cedented and ill-omened event! and the nation, assembled from all quarters, had been constrained to disperse without the completion of the sacred ceremony (1). After the tyrannical reign of Archelaus as ethnarch, for more than nine years, he had been banished into Reduction Gaul, and Judæa was reduced to a Roman province, under a goman pro- vernor (procurator) of the equestrian order, who was subordinate to a Ro vince. Sabhe drin. to the President of Syria. But the first Roman governors, having taken up their residence in Herod's magnificent city on the coast, Cæsarea, the municipal government of Jerusalem had apparently fallen into the hands of the native authorities. The Sanhedrin of seventy-one, composed of the chief priests and men learned in the law, from a court of judicature, to which their functions were chiefly confined, while the executive was administered by the kings, had become a kind of senate. Pontius Pilate, the first of the Roman governors, who, if he did not afflict the capital with the spectacle of a resident foreign ruler, seems to have visited it more frequently, was the first who introduced into the city the "idolatrous" standards of Rome, and had attempted to suspend certain bucklers, bearing an image of the emperor, in the palace of Herod (2). In his time, the Sanhedrin seems to have been recognised as a sort of representative council of the nation. But the proud and unruly people could not disguise from itself the humiliating consciousness, that it was reduced to a state of foreign servitude. The pub. Throughout the country the publicans, the farmers or collectors of the tribute to Rome, a burden not less vexatious in its amount (3) and mode of collection, than offensive to their feelings, were openly exercising their office. The chief priest was perpetually displaced at the order of the Roman prefect, by what might be jealous or systematic policy, but which had all the appearance of capricious and insulting violence (4). They looked abroad, but without hope. The country had, without any advantage, suffered all the evils of insurInsurrec rectionary anarchy. At the period between the death of Herod and the accession of his sons, adventurers of all classes had taken up arms, and some of the lowest, shepherds and slaves, whether hoping to strike in with the popular feeling, and if successful at first, to throw the whole nation on their side, had not scrupled to assume the title and ensigns of royalty. These commotions had been suppressed; but the external appearance of peace was but a fallacious evidence of the real state of public feeling. The religious sects which had long divided the nation, those of the Pharisees and Sadducees, no longer restrained by the strong hand of power, renewed their conflicts sometimes one party, sometimes the other, ob licans. tions. (1) Hist. of the Jews, ii. 132. (3) About this period Syria and Judæa peti- scribed as intolerably oppressive. Tac. Ann. ii. 42. (4) There were twenty-eight, says Josephus, from the time of Herod to the burning of the temple by Titus Ant, xx. 8. tained the high priesthood, and predominated in the Sanhedrin ; while from the former had sprung up a new faction, in whose tenets the stern sense of national degradation which rankled in the hearts of so many, found vent and expression. Galilean. The sect of Judas the Gaulonite, or as he was called, the Galilean, Judas the may be considered the lineal inheritors of that mingled spirit of national independence and of religious enthusiasm, which had in early days won the glorious triumph of freedom from the Syro-Grecian kings, and had maintained a stern though secret resistance to the later Asmoneans, and to the Idumean dynasty. Just before the death of Herod, it had induced the six thousand Pharisees to refuse the oath of allegiance to the king and to his imperial protector, and had probably been the secret incitement in the other acts of resistance to the royal authority. Judas, the Galilean, openly proclaimed the unlawfulness, the impiety of God's people submitting to a foreign yoke, and thus acknowledging the subordination of the Jewish theocracy to the empire of Rome. The payment of tribute which began to be enforced on the deposition of Archelaus, according to his tenets, was not merely a base renunciation of their liberties, but a sin against their God. To the doctrines of this bold and eloquent man, which had been propagated with dangerous rapidity and success, frequent allusions are found in the Gospels. Though the Galileans, slain by Pilate, may not have been of this sect, yet probably the Roman authorities would look with more than usual jealousy on any appearance of tumult arising in the province, which was the reputed birthplace of Judas; and the constant attempts to implicate Jesus with this party appear in their insidious questions about the lawfulness of paying tribute to Cæsar. The subsequent excesses of the Zealots, who were the doctrinal descendants of Judas, and among whom his own sons assumed a dangerous and fatal preeminence, may show that the jealousy of the rulers was not groundless; and indicate, as will hereafter appear, under what unfavourable impressions with the existing authorities, on account of his coming from Galilee, Jesus was about to enter on his public career. Towards the close of this period of thirty years, though we have John the no evidence to fix a precise date, while Jesus was growing up in the Baptist. ordinary course of nature, in the obscurity of the Galilean town of Nazareth, which lay to the north of Jerusalem, at much the same distance to the south John had arrived at maturity, and suddenly appeared as a public teacher, at first in the desert country in the neighbourhood of Hebron; but speedily removed, no doubt for the facility of administering the characteristic rite, from which he was called the Baptist, at all seasons, and with the utmost publicity and effect (1). In the southern desert of Judæa the streams are few and (1) Matt. iii. 1-12, Mark, i, 2—8. Luke, iii. 1—18. B.ptism. scanty, probably in the summer entirely dried up. The nearest large body of water was the Dead Sea. Besides that the western banks of this great lake are mostly rugged and precipitous, natural feeling, and still more the religious awe of the people, would have shrunk from performing sacred ablutions in those fetid, unwholesome, and accursed waters (1). But the banks of the great national stream, the scene of so many miracles, offered many situations, in every respect admirably calculated for this purpose. The Baptist's usual station was near the place, Bethabara, the ford of the Jordan, which tradition pointed out as that where the waters divided before the ark, that the chosen people might enter into the promised land. Here, though the adjacent region towards Jerusalem is wild and desert, the immediate shores of the river offer spots of great picturesque beauty. The Jordan has a kind of double channel. In its summer course, the shelving banks, to the top of which the waters reach at its period of flood, are covered with acacias and other trees of great luxuriance; and amid the rich vegetation and grateful shade afforded by these scenes, the Italian painters, with no less truth than effect, have delighted to represent the Baptist surrounded by listening multitudes, or performing the solemn rile of initiation. The teacher himself partook of the ascetic character of the more solitary of the Essenes, all of whom retired from the tumult and license of the city, some dwelt alone in remote hermitages, and not rarely pretended to a prophetic character. His raiment was of the coarsest texture, of camel's hair; his girdle (an ornament often of the greatest richness in Oriental costume, of the finest linen or cotton, and embroidered with silver or gold,) was of untanned leather; his food the locusts (2), and wild honey, of which there is a copious supply both in the open and the wooded regions, in which he had taken up his abode. No question has been more strenuously debated than the origin of the rite of baptism. The practice of the external washing of the body, as emblematic of the inward purification of the soul, is almost universal. The sacred Ganges cleanses all moral pollution from the Indian; among the Greeks and Romans even the murderer might, it was supposed, wash the blood "clean from his hands (3);" and in many of their religious rites, lustrations or oblations, either in the running stream or in the sea, purified the candidate for divine favour, and made him fit to approach the shrines of the gods. The perpetual similitude and connection between the uncleanness of the body and of the soul, which ran through the (1) The Aulon, or Valley of the Jordan, is most ly desert. Διατέμνει τὴν Γεννήσαρ μέσην, ἔπειτα πολλὴν ἀναμετρούμενος ἐρημίαν εἰς τὴν Ασφαλτῖτιν ἔξεισι λίμνην. Joseph. B. T. iii. 10. 7. (2) That locusts are no uncommon food is so well known from all travellers in the East, that it is unnecessary to quote any single authority. There is a kind of beam, called in that country the locust bean, which some have endeavoured to make out to have been the food cf John. (3) Ah nimium faciles, qui tristia crimina cædis Tolli flumineà posse putatis aquá. OVID. Mosaic law, and had become completely interwoven with the common language and sentiment, the formal enactment of ablutions in many cases, which either required the cleansing of some unhealthy taint, or more than usual purity, must have familiarised the mind with the mysterious effects attributed to such a rite and of all the Jewish sects, that of the Essenes, to which no doubt popular opinion associated the Baptist, were most frequent and scrupulous in their ceremonial ablutions. It is strongly asserted on the one hand, and denied with equal confidence on the other, that baptism was in general use among the Jews as a distinct and formal rite; and that it was by this ceremony that the Gentile proselytes, who were not yet thought worthy of circumcision, or perhaps refused to submit to it, were imperfectly initiated into the family of Israel (1). Though there does not seem very conclusive evidence in the earlier rabbinical writings to the antiquity, yet there are perpetual allusions to the existence of this rite, at least at a later period; and the argument, that after irreconcilable hostility had been declared between the two religions, the Jews would be little likely to borrow their distinctive ceremony from the Christians, applies with more than ordinary force. Nor, if we may fairly judge from the very rapid and concise narrative of the Evangelists, does the public adminisIration of baptism by John appear to have excited astonishment as a new and unprecedented rite. who attend his preach For, from every quarter, all ranks and sects crowded to the teach- Multitudes ing and to partake in the mystic ablutions performed by the Baptist. The stream of the Jordan reflected the wondering multitudes of ing. every class and character, which thronged around him with that deep interest and high-wrought curiosity, which could not fail to be excited, especially at such a crisis, by one who assumed the tone and authority of a divine commission, and seemed, even if he were not hereafter to break forth in a higher character, to renew in his person the long silent and interrupted race of the ancient prophets. Of all those prophets Elijah was held in the most profound reverence by the descendants of Israel (2). He was the representative of their great race of moral instructors and interpreters of the Divine Will, whose writings (though of Elijah nothing remained) had been admitted to almost equal authority with the law itself, were (1) Lightfoot, Harmony of Evang. iii. 38. iv. 407, etc. Danzius, in Meuschen, Talmudica, etc. Schoetgen and Wetstein, in loc. (2) Some of the strange notions about Elias may be found in Lightfoot, Harm, of Evang. iv. 399. Compare Ecclesiast. xlviii. 10, 11. "Elias, who is written of for reproofs in these times, to appease the anger of him that is ready for wrath (or before wrath, προθύμου, or pc búμov,) to turn the heart of the father to the son, and to restore the tribes of Jacob. Blessed are they that see thee, and are adorned with love; for we too shall live the life." In the English translation the traditionary allusion is obscured. "In that day, read in the public synagogues, and with the other sacred books formed the canon of their Scripture. A mysterious intimation had closed this hallowed volume of the prophetic writings, announcing, as from the lips of Malachi, on which the fire of prophecy expired, a second coming of Elijah, which it should seem popular belief had construed into the personal re-appearance of him who had ascended into heaven in a car of fire. And where, and at what time, and in what form was he so likely to appear, as in the desert, by the shore of the Jordan, at so fearful a crisis in the national destinies, and in the wild garb and with the mortified demeanour so frequent among the ancient seers? The language of the Baptist took the bold, severe, and uncompromising tone of those delegates of the Most High. On both the great religious factions he denounced the same maledictions, from both demanded the same complete and immediate reformation. On the people he inculcated mutual charity; on the publicans, whom he did not exclude from his followers, justice; on the soldiery (1) humanity, and abstinence from all unnecessary violence and pillage. These general denunciations against the vices of the age, and the indiscriminate enforcement of a higher moral and religious standard, though they might gall the consciences of individuals, or wound the pride of the different sects; yet, as clashing with no national prejudice, would excite no hostility, which could be openly avowed; while the fearless and impartial language of condemnation was certain to secure the wonder, the respect, the veneration, of the populace. But that which no doubt drew the whole population in such Expectation of the crowds to the desert shores of the Jordan, was the mysterious yet Messiah. distinct assertion, that the "kingdom of Heaven was at hand (2)” -that kingdom of which the belief was as universal as of the personal coming of the Messiah; and as variously coloured by the disposition and temperament of every class and individual, as the character of the sovereign, who was thus to assume dominion. All anticipated the establishment of an earthly sovereignty, but its approach thrilled the popular bosom with mingled emotions. The very prophecy which announced the previous appearance of Elijah, spoke of the "great and dreadful day of the Lord," and, as has been said, according to the current belief, fearful calamities were to precede the glorious days of the Messiah: nor was it till after a dark (1) Michaelis has very ingeniously observed, march would lead them to the ford of the Jordan, i. was equivalent to the kingdom of the Messiah (the kingdom of God, or of Heaven), Schoetgen, Hor. Hebr. p. 1147., which was to commence and endure for ever, when the law was to be God's chosen people re-established for eternity. fully restored, and the immutable theocracy of In its higher Christian sense it assumed the sense of the moral dominion to be exercised by Christ over his subjects in this life; that dominion which is to be continued over his faithful in the state of immortal existence beyond the grave. |