachings were given
in subsequent history?

MODERN JEWISH ATTITUDE i8i

Yet, these things apart, who can compute
all that Jesus has meant to humanity? The
love he has inspired, the solace he has given,
the good he has engendered, the hope and
joy he has kindled — all that is unequalled in
human history. Among the great and the
good that the human race has produced, none
has even approached Jesus in universality of
appeal and sway. He has become the most
fascinating figure in history. In him is com-
bined what is best and most mysterious and
most enchanting in Israel — the eternal peo-
ple whose child he was. The Jew cannot
help glorying in what Jesus thus has meant
to the world; nor can he help hoping that
Jesus may yet serve as a bond of union be-
tween Jew and Christian, once his teaching
is better known and the bane of misunder-
standing at last is removed from his words
and his ideal.

THE END

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