History of the Jews, Vol. 2 (of 6). Graetz Heinrich
who daily bathed and cleansed both body and soul in spring water). But few accounts have reached us of John the Baptist. He led the same life as the Essenes, fed upon locusts and wild honey, and wore the garb of the prophets of old, a cloak of camel-hair fastened by a leather girdle. John appears to have fully entertained the belief, that if only the whole Judæan nation would bathe in the river Jordan, acknowledge their sins, and adopt the strict rules of the Essenes, the promised Messianic time could be no longer deferred. He therefore called upon the people to come and receive baptism in the Jordan, to confess and renounce their sins, and thus prepare for the advent of the kingdom of heaven.
John dwelt with other Essenes in the desert, in the vicinity of the Dead Sea, presumably in order to be ever at hand to teach the repentant sinners the deep moral signification of baptism. Bound up with that rite was doubtless the adoption of the rule of life of the Essenes. There were certainly many, imbued with an enthusiastic spirit, and saddened by the evils and the distress they witnessed, who eagerly responded to the cry of the Essene Baptist. Who would not gladly, were it only in his power to do so, further the great work of the Redemption, and help to advance the kingdom of heaven? Did the baptized persons return improved by their immersion in the waters of the Jordan? Was any great moral influence the result of this symbolical act? History tells us not; but our knowledge of the state of Judæa at that time can easily supply us with an answer to the question. The Judæan people did not as a whole, especially among the middle-class citizens, require this violent shock as a means of improvement; they were neither vicious nor depraved, and their form of public religious worship was sufficient to keep them in the right paths. By two sets of people, however, the call of John to repentance might have been heeded – it might have had a beneficial influence upon the higher and lower classes, upon the aristocracy and wealthy, who had been corrupted by Rome, and upon the miserable peasantry, brutalized by constant warfare. But the rich only laughed at the high-souled enthusiast, who taught that baptism in the water of the Jordan would bring about the miraculous Messianic era, and the sons of the soil were too obtuse and ignorant to heed the Baptist's earnest cry.
His appeal, on the other hand, had nothing in its tenor and character to offend the Pharisees, or arouse any opposition among the ranks of that ruling party. John's disciples, those who were bound closest to him, and who carried out his mode of living, kept strictly to the words of the Law, and observed all its prescribed fasts. If the Pharisees, comprising at that time the schools of Hillel and of Shammai, did not greatly favor the enthusiasm and extravagance of the Essenes, they placed themselves in no direct antagonism to the Baptists.
From their side, John would have met with no hindrance to his work, but the Herodians were suspicious of a man who drew such throngs around him, whose burning words moved the hearts of his hearers in their very depths, and could carry away the multitude to the performance of any enterprise he chose to undertake. Herod Antipas, governor of the province in which the Baptist dwelt, gave his soldiers orders to seize and imprison him. How long a time he was kept in confinement, and whether he was still alive when one of his disciples was being proclaimed as the Messiah, must, on account of the untrustworthiness of the sources from which our information is derived, remain doubtful. It is authentic, however, that he was beheaded by the order of Antipas, whilst the story of the young daughter of Herodias bringing to her mother the bloody head of the Baptist upon a platter is a mere legend.
After the imprisonment of the Baptist, his work was carried on by some of his disciples, among whom no one exerted so powerful an influence as Jesus of Galilee. Jesus (short for Joshua), born in Nazareth, a small town in Lower Galilee, to the south of Sepphoris, was the eldest son of an otherwise unknown carpenter, Joseph, and of his wife Miriam or Mary, who bore him four more sons, Jacob, Josê, Judah, and Simon, and several daughters. Whether Joseph or Mary, the father and mother of Jesus, belonged to the family of David cannot be proved. The measure of his mental culture can only be surmised from that existing in his native province. Galilee, at a distance from the capital and the Temple, was far behind Judæa in mental attainments and knowledge of the Law. The lively interchange of religious thought, and the discussions upon the Law, which made its writings and teachings the common property of all who sought the Temple, were naturally wanting in Galilee. The country, which, at a later period, after the destruction of the Temple, contained the great schools of Uscha, Sepphoris, and Tiberias, was at that time very poor in seats of learning. But, on the other hand, morality was stricter in Galilee, and the observance of laws and customs more rigidly enforced. The slightest infringement was not allowed, and what the Judæans permitted themselves, the Galilæans would by no means consent to. They were also looked upon as fanatical dogmatists.
Through their vicinity to the heathen Syrians, the Galilæans had adopted many superstitions, and, owing to their ignorance of the nature of disease, the sick were often thought to be possessed by demons, and various forms of illness were ascribed to the influence of evil spirits. The language of the Galilæans had also become corrupted by their Syrian neighbors, and was marred by the introduction of Aramaic forms and words. The Galilæans could not pronounce Hebrew with purity. They exchanged, and sometimes omitted, the guttural sounds, and thus often incurred the ridicule of the Judæans, who thought a great deal of correct articulation. The first word he spoke revealed the Galilæan, and, as his language provoked laughter, he was not often allowed to lead in the recital of the prayers. The birthplace of Jesus, Nazareth, offered no particular attraction; it was a small mountain-town, not more fertile than the other parts of Galilee, and bearing no comparison to the richly-watered Shechem.
On account of his Galilæan origin, Jesus could not have stood high in that knowledge of the Law which, through the schools of Shammai and Hillel, had become prevalent in Judæa. His small stock of learning and his corrupt half-Aramaic language pointed unmistakably to his birthplace in Galilee. His deficiency in knowledge, however, was fully compensated for by his intensely sympathetic character. High-minded earnestness and spotless moral purity were his undeniable attributes; they stand out in all the authentic accounts of his life that have reached us, and appear even in those garbled teachings which his followers placed in his mouth. The gentle disposition and the humility of Jesus remind one of Hillel, whom he seems, indeed, to have taken as his particular model, and whose golden rule, "What you wish not to be done to yourself, do not unto others," he adopted as the starting-point of his moral code. Like Hillel, Jesus looked upon the promotion of peace and the forgiveness of injuries as the highest forms of virtue. His whole being was permeated by that deeper religiousness which consecrates to God not only the hour of prayer, a day of penitence, and longer or shorter periods of devotional exercise, but every step in the journey of life, which turns every aspiration of the soul towards Him, subjects everything to His will, and, with child-like trust, commits everything to His keeping. He was filled with tender brotherly love, which Judaism also teaches towards an enemy, and had reached the ideal of the passive virtues which the Pharisees inculcated: "Count yourself among the oppressed and not among the oppressors, receive abuse and return it not; do all from love to God, and rejoice in suffering." Jesus doubtless possessed warm sympathies and a winning manner, which caused his words to produce a deep and lasting effect.
Jesus must, from the idiosyncrasies of his nature, have been powerfully attracted by the Essenes, who led a contemplative life apart from the world and its vanities. When John the Baptist – or more correctly the Essene – invited all to come and receive baptism in the Jordan, to repent and prepare for the Kingdom of Heaven, Jesus hastened to obey the call, and was baptized by him. Although it cannot be proved that Jesus was formally admitted into the order of the Essenes, much in his life and work can only be explained by the supposition that he had adopted their fundamental principles. Like the Essenes, Jesus highly esteemed self-inflicted poverty, and despised the mammon of riches. The following proverbs, ascribed to him, appear to bear his stamp: "Blessed are ye poor, for yours is the kingdom of heaven" (Luke vi. 20). "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God" (Matthew xix. 24). "No man can serve two masters, ye cannot serve God and mammon" (Matthew vi. 24). Jesus shared the aversion of the Essenes to marriage: "It is not good to marry" (Matthew xix. 11). Community of goods, a peculiar doctrine of the Essenes, was not only approved of, but positively enjoined by Jesus; like them, he also reprobated every form of oath. "Swear not at all" (so Jesus taught), "neither by heaven nor by the earth, nor by your head – but let your yea be yea, and your nay be nay" (James v. 12). Miraculous cures, said to have been performed