Christ in Art. Ernest Renan

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СКАЧАТЬ the first years of the development of Christianity. Mary, indeed, had a sister named Mary also, who married a certain Alpheus or Oleophas (these two names appear to designate the same person) and was the mother of several sons who played a very considerable part among the first disciples of Jesus. His second cousins, who adhered to the young master, while his real brothers were opposed to him, assumed the title of “brothers of the Lord.” The real brothers of Jesus, as well as their mother, had no importance until after his death. Even then they do not appear to have equalled their cousins in consideration whose conversion had been more spontaneous, and whose character appears to have had more originality. His sisters married at Nazareth, and there he spent his early years. Nazareth was a little town, situated in a fold of land broadly open at the summit of the group of mountains which closes on the north the plain of the Jezreel Valley. The population was from three to four thousand. It is quite cold in the winter and the climate is very healthy. The people are friendly and good-natured; the gardens are fresh and green. Antoninus Martyr draws an enchanting picture of the fertility of the environs, which he compares to paradise. Some valleys on the western side fully justify his description. The fountain from which the life and gaiety of the little town formerly centred has been destroyed; its broken channels now only produce a turbid water.

      Having attained a better idea of what constitutes respect for origins, one shall desire to substitute authentic holy places for the mean and apocryphal sanctuaries which were seized upon by the piety of the barbarous ages, it is upon this height of Nazareth that it will build its temple. There, at the point of advent of Christianity, and at the centre of action of its founder, should rise the great church in which all Christians might pray. There also, upon this soil in which sleeps Joseph the carpenter, and thousands of forgotten Nazarenes, who have never crossed the horizon of their valley, the philosopher would be better situated than in any other place in the world, to contemplate the course of human things to find consolation for their uncertainty, to find faith in the divine object which the world pursues through innumerable dejections, and notwithstanding the vanity of all things.

      The Education of Jesus

      This nature at once smiling and grand, was the whole education of Jesus. He learned to read and write, no doubt according to the method of the East, which consists of putting into the hands of the child a book, that he repeats in concert with his little school-fellows until he knows it by heart. It is doubtful, however, whether he really understood the Hebrew writings in their original tongue. The biographies make him quote from them in the Aramaic tongue; his principles of exegesis, as nearly as we can make them out from those of his disciples, closely resembled those which were current at that time, and which compose the spirit of the Targums and the Midrash.

      The schoolmaster in the small Jewish towns was the hazzan or reader of the synagogue. Jesus attended little upon the higher schools of the scribes and he did not have any of those titles which confer in the eyes of the common people the privileges of learning. It would be a great mistake, however, to suppose that Jesus was what we call illiterate. The education of the schools marks among us a wide distinction, in the relation of personal worth, between those who have received it and those who have been deprived of it. It was not thus in the East, nor generally in the good old ages.

      It is not probable that he knew Greek. This language was little known in Judea beyond the classes given by the government in the towns inhabited by pagans, like Cesarea. The native language of Jesus was a Syrian dialect mixed with Hebrew, which was then spoken in Palestine. This culture was proscribed by the Palestinian doctors, who “united in the same malediction he who breeds swine and he who teaches his son the wisdom of the Greeks.” At all events, it had not penetrated into little towns like Nazareth. Notwithstanding the anathema of the doctors, it is true, some Jews had already embraced the Hellenic culture. Not to speak of the Jewish school of Egypt, in which attempts to amalgamate Hellenism and Judaism had been continued for nearly two hundred years. Nicholas of Damascus had become at this very time one of the most distinguished, most learned and most honoured men of his age. It is certain that in Jerusalem, Greek was very little studied, that Greek studies were considered dangerous and even servile; that they were declared good at most as an ornament for women. The study of the Law alone was considered liberal and worthy of a serious man. A learned rabbi, when asked at what time it was proper to teach children “the wisdom of the Greeks,” he answered: “At the hour which is neither day nor night, for it is written of the Law: Thou shalt study it day and night.”

      Neither directly nor indirectly, therefore, did any element of Hellenic culture make its way to Jesus. He knew nothing beyond Judaism, his mind preserved this frank simplicity which was always enfeebled by an extensive and varied culture. In the very bosom of Judaism, he was still a stranger to many efforts some of which were parallel to his own. On one hand, the asceticism of the Essenes, or Therapeutes, on the other, the fine essays in religious philosophy, made by the Jewish school of Alexandria, and ingeniously interpreted by Philo, were to him unknown.

      The Nativity, detail of The Story of the Youth of Christ, 1140–1145.

      Stained glass window.

      Ambulatory, Basilica of St. Denis, Saint-Denis.

      Virgin of Montserrat, also known as La Moreneta, 12th century.

      Wood. Abbey of Santa Maria de Montserrat, Catalonia.

      Donatello, Virgin and Child, 1440.

      Terracotta, height: 158.2 cm.

      Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence.

      Giotto di Bondone, Madonna and Child Enthroned with Angels and Saints, also known as the Ognissanti Madonna, c. 1310.

      Tempera on wood panel, 325 × 204 cm.

      Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.

      Luckily for him, he knew no more of the grotesque scholasticism which was taught in Jerusalem, and which was soon to constitute the Talmud. If a few Pharisees had already brought it to Galilee, he did not attend upon them, and when he afterwards came in contact with this silly casuistry, it inspired in him nothing but disgust.

      The reading of the books of the Old Testament produced upon him much greater impression. The canon of the sacred books was composed of two principal parts – the Law, that is, the Pentateuch, and the Prophets as we now possess them. A vast allegorical exegesis was applied to all these books, and sought to extract what is not in them, but what responded to the aspirations of the time. The Law, which represented, not the ancient laws of the country, but rather Utopias, the factitious laws and the pious frauds of the time of the pietistic kings, had become, since the nation had ceased to govern itself, an inexhaustible theme of subtle interpretations. As to the prophets and psalms, they were persuaded that nearly all the allusions in these books which were even slightly mysterious were related to the Messiah, and they sought in advance the type of him who was to realize the hopes of the nation. Jesus shared the universal taste for these allegorical interpretations. But the real poetry of the Bible, which was lost to the foolish expositors of Jerusalem, was fully revealed to his exquisite genius. The Law appears to have been of little interest to him; he thought he could do better. But the religious poetry of the psalms was in wonderful harmony with his lyrical soul. All his life they were his sustenance and his support. The prophets, Isaiah in particular, and his continuator of the time of the captivity, with their splendid dreams of the future, their impetuous eloquence and their invectives intermingled with enchanting pictures, were his real teachers. Undoubtedly he read also many modern writings, whose authors, to gain an authority now accorded only to very ancient writing, hid themselves beneath the names of prophets and patriarchs. One of these books made a deep impression upon him, the СКАЧАТЬ