History of the Jews (Vol. 1-6). Graetz Heinrich

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СКАЧАТЬ for mammon admonished them to submit willingly to the Roman tax-gatherers. "Render therefore unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar's, and unto God the things which are God's" (Matt. xxii. 21). These startling peculiarities, which seemed to contradict the preconceived idea of the Messianic character, caused the higher and the learned classes to be coldly indifferent to him, and it is certain that he met with no friendly reception in Jerusalem. These various objections, however, to the mode of life and the tenets of Jesus afforded no ground for any legal accusation against him. Freedom of speech had, owing to the frequent debates in the schools of Shammai and Hillel, become so firmly established a right that no one could be attacked for expressing religious opinions, unless indeed he controverted any received dogma or rejected the conception of the Divinity peculiar to Judaism. It was just in this particular that Jesus laid himself open to accusation. The report had spread that he had called himself the Son of God—words which, if taken literally, wounded the religious feelings of the Judæan nation too deeply to allow him who had uttered them to pass unscathed. But how was it possible to ascertain the truth, to learn whether Jesus had really called himself the Son of God, and to know what meaning he attached to these words? How was it possible to discover what was the secret of his sect? To bring that to light it was necessary to seek a traitor among his immediate followers, and that traitor was found in Judas Iscariot, who, as it is related, incited by avarice, delivered up to the judges the man whom he had before honored as the Messiah. One Judæan account, derived from what appears a trustworthy source, seems to place in the true light the use made of this traitor. In order to be able to arraign Jesus either as a false prophet or a seducer of the people, the Law demanded that two witnesses had heard him utter the dangerous language of which he was accused, and Judas was consequently required to induce him to speak whilst two hidden witnesses might hear and report his words. According to the Christian writings, the treachery of Judas manifested itself in pointing out Jesus through the kiss of homage that he gave his master as he was standing among his disciples, surrounded by the people and the soldiers. No sooner had Jesus been seized by the latter than his disciples left him and sought safety in flight, Simon Peter alone following him at some distance. At dawn of day on the 14th of Nissan, the Feast of the Passover, that is to say, on the eve of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, Jesus was led, not before the great Synhedrion, but before the smaller court of justice, composed of twenty-three members, over which the High Priest, Joseph Caiaphas, presided. The trial was to determine whether Jesus had really claimed to be, as the two witnesses testified, the Son of God; for one cannot believe that he was arraigned before that tribunal because he had boasted that it was in his power to destroy the Temple and rebuild it in three days. Such a declaration, if really uttered by him, could not have been made a cause of complaint. The accusation doubtless pointed to the sin of blasphemy, and to the supposed affirmation of Jesus that he was the Son of God. Upon the question being put to him on that score, Jesus was silent and gave no answer. When the presiding judge, however, asked him again if he were the Son of God, he is said to have replied, "Thou hast said it," and to have added, "hereafter shall ye see the Son of Man sitting on the right hand of power and coming in the clouds of Heaven." If these words were really spoken by Jesus, the judges could infer that he looked upon himself as the Son of God. The High Priest rent his garments at the impious assertion, and the court declared him guilty of blasphemy. From the account of the proceedings given by Christian authorities, there is no proof that, according to the existing penal laws, the judges had pronounced an unjust verdict. All appearances were against Jesus. The Synhedrion received the sanction of the death-warrant, or rather the permission to execute it, from the governor, Pontius Pilate, who was just then present for the festival at Jerusalem.

      Pilate, before whom Jesus was brought, entering into the political side of the question, asked him if he declared himself to be not only the Messiah but the King of the Judæans, and as Jesus answered evasively, "Thou hast said it," he likewise decreed his execution, which he indeed alone had the power to enforce. That Pilate on the contrary found Jesus innocent and wished to save him, while the Judæans had determined upon putting him to death, is unhistorical and merely legendary. When Jesus was scoffed at and obliged to wear the crown of thorns in ironical allusion to the Messianic and royal dignity he had assumed, it was not the Judæans who inflicted those indignities upon him, but the Roman soldiers, who sought through him to deride the Judæan nation. Among the Judæans who had condemned him there was, on the contrary, so little of personal hatred that he was treated exactly like any other criminal, and was given the cup of wine and frankincense to render him insensible to the pains of death. That Jesus was scourged before his execution proves that he was treated according to the Roman penal laws; for by the Judæan code no one sentenced to death could suffer flagellation. It was consequently the Roman lictors who maliciously scourged with fagots or ropes the self-styled King of the Judæans. They also caused Jesus (by the order of Pilate) to be nailed to the cross, and to suffer the shameful death awarded by the law of Rome. For after the verdict of death was pronounced by the Roman authorities, the condemned prisoner belonged no more to his own nation, but to the Roman state. It was not the Synhedrion but Pilate that gave the order for the execution of one who was regarded as a State criminal and a cause of disturbance and agitation. The Christian authorities state that Jesus was nailed on the cross at nine o'clock in the morning, and that he expired at three o'clock in the afternoon. His last words were taken from a psalm, and spoken in the Aramaic tongue—"God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?" (Eli, eli, lama shebaktani.) The Roman soldiers placed in mockery the following inscription upon the cross: "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Judæans." The cross had been erected and the body was probably buried outside the town, on a spot which was the graveyard of condemned criminals. It was called Golgotha, the place of skulls. Such was the end of the man who had devoted himself to the improvement of the most neglected, miserable, and abandoned members of his people, and who, perhaps, fell a victim to a misunderstanding. How great was the woe caused by that one execution! How many deaths and sufferings of every description has it not caused among the children of Israel! Millions of broken hearts and tragic fates have not yet atoned for his death. He is the only mortal of whom one can say without exaggeration that his death was more effective than his life. Golgotha, the place of skulls, became to the civilized world a new Sinai. Strange, that events fraught with so vast an import should have created so little stir at the time of their occurrence at Jerusalem, that the Judæan historians, Justus of Tiberias and Josephus, who relate, to the very smallest minutiae, everything which took place under Pilate, do not mention the life and death of Jesus.

      When the disciples of Jesus had somewhat recovered from the panic which came upon them at the time he was seized and executed, they re-assembled to mourn together over the death of their beloved Master. The followers of Jesus then in Jerusalem did not amount to more than one hundred and twenty, and if all who believed in him in Galilee had been numbered, they would not have exceeded five hundred. Still, the effect that Jesus produced upon the unenlightened masses must have been very powerful; for their faith in him, far from fading away like a dream, became more and more intense, their adoration of Jesus rising to the highest pitch of enthusiasm. The only stumbling-block to their belief lay in the fact that the Messiah who came to deliver Israel and bring to light the glory of the kingdom of heaven, endured a shameful death. How could the Messiah be subject to pain? A suffering Messiah staggered them considerably, and this stumbling-block had to be overcome before a perfect and joyful belief could be reposed in him. It was at that moment probably that some writer relieved his own perplexities and quelled their doubts by referring to a prophecy in Isaiah, that "He will be taken from the land of the living, and will be wounded for the sins of his people." The humble, wavering disciples of Jesus were helped over their greatest difficulty by the Pharisees, who were in the habit of explaining the new or the marvelous by interpretations of Scripture. By this means they afforded indirectly a solution and support to Christianity, and thus belief was given to the most senseless and absurd doctrines, and the incredible was made to appear certain and necessary. Without some support, however feeble, from Holy Writ, nothing new would have been received or could have kept its ground. By its help everything that happened was shown to have been inevitable. Even that Jesus should have been executed as a malefactor appeared pregnant with meaning, as it fulfilled the literal prophecy concerning the Messiah. Was it not written that he should be judged among the evil-doers? His disciples declared they had heard Jesus say that he would be persecuted even unto death. Thus his sufferings and death were evident proofs that he was the Messiah. СКАЧАТЬ