PREFACE TO THE TRANSLATION<\/p>\n
His vast knowledge of Rabbinic literature has enabled the author to open a new field in the department of the New Testament contemporaneous history, thus throwing new light upon the country in which Jesus worked and upon the people among whom He moved. That this volume forms a valuable contribution to the literature of the New Testament may be gathered from the fact that scholars like C. Geikie and Ph. Schaff, the former in his \u201cThe Life and Words of Christ,\u201d the latter in his \u201cHistory of the Christian Church\u201d (vol. i. \u201cApostolic Christianity\u201d), have made use of it in describing the land and the people in the time of Jesus. For the additions put in [] the translator is responsible.<\/p>\n
B. P.
\nALLEGHENY, PENN., June, 1883.<\/p>\n
JEWISH ARTISAN LIFE IN THE TIME OF JESUS<\/p>\n
CHAPTER I<\/p>\n
THE HERODIAN GOVERNMENT AND THE SECOND TEMPLE IN THEIR RELATIONS TO HANDICRAFT<\/p>\n
When, on a certain Sabbath day, Jesus appeared in the synagogue of Nazareth, and the men and the women of the little country place where he had grown up beheld the wonder-working prophet of Galilee in their own midst, the enigma appeared to them more enigmatical; and, more confused in their minds than touched in their hearts, they looked at each other and asked, \u201cIs not this the carpenter\u2019s son? Is not this the carpenter?\u201d In this question of the Nazarenes lies the justification of the task which I have proposed to myself. Handicraft is historically interwoven with the person of Jesus. For the present we will not discuss whether he might be called with equal right \u201cthe carpenter,\u201d as \u201cthe carpenter\u2019s son,\u201d but the very fact that he was the legitimate, though not natural son of a carpenter, and was himself called the carpenter, must make the artisan class highly honored. What, in the face of this fact, are all imperial and royal privileges, which corporations and guilds have to show? There is not in all the world any higher honor to the artisan than the fact that Jesus came forth from a mechanic\u2019s family, and though he was not a mechanic himself, yet he had taken part in their employments. Through this, handicraft is hallowed, or which is the same, it has become ennobled in a more than earthly manner.
\nIt is a circle of young mechanics whom I address, and I may well take it for granted, that there is none of you who does not daily bow his knee in the name of Jesus. For this very reason I could apprehend that the choice of my theme might not only flatter an unentitled pride of the mechanic, but also wound your Christian consciousness. But I do not apprehend this. You well know that the same Jesus whom we adore is the exalted One. In that glory, which is the reward of his self-humiliation, he is exalted infinitely above all the earthly relations which he entered, and through which he passed. If we consider the state of his self-humiliation apart from his exaltation, only a false awe, an undue delicacy, could prevent us from making the statement of the Nazarenes both the starting-point and end of our attempt in considering the relation of Jesus to handicraft in connection with the history of his times.
\nBut are we to believe that by this means the essence of the person and work of Jesus will be more comprehensible to us? Shall we add a contribution to that romantic treatment of the life of Jesus, which is now in fashion? No; for three decades I have studied the history and literature of that people from among whom Jesus sprang, but ever more and more I convinced myself that that which he was and which he has become to the world will never be comprehended out of the connection of his time and the circumstances of his life. We may try to bring before us the conditions of his times and the situation of his country, as near as possible, yet he ever moves like a mysterious figure through these finite surroundings, and his form ever towers in peerless majesty above the scene of his presence. Nevertheless it will repay to bring before us the scenes where once wandered the heavenly Son of man, to whom we all, old and young, lettered and unlettered, owe the salvation of our souls.
\nBut can we really perform the task which we have undertaken? With the exception of Joseph the carpenter, Simon the tanner, and Paul, Aquila, and Priscilla, the apostolic family of tentmakers, I know of no artisan whom the New Testament mentions. But you will perhaps remind me of Alexander the coppersmith at Ephesus, who under Christian pretence strongly opposed the Apostle Paul, and of Demetrius the silversmith, of the same place, who, by making small models of the world-wide famous Temple of Diana, earned great gains, which he feared to lose through the preaching of St. Paul; perhaps also of Lydia the seller of purple at Philippi, who may also have sold trimmings, especially in crimson, since real purple was beyond the reach of the middle classes. But Alexander and Demetrius and Lydia do not concern us here, since we are about to consider handicraft only, as it was viewed and carried on in the time of Jesus and his surroundings. If we had the New Testament alone we could not perform our task, for although the contemporary views concerning handicraft are reflected therein, yet it is never brought vividly before us. We have, however, other sources: in the first place, the historian Josephus, the contemporary of Jesus, who not only describes the war with the Romans, in which he took an active part down to the downfall of the Jewish state, but also the antiquities of his people; in the second place, we have the Talmud i.e., that huge, variegated legal code which regulates the Jewish life, and the Midrashim, i.e. the comprehensive and numerous sayings, which, in the form of a commentary on the several books of the Old Testament, reach as far back as the first centuries of the Christian era. Both the Talmud and the Midrash contain many historical passages, but in both works the material necessary for our task lies hidden here and there, unconnected and pell-mell. We will bring together these scattered sayings and stories respecting artisan life like stones of a destroyed mosaic picture, and put them into one harmonious whole, and keeping in view the stability of Eastern as well as Palestinian habits, we shall be justified in going here and there somewhat farther back and beyond the century in which Jesus lives. To-day we begin to bring before our minds the condition of Palestine under the government of the Herodians, with reference to handicraft.
\nThe dauntless patriotism of the Maccabean priestly family had rescued the Jewish people from the tyranny of the Syrian Seleucid\u00e6, who had tried to force on the Jews the pagan king of the gods, Jupiter Olympus, in place of the God of Israel. None had a better right to the throne, for which no heir of the lineage of David presented himself, than this priestly family, from which arose a new royal family, which governed Israel over a hundred years, and made it once more a free, rich, and respected people. But power, prosperity, and honor rather tend to corrupt than to ennoble mankind. The glorious royal family only too soon lost the nobility of mind which was the means of founding its nobility of birth. Its piety succumbed to dynastical passion and caprice and cruelty, and family feuds shifted at last the government into the hands of an Idumean family, which was thus drawn into the public affairs of the Jewish people, and King Alexander Iann\u00e6us and his wife Alexandra, who for nine years ruled after his death, appointed the Idumean Antipater as governor of the violently conquered province of Idumea. When, after the death of Alexandra, a sanguinary struggle broke out between her two sons, Aristobulus and Hyrcanus, this Antipater supported the cause of the latter, the older of the two brothers. But he only sought his own interests. With Hyrcanus\u2019s money he bought the favor of the Romans, and his son Herod, whom at the age of twenty-five he had made governor of Galilee, by his activity soon threw Hyrcanus into the shade. Hyrcanus, however, saw nothing, and took no warning; he was too generous, too weak, and too short-sighted to perceive what a viper he nourished in his bosom in the more powerful and daring Herod. The end was, that in the year 39 B.C. Herod was nominated King of Judea by the Roman Senate, on the motion of Anthony. The Maccabean prince Antigonus was executed by Anthony, whom Herod had bribed for this purpose, and Herod now made good his position in the government, which he had obtained so cunningly and boldly, by ridding himself successively of all the other branches of the Maccabean royal house, at the same time contriving to retain, by lies and flattery, the favor of the Roman conquerors.
\nWhen the Son of David, who opposed his heavenly kingdom to the glittering misery of this tyrannical government, was born at Bethlehem, Herod had only yet six years left of his thirty-seven years of government. The suspicion of the tyrant increased more and more. His crying deeds of blood in those latter years are so numerous that we must not be surprised to find the comparatively insignificant massacre of the children of Bethlehem only referred to in connection with the Gospel narrative. We, however, have nothing to do here with these scenes of horror\u2014we must not forget that we are about to describe the artisan life of that time.
\nUnder Herodes many conditions were wanting for a comfortable and thriving prosperity of the working classes. Politically the times were unsettled; true, that the neighboring nations were subdued by Herod, but whether he would be able to maintain his throne against the Romans was always doubtful, while he believed his life and throne to be secure only by heaping murder on murder against the attempts of his nearest relatives. Toward the Romans he showed a boundless gratitude, and toward many foreign cities an inexhaustible generosity, and in order to satisfy his ambition he wasted enormous sums, which, for the greater part, he extorted from his subjects. He provided the foreign cities with more liberal means for erecting splendid buildings, and did openly profess his preference for the Greeks above the Jews. Still, in his own dominions he erected buildings which vied even with those of the neighboring land of the pyramids\u2014C\u00e6sarea, with its harbor, and the Temple of Jerusalem were marvels of architecture. When about to rebuild the temple, the people feared that Herod might destroy without constructing it. He therefore made ready everything necessary for the work before he commenced it. He procured a thousand wagons for carting stone; he selected ten thousand of the most experienced workmen, and had one thousand priests, whose good-will he won by presenting them with new vestments, instructed in masonry and carpentry. But in many other places also axe and chisel were called into play to beautify the old and to conjure forth the new, as in the city of Phasaelis, so called after his brother, which in a hitherto isolated surrounding now received a potent impetus to industry. In as far as the people strictly adhered to the law of the fathers, it beheld with sorrow this heathenishly splendid transformation of the country and this prodigal expenditure of the national fund; but a large proportion of the citizens sided with the king, because he gave them employment and flattered their worldly, national pride. During the famine, which occurred in the thirtieth year of his reign, Herod at once, though not for the length of time, won the affection of the whole people. He ordered to have the gold and the silver of his palace melted down for the purpose of buying corn in Egypt, appointed bakers for those who could not use up their allotted share of meal themselves, and in every manner he assisted the sufferers. Yet, in spite of all his benevolence or the reductions of the taxes, he betrayed but too openly his selfish motives. It was no real love for his people that actuated him, for the benefits he conferred on them were soon far outbidden by still more liberal sums squandered on foreigners, as e.g. on the revival of the Olympic games. It was hardly possible to conceive how he, who to-day appeared a bankrupt, seemed to be so inexhaustibly rich to-morrow. But at that time Palestine had an incredibly dense tax-paying population. Of Galilee, the northern province, Josephus tells us: \u201cNo part of it lies idle; moreover the cities lie here very thick, and the very many villages there are here, as everywhere, so full of people, by the richness of their soil, that the very least of them contain about fifteen thousand inhabitants.\u201d In another place he counts no fewer than two hundred and four cities and villages in Galilee. \u201cThe land of Israel,\u201d says the Talmud, \u201cis not called without reason the \u2018gazelle beauty,\u2019 for when inhabited it stretches itself out like the skin of the gazelle; when not inhabited it shrinks together.\u201d Indeed, the boundaries of the Holy Land must have been as elastic as the skin of a gazelle\u2014thin, yet hard to sever.
\nOn feeling his approaching end, Herod ordered the chiefs of the Jewish people to be shut up in the Hippodrome, and commanded that immediately after he had drawn his last breath they should be shot down with arrows, that there might be lamentation at his death, though not for him. When his son Archelaus ascended the throne, saving the right of the imperial sanction, he was saluted with the cry to reduce the taxes, release the prisoners, and abolish the heavy excise, with which his father had hampered trade. Against his will, he was too soon involved in sanguinary contests with the people, which gave vent to the long-suppressed rage. The whole kith and kin of the Herodians went to Rome, and in the temple of Apollo the Emperor Augustus divided the country between the three sons of his faithful deceased vassal\u2014between Archelaus, Philippus, and Herod Antipas. Archelaus is the same under whose dominion over Judea the holy family, after their return from Egypt, hesitated to settle at Bethlehem. Herod Antipas is the same who gave the head of John the Baptist to the bewitching dancer, his step-daughter Salome. From Philip the town of C\u00e6sarea Philippi, at the sources of the Jordan, took its name. He also raised the hamlet of Bethsaida, on the left bank of the Jordan, to the rank of a town, endowing it at the same time with municipal property, thus inducing a great many to settle there. Archelaus also became famous by building Archelais and embellishing Jericho by restoring the royal palace and planting palm-trees, which were watered by an aqueduct. And no less pleasure in architecture took Antipas. Under him Sepphoris arose from its ruins as one of the strongest and most beautiful of mountain fortresses, while Beth-Haram, on the other side of the Jordan, opposite Jericho, was rebuilt in Roman style and was called Livias Julias, in honor of the consort of the Emperor Augustus. The most remarkable, however, of all buildings is the building of Tiberias on the shores of Gennesareth\u2014the lake of the Princes\u2019 Gardens. This town, named after the Emperor Tiberias, and which St. John mentions three times in his Gospel, and to which we owe, for the most part, the true transmission of the Old Testament text, was built partly on a cemetery, a circumstance which kept away stricter Jews; but the tetrarch contrived to people it, partly by force and partly by offering the inducements of high privileges. Not very different was the case of the royal residence of C\u00e6sarea on the Hermon, built by the tetrarch Philip. Pancas, the spot where it was built, was infamous on account of the idolatrous practices there. The same Philip, who also raised Bethsaida on the left bank of the Jordan, from a village to the rank of a city, which he called Julias, and where he built for himself a family vault, was the best of the three Herodians, a plain, straightforward, peace-loving man, to whom it was granted to end his days in peace after a reign of thirty-seven years. He died childless. His wife was that Salome, whose mother Herodias had left her husband at Rome and had thrown herself into the arms of his more prominent brother, Herod Antipas. This Herodias was not satisfied with being the wife of a tetrarch; she wished to be a queen, and through her vanity brought it finally to pass that she had to follow her husband into banishment to Lugdunum (Lyon) in Gaul. Here in Gaul Archelaus also expired, who had been banished thirty years before to Vienne by the emperor, on account of complaints made against him. For some time the provinces once ruled by these three brothers were under the Roman government; one of the procurators of Judea, after the deposition of Archelaus, was Pontius Pilate. Yet once more, as in the days of Herod the Great, the whole of Palestine became one kingdom under his grandson Agrippa, who received the tetrarchies of Philip and Antipas from the Emperor Caligula, and afterward also the rest of the country from the Emperor Claudius. When he suddenly died, at C\u00e6sarea, A.D. 44, his son Agrippa was yet a minor. The country was again governed by procurators. But through the favor of the Emperor Claudius and his successors, Agrippa II. was made king over a great part of the country, and his rule gradually extended greatly in the northerly and easterly directions. During the national struggle for independence, Agrippa with servile devotion sided with the Romans, and died in the year 100, leaving no son to succeed him. With these two Agrippas ended the Herodian government, and that in a manner which in some degree indemnified the people for the many sufferings they had to endure.
\nFor fifty years Agrippa I. led a wild, loose, and extravagant life; but during the three years of his reign he became pharisaically pious, and regarded it as a matter of honor to conform to the Mosaic law as strictly as any other Israelite, without, however, denying the inherited heathenish trait peculiar to the Herodians. He squandered millions in splendidly decorating the town of Berytos with theatre, amphitheatre, colonnades, baths, statues, and paintings. And, although, at the annual shows held there, he distributed corn and oil among the populace, yet it was painfully felt that he distinguished by far too much a heathenish city. On the other hand, he dedicated to the temple the golden chain which was given to him by the Emperor Caligula to replace the iron one which he had worn in his Roman prison, and which was hung up over the treasury-chamber, and, as Josephus relates, he never allowed a day to pass without offering a sacrifice. In the Talmud he is celebrated as the ideal of an Israelitish king. He is often quoted there as negotiating with the chiefs of the Pharisees. He carried, as we are told, his basket of first-fruits up the temple ascent, and once, when in the first year after a jubilee, he stood on a pulpit erected in the temple, and in accordance with an old custom read aloud the section relating to the king, in the book of Deuteronomy (17:15), his tears ran down when he came to the words: \u201cThou shalt not set a stranger to be king over thee.\u201d Touched by his emotions, the bystanders encouraged him with the words, \u201cBe of good cheer, Agrippa! Thou art our brother, thou art our brother!\u201d It was this Herod who beheaded James, the son of Zebedee, and seeing that this pleased the Jews, had Peter also imprisoned. He died suddenly in an assembly, in which he had appeared in a state dress, worked entirely in silver, and had received divine honors from his flatterers. Under his government handicraft saw its good days. He squandered the means, of which he disposed, in his country. He could enter into the feelings of the trader and artisan, since, before his star was in the ascendency, he had occupied the office as agoranomen\u2014i.e., \u201ccontroller of the markets\u201d at Tiberias\u2014an office which he had received from the husband of his sister Herodias, who interceded in his behalf. His son, Agrippa II., was the pale reflection of his father. He also professed great piety, but with less fanaticism. He is the same, who with his sister Berenice, with whom he was united in far other than sisterly bonds, had the Apostle Paul brought before them, at whom they wished to look closely. Owing to the outbreak of the war with Rome it was impossible to use the great stock of building materials which he had procured from Lebanon to continue the building of the Temple. But that he did not like to see the working-class idle and impoverished had already been shown, when, on the completion of the Temple, thousands having been thrown out of work, he employed them by paving the streets of Jerusalem with white marble.
\nThe most prosperous mechanics under the Herodians were those who were employed on the building of the Temple, from the year 20 B.C. to about ten years before the fall of Jerusalem. There were more than 18,000 laborers. The work was given out to the ell-measure, and completed according to an ell of somewhat greater length, so as to avoid both the possibility and appearance of unfaithfulness in holy things. The laborers did not lose anything by this arrangement, for the wages were very high. Wages were not only paid weekly, but also daily, and he who only worked one hour in the day was immediately paid. It must, however, not be supposed that only architects, sculptors, masons, and carpenters were employed. The wall, which inclosed the two forecourts of the temple, was forty ells high and was pierced by nine lofty gateways, eight of which were provided with folding-doors overlaid with gold and silver, while the eastern one had folding-doors constructed wholly of Corinthian brass, but all the more richly decorated. This was called the Nicanor, or the \u201cBeautiful Gate.\u201d The temple also was internally richly adorned, not only by the overlaying with gold and silver, but also with massive works wrought in these precious metals. The whole temple was aglow with dazzling light, reflected partly from the plates of gold with which it was overlaid on all sides, and partly, where there was no gilding, from the lustre of the purest white marble; from above it bristled with golden spikes, which we would take as lightning-rods, but which were really designed to prevent the birds from alighting on it. Inside no iron was used, and the altar of burnt-offering was built without the use of any iron tool, since \u201cthat which shortens the life of man should not be lifted upon that which lengthens it.\u201d In decorating the temple no scope was found for the painter\u2019s pencil, but it appears that on the eastern gate the sculptor had chiselled at least one bas-relief, representing, it is said, the Persian metropolis, Susa. All the more busily were other artisans employed, not only artificers in gold, silver, and copper, but also weavers, knitters, and robemakers, whose business it was to make the curtains which separated the holy places of the temple and the vestments of the priests. According to the statement of Simeon, the assistant of the high priest, who had seen the curtain of the Holy of Holies, it was woven of seventy-two twisted plaits; each plait consisted of twenty-four threads\u2014six white, six scarlet, six blue, and six gold\u2014these were the four remarkable holy colors. When Jesus uttered those enigmatical words, \u201cDestroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days,\u201d forty-six years had already been spent in building the Temple of Jerusalem. It was a grand monument of the unsurpassable love of art, of the most different Palestinian works.
\nSeveral trades were even carried on permanently within the temple. The service of the butcher\u2019s trade in the greatest measure was called forth by the symbolic sacrifices of animals, the abolishing of which we owe to the self-sacrifice of Jesus Christ. The priests, who were daily appointed for their service by the lot, had the duty of slaying and dissecting the sacrifices, of which the minutest details were regulated by the law. On the north side of the altar stood the so-called slaughter-house; here were eight dwarf columns of stone, on which lay square boards of cedar wood; each board had three rows of hooks, for hanging up large and small cattle, and between these columns stood marble tables, on which the animals were excoriated. The temple had also its bakeries. There was one cell in which every morning the high priest\u2019s meal-offering was prepared, and another in which the shewbread was prepared. There were excellent confectioners and perfumers. The preparation of the shewbread belonged to the family of Garmu, and that of the incense to the family of Abtinas. Both were matchless in their respective callings. Alexandrians who attempted it failed to produce so fine and straight a column of smoke. On the whole, the Alexandrians who had been procured did not meet the expectation formed of them. When Alexandrian workmen repaired the brazen cymbal of the temple, the work had to be undone in order to evoke the former sweet sounds. When they repaired the large mortar in which the spice for incense was bruised, this work also had to be undone, in order to produce as aromatic a perfume as had formerly been obtained. Palestinian workmanship, therefore, carried off the prize. One of its masterpieces was an organ with one hundred different tones\u2014not a water-organ (hydraulic), but a wind-organ with pipes\u2014whose powerful sound, it is said, could be heard as far as Jericho. There was a special inspector, who had charge of the water-works. In the temple was not only a physician especially devoted to bowel-complaint, and whose practice was by no means small, since the priests were obliged always to be barefoot on the stone pavements, but also an inspector of fountains, a master of the vestry, a lamp-trimmer, an overseer of the curtains\u2014i.e., the skilled weavers whose duty it was to keep them in repair, and were assisted in their labor by women. Masters and fellows of the most different trades worked here together, and were paid out of the temple funds. This temple was, as it is called in Heb. 9:1, \u201ca worldly sanctuary;\u201d it was a world in miniature\u2014a great slaughter-house, a great kitchen, a great bakery. The world-enlightening word of the adoration of God in spirit and truth had but to be spoken, in order to make the restoration of this cultus, after it had once been abolished, impossible for all eternity.<\/p>\n
CHAPTER II<\/p>\n
CONTEMPORARY VIEWS OF LABOR AND HANDICRAFT IN GENERAL<\/p>\n
Before we proceed any farther we must make ourselves acquainted with the views respecting labor and handicraft which were generally current at the time of Jesus. The New Testament is here our main source of information; next is the Talmud, that colossal Jewish religious code, in which the Jew educated in the love of his nation finds his spiritual home, while to the educated in Christendom it is less known than the Vedas of the Indians or the Avesta of the Persians.
\nA learned Jew, Emmanuel Deutsch, of the British Museum, published in the year 1867 in one of the most read and prominent English reviews\u2014the Quarterly Review\u2014an article on the Talmud, in which he endeavored to show that between Judaism and Christianity no such wide difference exists as is generally believed, since most of the pithy sayings and parables of the New Testament are not to be regarded as the original property of Christianity. The impression produced by this essay was all the deeper, the less able most of the readers were to compare the Talmud with this its glorification. Not a word was said of the reverse of its bright side. The relation of Christianity to the Talmud is that of an inland sea to the ocean, to which it owes its filling. The good of Christianity is already to be found in the Talmud, and what is repulsive therein has already been objected to in the Talmud.
\nIt would be very easy to demonstrate that the author has no idea of the essence of Christianity, which consists above all in the work of redemption, and in the fact that in Jesus was manifested that servant of God whom by the mouth of the Old Testament prophets God had promised to make as the covenant of the people and a light to the Gentiles\u2014i.e. as mediator of a new covenant, which, proceeding forth from Israel, should embrace all nations. Since, however, in these lectures we are to speak of the artisan life in the time of Jesus, we will prove by one example on the ground of handicraft, that the records of Christianity are so much older than their Talmudic parallels.
\n\u201cHast thou all thy life long seen,\u201d says Rabbi Simeon, the son of Eleazer in the Talmud, \u201ca beast or a bird which has a trade? Still, they are nourished, and that without anxious care, although they are created only to serve me. But I am created to serve my Creator, and if they that are created to serve me are nourished without anxious care, shall I not also, who have been created to serve my Creator, be able to be nourished without anxious care? Certainly, only if I have been evil in my deeds, I forfeit my support.\u201d Who is not here reminded of the words of Jesus: \u201cBehold the fowls of the air; they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?\u201d Herr Deutsch draws many such parallels, avoiding with proud air the question of priority, as if it could not be raised at all. For when did this Simeon, the son of Eleazer, live? He lived in the time of Emperor Adrian, full nigh a century later than Jesus. We will not, of course, insist on that account that he had drawn his maxim either direct from the gospel of St. Matthew, which was current in the Hebrew language, or indirectly from Christian lips; but if there is such a real coincidence, it is evident here, as in almost any other case, that the saying of Jesus is the original and that of Simeon the copy. We say in almost any other case, but we might just as well say in all cases; for with the exception of Hillel, of whom I have spoken in my essay on Jesus and Hillel, all Talmudical teachers whose maxims correspond to the words of the New Testament are of a far later date than Jesus and the records of Christianity.
\nBesides, we are willing to admit that the whole of Christianity might be easily compiled from the Talmud, if it consisted only in such teachings as the exhortation to trust in God and to virtuous living; but only a tea-water interpretation can pare down the New Testament writings to such ordinary moral maxims; and with Kirkegaard we ask, \u201cWhat necessity was there that the Heavenly Wisdom should become man, in order to utter trivialities?\u201d
\nThe Jewish nation has ever been an industrious people, second to none in energy, strength, ingenuity, and restless activity. Agriculture and handicraft were their main occupations until their dissolution as an independent state; and only in consequence of their dispersion and the forced restrictions placed on their industry have they become a people of barterers and traders, thus taking the place of the ancient Ph\u0153nicians. The God of the Jews, Cicero somewhere remarks, must be a small God, since he has given his people so small a territory. But this little territory, of only about thirty-three miles long and twenty miles broad, by concurrent advantages of divine blessing and human culture, had for centuries been an earthly paradise. In its present form it is merely the dross of its former self. It was planted and cultivated almost to the mountain summits, by means of terraces, and even rocky ground was made fruitful by means of mould being piled upon it. The Mosaic law promoted and protected agriculture by its wise enactments. It also favored the culture of the vine and the olive. In the Song of Songs we see horticulture in its highest perfection. Iron and copper were obtained not only from stones lying around the surface, but probably also by mining. Among the iron mines of the district east of the Jordan are some known in Syria as the \u201cRose Mines,\u201d which were again worked by Ibrahim Pasha from the year 1835 to 1839; but when, in 1840, Syria was again connected with Turkey, a sudden end was put to this newly revived branch of industry. Egypt had become to the Israelites a school of science and arts, the influence of which was left long afterward. Already, in the times before the captivity, we meet with numerous trades developed into separate callings. Smiths and locksmiths, carpenters and masons, have distinct names. Fullers and potters we find in their separate quarters. Even shaving had already become a profession.
\nIn that early period of Christianity which we are here considering, trade was so developed and so highly esteemed that many places were named after any particular business which was carried on there with peculiar skill and success; thus Arbel from its ropewalks, and Kefar Chananja and Sichin from their potteries. Some actually took the names of such trades as Magdala the Dyer (Migdal zab\u2019ajja). The Jewish people were at that time far from being barterers and traders. Of course we are not now speaking of such internal commerce as a nation must of necessity carry on to provide its own necessaries of life. As we learn from the book of Nehemiah, there was at Jerusalem a provision market, to which not only peasants from the country brought their agricultural produce, but also Tyrians brought fishes and other wares. Agriculture and trade cannot exist without reciprocity of buying and selling, hence the high priest, in the short petition which he offered up on the day of Atonement, after leaving the Holy of Holies, among other things prayed for a \u201cyear of intercourse and trade.\u201d That Jesus found in the Temple tables of money-changers, who, for a commission, exchanged unholy for holy coins, and stands of those who sold doves, where those who were unable to bring more costly offerings procured the birds requisite for sacrifice, does not indicate any special love of trade on the part of the people. These were branches of industry springing naturally from the temple ritual, which, however intruding themselves as not belonging to the place, had degraded the outer temple-court into a noisy bazaar. Even under two cedars, on the Mount of Olives, there were booths, where Levitically pure meal, etc. were sold; but on these \u201cbooths of Bethany\u201d did not light the fiery zeal of the Purifier of the Temple. Any special preference for that kind of trade which subsists not in the sale of native but foreign produce, we find nowhere among the Jewish people, when we look backward as far as possible beyond the first Christian century, and forward to about five hundred centuries afterward. \u201cHate not toilsome labor,\u201d we read in Eccles. 7:16, \u201cnor husbandry which the Most High has created.\u201d About trade nothing is said. In the sixty-three tracts which constitute the Talmud, scarcely a word occurs in honor of commerce, but much to point out the dangers attendant upon money-making and a wandering life. \u201cWisdom,\u201d says Rabbi Jochanan with reference to Deut. 30:12, \u201cis not in heaven,\u201d that is, it is not found with those who are proud; \u201cneither beyond the sea,\u201d that is, it will not be found among traders nor among merchants. The reason is apparent: the unsteady life, always speculating on gain, nourishes a materialistic spirit, preventing one from becoming a thoroughly religious character. If, however, in the Middle Ages the Jews absorbed not only the commerce, but also made themselves detested through their usurious greed, they had, in taking usury from non-Israelites, the Mosaic law on their side, which distinguishes between the coreligionist and foreigner, a distinction which Christianity does not recognize; but this professional usury was not in accordance with the spirit of Judaism, since the Talmud puts the usurer on the same level with the gambler, and declares both to be vicious men, unfit for bearing testimony in a court of justice.
\nAncient Judaism honored the more, however, labor and handicraft. When the Holy One, blessed be he, says a passage in the Talmud, pronounced his sentence on fallen Adam, he burst into tears at the words, \u201cThorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee,\u201d and exclaimed, \u201cO Lord of the Universe, shall I eat with the ass out of the same manger?\u201d But when God added, \u201cIn the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread,\u201d he was comforted. The life of man is no longer paradisaical, and his own maintenance is, as the Talmud says in the same passage, often as hard to him as is her labor to a woman, yea, hard as was the controlling of the Red Sea, when a miracle of God rent its waters asunder in the midst. But even in this unparadisaical life the superiority of man over the beast is attested by the fact that his daily bread, scanty and hard won as it may be, is yet the reward which nerves him for his daily labor. The laden ass, staggering under his burden, and the ox dragging the plough are but the passive and unconscious slaves of man, who himself becomes the servant of the earth, by helping her to bring forth both the seed full of promise and golden fruit. \u201cLove labor\u201d was a maxim of Hillel\u2019s teacher, Shemaya, who may have died shortly before Christ was born. \u201cGreat is labor,\u201d says another, \u201cfor she honors her master.\u201d \u201cGreat is labor, says yet a third, \u201cfor she warms her master.\u201d For this reason also did the Mosaic law punish with fivefold restitution the theft of an ox, but only with fourfold that of a sheep; because in the former case the prejudice done to the owner in his labors should be taken into consideration; behold how highly does the Maker of the world value labor, runs the conclusion! And, when a young man once presented himself before Rabbi Ishmael, the latter asked him, \u201cMy son, what is your occupation?\u201d He replied, \u201cI am a scribe.\u201d \u201cThen,\u201d exclaimed Ishmael, \u201cbe thou conscientious, my son, for thy work is godlike.\u201d
\nYes! all work worthy of the name is godlike, since the world is one whole in which everything co-operates. Each separate thing is but a stepping-stone to some higher end, and all things work out together the grand purpose of the whole\u2014that is, the purpose which God projected when it seemed good to him to create the world, and he executed his design. Mere selfish employment can be the allotted task of no individual, rather must the work of each one lie in making his dealings subservient to the good of the whole community by which he finds himself surrounded. In this general sense, and leaving the materials of earthly labor and its present difficulties out of consideration, labor was already the duty of the paradisaic man, and in this sense we may well say that labor is divine and eternal. For even the creative energy of God, by which he made his almighty power subservient to his love, is called work on the first page of the Bible, and even in the celestial world, wherever and however it is unveiled before the eyes of holy seers, it is not idle and monotonous rest which we behold, but motion, activity, self-sacrifice, fulfilment of divine commands, making known exigencies relating both to heaven and earth\u2014in a word, labor in God\u2019s service.
\nFor this reason St. Paul exhorts his readers, in many a passage of his Epistles, to labor and to wait on their worldly calling, and to work with their hands the thing which is good, that they may have to give to him that needeth, and that they may have lack of nothing. So, too, runs a Rabbinical saying: \u201cMake a working day of the Sabbath (without faring better on that day than on any other), only be not dependent upon people!\u201d And another: \u201cLet a man compel himself even to the most repulsive labor rather than be dependent upon others.\u201d True, the whole world is founded on the principle of reciprocal completion, but an idler is useless, and is a hindrance rather than a useful link in the chain of this organization. Giving was ever more blessed than receiving, and the bread of charity from another man\u2019s hand has ever a bitter taste. Therefore St. Paul refused to avail himself of his right as a preacher of the gospel to be supported by his willing hearers. Barnabas and some other of his fellow-laborers held the same views as this apostle, who in writing to the Thessalonians bears witness to himself that, while unwearying in preaching the gospel, he labored with his own hands day and night, because he would not be chargeable to any of them. In this he was more fortunately circumstanced than the Palestinian apostles, who were taken away from their calling as fishermen\u2014he had a trade which he could carry on either by sea or by land.
\nThere is no trade, says the Talmud, which the world can spare; but happy is he who has had in his parents the pattern of a business of superior character. In point of dignity and rank there is a difference between trade and trade, but even the lowest is no disgrace, in so far as it supplies a real human want, and any calling is better than none. When St. Paul says, \u201cLet him that stole steal no more, but rather let him labor,\u201d it sounds like an allusion to the old Jewish saying, that \u201cwhen a man teaches his son no trade it is as if he brought him up to highway robbery.\u201d Skin dead animals by the wayside, says a current maxim, and say not, I am a priest or I am a man of distinction, and work is objectionable to me. And God has so ordered things that every artisan loves his trade, so that no trade should disappear from the world.
\nAt the time of Jesus there was at Jerusalem a skilful and much patronized digger of wells, fountains, and cisterns (bajj\u00e2r), named Simeon, of the Palestinian village of Sichnin. He once said to Rabbi Jochanan, the son of Zaccai, the disciple of Hillel: I am as great a man as thou. How so? inquired the celebrated Rabbi. For the reason, replied Simeon, that I no less than thou supply the wants of the community. If any man comes to thee, and inquires for Levitically pure water, you tell him, Drink of yonder fountain, for its water is pure and cool; or if a woman inquire concerning a good bathing-place, you say, Bathe in this cistern, for its waters wash away uncleanliness. In fact, for the due observance of the Jewish laws of purification, Simeon was quite as indispensable a person as all the doctors of the law, whose decision was sought in dubious cases.
\nEven to this day the common Jewish proverb has it, \u201cMeloche is beroche\u201d i.e., labor is blessing; and again, \u201cLabor is no charpe\u201d (disgrace). There is certainly no lack of beggars who stroll from country to country and from place to place, living on the bounty of their coreligionists, and there are pedlars who have taken to heart the parting blessing of a mother to her son on his leaving home: \u201cLet them kick you, let them beat you, let them trample on you, let them spit on you, and throw you into the dog-kennel, but grow rich you must!\u201d Who can fail to perceive what estrangement from God and what a worldly spirit have spread, even among the better classes of the Jewish people, since they abandoned agriculture and handicraft for the dangerous pursuits of commerce, or devoted themselves (as had already begun to be the case even in the time of the Roman Empire) to sensational literary pursuits and dramatic science. Yet in every department this people display talents which may vie with the most brilliant achievements, and an energy of which some of our liberals stand so much in awe, that on the question of passing the bill for Jewish emancipation, they do not fear to be inconsistent. Even in agriculture the Jews were soon at home, when again allowed to practise it. When in 1849 the right of holding land was conceded to them in Austria, hundreds closed their shops and gladly threw the packs from their shoulders and became farmers. It remains to be seen whether free trade will put them once more in love with handicraft in that sense in which the ancients say, \u201cIt is gold at bottom.\u201d
\nYes, labor is gold at bottom. Though there were seven years of famine, says an old Jewish proverb, according with this Germano Christian saying, it will never come to the door of the workman. Yet even labor has its dark side. It is remarkable that the first handicraft which is mentioned in the first pages of the Bible took its rise among the descendants of Cain. Tubal-Cain was the first smith. Cain, in fact, means smith, and Tubal iron ships. So faithfully, indeed, is everything perpetuated in the East, that the blacksmith of the village Gubb\u00e2ta ez-z\u00eat\u00fbn on the Hermon, and whose inventory of the workshop Wetzstein wrote down, called the iron splinters struck off when working at his forge, t\u00fbb\u00e2l.
\nThe Cainite branch of the oldest human family exhibits the rise of worldliness. Ever since, handicraft has received a Cainite dowry, which it could never deny. Purge yourselves of it, my dear young friends! Let not your souls be snared in the earthly substances you handle! Let not your profession become to you a cage of your spirit! Materialism, narrowness of mind, undisciplined and uncultivated vulgarity\u2014let these be hateful to you! You have not only an earthly but also a heavenly calling\u2014see that they are interwoven. Then the lowliest of you will stand higher than many a gentleman in high position, the light of whose eyes is quenched in dissipation; higher than many a one proud of his riches or his noble birth, whose soul thinks of nothing else than of his stable or his hounds.
\nBut I have wandered from my subject. The next lecture shall make you better acquainted with the details of Jewish artisan life.<\/p>\n
CHAPTER III<\/p>\n
THE HIGHER OR LOWER POSITION OF THE DIFFERENT TRADES IN THE ESTIMATION OF THE PEOPLE<\/p>\n
Often enough the Talmud has been mentioned. Those who have not in some degree accomplished the extremely difficult task of reading this work for themselves will hardly be able to form a clear idea of this polynomial colossus. It is a vast debating club, in which there hum confusedly the myriad voices of at least five centuries. As we all know by experience, a law, though very minutely and exactly defined, may yet be susceptible of various interpretations, and question on question is sure to rise when it comes to be applied to the ever-varying circumstances of actual life. Suppose, then, you have about ten thousand legal definitions, all relating to Jewish life and classified under different heads, and add to these ten thousand definitions about five hundred doctors and lawyers, belonging mostly to Palestine or Babylonia, who make these definitions, one after the other, the subject of examination and debate, and who with hairsplitting acuteness exhaust not only every possible sense the words will bear, but every possible practical occurrence arising out of them. Suppose that these fine-spun threads of these legal disquisitions frequently lose themselves in digressions, and that, when one has waded through a long tract of this sandy desert, one lights here and there on some green oasis consisting of stories and sayings of universal interest. This done, you will have some tolerable idea of this enormous and, in its way, unique code of laws, in comparison with which, in point of comprehensiveness, the law-books of all other nations are but Lilliputian, and when compared with the hum of its kaleidoscopic Babel, they resemble, indeed, calm and studious retreats.
\nAmong the constant repetitions of \u201cRabbi N. N. says,\u201d and \u201cRab. N. N. says,\u201d and \u201cMar (master) N. N. says,\u201d it may happen that we meet here with a Pharisee exclaiming, \u201cGod, I thank thee that I am not as other men are,\u201d while there a humble-minded one prays with the publican, \u201cGod be merciful to me a sinner!\u201d When we say that the Talmud is full of respectful allusions to trade and handicraft, it does not exclude the fact that here and there pharisaical pride of learning makes itself known, which from the height of the study of the law looks down contemptuously on all professions in the world, and thinks the ink of the sage to be more precious than the blood of martyrs. Rabbi Nechunja ben Hakana was wont, on leaving the academy, to pray thus: \u201cI thank thee, O Lord my God, that thou hast given me my portion among those who frequent the House of Instruction, and not among those who are busy at the street corners, for I rise early and they rise early; I apply myself early to the Law, and they to vain things; I work, and they work; I work and receive my reward, they work and receive none; I run, and they run; I run after eternal life, and they to the pit.\u201d How much less proud and assuming, if compared to this, sounds the utterance of like import which was used by the teachers in Jabne (Jamnia): \u201cI am a creature of God, and my fellow-man is no less so. I have my calling in the town, he his in the field. I go early to my work, and he to his. As he is not made proud by his labor, I am not proud of mine. If you think that I am busied with great matters and he with small, remember that true work, whether great or small, leads to the same end, provided the state of the heart be right.\u201d
\nAnd yet, though all work which supplies a real want is honorable, and though the honor of each workman is meted out both by God and man, according to the divine standard of the moral and religious feeling and line of action connected with his work, yet ever and everywhere among mankind has there been a difference in the estimation in which different kinds of work are held; and this difference is legitimate so far as it proceeds from a correct point of view and is measured by a just scale. We must think it objectionable that in ancient Egypt, as in India at the present day, the honor of the work was defined according to the rank of its caste; and just so in Germany in the Middle Ages, the honor of the work was connected with the rank of honor, and the position of the artisan in society was either a higher or lower one according to the privileges which the craft to which he belonged enjoyed. It is but natural that common interests should bring together the members of one and the same craft. We see such associations continuing to exist even after the introduction of free trade; for instance, that of the tailors in our own town, whose organization is not the same thing as the corporate guilds of former days. In like manner, the different trades were bound together in Palestine in the time of Jesus. There was a kind of sayings expressly designated as the \u201cproverbs of the fullers;\u201d the fullers, who cleaned and thickened woollen stuffs, and occupied for that purpose a particular bleaching ground, situated near the upper pool, on the road to Joppa, formed a circle among themselves, and expressed themselves after a peculiar fashion, understood only by the initiated. There was something like the provisions of mutual assurance in the associations of muleteers and sailors, which undertook to replace a beast or a ship that had been lost without negligence on the part of the owner. But these associations were now guilds in the strict and full sense of the word.
\nOn the other hand, in Egypt, the land of caste, trades-unions flourished even among the Jews. The Jews of Alexandria had a far-famed and magnificent synagogue, so large that when the congregation were required to say \u201cAmen,\u201d the sexton (chazz\u00e2n) was obliged to use a veil or headcloth as an optical telegraph. This article was called sudarium (a kind of napkin), for pocket handkerchiefs were unknown in those days. In this synagogue the men did not sit together haphazard, but the workers in gold and in silver, the nail and needle smiths, the coppersmiths, and the weavers had each their proper station and seats, and if a poor craftsman came in he seated himself among his fellow-workmen, who maintained him until he found employment.
\nThe coppersmiths settled in Alexandria, who in their journeyings carried with them a portable bed, and whose badge was a leathern apron; they had also their own synagogue and burial-place at Jerusalem. That they were organized as a guild, we see from the fact that mention is made of their Rabban, i.e. head-master.
\nThe spirit of trades-unions spread thus from Egypt to Palestine, but handicraft was not estimated according to accidental corporate privileges extending beyond its own pale. Neither was it prized according to its spirituality, nor the ideality of its pursuit, nor yet in accordance with its relationship to the higher and lower interests of mankind, for handicraft and science were at that time so blended in each other that language had not even different terms for them. There was not then, as now, within the sphere of handicraft a gradual gradation from the lowest to the highest pinnacle of art, and there was then no such union between handicraft and science as exists now, when a mechanic can hold the most influential position within the progressive sciences\u2014for example, in optics and acoustics.
\nThe Mosaic law had fostered in the people a strong and keen perception of clean and unclean. A trade which brought a man in contact with unclean substances, which made him personally offensive, ranked low on that account. Tanning, by which the skins of beasts are converted into leather, and mining, which bores into the earth, were both considered as such dirty trades that a woman was permitted to separate not only from the gatherer of dogs\u2019 dung, who supplies the tanner with this ingredient of tan, but also from the tanner and miner, as well as from a man smitten with leprosy, or afflicted with a polypus, no matter whether these circumstances existed before or arose after marriage. The world, says an oft-recurring proverb, cannot exist without the perfumer (bass\u00e2m) or the tanner (bursek\u00ee). Happy is the man whose calling is perfumery, but woe to him whose calling is a tanner! Tanneries, like cemeteries, had to be removed at least fifty ells from the city.
\nAnd yet there is some objection to perfumery. The intercourse with the other sex, beyond that of married life, retired within the strictest seclusion of home, was among the Jews, as everywhere in the East, very restricted and suspected. To be seen with her hair uncovered was regarded as a disgraceful exposure on the side of the woman and to sing verged on unchastity. So strict, indeed, were they, that though in Judea a bridegroom was allowed to pass one hour alone with his affianced wife before marriage, it was considered serious to extend this concession to Galilee also. Hence we must not be surprised when the disciples were astonished on seeing Jesus in conversation with a woman, the Samaritan. He who sought to raise mankind from the slough of sin to moral freedom, and desired to lift woman also from the abasement in which she was at that time held by the one-sided views of the opposite sex, to the rights of a free personality, conversed with women in a freer manner. Renan has turned this to account in various piquant incidents of the romance into which he has transformed the life of Jesus. But, in fact, Jesus had to act thus, not only because God had so ordained it, that the line which began with the blessed among women should continue itself in Mary Magdalene, Salome, and other holy female disciples; but also purposely, in order to break the ban of the old prejudice, and to found that spiritual communion in whose spiritual atmosphere the lines disappear which the Mosaic law had drawn between the sexes and nations. Intercourse with women is only seductive to him in whom the fire of evil lusts is not yet extinguished by that water of Life of which Jesus spoke to the Samaritan woman. For this very reason we must not wonder that the time of Jesus, which knew nothing yet of that healing power of the new life, the emancipation of the spirit from the fetters of the flesh, regarded with suspicion and contempt every trade which necessitated an intercourse with women. In the same connection in which it was said that no unmarried man or woman should keep a school, because the former would be likely to be visited by the mothers and the latter by the fathers of the pupils, so we read that a man should not teach his son a trade which brings him in connection with the other sex. Such would include, among others, goldsmiths, wool-carders, handmill-borers, perfumers, weavers, hairdressers, fullers, cuppers, and bath-heaters, none of whom could ever be a king or a high priest, not on account of personal unfitness, but because of their degrading trade, which was held in this low estimation on account of the dangerous temptations connected with it\u2014temptations only to be overcome by such strict self-control as was exercised by Rab Chanina and Rab Oshaya, who followed the trade of shoemaking in a place of the Holy Land especially notorious for its dissoluteness. These men made shoes for the girls, but never lifted up their eyes to look at them when they brought home to them their work. A sage, so runs a parable, established his son as a perfumer at a rendezvous of fallen women. The place, trade, and wantonness of the youth all did their work: he fell a prey to vice. The father\u2019s wrath gave vent, and he exclaimed, \u201cI will kill you.\u201d A friend heard the threat. \u201cWhat!\u201d he said, \u201cyou will kill the youth, and are yourself so unruly? Was there no other trade for him than that of a perfumer? was there no other business-place than the market for courtesans?\u201d
\nAnother point of view which determined the estimation in which different trades were held was the moral repute in which those that followed them stood. There were some callings that exposed those who exercised them to the temptation of appropriating more than was right of the different materials intrusted to them. The concluding Mishna of the treatise Baba kamma gives minute directions for avoiding this. \u201cThe flakes of wool,\u201d we there read, \u201cwhich come off when the fuller soaks in his stuff are his, but those which come off during the process of carding belong to the owner. The three threads which the clothmaker weaves into the selvedge, but which the fuller draws out, belong to the latter, but anything beyond these to the owner. If, however, there are black threads which bordered the white cloth, the fuller may retain them, after having them drawn out of the stuff, since black does not look well on white. If a tailor has any surplus thread sufficient for sewing, or a piece of cloth three fingers long and three fingers broad, both belong to the owner. The shavings made by a carpenter in planing wood were his, but any made by the axe belonged to the owner; should he be working in his (the employer\u2019s) house, even the sawdust belonged to the latter.\u201d Some trades were proverbially infamous on account of their customary dishonesty toward the employers. \u201cNone,\u201d says a traditional saying, \u201cshould bring up his son to be an ass or camel driver, barber, mariner, shepherd, or a peddler, for these are not honest trades.\u201d \u201cMost of the ass-drivers,\u201d says another, \u201care wicked persons, but the greater part of the camel-drivers (notwithstanding the temptation inseparable from the wandering life to help themselves to the property of others) are generally honest; most mariners (on account of the dangers to which they are constantly exposed) are pious; the best of physicians is ripe for hell (on account of the too materialistic train of thought engendered by their profession, and their too frequently preferring the rich to the poor); and the most upright of the butchers is a companion of Amalek (because, in his greed of gain, he is not careful about the quality of meat).
\nThe following story may serve as an illustration of the craft and deceit of the ass-drivers. There was in a certain town a great dearth of salt. A company of donkey-drivers belonging to the place agreed to go and fetch salt from some other locality, and bring it to market as quick as possible. In calling upon their head man to accompany them, he replied, \u201cTo-day and to-morrow I must work in my field, but wait and then we will go together,\u201d to which they agreed. But by working in his field he meant something else than what he said, and hastened to initiate his wife into his artifice. \u201cMind,\u201d said he, \u201cthat when I call for the yoke, bring me the saddle, and when I ask for the jug, bring me a sack.\u201d He then threw the sack across, the back of his ass and trotted off. When his men came to call upon him, they were told that he had already started off the day before, and as they set out on their journey they met him returning with his load. \u201cWhy hast thou thus dealt with us?\u201d cried they. \u201cDon\u2019t be foolish,\u201d he replied; \u201cif we had all gone together, salt would have become cheaper, but now, when you come back, mine will already be sold, and you can still make a handsome profit!\u201d Thus the head ass-driver proved himself a master in subtilty.
\nThe fact that sailors were regarded as pious on account of their business bringing them ever face to face with the uncertain and dangerous element\u2014though there are exceptional cases\u2014reminds us that Jesus called his first four disciples from the fishing-boats on the lake of Gennesaret. Fishing on the lake was free, only the sinking of bow-nets was prohibited, because it impeded navigation; for the rest, every one was allowed to try his fortune there with net and line; this was believed to be a liberty especially insisted upon by Joshua at the division of the land. The fishermen did not become rich by their trade. Before the Jewish war the sailors and the poor of Tiberias formed one party, but such a strong and formidable one that Jesus, the son of Sapphias, who had set himself up as a commander of the town, maintained his position by their support.
\nAs Jesus Christ chose his first and most renowned disciples among the fishermen or sailors of the Lake of Gennesaret, whom, according to St. Matthew, he first saw on the shore of the lake, and according to St. John had already met before in Judea (which circumstance explains the acquaintance of John, the son of Zebedee, with the household of the high priest), so did the then despised trade of the tanner open a hospitable house to Peter in Joppa, where he was inwardly prepared to bring the preaching of the gospel to the Gentiles also. On the other hand, it is a blot on the history of the fullers that one of them, with his club, gave the death-blow to James the Just, the brother of the Lord, when, as Hegesippus records his martyrdom, he was thrown down from the battlement of the temple. Very disagreeable were the weavers (gardijjim); ribald songs, to which no decent man would listen, were called weavers\u2019 ditties. In the treatise Ediyoth i. 3, two respectable weavers from the King-gate of Jerusalem are introduced as witnesses, whose evidence was accepted on a question of law; but, with this exception, history has no good to say of the weavers. Two Jewish journeymen weavers of Nehardea, a Babylonish city, named Asinaios and Anilaios, being once ill-treated by their master for coming late to work, embraced the profession of arms, and under the Emperor Caligula these bold adventurers long ruled the district of the Euphrates and Tigris. Another weaver, Jonathan by name, who belonged to the robber band of the Siccari, attached to himself the poor people of the district of Cyrene, and led them into the wilderness, where they expected to see miracles. But they were soon dispersed by the Romans, and Jonathan, trying to save himself by lying calumnies, which cost thousands of his people their lives, was finally unmasked, severly scourged, and burnt alive. With these events, which happened under the Emperor Vespasian, Josephus concludes his work on the Jewish war.
\nWhen, in Erlangen, I used to hear the hum of the weaver\u2019s spool in passing many houses, it always seemed to me as if this humming was accompanied by the sigh of poverty. Weaving had once a time when it was richly paid; for the most part it lay under the curse of poverty. Thus it was in the time of which we are speaking. \u201cA weaver,\u201d says an old proverb, \u201cmust be humble, or his life will be shortened by excommunication,\u201d i.e., he must submit to anything for his miserable living. In another form this proverb runs, \u201cA weaver who curses his fate shortens his years by a year,\u201d i.e. he must content himself with his lot, if he would not shorten his life by repeated outbreaks of despair.\u201d And when a proverb says that \u201cEven the weaver is master in his own house,\u201d the humble social position of the weaver is brought before us, and the idea is, that any calling, however humble, makes him who follows it a master within certain limits, which is what the centurion of Capernaum intended to express when he says that he has a limited jurisdiction within which his word is law, in the same degree as in the boundless jurisdiction of Jesus. There is no calling so unimportant that a man may not be proud of it; for man, blind to his own sin, is but too often self-righteous, and can be proud in any station of life. From pride of nobility down to beggarly pride, this vice takes the most various forms. A wife especially will always hold her husband\u2019s calling in honor, and is disposed, however mean it may be, to magnify it to herself. Though a man were only the size of an ant, says a proverb, his wife would try to sit down among the big ones. This self-consciousness is, when it does not degenerate into conceit, the divinely appointed consequence of wedded love, which feels its own happiness even in the humblest relations, and throws its transforming light even over the most trifling circumstances. If a man be only a watchman, says another proverb, his wife is content, and does not want lentils for her pot. And a third proverb, Though a man were only a comber of wool, his wife calls him before the threshold and seats herself beside him.
\nWe have many such sayings which have come down to us from this time. Almost every trade has contributed its quota. Thus, \u201cAfter the ox comes the butcher,\u201d that is to say, his importance depends upon the value of the cattle which he slaughters; and \u201cThe blacksmith who sits at his forge is often paid by the work of his own hands,\u201d that is to say, he forges the weapon which may become the instrument of his death; and the miller\u2019s proverb, that \u201cEvery man\u2019s luck lies in his trough,\u201d needs no explanation.
\nSince we have touched on marriage, let us cast a glance into the artisan\u2019s house. Already we find warnings against too early marriages, often the source of domestic unhappiness. Let a man first build a house, it was said with reference to Prov. 24:27, and plant a vineyard, and then let him take a wife. On the other hand, a happy marriage, contracted at a suitable age, was considered as the greatest happiness in this world, especially for him who has to live by the work of his hand. A sleepy wife, says a proverb, makes an empty bread-basket, but of the industrious one it is said, Even when gossiping, she spins. She is not only maintained by her husband, but helps to support him and his children. Thus, for instance, it was customary in Judea for women to make woollen, and in Galilee linen clothing. To a woman who asked a scientific question, Rabbi Eliezer gave the answer, \u201cNo other wisdom is becoming to a woman than the distaff.\u201d And the Prophet Elias replies to Rabbi Jose, on his question, in what respect a woman is a helpmeet to her husband (Gen. 2:18): The husband brings corn into the house, but can he eat it? he brings home flax, but can he clothe himself with it? No, but the wife (by grinding the corn and spinning the flax) enlightens his eyes and sets him upon his legs.
\nDomestic servants were treated as members of the family, and the death of a good servant was lamented in the following manner: Alas! for the good and faithful servant, who shows himself profitable in all his work. Kindness and consideration for servants is recommended both by precept and example. \u201cBeware,\u201d it is said, \u201cto eat fine bread and to feed thy servant upon black bread; to sleep on cushions while he lies on straw, especially when he is thy countryman and coreligionist; for whosoever acquires a Hebrew servant acquires with him a master over himself, inasmuch as he must allow those claims on kind treatment which such a one can always demand. Righteousness was already then understood by the better class in the sense in which St. Matthew describes Joseph, the husband of Mary, as a \u201cjust,\u201d or as Luther translates, \u201cpious man,\u201d that is they held it to consist, not in strict adherence to the law, but in following the law of kindness. Some coopers once allowed the wine to run to waste from a cask belonging to a Rabbi. He seized their garments to make good his loss. They complained to a prominent teacher. \u201cRestore their garments,\u201d was his sentence. \u201cIs this true judgment?\u201d asked the defendant. \u201cYes,\u201d replied the judge, \u201cfor as Solomon exhorts, \u2018Thou shalt walk in the way of good men\u2019 \u201d (Prov. 2:20). Upon this he returned the garments. The coopers, however, made still another complaint. \u201cWe are poor people and have worked the whole day, and now we hunger and have nothing.\u201d \u201cGo, give them their hire,\u201d was the judge\u2019s sentence. \u201cIs this true judgment?\u201d asked the Rabbi. \u201cYes,\u201d was the reply; \u201c \u2018Thou shalt,\u2019 as Solomon continues, \u2018keep the paths of the righteous.\u2019 \u201d According to another story, four hundred casks of wine belonging to a rich Rabbi turned sour. Some outspoken friends, who regarded this as a divine visitation, begged him to examine his life. \u201cWhat!\u201d said he, \u201cdo you suppose me to have been guilty of wrong-doing because this evil is come upon me?\u201d \u201cShall we then,\u201d said they, \u201csuspect God of executing judgment without cause?\u201d \u201cWell,\u201d said the Rabbi, \u201cif any one has heard anything against me, let him not conceal it.\u201d \u201cIt has been reported to us,\u201d said they, \u201cthat the master has withheld the gardener\u2019s share of the prunings.\u201d \u201cWhat else, pray, did he leave me?\u201d retorted the Rabbi; \u201che has stolen all the produce of my vineyard.\u201d They, however, insisted upon it that he was in the wrong, and referred him to the saying, \u201cWhoever steals from a thief is no better than the thief.\u201d
\nSuch traces of a line of conduct, which was guided by grace rather than by law, and which overcame evil with good, should benefit us wherever we meet with them. No man should require special exhortations to such actions; the pattern of the divine love should suffice, which, thanklessly as we repay it, daily keeps our spirit and makes its sun to rise on the just and on the unjust. Yet how much nearer is the duty of that love brought home to us, which is founded not on the amiability of our neighbor, but on his need of love, since Jesus, the Messiah of Israel, the Saviour of the world, has offered himself for his sinful people and the whole sinful human race! From his life-blood, which was shed on Golgotha, may be derived by all who will suffer his sacrifice to be to them that which it is meant to be to all men\u2014the gift of a righteousness valid before God, and the power of a new world-embracing love.
\nBrothers, friends, of whatsoever rank and calling you may be, strive that your souls may be ennobled through this righteousness and love, and take this lily and this rose as your escutcheon.<\/p>\n
CHAPTER IV<\/p>\n
A JUNE DAY IN JERUSALEM DURING THE LAST DECADE BEFORE CHRIST<\/p>\n
[Sources: Josephus, \u201cJewish Wars,\u201d i. 23\u201327; \u201cAntiquities,\u201d xvi. 7\u201311. Besides, the Talmud and the entire oldest Jewish literature. For the topography, besides the immediate sources, Unruh\u2019s \u201cAltes Jerusalem und seine Bauwerke,\u201d 1861.]<\/p>\n
In a year (the ninth, or perhaps later, we do not know it exactly) of the last decade before our era, all Palestine and Syria was anxious to see the end of a fearful tragedy. Mariamne, the most beloved and noblest wife of Herod, the descendant of the royal house of the Maccabees, had already fell a victim to his gloomy suspicion. Now intrigue had succeeded in making him suspect his two sons, by the murdered Mariamne, Alexanderand Aristobulus, the pride and joy of the nation, of plotting against his life. By means of intimidation he had succeeded, that a tribunal at Berytos had condemned them, unseen and unheard, to death. All were now asking whether it were possible that a father would permit his own sons to be executed, above all two such noble, and without doubt innocent sons. To this period of anxious waiting, let us transplant ourselves, in thought, and unroll the picture of a day in ancient Jerusalem.
\nIt is a work-day of the month of Sivan, corresponding to our June. The starlight fades gradually in the cloudless heavens before the early-breaking dawn. The two divisions of the Temple watch, provided with torches, have met before the chamber in which the meat-offering for the high priest is prepared, and have mutually passed the word that all is in order and readiness. Those of the priests who have been able to pass this night in sleep, are arisen, have bathed, and donned their official robes. In the Hall of Squares, one half of which served as councilroom for the Sanhedrim, lots were cast for the division of the duties of the coming day. The brazen laver, which has stood all night in water, has been drawn up, and in it the priests have bathed their hands and feet. And now the bells ring their first morning peal for the town lying below; priests sound their trumpets, whose blast, in the quiet of the early morning, can be heard far and wide, both in the Upper and Lower, and in the Old and New Town.
\nAt the command of the captain of the guards, the Levites now open all the gates of the Temple, the preparations for the morning service, the chief feature of which was the daily sacrifice of a lamb, now begin. The altar of burnt-offering is cleansed, the fagots strewn on the glowing embers begin gradually to kindle, the musicians fetch their instruments and take them out of their wrappers, the guards are relieved, and the officiating Levites and priests of the previous day are dismissed. All this is done by torchlight. Meanwhile the captain is observing the dawn of the day. Some priests, deputed by him, ascend the battlements of the Temple. When the sun has so far risen that Hebron, lying among the mountains south-east of Jerusalem, can be discerned, they cry, \u201cBark\u0101\u00ef ad chebron\u201d (the light has reached Hebron), and instantly is heard the command, \u201cTo your duties, Priest! To your pulpits, Levites! To your stands, Israelites!\u201d This last call was addressed to the representatives of the people, who were relieved every week, and whose duty it was to assist at the sacrifice and to pass the night in the Temple.
\nMeanwhile the city and its suburbs are awaking. The castle of Antonia resounds with military signals. The booths of Beth-Hini, beneath the cedars on the Mount of Olives, are opened. In the Temple street, which leads from the Castle Square to the west wall of the Temple inclosure, cattle-dealers and money-exchangers are hurrying in advance of the worshippers to the Temple bazaar, in the outer court of the Gentiles. But those, too, who mean to attend the morning service, betake themselves from the Upper Town through the Xystus Gate, from the New Town through the Market Gate, and by many another road to the ascent of the Temple mount. Especially frequented is the bridge which connects the Xystus Terrace with the Temple precincts. Here and there some one pauses to look down on the left at the splendid theatre, or on the right toward the Tyrop\u0153on or Cheesemaker\u2019s Valley, to inhale, instead of the city air, the country air, wafted thence from the dairy of the farms.
\nBut not all go to the early Temple service, for Jerusalem has hundreds of synagogues. Those two fine gentlemen yonder, dressed according to the Greek fashion and conversing in Greek, are on their way to the synagogue of the Alexandrians. This worthy burgher, carrying his prayer-mantle, with his phylacteries therein, under his arm, is on his way to the synagogue of the coppersmiths, where he pays for his place; while yonder lady, fresh from the hands of the hairdresser and with the bouquet of roses, has no idea of hiding her costly morning toilet behind the lattice of the women\u2019s gallery at a synagogue, but trips with mincing steps toward the Temple mount, in order to be seen in the court of the women. The worshippers scatter themselves in the most opposite directions, most of them wearing serious faces, and whenever two walk and converse with each other, they never do it without looking cautiously around. A venerable old man, with a long beard and two snowy curls in front, murmurs to himself, as he passes through the Mortar Place in front of the theatre, \u201cI thank thee, O my God, and God of my fathers, that thou hast given me my part among those who frequent the schools and synagogues, and not among those who have pleasure in theatres and the circus!\u201d His wife, walking by his side, or rather a step behind him, murmurs \u201cAmen\u201d in a low voice, and whispers, as with tearful eyes she glances to the left, at the Tower of Mariamne, \u201cThou hast passed beyond it; it is well that thou no longer livest, noble Mariamne!\u201d
\nThe sun has meanwhile risen, and the actual hour of the morning prayer, at which time also the sacrifice was offered in the Temple, has arrived. Yonder Pharisee, who has allowed himself to be surprised by the hour of prayer, in the street, stands suddenly still and puts on his head and arm the tephillin [i.e. phylacteries.\u2014Tr.], conspicuous by their large cases. The laborer, who, carrying his fruit-basket, has climbed the fruit-tree, stops gathering the fruit and offers his morning prayer in his temple of nature between the branches. Everywhere prayer is offered. Only in Herod\u2019s palace everything is quiet. The tyrant sleeps, and his parasites creep about on tiptoe. The people pray, and wherever they do so, mingle with their loud prayers a silent petition for deliverance from the tyrant and an intercession for Aristobulus and Alexander, the two noble sons of the Maccabean princess, the noble-minded Mariamne, murdered by her husband\u2014by this very Herod, who, having listened to their calumniators, now keeps them imprisoned, pending between life and death. Yet even the government of a Herod is not bad enough to lack the support of a swarm of hirelings and partisans, parasites and sycophants, such as the court-baker, the court-perfumer, etc.
\nAfter the morning service, even before it is concluded in Temple and synagogues, a scene full of the brightest and most stirring life displays itself in the large market in the lower New Town. But we must not imagine this market to have been a square with the city hall\u2014the city hall of Jerusalem stood on the Xystus Terrace, the lower market was just such a long, wide street, what we call in our German cities \u201cThe Long Lane\u201d or \u201cBroadway.\u201d On both sides were shops, booths, and stands; pastry made of the fine flour of Ephraim, which hucksters were cheapening, and which they intend to sell with profit in the more remote parts of the city; cakes of figs and of raisins, which a poor little girl wistfully eyes, wearing in default of earrings little wooden pegs in her ears; fish of all kinds, from the Lake of Tiberias, attracting the attention of those juvenile students, who bend their way toward the high school founded by Simeon the son of Shetach; jewelry and ornaments of all kinds, even false teeth, to be fastened by means of a gold or silver wire, are here to be had. Here one is crying his dibs, i.e. syrup of grapes; there one recommends his Egyptian lentils of the first quality; a third sells caraway and turns a pepper-mill. Where an open space is left before the houses, the artisans, whose work allows it, have removed their workshops into the street, and there they work so diligently that they would not suffer themselves to be interrupted by rising, should even a Hillel or another scribe pass by. Here a shoemaker fastens the upper leather to the sole of a sandal; there a tailor trims a costly prayer-mantle with elegant fringes; while in another place an armorer is hammering away at the handle of a sword of Syrian iron. In the less frequented and shadier lanes, as that of the butchers and wool-combers, the trades pursued in the open air are more numerous, even flax being beaten here in the street. The market becomes crowded more and more. From all sides buyers, sellers, and idlers make their appearance. Down below, in the corners of the Market Gate, and above, where the streets from the North Gate and the Women\u2019s Tower meet, hired servants are standing; one of them is hired to draw flax from the steeping tub, but the employer carefully adds, \u201cBread and peas and nothing else you can expect to eat at my house!\u201d Yonder, too, at the Market Gate, in the very heart of the town, the shrewd company of the donkey-drivers has a stand, and one of them is so fortunate as to be engaged to transport a bedstead and other furniture, together with the indispensable flutes, for a wedding about to take place at Bethany. Here is a crowd of people, which none can hardly pass without hearing some sarcastic remark. A man, grave and self-absorbed, with a look of suffering about him, hurries by. \u201cThe gentleman,\u201d observes a donkey-driver, \u201cmust have had a bad dream; to which of the twenty-four interpreters of dreams is he going?\u201d A bath-keeper makes his way through, being greeted with \u201cGood-morning, master surgeon, how is business?\u201d \u201cA hundred bleedings for a sus (groat)\u201d is his reply. A fat, copper-faced scribe pushed an old woman rather roughly out of his way. \u201cOld fellow, old fellow!\u201d she screeches mockingly, \u201chow red is your face! You are either a winebibber, or a pawnbroker, or a swine-keeper.\u201d
\nLeaving the Market Gate through the Lower Town, and the gate in the wall of the Maccabees, by which it is inclosed, we come to the tomb of John, the high priest, and turning southward through the Gate of Genn\u00e2th we come to the Upper Market, which is between the old fortress of the Maccabean kings and the palace of Herod, which in point of splendor by far surpasses the Temple itself. Here also is life enough, but nothing in comparison to the merry turmoil in the great Lower Market. Everything moves here more quiet and decent. For here is the seat of the callings of the polytechnical city especially favored by King Herod. The productions of sculpture, floriculture, etc. are here mainly exhibited. Here a goldsmith has for sale a terp\u00f4le, that is, a golden artificial vine of embossed work, while close by a potter exhibits his wares, both useful and ornamental, formed of white and black earthenware. The most delicious figs of Jerusalem, coming from the rose garden manured by the blood from the sacrifices, are for sale here. That white-robed old man, on whose feet are shoes which no beggar would stop to pick from the gutter, is an Essene; he anxiously looks around, hoping to meet some one who could show him the way to the house of the head of his order.
\nBy this time the heat of the day is already felt, since the fresh morning breeze coming from the Mediterranean has died away, and the large cistern in the midst of the market is now besieged by both old and young. Now and then the crowd timidly gives way to one of the royal grooms; intending purchasers stand aside to give precedence to one of the royal ennuchs. A young Galilean, however, who has spread a square of linen on the ground and placed on it a large jar of Lebanon oil, with a further attraction in the shape of a gigantic watermelon, looks defiant and amused at the throng, cowed alike by fear and servility. \u201cWhere do you come from?\u201d asks a scantily bearded, trembling mannikin, for whom he is pouring oil into a clay egg, which serves as a measure. \u201cI come from the city,\u201d he says, \u201cwhich nestles free as a bird on the mountain!\u201d He means Sepphoris. On seeing among the passers-by a dyer, who to show his trade and what he can do has passed red and blue threads through the flap of one ear, and green and pale yellow through the other, the Galilean bursts into a loud laugh at this strange self-recommendation, and shouting to the stranger exclaims, \u201cMaster Tobias, can you also change red (adom) to white?\u201d This was an allusion to the Edomite Herod. But a Herodian police-spy runs after the market-watch, and when two soldiers command the youth to follow them, he resists with such herculean strength that he cannot be moved from the spot. A crowd soon gathers around, the soldiers begin to fear for themselves, on account of this uproar having broken out so near the palace, and while one wrestles with the Galilean the other runs his sword through his body. With the words, \u201cHe shall visit thy transgression, O daughter of Edom, and discover thy sins!\u201d he falls to the ground, and his blood mingles with the Lebanon oil from his overturned and shattered jar.
\nCries of anger at the brutality of the soldiers and the baseness of the traitor, cries of despair for liberty so shamefully trampled under foot, cries of sorrow for the blood of the young martyr for freedom so wickedly shed ring through the air; but, as if by some magic signal, universally understood, the confused shouts turn to breathless silence, as from mouth to mouth the news passes of the approach of a man who has just passed under the Genn\u00e2th Gate, and with light, almost noiseless steps, casting, however, on all sides, keen, observant glances, is threading his way through the market-place, carrying an elegant little chest under his arm. His dress is more Alexandrian than Jewish; his hair, though black, seems to be dyed, his fingers covered with sparkling rings. In passing before the stand of a scribe, who sells phylacteries and all sorts of amulets against evil spirits, he runs his eye over them, and exclaims, \u201cOh, oh! you emulate Diophant!\u201d This was the name of the expert who had forged a letter as from Alexander, the now imprisoned son of Herod and Mariamne, to the commander of the fortress Alexandrion, in which the former demanded of the latter to receive him after his father had been put out of the way, and to hand over to him all the warlike stores in the fortress. \u201cYou do me too much honor, sir,\u201d replied the old man, deeply offended at that comparison. The much-feared man now advances toward the thickest of the throng. It parts, and the bloody corpse of the young Galilean is visible. Without being moved by this aspect, he cries, in a harsh, repulsive voice, \u201cFriends, you prove the truth of the proverb: where the ox has fallen, there are many butchers.\u201d
\nThis man was Tryphon, the court-barber, whose intention it was by a master stroke of cunning to rise far higher to-day than ever in Herod\u2019s favor. An old worthy soldier of the king, named Teron, was so touched by the fate of the princes Alexander and Aristobulus that he almost became crazy over it. He ran about and cried aloud that right was trampled under foot and that falsehood was triumphant. At last he poured out the excess of his indignation to Herod himself, mentioning to him at the same time the many like-minded in the army. The consequences could have easily been foreseen. Together with his son, who had been attached to prince Alexander, he now was kept behind bolts and bars in the castle of Antonia. These two, thought Tryphon, are now beyond help and injury, I will now turn their misfortune, which they have deserved by their own indiscretion, to my own advantage. With these thoughts he entered under the portal of the palace, mounted the magnificent flight of stone steps which led to the lofty platform on which the royal castle was built, and where he hoped to find the king awake at this time, it being between ten and eleven or between five and six o\u2019clock, according to the then prevailing custom (reckoning the hours from sunrise). For last night, in one of the spacious dining-halls of the castle, a banquet had been held in honor of Nicholaus of Damascus, where till late in the night a hundred guests had sat tippling and draining bumpers to the death of all of the king\u2019s enemies.
\nThe sun of Sivan is now burning more and more. Both markets are almost empty. We, too, are thirsty and somewhat hungry. What shall we drink? Median beer, or yet better Babylonian beer, or Egyptian zithos, or native cider? We need not ask long for an ushpiza (host) who sells the one or the other kind. In the Woolcomber Street (shuk shel zamm\u00e2r\u00eem) we have seen a house in front of which great jars were standing toward the sun. They contain wine, to be fermented by exposure to the sun. We enter, and to improve our knowledge of the country even in eating, we ask whether we can have a dish of locusts, fried either in meal or honey, or even merely salted. But how thronged and how riotous is the place! Before the host answers our question, a coppersmith, whom we recognize by his leather apron, thrusts his bumper of wine under our nose and yells, \u201cFools, eating without drinking means to consume his own blood!\u201d A soldier approaching us with the remark, \u201cThe gentlemen seem to be scholars,\u201d thinks with the coppersmith, and shouts that our ears tingle: \u201cChamra wechaja lef\u00fbm rabbanan wethalmidehon, i.e., this cup to the health of the gentlemen and their scholars!\u201d \u201cOh, you cham\u00f4r,\u201d i.e., fools, exclaims a third; \u201cwhat do you know of scholars? Where the sword is, there is no book, the people say.\u201d Two more quiet men, who in a corner are playing nerdshir, or, as we would call it, tiktrak, offer us seats beside them. The noise becomes louder and louder in this sooty den. We soon find out that the despotic government has also divided this lowest class of the people into Herodians and lovers of freedom. \u201cHow about Aleph and Aleph?\u201d asks some one, meaning thereby Alexander and Aristobulus. \u201cBlockhead!\u201d says his neighbor, putting his fist before his face; \u201csilence is the best spice.\u201d \u201cWho was that fellow in the Upper Market?\u201d inquires another. \u201cAfra lefum de Jjob\u201d (dust in Job\u2019s mouth, i.e. shut up, you foul-mouthed fellow), growls a tanner. \u201cWhat!\u201d thou stinking fungus,\u201d he says, \u201cthou wilt stop my mouth!\u201d \u201cGo on,\u201d replies the master tanner, \u201ca myrtle is a myrtle even among weeds.\u201d Thus no one is allowed to express his opinion, for the walls have ears. As soon, however, as an acknowledged Herodian sneezes like a crocodile, so that his neighbor removes the cup, that the wine may not be thinned by his mucus, the whole rout shouts, \u201cJas, jas, Lord bless you, Lord bless you!\u201d
\nThe sun has in the mean time reached the meridian. The white marble of the palace flings back its noonday rays with dazzling splendor. The Temple overhangs the city like a sea of lights. A glance upward, be it toward the Temple or the Castle of Antonia, or the city of David with the three towers of the Herodian royal castle, is intolerable. The streets are almost deserted, and the stillness is only interrupted here by the cry of a water-carrier, there by the hawker of Edomitish vinegar, i.e., wine fermented by steeping barley in it. Laborers and donkey-drivers rest in the shade, and dip their bread in a kind of lacteal beverage called Babylonian cuthach. In the dye-house yonder things are done in a more fashionable way: the journeymen enjoy a soup made with sliced onions and roast meat, and sup with it their zuman, i.e., water mixed with bran. On the table of the goldsmith, however, stands a large jug of wine and a vessel fitted with a fine network of Egyptian palm-straw, to strain the wine, and round about juicy fruits to be served as a second course.
\nThe air is close, and closer yet the mood of the people. For a rumor has been spread through the city that King Herod, in a paroxysm of fury, has again sworn death to hundreds. Here and there some one tells of his having seen how Tryphon, the court barber, was led across the Castle Square by four soldiers. \u201cYes,\u201d says another, \u201cI was in the Temple at the second hour of prayer, and passing the Castle Square through the Temple Street, on my way home, I saw how the Iron Gate was shut and how Tryphon, hanging down his head, was driven by the soldiers across the bridge over the Antonia ravine to the Castle Gate.\u201d So it was. Herod\u2019s favorite had hoped to rise yet higher by revealing a secret. He had shaved the king and left him. But for a long time he walked up and down the avenues, with which the open space round the palace was planted, struggling with himself. At last he had come to a conclusion. For a second time he asked to be admitted to the king, and lied to him, that that Teron, who was already imprisoned on account of his zeal in behalf of Alexander and Aristobulus, had often tried to persuade him to cut the king\u2019s throat with his razor, for which he assured him of the high favor and rich presents of Alexander. \u201cI thank thee for thy candor,\u201d replied the king, who believed everything that was bad without being told of it, and the more so when he was told of it, especially when it concerned his sons, so greatly slandered. Having brooded over what he had heard, long and gloomily, he at once sprang up, and roaring more like a beast than a man, which made Tryphon tremble from head to foot, exclaimed: \u201cSo, then, he would often have persuaded thee, and only to-day it has pleased thee to tell me this? So long didst thou lend thine ear to this dog and spin treason with him? The reward for this blood-letting, which thou hadst intended for me, was probably not high enough for thee?\u201d Tryphon was about to reply, but the king flung the door open and shouted, \u201cSeize him, lodge him in the Antonia, and tell the commander that he is an accomplice of Teron and his son!\u201d Thus Tryphon sat in prison, and while Jerusalem\u2019s artisans were enjoying some rest during the noontide heat, the executioners were hard at work at Antonia, while the officers of justice recorded the statements of the tortured.
\nPity for Tryphon, whose talebearings had already brought misery on many families, we cannot expect at Jerusalem. But if we were permitted to enter the houses we would hear everywhere expressions of fear and compassionate anxiety for the sons of Mariamne, expressed partly in a more timid manner (since reiprocal mistrust had even taken a hold in the most intimate family circles), partly in a more fearless manner.
\nIt is now about three o\u2019clock in the afternoon. A crowd, chiefly of young people, is coming from the North Gate, while others run in the same direction. What is the matter? is the general inquiry. A \u201cBiccurim procession is before the North Gate,\u201d is the reply. Biccurim were the first-fruits of the earth, which were sanctified unto God, and had to be brought to the Temple. The country was divided into twenty-four districts. At the appointed time all those who wished to bring the firstlings to Jerusalem met at the capital of the district, where they passed the night in the open street, in order to be ready very early as soon as the cry of the captain of the district was heard, \u201cArise, let us go up to Zion, to the house of the Lord our God.\u201d Such a Biccurim procession had now arrived at the North Gate, in order to announce from thence its arrival in the Temple, meanwhile arranging the first-fruits by making garlands of them. Already the delegates of the Temple are on the way to meet them, viz., the representatives of the officiating priests and Levites and the treasurers of the sanctuary. From afar off we hear joyous airs of the flute. A more charming breaking through of the gloom, in which Jerusalem was this day, was not possible. The Israelitish national feeling, stifled by the tyrannical government, is roused by this spectacle, and we feel that it corresponds better with the spirit of the people than the dramatic play and Greek music of the theatre, or the gladiatorial combats and wild-beast fights of the amphitheatre, which Herod had introduced at Jerusalem. Those from the nearer districts bring fresh figs, and even grapes, though June is not yet ended, some in vessels of gold and silver, and some in baskets made of plaited withes, while those from a far distance bring dried figs and other fruits, and from the baskets hang doves, designed for burnt-offerings, with their wings bound. A bullock, intended to be the joint thankoffering of all, forms the head of the procession; his horns are gilt, and on his head he bears a crown of olive branches. It is a long train which enters Jerusalem, marching to the music of the flutes. On this account, the deputation from the Temple, whose duty it is to receive the numerous newcomers with due honor, is very large. The curious question as to whence they come is soon answered: they come from Sebaste, the ancient Samaria. Wherever the train passes, the artisans, sitting at work either before the house or in the vestibule, rise respectfully, greeting them: \u201cAchenu anshe Sebasti bathem leshalom! Beloved brothers, men of Sebaste, be welcome!\u201d
\nHaving reached in this manner the ascent to the Temple Mount, each takes his basket on his shoulders. When they have arrived at the court of the men, the Levites chant, to the accompaniment of music, the Psalm, \u201cI will thank thee, O Lord, for thou hast heard me, and hast not made mine enemies to triumph over me.\u201d The doves hanging down from the baskets are now taken for burnt-offerings, and what other offerings they have brought are given to the priests, the givers meanwhile reciting the confession appointed for those who bring the first-fruits, in the book of Deuteronomy. All this takes place to-day about the hour of the evening service. A vast multitude of men, women, and children has followed the procession to the Temple, and throngs round them as they come out. Relatives and friends take charge of those dear to them, while hospitality struggles for the rest.
\nAnd as men sit at Jerusalem with their hosts at the evening meal, or recline on cushions, nowhere the question is omitted, \u201cKnow you nothing of Mariamne\u2019s sons?\u201d \u201cThey are still arrested in the Sidonian village of Platane,\u201d says the one. \u201cNo,\u201d replies the other, \u201cthey are in a far stronger prison; they have been taken from Platane to Tyre. But say, ye men of Jerusalem, what are the king\u2019s intentions concerning them!\u201d \u201cHe will put them to death,\u201d replies the master of the house, \u201cand build two towers in their honor.\u201d \u201cHe never loved them,\u201d remarks his wife, \u201cfor he hates every one better than himself. Sometimes I have seen him walking with the two princes\u2014they overtopped him almost by a head, but how did they stoop in order not to appear taller than he!\u201d A Rabbi, being also a guest, thought it to be his duty, as a disciple of Hillel, who was highly honored by Herod, to take the king\u2019s part. \u201cFie,\u201d they all cry out, \u201chast thou taken hold of God\u2019s work (i.e., if thou occupiest thyself with God\u2019s word), put on this livery too (i.e., practice love)!\u201d But when one related, and not without bitterness, what a \u201cmustache day\u201d Tryphon had had (for the barbers thus called their unlucky days, on which they had made but little), and when another told how, in consequence of the calumnies with which Tryphon had blackened them, the worthy Teron and his son had been so cruelly tortured that, in their agony, they had falsely accused themselves, and how a gigantic execution of hundreds may be expected for one of the coming days, the countryman from Thirza exclaimed, \u201cHow glad will I be when I have left the holy city, this den of murderers!\u201d And when he comes back again, what awful tidings will then reach his ears! Alexander and Aristobulus had, in the mean time been dragged from Tyre to Sebaste, and there strangled. But in Jerusalem during the following days the streets ran blood. The daily task of sweeping them was horrible. In the theatre the king himself denounced the officers of his army and Tryphon as traitors, to the assembled people. The populace of Jerusalem acted like wild beasts when thus left free to glut their unbridled vengeance on the mostly detested officers. Three hundred were killed. They were generally beaten down with clubs and stones. Teron fell too.
\nBut still, now in some quiet chamber, now in some dim corner of a synagogue, or in the darkness of some secluded archway, a prayer was offered for the speedy coming of the Messiah of God, who should put an end to this bloody tyranny and this worldly turmoil and confusion. Yes, indeed, this atmosphere which was thickened with the odor of pleasure, with the fumes of the blood of innocent victims of perverted justice, with the smoke and steam and fat of sacrifices and burnt-offerings, needed a thorough purification! And this purification is near at hand: when some thirty years later Jesus of Nazareth shall go forth from the Iron Gate of the Castle of Antonia and bear his cross along the Via Dolorosa to Golgotha, then shall strike the doom of the Herodians, and then shall sound the hour of redemption.<\/p>\n
CHAPTER V<\/p>\n
COMBINATION OF STUDY WITH HANDICRAFT<\/p>\n
As the procession with the first-fruits passed through Jerusalem, we saw how all the artisans who were sitting at work in the street before the doors of their houses rose and kindly welcomed them. Involuntarily they stopped in their work, pleasantly surprised by the sight of so many fellow-countrymen from a distance, and impelled by the religious character of the procession to show this outward token of respect, by which, indeed, they honored God himself through these his servants, come hither to do him homage. For others a workman was expressly allowed to remain seated and go on in his work, even when one passed by to whom salutation was due. And highly honored as was the study of the law, yet the workman engaged in his work was not obliged to rise even before a sage.
\nWe may, however, assume that some of these artisans in the street were themselves learned men. Even in Germany, Jacob Boehm, who in 1594, after years of wandering, settled down as a master shoemaker in Goerlitz, became one of the profoundest thinkers; who, in his endeavors to reduce the knowledge of God and the world, heaven and earth, to a coherent system, considered from a Biblical-Christian standpoint, up to this day has not found his equal; and in Germany, too, there was a time when the burgher craftsman invaded even the domain of knightly minnesong, and produced many a master-singer who was really a master in the poetry of folk-lore, like the famous Hans Sachs of Nuremberg, who was at the same time a shoemaker.
\nBut the combination of handicraft with study, in the time we are speaking of, was of a different nature. In Jacob Boehm we see a man who, a shoemaker by trade, yet soared to the highest regions on the pinions of his spirit with which both nature and grace had richly endowed him. He is an extraordinary character. In the schools of the meistersingers, which came forth from the trade-guilds, it was not science, but art, which was now as diligently cultivated by the burgher classes as it had been heretofore almost exclusively by the nobles. Poetry was here considered as an elevating pastime, which harmonized with the tendency of the age. When, however, in former days, among the Jewish people, many a Rabbi was at the same time an ushc\u00e2f, i.e., shoemaker, or sandelar, i.e., sandalmaker, this was neither an exceptional case, nor must we argue from it that, along with his daily toil, he delighted in study, but rather, that it was then the general custom to earn one\u2019s bread with the hands while following at the same time the calling of a teacher. There certainly were not wanting some isolated voices which regarded study and handicraft as incompatible with each other, but the view that handicraft was ennobled by its connection with study, or rather, that the study was ennobled by its connection with handicraft, finally gained the upper hand.
\nJesus Sirach (Ben-Sira), in his proverbs, which were written about 200 B.C., and translated into Greek by his grandson about 125 B.C., speaks in terms of honor of practical occupations, as, for example, those of the farmer, the workman, and the artificer, but holds them incompatible with the pursuits of those studying the law. He depicts the work of the farmer, the mason and carpenter, the smith and potter, in order to show that their calling, when pursued with great zeal, leaves them no time for study, and that they therefore can neither become sages and representatives of the people, nor magistrates. \u201cWithout these,\u201d he says, \u201cshall not a city be inhabited,\u201d but \u201cthey shall not be sought for in public council, nor sit high in the congregation; they shall not sit on the judge\u2019s seat, nor understand the statutes of the covenant. They shall not bring to light instruction and judgment\u201d\u2014a verdict with which, as I well remember, people here in Leipsic opposed in 1831 the introduction of the constitution and of the common council. When, however, in the second century after Christ, the same question was discussed, it was decided otherwise. How can the Scripture say (Deut. 11:14), \u201cThou shalt gather in thy corn,\u201d while in another place it is said (Josh. 1:8), \u201cThis book of the Law shall not depart out of thy mouth\u201d? Is it possible to carry out both injunctions simultaneously? Rabbi Ismael drew the inference that the study of the law and work for the daily necessities were compatible, and that the one must be accommodated to the other. Rabbi Simeon ben Jocha\u00ef replied, however, How is that possible? How can a man who ploughs busy himself with the study of the law at the time of ploughing, or a sower at the time of sowing, or a reaper at the time of harvest, or one who threshes at threshing-time, or again, he who would winnow when the wind serves? No; let Israel only faithfully do the will of God, then the menial tasks incumbent on them will be performed by others, as Isaiah (61:5) says: \u201cStrangers shall stand and feed your flocks, and the sons of the alien shall be your ploughmen and your vinedressers.\u201d It is added that many who followed the example of Rabbi Ismael attained the desired end, while those, who like Rabbi Simeon made study their exclusive occupation, or, as it is expressed, made the law their calling, God\u2019s work their work, did not attain it. From the maxims of older teachers we can perceive that, already in the first Christian century, the combination of study with some calling by which the means of subsistence might be secured was very much preferred. \u201cLove work\u201d was a maxim of Shemaiah, the teacher of Hillel. To the family of Gamaliel we owe the saying, \u201cFair is the study of the law, if accompanied by a worldly occupation, as the joining of these two annihilates sin; and all the study of the law that is not supported by business will become of none effect, and will be the cause of sin.\u201d Judah the Holy, the editor of the Mishna, who sprang from this same family, in which the dignity of patriarch was for centuries hereditary, called Rabbi Jose ben Meshullam and Rabbi Simeon ben Menasja (perhaps with an allusion to the Essenes), the holy congregation, because they devoted one third of the day to study, one third to prayer, and one third to labor. The word of Solomon the preacher: \u201cBehold, i.e., enjoy thy life with the wife whom thou lovest,\u201d he explained after the then current allegorical manner: Look out for some trade along with the study of the law, to which thou lovingly hast given thyself. Thus we see that, not only study and the practice of beneficence, not only an honest trade and prayer, but also study and handicraft, science and trade, brainwork and manual labor, were considered as a compatible and inseparable pair.
\nFor this reason famous teachers not only carried the chairs on their own shoulders to the college, because all labor calling for physical exertion was regarded an honor, but a certain Pinehas was cutting stones, when the stone-mason (satt\u00e2th) was informed of his election to the high priesthood. Rab Joseph turned the mill, Rab Shesheth dragged beams, highly praising this diaphoretic labor, and more than a hundred Rabbis whom the Talmud mentions were both artisans and bore artisan names. With the two shoemakers, Rabbi Bhaja and Rabbi Chanina, we are already acquainted. Three Rabbis at least, Abba, Chanan, and Judah, were tailors (chajj\u0101t). Another Judah was a baker (necht\u00f4m), and a third a perfumer (bass\u0101m). And thus in the republic of letters we meet not only with a physician Theodos, an astronomer Samuel, an architect Abba Joseph, a surgeon Abba, a surveyor Ada, a scribe Me\u00efr, and Nahum and Nathan, a money-changer Chana, a grave-digger Abba Saul, but also with a fisher (zajj\u00e2d) Ada and Jos\u00e9, a gritsmaker (garsi) Joshua, a woodcutter (mafza k\u00easin) Chanina, a leather-dresser (shall\u00e2ch) Jos\u00e9, an oven-setter (tannuraj) Ami, a sandalmaker (sandelar) Jochanan, a smith (napp\u00e2ch) Isaac, an embroiderer (pikk\u00f4li) Simeon, a potter (kadd\u00e2r) Nehemiah, a dyer (cob\u0113s) Abba Oshaja, a carpenter (nagg\u00e2r) Abin, a threadmaker (shez\u00fbri) Simeon. One of the most famous teachers, Rabbi Joshua ben Chananja, was a needler or claspmaker (pechomi). When on one occasion he had withdrawn, on account of some wrong which he had suffered, Rabbi Gamaliel offered himself as a peacemaker. When he had entered the house and his eyes fell on the blackened walls, he exclaimed, with some scorn, \u201cOne can tell at once, by the walls of thy house, that thou art a needler!\u201d But Joshua repaid this ill-advised speech of the descendant of a rich and highly aristocratic family with the humiliating retort, \u201cAlas for the age of which thou art the leader [and the ship of which thou art the helmsman.\u2014Tr.]! Thou art equally ignorant of the cares of the sages and of their difficulties.\u201d \u201cI acknowledge my fault,\u201d replied Gamaliel; \u201cpardon me!\u201d But Rabbi Joshua paid no heed to him until he implored his pardon for the sake of the honor of his house. [To this plea Joshua yielded.\u2014Tr.] Another famous teacher who lived in voluntary poverty was Judah bar Illai, a cooper by trade, who dwelt in the town of Usha in Galilee, and who carried to the college the cask, seated on which he used to lecture.
\nAt that time there were no paid teachers. Even in Rome the Emperor Vespasian was the first to allow an annual payment to the Roman or Greek teachers. Nor does it appear from any Jewish source that pupils paid any fixed sum to their teachers. The learned, or teachers of wisdom (talm\u00eede chakam\u00eem), as they were called, were thrown on the gratitude of their scholars and their scholars\u2019 parents, on some consideration at the distribution of the tithes for the poor, and in certain cases also on the support from the Temple treasury, As authors they could also earn nothing, for although Rome had plenty of booksellers in all quarters, yet in Palestine bookselling was something unknown, and the codification in writing of the so-called oral or traditional law, until the second century after Christ, was regarded as something forbidden. No wonder, then, that the pursuit of some remunerative occupation in connection with the study of the law was held to be most advisable. And this combination was not only a necessary evil, but to work in the sweat of the face was also regarded as a blessing of healthy moral discipline, which admitted of no substitute. And such a combination could also be carried out, since at that time learning was more effected by hearing than reading, and the objects of study were both far fewer and far less varied than at present. Thus, for instance, the study of classical languages was not known then. They were learned not from books, but only in so far as the intercourse with Greeks and Romans made it necessary and possible.
\nIt is therefore quite in accordance with the custom of the times, when Saul of Tarsus in Cilicia, afterward the apostle, although he had chosen learning as his profession, for which purpose he went to Jerusalem, the metropolis of national learning, also understood a trade. Like Aquila of Pontus, with whom he became acquainted at Corinth, he was a tentmaker, i.e., not a maker of tents, but of tent-cloth! Tarsus lay in a fertile plain, watered by the Cydnus, and very favorable to cattle-breeding, and Cilician wool was one of the most favorite materials of which cloth for covering the framework of tents was manufactured. To this day the tent-cloth of the wandering tribes of Arabia is chiefly made of goat\u2019s hair. To manufacture such tent-cloth, or tent-linen, Saul had probably learned of his father, since it was a general rule that the son followed the trade of his father, unless he was early deprived of him by death. But Saul\u2019s father, a strict Israelite and Pharisee, would not suffer that his son, of whose talents and desire of learning he could expect great things, should confine himself to handicraft. Now it is true that Tarsus was a city rich in all means of educational schools, eclipsing even Athens and Alexandria in the cultivation of philosophy and science. But the place suited above all others for the training of a Jewish sage was Jerusalem, the city of the Temple and of the famous schools of Hillel and Shammai. And at Jerusalem Saul was not quite a stranger, for there he had a married sister, whose son saved him, then the apostle of Jesus Christ, from the hands of Jewish murderers. All the more anxious were his parents, and all the more easy was it to them, to send their son to Jerusalem. Here, in the Holy City, as he himself tells us, he was educated, and at the feet of Gamaliel he was instructed with all diligence in the law of the fathers. Perhaps he is that purposely unnamed disciple of Rabban Gamaliel, the grandson of Hillel, whom the Talmud once brings before us as engaged in discussion with this his teacher, concerning the signs of the Messianic time. While at college, his trade on which he had decided, and which he had, doubtless, learned at Tarsus, may very likely have been in abeyance. But as an apostle he again practised it, and it did him priceless service.
\nWe return now to him from whom our first proposition took its rise, and who, as he is the same yesterday and to-day and forever, the beginning and the end, should also be the beginning and end of these lectures. Jesus was the legitimate son of a carpenter, miraculously born into the married life of Joseph and Mary. In Mark 6:3 he is himself spoken of as the carpenter (\u1f41 \u03c4\u03ad\u03ba\u03c4\u03c9\u03bd), although at a very early period the reading of Matt. 13:55, \u201cthe carpenter\u2019s son,\u201d began to be preferred, and Origen, deciding in favor of this reading, in his work against Celsus, the opponent of Christianity, expressly states it, that nowhere in the canonical Gospels Jesus is described as the carpenter. We, however, take the text as it stands in the Gospel of St. Mark, in spite of the frivolous mockery to which it even yet may excite ignorant sceptics. For we are enlightened as to the high honor in which handicraft then stood, and how well compatible it was with the teacher\u2019s calling. It is true that a thick veil overhangs these thirty years which precede the public ministry of Jesus, once only lifted to recount the pilgrimage of the boy when twelve years old with his parents to Jerusalem, and although the apocryphal Gospels have a great deal to relate respecting the share Jesus had in his father\u2019s trade, yet if merely taken as the product of imagination, these stories are so unchaste, senseless, and foolish, that it would almost be a sin to annoy your fancy with these caricatures. Nor can we approve it, that the Moravians, while suppressing, with good reason, many of Zinzendorf\u2019s hymns, which speak in an offensive manner of Jesus the carpenter, yet retain in their litany not only the expression, \u201cMay thy precious sweat of toil lighten our labors,\u201d but also, \u201cMay thy faithfulness in daily labor make us faithful in our part!\u201d The Church of Christ should, in divine service, keep closely to the Word of God, which says nothing of Jesus\u2019 faithfulness in labor. Yet, more than probable it certainly is, that he who came down from heaven and took our nature on him, and he who was made in all things like unto us, sin only excepted, and who submitted himself to the law and custom of his people, was not only an obedient son to his mother, but also a willing helper of his father in the work of his calling; and even as it was by no mere accident that his first miracle was wrought at a wedding, so it was by no accident that he was born not in the house of a smith, who forges the death dealing weapons of war, but in the house of a carpenter, where he who came to bring peace to the world and to hallow the beginning and end of human life, had to work in fashioning both the rockers of the cradle and planks of the coffin, and the peaceful instruments of husbandry and family life.
\nBut as that Pinehas, after his elevation to be high priest, could no longer remain a stonecutter, so did the ministerial energy of Jesus, after those thirty quiet years, utterly preclude the continuation of the trade. It is impossible to picture him, as Shammai once appears in the Talmud, with the carpenter\u2019s rule in his hand. His divine ministry, which aimed at giving a new foundation and form of life to his own people and the whole human race, gathered itself up during the last three years to such an inward and outward labor that, besides the struggles and prayers, teaching and healing, exhausting all his power, no room was left for anything not immediately connected with his work as Saviour. The zeal for God\u2019s cause consumed his life during these three years. The sweat of his face finally became the bloody sweat which burst from him in Gethsemane. His sufferings no less than his doing were the hardest and most decisive works. His soul was the workshop of a world, the birthplace of a new race. For this cause he suffered himself during these three years to be supported by the hands of faithful love, and what was left after the most necessary wants were supplied was given by the hands of the apostles to the poor, the favorites of their master.
\nTo handicraft, however, belongs the honor that the Saviour of the world sprang from an artisan\u2019s house. The first king of Israel was taken from behind the plough; the second king of Israel was called from the sheepfold; and the second David, the Messiah of Israel, was called from the carpenter\u2019s shop. Happy are all who thus humbly praise the heavenly decree, carried out in earthly forms, instead of mockingly mastering it! When the Emperor Julian the Apostate undertook his expedition against the Persians, for which he had to pay with his life, he threatened to punish the Christians as soon as the war was over, for not being helped by the carpenter\u2019s son. An Antiochian minister replied to him, \u201cThis carpenter\u2019s son is now making a coffin for thy corpse.\u201d
\nFor his true disciples something better is made from the wood of his cross, and with the mortar of his blood something better is built up. Let us therefore seek to be received in that other city of peace which God has built through him!<\/p>\n
title Jewish Artisan Life in the Time of Jesus, according to the Oldest Sources<\/p>\n
author Delitzsch, Franz<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
PREFACE TO THE TRANSLATION His vast knowledge of Rabbinic literature has enabled the author to open a new field in the department of the New Testament contemporaneous history, thus throwing new light upon the country in which Jesus worked and upon the people among whom He moved. That this volume forms a valuable contribution to … <\/p>\n