As others saw Him

by Joseph Jacobs

AS OTHERS SAW HIM

AS OTHERS SAW HIM

A Retrospect

A. D. 54

It cannot be that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem

Luke xiii. 33

WITH AFTERWORDS AND NOTES

BY

JOSEPH JACOBS

BOSTON AND NEW YORK

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY

The Riverside Press, Cambridge

1900

Copyright, 1895,

By HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO.

All rights reserved.

SECOND EDITION.

The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U.S.A.

Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co.

To Aglaophonos, Physician of the Greeks at Corinth, Meshullam ben Zadok, a Scribe of the Jews at Alexandria, greeting:—

It was a joy and a surprise to me to hear news after many days from thee, my master and my friend. To thee I owe whatever I have of Greek wisdom; for when in the old days at the Holy City thou soughtest me for instruction in our Law, I learnt more from thee than I could impart to thee. Since I last wrote to thee, I have come to this great city, where many of my nation dwell, and almost all the most learned of thy tongue are congregated. Truly, it would please me much, and mine only son and his wife, if thou couldst come and take up thy sojourn among us for a while.

Touching the man Saul of Tarsus, of whom thou writest, I know but little. He is well instructed in our Law, both written and oral, having received the latter from the chief master among those of the past generation, Gamaliel by name. Yet he is not of the disciples of Aaron that love peace; for when I last heard of him he was among the leaders of a riot in which a man was slain. And now I think thereon, I am almost certain that the slain man was of the followers of Jesus the Nazarene, and this Saul was among the bitterest against them. And yet thou writest that the same Saul has spoken of the Nazarene that he was a god like Apollo, that had come down on earth for a while to live his life among men. Truly, men's minds are as the wind that bloweth hither and thither.

But as for that Jesus of Nazara, I can tell thee much, if not all. For I was at Jerusalem all the time he passed for a leader of men up to his shameful death. At first I admired him for his greatness of soul and goodness of life, but in the end I came to see that he was a danger to our nation, and, though unwillingly, I was of those who voted for his death in the Council of Twenty-Three. Yet I cannot tell thee all I know in the compass of a letter, so I have written it at large for thee, and it will be delivered unto thee even with this letter. And in my description of events I have been at pains to distinguish between what I saw myself and what I heard from others, following in this the example of Herodotus of Halicarnassus, who, if he spake rude Greek, wrote true history. And so farewell.

CONTENTS.

		PAGE
I.	The Man with the Scourge	9
II.	The Upbringing	21
III.	Earlier Teaching. Sermon in the Synagogue of the Galilæans	37
IV.	The Two Ways	55
V.	The Woman Taken in Adultery. the Rich Young Man	63
VI.	The Testings in the Temple	75
VII.	The Second Sermon	87
VIII.	The Rebuking of Jesus	99
IX.	Jesus in the Temple	111
X.	The Entry Into Jerusalem	121
XI.	The Cleansing of the Temple	133
XII.	The Woes	145
XIII.	The Great Refusal	155
XIV.	The Meeting of the Hananites	167
XV.	The Examination Before the Sanhedrim	181
XVI.	Condemnation and Execution	195
	Epilogue	207