CHAPTER IV. Departure salem. PUBLIC LIFE OF JESUS FROM THE FIRST TO THE SECOND PASSOVER. On the dispersion of the strangers from the metropolis, at the from Jeru close of the Passover, Jesus, with his more immediate followers, passed a short time in Judæa, where such multitudes crowded to the baptism administered by his disciples, that the adherents of John began to find the concourse to their master somewhat diminished. The Baptist had removed his station to the other side of the Jordan, and fixed himself by a stream, which afforded a plentiful supply of water, near the town of Salim, in Peræa. The partisans of John, not it should seem without jealousy, began to dispute concerning the relative importance of the baptism of their master, and that of him whom they were disposed to consider his rival. But these unworthy feelings were strongly repressed by John. In terms still more emphatic he re-asserted his own secondary station: he was but the paranymph, the humble attendant on the bridegroom, Christ the bride-groom himself his doctrine was that of earth, that of Christ was from heaven; in short, he openly announces Jesus as the Son of the Almighty Father, and as the author of everlasting life (1). John the and Herod. The career of John was drawing to close. His new station in Baptist, Peræa was within the dominions of Herod Antipas. On the division of the Jewish kingdom at the death of Herod the Great, Galilee and Peræa had formed the tetrarchate of Antipas. Herod was engaged in a dangerous war with Aretas, king of Arabia Petræa, whose daughter he had married. But having formed an incestuous connection with the wife of his brother, Herod Philip, his Arabian queen indignantly fled to her father, who took up arms to revenge her wrongs against her guilty husband (2). How far Herod could depend in this contest on the loyalty of his subjects, was extremely doubtful. It is possible he might entertain hopes that the repudiation of a foreign alliance, ever hateful to the Jews, and the union with a branch of the Asmonean line (for Herodias was the daughter of Herod the Great, by Mariamne), might counterbalance in the popular estimation the injustice and criminality of his marriage with his brother's wife (3). The influence of John (according to Josephus) was almost unlimited. The subjects, and even the sol (1) John, iii. 22. 36. (2) Luke, iii. 19. Matt. xiv. 3. 5. Mark, vi. 17. 20. (3) This natural view of the subject appears to ne to harmonise the accounts in the gospels with that of Josephus. Josephus traces the persecution of the Baptist to Herod's dread of popular tumult and insurrection, without mentioning the real cause of that dread, which we find in the Evangelic narrative. diery, of the tetrarch crowded with devout submission around the Prophet. On his decision might depend the wavering loyalty of the whole province. But John denounced with open indignation the royal incest, and declared the marriage with a brother's wife to be a flagrant violation of the law. Herod, before long, ordered him to be seized and imprisoned in the strong fortress of Machærus, on the remote border of his transjordanic territory. -- es through of Jews ritans. Jesus, in the mean time, apprehensive of the awakening jealousy of the Pharisees, whom his increasing success inflamed to more avowed animosity, left the borders of Judæa, and proceeded on his return to Galilee (1). The nearer road lay through the province of Jesus passSamaria (2). The mutual hatred between the Jews and Samaritans, Samaria. ever since the secession of Sanballat, had kept the two races not Hostility merely distinct, but opposed to each other with the most fanatical and Samahostility. This animosity, instead of being allayed by time, had but grown the more inveterate, and had recently been embittered by acts, according to Josephus, of wanton and unprovoked outrage on the part of the Samaritans. During the administration of Coponius, certain of this hateful race, early in the morning on one of the days of the passover, had stolen into the temple at Jerusalem, and defiled the porticoes and courts by strewing them with dead men's bones an abomination the most offensive to the Jewish principles of cleanliness and sanctity (3). Still later, they had frequently taken advantage of the position in which their district lay, directly between Judæa and Galilee, to interrupt the concourse of the religious Galileans to the capital (4). Jealous that such multitudes should pass their sacred mountain, Gerizim, to worship in the temple at Jerusalem, they often waylaid the incautious pilgrim, and thus the nearest road to Jerusalem had become extremely insecure. Our history will show how calmly Jesus ever pursued his course through these conflicting elements of society, gently endeavoured to allay the implacable schism, and set the example of that mild and tolerant spirit, so beautifully embodied in his precepts. He passed on in quiet security through the dangerous district, and it is remarkable that here, safe from the suspicious vigilance of the Pharisaic party, among these proscribed aliens from the hopes of Israel, he more distinctly and publicly than he had hitherto done, avowed his title as the Messiah, and developed that leading characteristic of his religion, the abolition of all local and national deities, and the promulgation of one comprehensive faith, in which the great Eternal Spirit was to be worshipped by all mankind in "spirit and in truth." There was a well (5) near the gates of Sichem, a name which by (1) Matt. iv. 12.; Mark, i. 14.; Luke, iv. 14. (2) John, iv. 1. 32. (3) Hist, of the Jews, ii. 154. (4) Ibid. 169. (5) Tradition still points to this well, about a mile distant from the walls of Sichar, which Maundrell supposes to have extended farther. A church was built over it by the Empress Helena, the Jews had been long perverted into the opprobrious term Sichar (1). This spot, according to immemorial tradition, the patriarch Jacob had purchased, and here were laid the bones of Joseph, his elder son, to whose descendant, Ephraim, this district had been assigned. Sichem lay in a valley between the two famous mounlains Ebal and Gerizim, on which the law was read, and ratified by the acclamations of the assembled tribes; and on the latter height stood the rival temple of the Samaritans, which had so long afflicted the more zealous Jews by its daring opposition to the one chosen sanctuary on mount Moriah. The well bore the name of the patriarch; and while his disciples entered the town to purchase provisions (2), a traffic from which probably few, except the disciples of Christ, would not have abstained (3), except in extreme necessity, Jesus reposed by its margin. It was the sultry hour of noon, about twelve o'clock (4), when a woman, as is the general usage in the East, where the females commonly resort to the wells or tanks to obtain water for all domestic uses, approached the well. Jesus, whom she knew not to be her countryman, either from his dress, or perhaps his dialect or pronunciation, in which the inhabitants of the Ephraimitish district of Samaria differed both from the Jews and Galileans, to her astonishment, asked her for water to quench his thirst. For in general the lip of a Jew, especially a Pharisaic Jew, would have shrunk in disgust from the purest element in a vessel defiled by the hand of a Samaritan. Drawing, as usual, his similitudes from the present circumstances, Jesus excites the wonder of the woman by speaking of living waters at his command, waters which were to nourish the soul for everlasting life: he increases her awe by allusions which show more than mortal knowledge of her own private history (she was living in concubinage, having been married to five husbands), and at length clearly announces that the local worship, both on Gerizim and at Jerusalem, was to give place to a more sublime and comprehensive faith. The astonished woman confesses her belief that, on the coming of the Messiah, truths equally wonderful may be announced. Jesus, for the first time, distinctly and unequivocally declares himself to be the Messiah (5). On the return of the disciples from the town, their but it is now entirely destroyed. "It is dug in a firm rock, and contains about three yards in diameter, and thirty-five in depth, five of which we found full of water." Maundrell, p. 62. (1) From a Hebrew word meaning a "lie" or an "idol." The name had no doubt grown into common use, as it could not be meant by the evangelists in an offensive sense. (2) According to the traditions they might buy of them, use their labour, or say amen to their benedictions (Beracoth, i. 8.), lodge in their towns, but not receive any gift or kindness from them. Buxtorf, Lex Talm. 1370. Lightfoot in loc. (3) Probably the more rigid would have re frained, even from this permitted intercourse, unless in cases of absolute necessity. (4) This is the usual opinion. Dr. Townson, in his ingenious argument to prove that the hours of John are not Roman or Jewish but Asiatic, adduces this passage, as in his favour, the evening being the usual time at which the women resort to the wells. On the other hand it is observed that noon was the usual time of dinner among the Jews, and the disciples probably entered the town for provisions for that meal. (5) Leclerc observes that Jesus spoke with more freedom to the woman of Samaria, as he had no fear of sedition, or violent attempts to make him a king. On John, iv. 26. Jewish prejudices are immediately betrayed at beholding their master thus familiarly conversing with a woman of the hateful race: on the other hand the intelligence of the woman runs rapidly through the town, and the Samaritans crowd forth in eager interest to behold and listen to the extraordinary teacher. belief in siah. The nature and origin of the Samaritan belief in the Messiah is Samaritan even a more obscure question than that of the Jews (1). That be- the Meslief was evidently more clear and defined than the vague expectation which prevailed throughout the East, still it was probably, like that of the Jews, by no means distinct or definite. It is generally supposed that the Samaritans, admitting only the law, must have rested their hope solely on some ambiguous or latent prediction in the books of Moses, who had foretold the coming of another and a mightier prophet than himself. But though the Samaritans may not have admitted the authority of the prophets as equal to that of the law; though they had not installed them in the regular and canonised code of their sacred books, it does not follow that they were unacquainted with them, or that they did not listen with devout belief to the more general promises, which by no means limited the benefits of the Messiah's coming to the local sanctuary of Jerusalem, or to the line of the Jewish kings. There appear some faint traces of a belief in the descent of the Messiah from the line of Joseph, of which, as belonging to the tribe of Ephraim, the Samaritans seem to have considered themselves the representatives (2). Nor is it improbable, from the subsequent rapid progress of the doctrines of Simon Magus, which were deeply impregnated with Orientalism (3), that the Samaritan notion of the Messiah had already a strong Magian or Babylonian tendency. On the other hand, if their expectations rested on less definite grounds, the Samaritans were unenslaved by many of those fatal prejudices of the Jews, which so completely temporalised their notions of the Messiah, and were free from that rigid and exclusive pride which so jealously appropriated the divine promises. If the Samaritans could not pretend to an equal share in the splendid anticipations of the (1) Bertholdt, ch. vii. which contains extracts from the celebrated Samaritan letters, and references to the modern writers who have translated them, and discussed their purport. Quæ vero fuerit spei Messianæ ratio neque ex hoc loco, neque ex ullo alio antiquiore monumento accuratius intelligi potest, et ex recentiorum demum Samaritanorum epistolis innotuit. Atque his testibus prophetam quemdam illustrem venturum esse sperant, cui observaturi sint populi ac credituri in illum, et in legem et in montem Garizim, qui fidem Mosaïcam evecturus sit, tabernaculum restituturus in monte Garizim, populum sunm beaturus, postea moriturus et sepeliendus apud Josephum (i. e. in tribu Ephraim). Quo tempore venturus sit, id nemini præter Deum cognitum esse. Gesenius in this note to the curious Samaritan poems which he has published, (p. 75.) proceeds to say that his name is to be (2) We still want a complete and critical edi (3) Mosheim, it. 19. 7 Samaritan drin. ancient prophets, they were safer from their mis-interpretation. They had no visions of universal dominion; they looked not to Samaria or Sichem to become the metropolis of some mighty empire. They had some legend of the return of Moses to discover the sacred vessels concealed near mount Gerizim (1), but they did not expect to see the banner raised, and the conqueror go forth to beat the nations to the earth and prostrate mankind before their reestablished theocracy. They might even be more inclined to recognise the Messiah in the person of a purely religious reformer, on account of the overbearing confidence with which the rival people announced their hour of triumph, when the Great King should erect his throne on Sion, and punish all the enemies of the chosen race, among whom the "foolish people," as they were called, "who dwelt at Sichem (2)," would not be the last to incur the terrible vengeance. A Messiah who would disappoint the insulting hopes of the Jews would, for that very reason, be more acceptable to the Samaritans. The Samaritan commonwealth was governed, under the Roman Sanhe supremacy, by a council or sanhedrin but this body had not assumed the pretensions of a divinely inspired hierarchy; nor had they a jealous and domineering sect, like that of the Pharisees, in possession of the public instruction, and watching every new teacher who did not wear the garb, or speak the Shibboleth of their faction, as guilty of an invasion of their peculiar province. But, from whatever cause, the reception of Jesus among the Samaritans, was strongly contrasted with that among the Jews. They listened with reverence, and entreated him to take up his permanent abode within their province; and many among them distinctly acknowledged him as the Messiah and Saviour of the world. Still a residence, longer than was necessary in the infected air, as the Jews would suppose it, of Samaria, would have strengthened the growing hostility of the ruling powers, and of the prevailing sect among the Jews. After two days, therefore, Jesus proceeded on his journey, re-entered Galilee, and publicly assumed, in that proSecond Vince, his office as the teacher of a new religion. The report of a miracle in second, and more extraordinary miracle than that before performed in the town of Cana, tended to establish the fame of his actions in Jerusalem, which had been disseminated by those Galileans who had returned more quickly from the passover, and had excited a general interest to behold the person of whom such wonderful rumours were spread abroad (3). The nature of the miracle, the healing a youth who lay sick at Capernaum, about twenty-five Caper naum. (1) Hist. of the Jews, ii. 160. (2) There be two manner of nations which my heart abhorreth, and the third is no nation. They that sit upon the mountain of Samaria, and they that dwell among the Philistines, and that foolish people that dwell at Sichem. Ecclesiast. 1. 25, 26. (3) Matt. iv. 13. 17.; Mark, i. 14, 15.; Luke, iv. 14, 15.; John, iv. 43—45. |