As others saw Him/notes
NOTES
[The references to Resch are to the number of the Logion or Apocryphon (A.) respectively.]
Page 13. Hanan's Bazaar. There is a Talmudic tradition to this effect which seems to confirm the story of the cleansing of the Temple. See Derenbourg, Histoire de la Palestine (Paris, 1867), Appendix.
Page 15. Approved money-changers. Resch, 43.
Let none of alien birth. This inscription has actually been found of recent years.
Page 16. A wheelwright. Justin Martyr reports that Jesus made ploughs and yokes. (Dial. c. Tryph. c. lxxxviii.) Almost all the Jewish teachers of the time were workmen.
Page 19. Annas. There is no doubt that he was the most influential among the priestly party at the time that others nominally held the High Priesthood.
Page 25. Mixture. The actual expression in Jewish writings is paste.
Page 26. Son of the Covenant. There is, however no evidence of such custom, apart from the reference in the Gospel, till much later.
Page 30. Wherein have I sinned. Resch, A. 2.
Page 31. Thou art my Son. Resch, A. 4. Gospel account differs.
Fatherhood of God. This is of course a fundamental Jewish doctrine found throughout the earliest ritual. Cf. Deut. xxxii. 6; Jer. iii. 19; Mal. ii. 20; Ps. ciii. 13. Cf. Jew. Quart. Rev., ii. 633 seq.
Page 34. Why marvel ye? Resch, 29.
Page 36. Man, if thou knowest. Resch, 27.
The Sabbath was made. This was a characteristic Jewish principle. See Derenbourg, Histoire de la Palestine, p. 144.
Page 41. Let Rabbi Joshua. This would have been Jesus' Jewish name: Rabbi was applied to all respectable persons, somewhat like our "Mr." The method of "calling up to the law" described here has lasted on to the present day.
Haphtara. The first and second lessons of the church are derived from the practice of the synagogue, where a portion of the Law is first read, and then the Haphtara or lesson from the prophets.
Cantillation. This has still been preserved by the synagogue; it is probably the source of the Gregorian Chant.
Page 42. It hath been written. This sermon has been composed out of the following sections of the Resch Agrapha: 61, 45, 20; A. 60; 12, 35; A. 76; 15, 47, 62, 9, 1, 13, 49, 48, 33, 47; A. 22; 34, 42, 26, 51, 63, 73, 65, 32, 31; A. 36; 46; A. 6; A. 29. The sentence Howbeit, he who longs … till he perish is derived from a Mohammedan tradition about Jesus. Two or three of these sayings, as, for instance, Love covereth a multitude of sins, occur in the Epistles, but are quoted in the Church Fathers as actual words of Jesus. Resch regards them as forming part of a Gospel now lost.
Page 48. Let son and daughter inherit alike. From the Gospel according to the Hebrews, edit. Nicholson, No. 34.
Page 49. Let the wife. Resch, 24. Quotation as a "Command of the Lord" by Paul, 1 Cor. xiv. 37.
Page 51. Because they are poor. It is a mistake to think that Jesus was the first among the Jews to insist upon the blessedness of the poor. The whole of the later literature of the Bible and the earlier literature of the Talmud bears the same tradition. See I. Loeb, La Littérature des Pauvres dans le Bible (Paris, 1893).
Page 57. The Two Ways. This is the original kernel of the Testament of the XII. Apostles, according to the reconstruction of Harnack, who, following Dr. Taylor, has recognized that this early catechism of the Christian Church was modelled upon a previous Jewish catechism. Traces of this latter are left in a Latin fragment in which the Christian interpolations do not appear. I have endeavored to bring out the significance of this fact from a Jewish point of view in the interviews with the Rich Young Man (page 71) and with the Scribe (page 81.) If Jesus adopted as the summing up of his own faith the ordinary statements of the common Jewish catechism of the time, it would be hard to contend that he regarded himself as in any way advancing beyond the Jewish standpoint. Harnack has given this reconstruction of the Jewish catechism in his pamphlet, Die jüdischen beiden Wege.
Page 67. The passage relating to the woman taken in adultery is now recognized to be an interpolation in the Gospel of St. John (in some of the earliest MSS. of which it does not occur) from a more primitive Gospel. As will be seen from the text, the contrast usually drawn between Jesus' attitude and the harshness of contemporary Jewish Law is unjustified, since Rabbinic Law had already modified the sternness of the Levitical Decree. Nothing can be more humane or tender than the address of the President of the Court on page 68, taken from the Talmudic treatise Sota.
Page 71. This version of the interview with the Rich Young Man is taken from the Gospel according to the Hebrews, edit. Nicholson, page 50. It seems to me to be more primitive than the ordinary Gospel account. The touch of the Young Man scratching his head in doubt, coarse as it is, brings the whole scene vividly before one's eyes.
Page 73. Easier for an elephant. This is the form in which the proverb was current among the Jews of the time, as we can see from the quotations of it in the Talmud.
Page 81. For the interview with the Scribe (whom I identify with the writer of the reminiscences) I have combined the two accounts in Luke x. and Mark xii., which obviously refer to the same incident. It is clear from the question How readest thou? that Jesus was referring to some written exposition of the current religion of the time. Yet the collocation of the Shema (Deut. vi. 4) with the injunction to neighborly love (Levit. xix. 18) does not of course occur in the Old Testament, but is found in the Jewish Two Ways, with some form of which Jesus is thus shown to have been acquainted.
Page 83. There is little doubt that M. Halévi is right in contending that the Parable of the Good Samaritan was originally a Parable of the Good Israelite. Jewish society was divided into three castes, Priests, Levites, and the ordinary Israelites, and the distinction is kept up even to the present day in the "calling up to the Law" (see page 40). There would be no point in referring to two of the castes if they were not to be contrasted with the third, the ordinary Israelite of the time. The point of the parable is against the sacerdotal classes, who were indeed Jesus' chief opponents and ultimately brought about his execution. As a confirmation of M. Halévi's views it may be pointed out that no Samaritan would have been found at that period on the road between Jerusalem and Jericho.
Page 92. This second sermon is put together from Resch, sections 23, 68; A. 57; A. 27, 53, 18, 21, 25, 7, 41; A. 11; 17, 16, 10, 5, 64, 36 b, 52, 60, 59, 39. The two passages, Is it not enough for the disciples to be as the Master? and I will choose me the good whom my Father in the heavens hath given me, are from the Gospel according to the Hebrews, edit. Nicholson, Nos. 13, 14.
Page 96. Awake thou. Quoted by Paul, Eph. v. 14. See Resch, 37.
Page 102. This description of an ordinary Jewish meal of the time is taken from the Talmudic indications as given in S. Spitzer, Das Mahl bei den alten Hebräern. The blessing on the bread is that said up to the present day.
Page 103. Fowl to be boiled in milk. This was one of the points in dispute between the Galileans and the Jews of the time. See Talmud, Chullin, 116 a.
Page 105. Corban. This is the actual word used in the Greek original, but on the rather subtle point raised by Jesus there was a division of opinion among the Jewish doctors, as stated in the text. It is somewhat curious that only upon this and the question of washing hands before meals is there record of a specific difference between Jesus and the teaching of the Pharisees.
Page 109. Many a Pharisee. This is from the celebrated division of Pharisees into seven classes, made in the Talmud.
King Jannaus. From the Talmud. This shows that the dangers of hypocritical observances of the externalities of the Law were recognized a hundred years before Jesus.
Page 113. Hall of hewn stone. See Derenbourg, Histoire de la Palestine.
Page 114. I have selected these sayings from John as typifying the attitude of Jesus which would most grate against Jewish feeling. It is the seeming arrogance of these statements which forms the chief jarring note in the Gospels, judged from a Jewish point of view. How far they are authentic, however, is a very grave question. The whole tendency of modern criticism is to regard them as apocryphal.
Page 118. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem! Resch, 58.
Page 120. Signs of the times. For these, see Drummond, Jewish Messiah.
Page 123. Jesus Bar Abbas. The earliest MSS. of the Gospels give this as the full form of Barabbas' name, and it is necessary to remember this as a clue to the scene at the Prætorium. See p. 198. Though ordinarily spoken of as a robber, it is clear from Mark xv. 7 that Barabbas had been concerned in some insurrection against the Romans.
Page 125. Maccabee. The ordinary etymology of this word is from the Hebrew for "hammer." Cf. Charles Martel.
Page 127. Hosanna Barabba. Some of the Apocryphal Gospels give this in the Aramaic form.
Page 142. Street of the Bakers. Mentioned in Jeremiah xxxvii. 21.
Page 147. Jochanan ben Zaccai. If the ordinary date given for Hillel be correct, Jochanan would have been the chief Rabbi of the time of Jesus.
Page 163. Peter, of whom. An addition in Tatian's Diatessaron, recently discovered. Whether authentic or not, it clearly shows that the early Christians felt a need of explanation with regard to Jesus' seemingly unpatriotic acquiescence in paying tribute to Rome. It is at any rate clear that it was this incident that set the common people against Jesus, and enabled the sacerdotal party to compass his death.
Page 169. Passover lamb to be killed. I have adopted Chwolson's ingenious explanation of the discrepancy between John and the Synoptics in his treatise Das Passahmahl Christi, 1893.
Page 171. Moon, which was near its full. We know that the moon must have been full at this date, since the Hebrew months are lunar ones.
Page 172. Priestly Sanhedrim. Derenbourg has made it probable that the Greater Sanhedrim, of seventy-one members, was composed of three orders of Lesser Sanhedrim, each containing twenty-three; the addition of President and Vice-President would make the number seventy-one. The three orders were those of the Jews of that time and of this, namely, Priests, Levites, and Israelites. If, as is probable, the Trial of Jesus before the Sanhedrim took place outside of Jerusalem at the house of Hanan, it is likely that he was only tried before the priestly section, who indeed would be most embittered against him.
Page 173. Mount of Olives. It has not been observed, I think, that if a trial took place before the Sanhedrim it must have been outside the walls of Jerusalem, since on passing through the gates of the city manned by the Roman soldiery Jesus would have had to be delivered up to the latter.
Page 174. Many of their names. The names which follow are those of the High Priests immediately preceding and succeeding Jesus' death. They would therefore be members of the Sanhedrim at that time.
Page 176. Character of the man Pontius Pilate. The anecdotes which follow are authentic, and show that Pilate was harsh and tyrannical.
Page 179. Judas. The Talmud reports that Jesus was condemned on the testimony of concealed witnesses, and I think it by no means unlikely that some such scene occurred. It is difficult to explain the execration with which Judas' memory was regarded by the early Church, if he had merely pointed out Jesus to the Roman soldiery.
Wise provision of our Law. The trial of Jesus was under any circumstances illegal according to Jewish Law.
Page 186. Thou art the youngest. This was one of the wise provisions of Jewish Law.
Page 191. Search after leaven. On the day preceding the Passover, the head of a Jewish household has to perform this search after leaven. It must therefore have been a rabble that crowded round the Prætorium.
Page 193. Dared not enter to any house. This is a point mentioned by John alone, and seems to prove that he had some independent testimony.
Page 197. Faded rose-wreath. One can only explain the so-called crown of thorns in some such way as this. No one desiring to torture another would first torture himself still more, as any one would have to do to make a crown of thorns.
Page 198. Jesus. It is only by remembering that Barabbas' name was also Jesus that we can understand the scene before the Prætorium. See Note on page 123.
Page 201. Four modes of capital punishment. This proves that Jesus' death was according to Roman, not to Jewish Law, which only gave instantaneous death for capital punishment.
Page 202. Words of menace. Luke xxiii. 28-31. It is probable that these not over-kind words were said in response to the offer of the anæsthetic, made, according to the merciful custom of the time, by the ladies of Jerusalem.
Page 208. Rufus ben Simon. A real personage.
Page 209. Appeareth in these records. It is forgotten, when judging of the conduct of the Jews of Jerusalem, that they never saw him in any of his attractive aspects.
Page 216. Daniel and Enoch. The latter is quoted as scripture in the Epistle of St. Jude. For the use of the expression Son of Man in it, see the Excursus of Charles in his translation of Enoch.