Jews

• Creator Sons incarnate in group with greatest Adamic inheritance

21:4.3Though these seven be­stowals vary in the dif­fer­ent sec­tors and uni­verses, they al­ways em­brace the mor­tal-be­stowal ad­ven­ture. In the fi­nal be­stowal a Cre­ator Son ap­pears as a mem­ber of one of the higher mor­tal races on some in­hab­ited world, usu­ally as a mem­ber of that racial group which con­tains the largest hered­i­tary legacy of the Adamic stock which has pre­vi­ously been im­ported to up­step the phys­i­cal sta­tus of the an­i­mal-ori­gin peo­ples. Only once in his sev­en­fold ca­reer as a be­stowal Son is a Par­a­dise Mi­chael born of woman as you have the rec­ord of the babe of Beth­le­hem. Only once does he live and die as a mem­ber of the low­est or­der of evo­lu­tion­ary will crea­tures.

• attitudes › family devotion and natural affection far transcended that of gentiles

84:7.1Sex mat­ing is in­stinc­tive, chil­dren are the nat­u­ral re­sult, and the fam­ily thus au­to­mat­i­cally comes into ex­is­tence. As are the fam­i­lies of the race or na­tion, so is its so­ci­ety. If the fam­i­lies are good, the so­ci­ety is like­wise good. The great cul­tural sta­bil­ity of the Jew­ish and of the Chi­nese peo­ples lies in the strength of their fam­ily groups.

• attitudes › opposed taking census

88:1.6Cer­tain days of the week were fe­tishes. For ages Fri­day has been re­garded as an un­lucky day and the num­ber thir­teen as an evil nu­meral. The lucky num­bers three and seven came from later rev­e­la­tions; four was the lucky num­ber of prim­i­tive man and was de­rived from the early rec­og­ni­tion of the four points of the com­pass. It was held un­lucky to count cat­tle or other pos­ses­sions; the an­cients al­ways op­posed the tak­ing of a cen­sus, “num­ber­ing the peo­ple.”

• attitudes › family devotion and natural affection far transcended that of gentiles

95:5.8The su­preme word of Ikh­na­ton’s re­li­gion in daily life was “righ­teous­ness,” and he rapidly ex­panded the con­cept of right do­ing to em­brace in­ter­na­tional as well as na­tional ethics. This was a gen­er­a­tion of amaz­ing per­sonal piety and was char­ac­ter­ized by a gen­uine as­pi­ra­tion among the more in­tel­li­gent men and women to find God and to know him. In those days so­cial po­si­tion or wealth gave no Egyp­tian any ad­van­tage in the eyes of the law. The fam­ily life of Egypt did much to pre­serve and aug­ment moral cul­ture and was the in­spi­ra­tion of the later su­perb fam­ily life of the Jews in Pales­tine.

• attitudes › took their religion too seriously; failed to evolve nontheologic philosophy of life

97:8.2In or­der to un­der­stand how the dev­as­tat­ing pres­sure and the in­es­cap­able co­er­cion of sec­u­lar his­tory so ter­ror­ized the cap­tive and alien-ruled Jews that they at­tempted the com­plete rewrit­ing and re­cast­ing of their his­tory, we should briefly sur­vey the rec­ord of their per­plex­ing na­tional ex­pe­ri­ence. It must be re­mem­bered that the Jews failed to evolve an ad­e­quate non­the­o­logic phi­los­o­phy of life. They strug­gled with their orig­i­nal and Egyp­tian con­cept of di­vine re­wards for righ­teous­ness cou­pled with dire pun­ish­ments for sin. The drama of Job was some­thing of a protest against this er­ro­neous phi­los­o­phy. The frank pes­simism of Ec­cle­si­astes was a worldly wise re­ac­tion to these overop­ti­mistic be­liefs in Prov­i­dence.

• history disastrously exploited by Jewish and Christian writers

97:8.5All mod­ern re­li­gions have se­ri­ously blun­dered in the at­tempt to put a mirac­u­lous in­ter­pre­ta­tion on cer­tain epochs of hu­man his­tory. While it is true that God has many times thrust a Fa­ther’s hand of prov­i­den­tial in­ter­ven­tion into the stream of hu­man af­fairs, it is a mis­take to re­gard the­o­logic dog­mas and re­li­gious su­per­sti­tion as a super­nat­u­ral sed­i­men­ta­tion ap­pear­ing by mirac­u­lous ac­tion in this stream of hu­man his­tory. The fact that the “Most Highs rule in the king­doms of men” does not con­vert sec­u­lar his­tory into so-called sa­cred his­tory.

97:8.6New Tes­ta­ment au­thors and later Chris­tian writ­ers fur­ther com­pli­cated the dis­tor­tion of He­brew his­tory by their well-meant at­tempts to tran­scen­den­tal­ize the Jew­ish proph­ets. Thus has He­brew his­tory been dis­as­trously ex­ploited by both Jew­ish and Chris­tian writ­ers. Sec­u­lar He­brew his­tory has been thor­oughly dog­ma­tized. It has been con­verted into a fic­tion of sa­cred his­tory and has be­come in­ex­tri­ca­bly bound up with the moral con­cepts and re­li­gious teach­ings of the so-called Chris­tian na­tions.

97:9.1There never were twelve tribes of the Is­raelites—only three or four tribes set­tled in Pales­tine. The He­brew na­tion came into be­ing as the re­sult of the union of the so-called Is­raelites and the Ca­naan­ites. “And the chil­dren of Is­rael dwelt among the Ca­naan­ites. And they took their daugh­ters to be their wives and gave their daugh­ters to the sons of the Ca­naan­ites.” The He­brews never drove the Ca­naan­ites out of Pales­tine, not­with­stand­ing that the priests’ rec­ord of these things un­hesi­tat­ingly de­clared that they did.

• Hebrews from southern kingdom of Judah known as J.

97:9.2The Is­raeli­tish con­scious­ness took ori­gin in the hill coun­try of Ephraim; the later Jew­ish con­scious­ness orig­i­nated in the south­ern clan of Ju­dah. The Jews (Ju­dahites) al­ways sought to de­fame and blacken the rec­ord of the north­ern Is­raelites (Ephraimites).

97:9.3Pre­ten­tious He­brew his­tory be­gins with Saul’s ral­ly­ing the north­ern clans to with­stand an at­tack by the Am­monites upon their fel­low tribes­men—the Gilea­dites—east of the Jor­dan. With an army of a lit­tle more than three thou­sand he de­feated the en­emy, and it was this ex­ploit that led the hill tribes to make him king. When the ex­iled priests rewrote this story, they raised Saul’s army to 330,000 and added “Ju­dah” to the list of tribes par­tic­i­pat­ing in the bat­tle.

97:9.4Im­me­di­ately fol­low­ing the de­feat of the Am­monites, Saul was made king by pop­u­lar elec­tion by his troops. No priest or prophet par­tic­i­pated in this af­fair. But the priests later on put it in the rec­ord that Saul was crowned king by the prophet Samuel in ac­cor­dance with di­vine di­rec­tions. This they did in or­der to es­tab­lish a “di­vine line of de­scent” for David’s Ju­dahite king­ship.

97:9.5The great­est of all dis­tor­tions of Jew­ish his­tory had to do with David. Af­ter Saul’s vic­tory over the Am­monites (which he as­cribed to Yah­weh) the Phil­is­tines be­came alarmed and be­gan at­tacks on the north­ern clans. David and Saul never could agree. David with six hun­dred men en­tered into a Phil­is­tine al­liance and marched up the coast to Es­draelon. At Gath the Phil­is­tines or­dered David off the field; they feared he might go over to Saul. David re­tired; the Phil­is­tines at­tacked and de­feated Saul. They could not have done this had David been loyal to Is­rael. David’s army was a poly­glot as­sort­ment of mal­con­tents, be­ing for the most part made up of so­cial mis­fits and fugi­tives from jus­tice.

97:9.6Saul’s tragic de­feat at Gil­boa by the Phil­is­tines brought Yah­weh to a low point among the gods in the eyes of the sur­round­ing Ca­naan­ites. Or­di­nar­ily, Saul’s de­feat would have been as­cribed to apos­tasy from Yah­weh, but this time the Ju­dahite ed­i­tors at­tributed it to rit­ual er­rors. They re­quired the tra­di­tion of Saul and Samuel as a back­ground for the king­ship of David.

97:9.7David with his small army made his head­quar­ters at the non-He­brew city of He­bron. Pres­ently his com­pa­tri­ots pro­claimed him king of the new king­dom of Ju­dah. Ju­dah was made up mostly of non-He­brew el­e­ments—Ken­ites, Calebites, Je­busites, and other Ca­naan­ites. They were no­mads—herders—and so were de­voted to the He­brew idea of land own­er­ship. They held the ide­olo­gies of the desert clans.

97:9.8The dif­fer­ence be­tween sa­cred and pro­fane his­tory is well il­lus­trated by the two dif­fer­ing sto­ries con­cern­ing mak­ing David king as they are found in the Old Tes­ta­ment. A part of the sec­u­lar story of how his im­me­di­ate fol­low­ers (his army) made him king was in­ad­ver­tently left in the rec­ord by the priests who sub­se­quently pre­pared the lengthy and pro­saic ac­count of the sa­cred his­tory wherein is de­picted how the prophet Samuel, by di­vine di­rec­tion, se­lected David from among his breth­ren and pro­ceeded for­mally and by elab­o­rate and solemn cer­e­monies to anoint him king over the He­brews and then to pro­claim him Saul’s suc­ces­sor.

97:9.9So many times did the priests, af­ter prepar­ing their fic­ti­tious nar­ra­tives of God’s mirac­u­lous deal­ings with Is­rael, fail fully to delete the plain and mat­ter-of-fact state­ments which al­ready rested in the rec­ords.

97:9.10David sought to build him­self up po­lit­i­cally by first mar­ry­ing Saul’s daugh­ter, then the widow of Na­bal the rich Edomite, and then the daugh­ter of Tal­mai, the king of Geshur. He took six wives from the women of Je­bus, not to men­tion Bathsheba, the wife of the Hit­tite.

97:9.11And it was by such meth­ods and out of such peo­ple that David built up the fic­tion of a di­vine king­dom of Ju­dah as the suc­ces­sor of the her­itage and tra­di­tions of the van­ish­ing north­ern king­dom of Ephraimite Is­rael. David’s cos­mopoli­tan tribe of Ju­dah was more gen­tile than Jew­ish; nev­er­the­less the op­pressed el­ders of Ephraim came down and “anointed him king of Is­rael.” Af­ter a mil­i­tary threat, David then made a com­pact with the Je­busites and es­tab­lished his cap­i­tal of the united king­dom at Je­bus (Je­ru­sa­lem), which was a strong-walled city mid­way be­tween Ju­dah and Is­rael. The Phil­is­tines were aroused and soon at­tacked David. Af­ter a fierce bat­tle they were de­feated, and once more Yah­weh was es­tab­lished as “The Lord God of Hosts.”

97:9.12But Yah­weh must, per­force, share some of this glory with the Ca­naan­ite gods, for the bulk of David’s army was non-He­brew. And so there ap­pears in your rec­ord (over­looked by the Ju­dahite ed­i­tors) this tell­tale state­ment: “Yah­weh has bro­ken my en­e­mies be­fore me. There­fore he called the name of the place Baal-Per­azim.” And they did this be­cause eighty per cent of David’s sol­diers were Ba­al­ites.

97:9.13David ex­plained Saul’s de­feat at Gil­boa by point­ing out that Saul had at­tacked a Ca­naan­ite city, Gib­eon, whose peo­ple had a peace treaty with the Ephraimites. Be­cause of this, Yah­weh for­sook him. Even in Saul’s time David had de­fended the Ca­naan­ite city of Keilah against the Phil­is­tines, and then he lo­cated his cap­i­tal in a Ca­naan­ite city. In keep­ing with the pol­icy of com­pro­mise with the Ca­naan­ites, David turned seven of Saul’s de­scen­dants over to the Gibeonites to be hanged.

97:9.14Af­ter the de­feat of the Phil­is­tines, David gained pos­ses­sion of the “ark of Yah­weh,” brought it to Je­ru­sa­lem, and made the wor­ship of Yah­weh of­fi­cial for his king­dom. He next laid heavy trib­ute on the neigh­bor­ing tribes—the Edom­ites, Moabites, Am­monites, and Syr­i­ans.

97:9.15David’s cor­rupt po­lit­i­cal ma­chine be­gan to get per­sonal pos­ses­sion of land in the north in vi­o­la­tion of the He­brew mores and pres­ently gained con­trol of the car­a­van tar­iffs for­merly col­lected by the Phil­is­tines. And then came a se­ries of atroc­i­ties cli­maxed by the mur­der of Uriah. All ju­di­cial ap­peals were ad­ju­di­cated at Je­ru­sa­lem; no longer could “the el­ders” mete out jus­tice. No won­der re­bel­lion broke out. To­day, Ab­sa­lom might be called a dem­a­gogue; his mother was a Ca­naan­ite. There were a half dozen con­tenders for the throne be­sides the son of Bathsheba—Sol­o­mon.

97:9.16Af­ter David’s death Sol­o­mon purged the po­lit­i­cal ma­chine of all north­ern in­flu­ences but con­tin­ued all of the tyranny and tax­a­tion of his fa­ther’s regime. Sol­o­mon bankrupted the na­tion by his lav­ish court and by his elab­o­rate build­ing pro­gram: There was the house of Lebanon, the palace of Pharaoh’s daugh­ter, the tem­ple of Yah­weh, the king’s palace, and the restora­tion of the walls of many cities. Sol­o­mon cre­ated a vast He­brew navy, op­er­ated by Syr­ian sailors and trad­ing with all the world. His harem num­bered al­most one thou­sand.

97:9.17By this time Yah­weh’s tem­ple at Shiloh was dis­cred­ited, and all the wor­ship of the na­tion was cen­tered at Je­bus in the gor­geous royal chapel. The north­ern king­dom re­turned more to the wor­ship of Elo­him. They en­joyed the fa­vor of the Pharaohs, who later en­slaved Ju­dah, putting the south­ern king­dom un­der trib­ute.

97:9.18There were ups and downs—wars be­tween Is­rael and Ju­dah. Af­ter four years of civil war and three dy­nas­ties, Is­rael fell un­der the rule of city despots who be­gan to trade in land. Even King Omri at­tempted to buy She­mer’s es­tate. But the end drew on apace when Shal­maneser III de­cided to con­trol the Med­i­ter­ra­nean coast. King Ahab of Ephraim gath­ered ten other groups and re­sisted at Karkar; the bat­tle was a draw. The As­syr­ian was stopped but the al­lies were dec­i­mated. This great fight is not even men­tioned in the Old Tes­ta­ment.

97:9.19New trou­ble started when King Ahab tried to buy land from Naboth. His Phoeni­cian wife forged Ahab’s name to pa­pers di­rect­ing that Naboth’s land be con­fis­cated on the charge that he had blas­phemed the names of “Elo­him and the king.” He and his sons were promptly ex­e­cuted. The vig­or­ous Eli­jah ap­peared on the scene de­nounc­ing Ahab for the mur­der of the Naboths. Thus Eli­jah, one of the great­est of the proph­ets, be­gan his teach­ing as a de­fender of the old land mores as against the land-sell­ing at­ti­tude of the Baalim, against the at­tempt of the cities to dom­i­nate the coun­try. But the re­form did not suc­ceed un­til the coun­try land­lord Jehu joined forces with the gypsy chief­tain Je­honadab to de­stroy the proph­ets (real es­tate agents) of Baal at Samaria.

97:9.20New life ap­peared as Je­hoash and his son Jer­oboam de­liv­ered Is­rael from its en­e­mies. But by this time there ruled in Samaria a gang­ster-no­bil­ity whose depre­da­tions ri­valed those of the Da­vidic dy­nasty of olden days. State and church went along hand in hand. The at­tempt to sup­press free­dom of speech led Eli­jah, Amos, and Hosea to be­gin their se­cret writ­ing, and this was the real be­gin­ning of the Jew­ish and Chris­tian Bibles.

97:9.21But the north­ern king­dom did not van­ish from his­tory un­til the king of Is­rael con­spired with the king of Egypt and re­fused to pay fur­ther trib­ute to As­syria. Then be­gan the three years’ siege fol­lowed by the to­tal dis­per­sion of the north­ern king­dom. Ephraim (Is­rael) thus van­ished. Ju­dah—the Jews, the “rem­nant of Is­rael”—had be­gun the con­cen­tra­tion of land in the hands of the few, as Isa­iah said, “Adding house to house and field to field.” Pres­ently there was in Je­ru­sa­lem a tem­ple of Baal along­side the tem­ple of Yah­weh. This reign of ter­ror was ended by a mono­the­is­tic re­volt led by the boy king Joash, who cru­saded for Yah­weh for thirty-five years.

97:9.22The next king, Amaziah, had trou­ble with the re­volt­ing tax-pay­ing Edom­ites and their neigh­bors. Af­ter a sig­nal vic­tory he turned to at­tack his north­ern neigh­bors and was just as sig­nally de­feated. Then the ru­ral folk re­volted; they as­sas­si­nated the king and put his six­teen-year-old son on the throne. This was Azariah, called Uzziah by Isa­iah. Af­ter Uzziah, things went from bad to worse, and Ju­dah ex­isted for a hun­dred years by pay­ing trib­ute to the kings of As­syria. Isa­iah the first told them that Je­ru­sa­lem, be­ing the city of Yah­weh, would never fall. But Jeremiah did not hes­i­tate to pro­claim its down­fall.

97:9.23The real un­do­ing of Ju­dah was ef­fected by a cor­rupt and rich ring of politi­cians op­er­at­ing un­der the rule of a boy king, Man­asseh. The chang­ing econ­omy fa­vored the re­turn of the wor­ship of Baal, whose pri­vate land deal­ings were against the ide­ol­ogy of Yah­weh. The fall of As­syria and the as­cen­dancy of Egypt brought de­liv­er­ance to Ju­dah for a time, and the coun­try folk took over. Un­der Josiah they de­stroyed the Je­ru­sa­lem ring of cor­rupt politi­cians.

97:9.24But this era came to a tragic end when Josiah pre­sumed to go out to in­ter­cept Ne­cho’s mighty army as it moved up the coast from Egypt for the aid of As­syria against Baby­lon. He was wiped out, and Ju­dah went un­der trib­ute to Egypt. The Baal po­lit­i­cal party re­turned to power in Je­ru­sa­lem, and thus be­gan the real Egyp­tian bond­age. Then en­sued a pe­riod in which the Baalim politi­cians con­trolled both the courts and the priest­hood. Baal wor­ship was an eco­nomic and so­cial sys­tem deal­ing with prop­erty rights as well as hav­ing to do with soil fer­til­ity.

97:9.25With the over­throw of Ne­cho by Neb­uchad­nez­zar, Ju­dah fell un­der the rule of Baby­lon and was given ten years of grace, but soon re­belled. When Neb­uchad­nez­zar came against them, the Ju­dahites started so­cial re­forms, such as re­leas­ing slaves, to in­flu­ence Yah­weh. When the Baby­lo­nian army tem­porar­ily with­drew, the He­brews re­joiced that their magic of re­form had de­liv­ered them. It was dur­ing this pe­riod that Jeremiah told them of the im­pend­ing doom, and pres­ently Neb­uchad­nez­zar re­turned.

97:9.26And so the end of Ju­dah came sud­denly. The city was de­stroyed, and the peo­ple were car­ried away into Baby­lon. The Yah­weh-Baal strug­gle ended with the cap­tiv­ity. And the cap­tiv­ity shocked the rem­nant of Is­rael into mono­the­ism.

97:9.27In Baby­lon the Jews ar­rived at the con­clu­sion that they could not ex­ist as a small group in Pales­tine, hav­ing their own pe­cu­liar so­cial and eco­nomic cus­toms, and that, if their ide­olo­gies were to pre­vail, they must con­vert the gen­tiles. Thus orig­i­nated their new con­cept of des­tiny—the idea that the Jews must be­come the cho­sen ser­vants of Yah­weh. The Jew­ish re­li­gion of the Old Tes­ta­ment re­ally evolved in Baby­lon dur­ing the cap­tiv­ity.

97:9.28The doc­trine of im­mor­tal­ity also took form at Baby­lon. The Jews had thought that the idea of the fu­ture life de­tracted from the em­pha­sis of their gospel of so­cial jus­tice. Now for the first time the­ol­ogy dis­placed so­ci­ol­ogy and eco­nomics. Re­li­gion was tak­ing shape as a sys­tem of hu­man thought and con­duct more and more to be sep­a­rated from pol­i­tics, so­ci­ol­ogy, and eco­nomics.

• not a miraculous people

97:9.29And so does the truth about the Jew­ish peo­ple dis­close that much which has been re­garded as sa­cred his­tory turns out to be lit­tle more than the chron­i­cle of or­di­nary pro­fane his­tory. Ju­daism was the soil out of which Chris­tian­ity grew, but the Jews were not a mirac­u­lous peo­ple.

• daily life › in bondage to priest-ridden code of laws, sacrifices, rituals

97:10.2When the Jews had been freed by the Per­sians, they re­turned to Pales­tine only to fall into bond­age to their own priest-rid­den code of laws, sac­ri­fices, and rit­u­als. And as the He­brew clans re­jected the won­der­ful story of God pre­sented in the farewell ora­tion of Moses for the rit­u­als of sac­ri­fice and pen­ance, so did these rem­nants of the He­brew na­tion re­ject the mag­nif­i­cent con­cept of the sec­ond Isa­iah for the rules, reg­u­la­tions, and rit­u­als of their grow­ing priest­hood.

• attitudes › never lost concept of Father
• attitudes › vibrant with expectation of a misconceived Messiah
• attitudes › worshiped letter of the law; self-righteous false pride of descent

97:10.3Na­tional ego­tism, false faith in a mis­con­ceived prom­ised Mes­siah, and the in­creas­ing bond­age and tyranny of the priest­hood for­ever si­lenced the voices of the spir­i­tual lead­ers (ex­cept­ing Daniel, Eze­kiel, Hag­gai, and Malachi); and from that day to the time of John the Bap­tist all Is­rael ex­pe­ri­enced an in­creas­ing spir­i­tual ret­ro­gres­sion. But the Jews never lost the con­cept of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther; even to the twen­ti­eth cen­tury af­ter Christ they have con­tin­ued to fol­low this De­ity con­cep­tion.

• attitudes › loved justice, wisdom, truth, and righteousness

97:10.6The Jews loved jus­tice, wis­dom, truth, and righ­teous­ness as have few peo­ples, but they con­tributed least of all peo­ples to the in­tel­lec­tual com­pre­hen­sion and to the spir­i­tual un­der­stand­ing of these di­vine qual­i­ties. Though He­brew the­ol­ogy re­fused to ex­pand, it played an im­por­tant part in the de­vel­op­ment of two other world re­li­gions, Chris­tian­ity and Mo­hammedanism.

• famed for military valor, theologic peculiarities

98:0.3Much of the Salem doc­trine was spread in Eu­rope by the Jew­ish mer­ce­nary sol­diers who fought in so many of the Oc­ci­den­tal mil­i­tary strug­gles. In an­cient times the Jews were famed as much for mil­i­tary valor as for the­o­logic pe­cu­liar­i­ties.

• contrasted with Greeks and Romans

98:2.7The evo­lu­tion of re­li­gious phi­los­o­phy among the Hel­lenic and He­brew peo­ples af­fords a con­trastive il­lus­tra­tion of the func­tion of the church as an in­sti­tu­tion in the shap­ing of cul­tural prog­ress. In Pales­tine, hu­man thought was so priest-con­trolled and scrip­ture-di­rected that phi­los­o­phy and aes­thet­ics were en­tirely sub­merged in re­li­gion and moral­ity. In Greece, the al­most com­plete ab­sence of priests and “sa­cred scrip­tures” left the hu­man mind free and un­fet­tered, re­sult­ing in a startling de­vel­op­ment in depth of thought. But re­li­gion as a per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence failed to keep pace with the in­tel­lec­tual prob­ings into the na­ture and re­al­ity of the cos­mos.

98:2.8In Greece, be­liev­ing was sub­or­di­nated to think­ing; in Pales­tine, think­ing was held sub­ject to be­liev­ing. Much of the strength of Chris­tian­ity is due to its hav­ing bor­rowed heav­ily from both He­brew moral­ity and Greek thought.

98:2.9In Pales­tine, re­li­gious dogma be­came so crys­tal­lized as to jeop­ar­dize fur­ther growth; in Greece, hu­man thought be­came so ab­stract that the con­cept of God re­solved it­self into a misty va­por of pan­the­is­tic spec­u­la­tion not at all un­like the im­per­sonal In­fin­ity of the Brah­man philoso­phers.

• eminently fitted to spread new religion

121:1.1Je­sus did not come to this world dur­ing an age of spir­i­tual deca­dence; at the time of his birth Uran­tia was ex­pe­ri­enc­ing such a re­vival of spir­i­tual think­ing and re­li­gious liv­ing as it had not known in all its pre­vi­ous post-Adamic his­tory nor has ex­pe­ri­enced in any era since. When Mi­chael in­car­nated on Uran­tia, the world pre­sented the most fa­vor­able con­di­tion for the Cre­ator Son’s be­stowal that had ever pre­vi­ously pre­vailed or has since ob­tained. In the cen­turies just prior to these times Greek cul­ture and the Greek lan­guage had spread over Oc­ci­dent and near Ori­ent, and the Jews, be­ing a Lev­an­tine race, in na­ture part Oc­ci­den­tal and part Ori­en­tal, were em­i­nently fit­ted to uti­lize such cul­tural and lin­guis­tic set­tings for the ef­fec­tive spread of a new re­li­gion to both East and West. These most fa­vor­able cir­cum­stances were fur­ther en­hanced by the tol­er­ant po­lit­i­cal rule of the Med­i­ter­ra­nean world by the Ro­mans.

• political matters › most influential Semitic people

121:2.1The Jews were a part of the older Semitic race, which also in­cluded the Baby­lo­ni­ans, the Phoeni­cians, and the more re­cent en­e­mies of Rome, the Carthagini­ans. Dur­ing the fore part of the first cen­tury af­ter Christ, the Jews were the most in­flu­en­tial group of the Semitic peo­ples, and they hap­pened to oc­cupy a pe­cu­liarly strate­gic ge­o­graphic po­si­tion in the world as it was at that time ruled and or­ga­nized for trade.

• in 200 synagogues throughout Roman world

121:2.3Al­though Pales­tine was the home of Jew­ish re­li­gious cul­ture and the birth­place of Chris­tian­ity, the Jews were abroad in the world, dwell­ing in many na­tions and trad­ing in ev­ery prov­ince of the Ro­man and Parthian states.

121:2.4Greece pro­vided a lan­guage and a cul­ture, Rome built the roads and uni­fied an em­pire, but the dis­per­sion of the Jews, with their more than two hun­dred syn­a­gogues and well-or­ga­nized re­li­gious com­mu­ni­ties scat­tered hither and yon through­out the Ro­man world, pro­vided the cul­tural cen­ters in which the new gospel of the king­dom of heaven found ini­tial re­cep­tion, and from which it sub­se­quently spread to the ut­ter­most parts of the world.

• attitudes › vibrant with expectation of a misconceived Messiah
• political matters › enjoyed considerable self-government

121:2.7The Jew­ish peo­ple of this time, al­though un­der Ro­man su­zer­ainty, en­joyed a con­sid­er­able de­gree of self-gov­ern­ment and, re­mem­ber­ing the then only re­cent heroic ex­ploits of de­liv­er­ance ex­e­cuted by Ju­das Mac­cabee and his im­me­di­ate suc­ces­sors, were vi­brant with the ex­pec­ta­tion of the im­me­di­ate ap­pear­ance of a still greater de­liv­erer, the long-ex­pected Mes­siah.

• attitudes › looked upon all others as gentile dogs
• did not fulfill destiny as people with spiritual mission
• political matters › national survival due to Roman foreign policy

121:2.8The se­cret of the sur­vival of Pales­tine, the king­dom of the Jews, as a semi-in­de­pen­dent state was wrapped up in the for­eign pol­icy of the Ro­man gov­ern­ment, which de­sired to main­tain con­trol of the Pales­tinian high­way of travel be­tween Syria and Egypt as well as the west­ern ter­mi­nals of the car­a­van routes be­tween the Ori­ent and the Oc­ci­dent. Rome did not wish any power to arise in the Lev­ant which might curb her fu­ture ex­pan­sion in these re­gions. The pol­icy of in­trigue which had for its ob­ject the pit­ting of Se­leu­cid Syria and Ptole­maic Egypt against each other ne­ces­si­tated fos­ter­ing Pales­tine as a sep­a­rate and in­de­pen­dent state. Ro­man pol­icy, the de­gen­er­a­tion of Egypt, and the pro­gres­sive weak­en­ing of the Se­leu­cids be­fore the ris­ing power of Parthia, ex­plain why it was that for sev­eral gen­er­a­tions a small and un­pow­er­ful group of Jews was able to main­tain its in­de­pen­dence against both Se­leu­ci­dae to the north and Ptolemies to the south. This for­tu­itous lib­erty and in­de­pen­dence of the po­lit­i­cal rule of sur­round­ing and more pow­er­ful peo­ples the Jews at­tributed to the fact that they were the “cho­sen peo­ple,” to the di­rect in­ter­po­si­tion of Yah­weh. Such an at­ti­tude of racial su­pe­ri­or­ity made it all the harder for them to en­dure Ro­man su­zer­ainty when it fi­nally fell upon their land. But even in that sad hour the Jews re­fused to learn that their world mis­sion was spir­i­tual, not po­lit­i­cal.

• attitudes › family devotion and natural affection far transcended that of gentiles

121:3.10Al­though woman en­joyed more free­dom through­out the Ro­man Em­pire than in her re­stricted po­si­tion in Pales­tine, the fam­ily de­vo­tion and nat­u­ral af­fec­tion of the Jews far tran­scended that of the gen­tile world.

• gentiles morally inferior to

121:4.1The gen­tiles were, from a moral stand­point, some­what in­fe­rior to the Jews, but there was pres­ent in the hearts of the no­bler gen­tiles abun­dant soil of nat­u­ral good­ness and po­ten­tial hu­man af­fec­tion in which it was pos­si­ble for the seed of Chris­tian­ity to sprout and bring forth an abun­dant har­vest of moral char­ac­ter and spir­i­tual achieve­ment. The gen­tile world was then dom­i­nated by four great philoso­phies, all more or less de­rived from the ear­lier Pla­ton­ism of the Greeks. These schools of phi­los­o­phy were:

• attitudes › resented emperor worship

121:5.42. Em­peror wor­ship. This de­ifi­ca­tion of man as the sym­bol of the state was very se­ri­ously re­sented by the Jews and the early Chris­tians and led di­rectly to the bit­ter per­se­cu­tions of both churches by the Ro­man gov­ern­ment.

• sorrows of a misunderstood despised people

121:6.7At about the time of Christ a strange re­ver­sion of feel­ing to­ward the Jews oc­curred in Alexan­dria, and from this for­mer Jew­ish stronghold there went forth a vir­u­lent wave of per­se­cu­tion, ex­tend­ing even to Rome, from which many thou­sands were ban­ished. But such a cam­paign of mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion was short-lived; very soon the im­pe­rial gov­ern­ment fully re­stored the cur­tailed lib­er­ties of the Jews through­out the em­pire.

• attitudes › looked upon all others as gentile dogs
• attitudes › settled concept of their history and destiny
• attitudes › worshiped letter of the law; self-righteous false pride of descent

121:7.1By the times of Je­sus the Jews had ar­rived at a set­tled con­cept of their ori­gin, his­tory, and des­tiny. They had built up a rigid wall of sep­a­ra­tion be­tween them­selves and the gen­tile world; they looked upon all gen­tile ways with ut­ter con­tempt. They wor­shiped the let­ter of the law and in­dulged a form of self-righ­teous­ness based upon the false pride of de­scent. They had formed pre­con­ceived no­tions re­gard­ing the prom­ised Mes­siah, and most of these ex­pec­ta­tions en­vis­aged a Mes­siah who would come as a part of their na­tional and racial his­tory. To the He­brews of those days Jew­ish the­ol­ogy was ir­re­vo­ca­bly set­tled, for­ever fixed.

• attitudes › unwilling to share Yahweh with gentiles

121:7.2The teach­ings and prac­tices of Je­sus re­gard­ing tol­er­ance and kind­ness ran counter to the long-stand­ing at­ti­tude of the Jews to­ward other peo­ples whom they con­sid­ered hea­then. For gen­er­a­tions the Jews had nour­ished an at­ti­tude to­ward the out­side world which made it im­pos­si­ble for them to ac­cept the Mas­ter’s teach­ings about the spir­i­tual broth­er­hood of man. They were un­will­ing to share Yah­weh on equal terms with the gen­tiles and were like­wise un­will­ing to ac­cept as the Son of God one who taught such new and strange doc­trines.

• did not fulfill destiny as people with spiritual mission

121:7.5These cir­cum­stances ren­dered it im­pos­si­ble for the Jews to ful­fill their di­vine des­tiny as mes­sen­gers of the new gospel of re­li­gious free­dom and spir­i­tual lib­erty. They could not break the fet­ters of tra­di­tion. Jeremiah had told of the “law to be writ­ten in men’s hearts,” Eze­kiel had spo­ken of a “new spirit to live in man’s soul,” and the Psalmist had prayed that God would “cre­ate a clean heart within and re­new a right spirit.” But when the Jew­ish re­li­gion of good works and slav­ery to law fell vic­tim to the stag­na­tion of tra­di­tion­al­is­tic in­er­tia, the mo­tion of re­li­gious evo­lu­tion passed west­ward to the Eu­ro­pean peo­ples.

• Gabriel chose J. as race for Michael’s incarnation

122:0.2Af­ter a study of the spe­cial re­port on the sta­tus of seg­re­gated worlds pre­pared by the Mel­chiz­e­deks, in coun­sel with Ga­briel, Mi­chael fi­nally chose Uran­tia as the planet whereon to en­act his fi­nal be­stowal. Sub­se­quent to this de­ci­sion Ga­briel made a per­sonal visit to Uran­tia, and, as a re­sult of his study of hu­man groups and his sur­vey of the spir­i­tual, in­tel­lec­tual, racial, and ge­o­graphic fea­tures of the world and its peo­ples, he de­cided that the He­brews pos­sessed those rel­a­tive ad­van­tages which war­ranted their se­lec­tion as the be­stowal race. Upon Mi­chael’s ap­proval of this de­ci­sion, Ga­briel ap­pointed and dis­patched to Uran­tia the Fam­ily Com­mis­sion of Twelve—se­lected from among the higher or­ders of uni­verse per­son­al­i­ties—which was in­trusted with the task of mak­ing an in­ves­ti­ga­tion of Jew­ish fam­ily life. When this com­mis­sion ended its labors, Ga­briel was pres­ent on Uran­tia and re­ceived the re­port nom­i­nat­ing three prospec­tive unions as be­ing, in the opin­ion of the com­mis­sion, equally fa­vor­able as be­stowal fam­i­lies for Mi­chael’s pro­jected in­car­na­tion.

• Jesus was not the Messiah anticipated by

122:4.2In all these vis­i­ta­tions noth­ing was said about the house of David. Noth­ing was ever in­ti­mated about Je­sus’ be­com­ing a “de­liv­erer of the Jews,” not even that he was to be the long-ex­pected Mes­siah. Je­sus was not such a Mes­siah as the Jews had an­tic­i­pated, but he was the world’s de­liv­erer. His mis­sion was to all races and peo­ples, not to any one group.

122:4.3Joseph was not of the line of King David. Mary had more of the Da­vidic an­ces­try than Joseph. True, Joseph did go to the City of David, Beth­le­hem, to be reg­is­tered for the Ro­man cen­sus, but that was be­cause, six gen­er­a­tions pre­vi­ously, Joseph’s pa­ter­nal an­ces­tor of that gen­er­a­tion, be­ing an or­phan, was adopted by one Zadoc, who was a di­rect de­scen­dant of David; hence was Joseph also ac­counted as of the “house of David.”

122:4.4Most of the so-called Mes­sianic prophe­cies of the Old Tes­ta­ment were made to ap­ply to Je­sus long af­ter his life had been lived on earth. For cen­turies the He­brew proph­ets had pro­claimed the com­ing of a de­liv­erer, and these promises had been con­strued by suc­ces­sive gen­er­a­tions as re­fer­ring to a new Jew­ish ruler who would sit upon the throne of David and, by the re­puted mirac­u­lous meth­ods of Moses, pro­ceed to es­tab­lish the Jews in Pales­tine as a pow­er­ful na­tion, free from all for­eign dom­i­na­tion. Again, many fig­u­ra­tive pas­sages found through­out the He­brew scrip­tures were sub­se­quently mis­ap­plied to the life mis­sion of Je­sus. Many Old Tes­ta­ment say­ings were so dis­torted as to ap­pear to fit some episode of the Mas­ter’s earth life. Je­sus him­self one­time pub­licly de­nied any con­nec­tion with the royal house of David. Even the pas­sage, “a maiden shall bear a son,” was made to read, “a vir­gin shall bear a son.” This was also true of the many ge­nealo­gies of both Joseph and Mary which were con­structed sub­se­quent to Mi­chael’s ca­reer on earth. Many of these lin­eages con­tain much of the Mas­ter’s an­ces­try, but on the whole they are not gen­uine and may not be de­pended upon as fac­tual. The early fol­low­ers of Je­sus all too of­ten suc­cumbed to the temp­ta­tion to make all the olden pro­phetic ut­ter­ances ap­pear to find ful­fill­ment in the life of their Lord and Mas­ter.

• daily life › children’s play life circumscribed

123:4.2The play life of Jew­ish chil­dren in the times of Je­sus was rather cir­cum­scribed; all too of­ten the chil­dren played at the more se­ri­ous things they ob­served their el­ders do­ing. They played much at wed­dings and fu­ner­als, cer­e­monies which they so fre­quently saw and which were so spec­tac­u­lar. They danced and sang but had few or­ga­nized games, such as chil­dren of later days so much en­joy.

• daily life › education compulsory

123:5.11When en­ter­ing school at seven years (at this time the Jews had just in­au­gu­rated a com­pul­sory ed­u­ca­tion law), it was cus­tom­ary for the pupils to choose their “birth­day text,” a sort of golden rule to guide them through­out their stud­ies, one upon which they of­ten ex­pa­ti­ated at their grad­u­a­tion when thir­teen years old. The text which Je­sus chose was from the Prophet Isa­iah: “The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, for the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the meek, to bind up the bro­ken­hearted, to pro­claim lib­erty to the cap­tives, and to set the spir­i­tual pris­on­ers free.”

• attitudes › history of ill-feeling with Samaritans

124:6.1Je­sus, hav­ing now reached the thresh­old of young man­hood and hav­ing been for­mally grad­u­ated from the syn­a­gogue schools, was qual­i­fied to pro­ceed to Je­ru­sa­lem with his par­ents to par­tic­i­pate with them in the cel­e­bra­tion of his first Pass­over. The Pass­over feast of this year fell on Sat­ur­day, April 9, A.D. 7. A con­sid­er­able com­pany (103) made ready to de­part from Naz­a­reth early Mon­day morn­ing, April 4, for Je­ru­sa­lem. They jour­neyed south to­ward Samaria, but on reach­ing Jezreel, they turned east, go­ing around Mount Gil­boa into the Jor­dan val­ley in or­der to avoid pass­ing through Samaria. Joseph and his fam­ily would have en­joyed go­ing down through Samaria by way of Ja­cob’s well and Bethel, but since the Jews dis­liked to deal with the Samar­i­tans, they de­cided to go with their neigh­bors by way of the Jor­dan val­ley.

• political matters › national survival due to Roman foreign policy

128:5.3The spokes­men for this com­mit­tee ex­plained to Je­sus that Alexan­dria was des­tined to be­come the head­quar­ters of Jew­ish cul­ture for the en­tire world; that the Hel­lenis­tic trend of Jew­ish af­fairs had vir­tu­ally out­dis­tanced the Baby­lo­nian school of thought. They re­minded Je­sus of the omi­nous rum­blings of re­bel­lion in Je­ru­sa­lem and through­out Pales­tine and as­sured him that any up­ris­ing of the Pales­tinian Jews would be equiv­a­lent to na­tional sui­cide, that the iron hand of Rome would crush the re­bel­lion in three months, and that Je­ru­sa­lem would be de­stroyed and the tem­ple de­mol­ished, that not one stone would be left upon an­other.

• attitudes › had God but no saving philosophy

132:7.5“You see, Gonod, Bud­dha knew God in spirit but failed clearly to dis­cover him in mind; the Jews dis­cov­ered God in mind but largely failed to know him in spirit. To­day, the Bud­dhists floun­der about in a phi­los­o­phy with­out God, while my peo­ple are piteously en­slaved to the fear of a God with­out a sav­ing phi­los­o­phy of life and lib­erty. You have a phi­los­o­phy with­out a God; the Jews have a God but are largely with­out a phi­los­o­phy of liv­ing as re­lated thereto. Bud­dha, fail­ing to en­vi­sion God as a spirit and as a Fa­ther, failed to pro­vide in his teach­ing the moral en­ergy and the spir­i­tual driv­ing power which a re­li­gion must pos­sess if it is to change a race and ex­alt a na­tion.”

135:5.1In or­der to un­der­stand John’s mes­sage, ac­count should be taken of the sta­tus of the Jew­ish peo­ple at the time he ap­peared upon the stage of ac­tion. For al­most one hun­dred years all Is­rael had been in a quandary; they were at a loss to ex­plain their con­tin­u­ous sub­ju­ga­tion to gen­tile over­lords. Had not Moses taught that righ­teous­ness was al­ways re­warded with pros­per­ity and power? Were they not God’s cho­sen peo­ple? Why was the throne of David des­o­late and va­cant? In the light of the Mo­saic doc­trines and the pre­cepts of the proph­ets the Jews found it dif­fi­cult to ex­plain their long-con­tin­ued na­tional des­o­la­tion.

• apocalyptists taught sufferings due to nation’s sins

135:5.2About one hun­dred years be­fore the days of Je­sus and John a new school of re­li­gious teach­ers arose in Pales­tine, the apoc­a­lyp­tists. These new teach­ers evolved a sys­tem of be­lief that ac­counted for the suf­fer­ings and hu­mil­i­a­tion of the Jews on the ground that they were pay­ing the penalty for the na­tion’s sins. They fell back onto the well-known rea­sons as­signed to ex­plain the Baby­lo­nian and other cap­tiv­i­ties of for­mer times. But, so taught the apoc­a­lyp­tists, Is­rael should take heart; the days of their af­flic­tion were al­most over; the dis­ci­pline of God’s cho­sen peo­ple was about fin­ished; God’s pa­tience with the gen­tile for­eign­ers was about ex­hausted. The end of Ro­man rule was syn­ony­mous with the end of the age and, in a cer­tain sense, with the end of the world. These new teach­ers leaned heav­ily on the pre­dic­tions of Daniel, and they con­sis­tently taught that cre­ation was about to pass into its fi­nal stage; the king­doms of this world were about to be­come the king­dom of God. To the Jew­ish mind of that day this was the mean­ing of that phrase—the king­dom of heaven—which runs through­out the teach­ings of both John and Je­sus. To the Jews of Pales­tine the phrase “king­dom of heaven” had but one mean­ing: an ab­so­lutely righ­teous state in which God (the Mes­siah) would rule the na­tions of earth in per­fec­tion of power just as he ruled in heaven—“Your will be done on earth as in heaven.”

135:5.3In the days of John all Jews were ex­pec­tantly ask­ing, “How soon will the king­dom come?” There was a gen­eral feel­ing that the end of the rule of the gen­tile na­tions was draw­ing near. There was pres­ent through­out all Jewry a lively hope and a keen ex­pec­ta­tion that the con­sum­ma­tion of the de­sire of the ages would oc­cur dur­ing the life­time of that gen­er­a­tion.

135:5.4While the Jews dif­fered greatly in their es­ti­mates of the na­ture of the com­ing king­dom, they were alike in their be­lief that the event was im­pend­ing, near at hand, even at the door. Many who read the Old Tes­ta­ment lit­er­ally looked ex­pec­tantly for a new king in Pales­tine, for a re­gen­er­ated Jew­ish na­tion de­liv­ered from its en­e­mies and pre­sided over by the suc­ces­sor of King David, the Mes­siah who would quickly be ac­knowl­edged as the right­ful and righ­teous ruler of all the world. An­other, though smaller, group of de­vout Jews held a vastly dif­fer­ent view of this king­dom of God. They taught that the com­ing king­dom was not of this world, that the world was ap­proach­ing its cer­tain end, and that “a new heaven and a new earth” were to usher in the es­tab­lish­ment of the king­dom of God; that this king­dom was to be an ev­er­last­ing do­min­ion, that sin was to be ended, and that the cit­i­zens of the new king­dom were to be­come im­mor­tal in their en­joy­ment of this end­less bliss.

135:5.5All were agreed that some dras­tic purg­ing or pu­ri­fy­ing dis­ci­pline would of ne­ces­sity pre­cede the es­tab­lish­ment of the new king­dom on earth. The lit­er­al­ists taught that a world-wide war would en­sue which would de­stroy all un­be­liev­ers, while the faith­ful would sweep on to uni­ver­sal and eter­nal vic­tory. The spiri­tists taught that the king­dom would be ush­ered in by the great judg­ment of God which would rel­e­gate the un­righ­teous to their well-de­served judg­ment of pun­ish­ment and fi­nal de­struc­tion, at the same time el­e­vat­ing the be­liev­ing saints of the cho­sen peo­ple to high seats of honor and au­thor­ity with the Son of Man, who would rule over the re­deemed na­tions in God’s name. And this lat­ter group even be­lieved that many de­vout gen­tiles might be ad­mit­ted to the fel­low­ship of the new king­dom.

135:5.6Some of the Jews held to the opin­ion that God might pos­si­bly es­tab­lish this new king­dom by di­rect and di­vine in­ter­ven­tion, but the vast ma­jor­ity be­lieved that he would in­ter­pose some rep­re­sen­ta­tive in­ter­me­di­ary, the Mes­siah. And that was the only pos­si­ble mean­ing the term Mes­siah could have had in the minds of the Jews of the gen­er­a­tion of John and Je­sus. Mes­siah could not pos­si­bly re­fer to one who merely taught God’s will or pro­claimed the ne­ces­sity for righ­teous liv­ing. To all such holy per­sons the Jews gave the ti­tle of prophet. The Mes­siah was to be more than a prophet; the Mes­siah was to bring in the es­tab­lish­ment of the new king­dom, the king­dom of God. No one who failed to do this could be the Mes­siah in the tra­di­tional Jew­ish sense.

135:5.7Who would this Mes­siah be? Again the Jew­ish teach­ers dif­fered. The older ones clung to the doc­trine of the son of David. The newer taught that, since the new king­dom was a heav­enly king­dom, the new ruler might also be a di­vine per­son­al­ity, one who had long sat at God’s right hand in heaven. And strange as it may ap­pear, those who thus con­ceived of the ruler of the new king­dom looked upon him not as a hu­man Mes­siah, not as a mere man, but as “the Son of Man”—a Son of God—a heav­enly Prince, long held in wait­ing thus to as­sume the ruler­ship of the earth made new. Such was the re­li­gious back­ground of the Jew­ish world when John went forth pro­claim­ing: “Re­pent, for the king­dom of heaven is at hand!”

135:5.8It be­comes ap­par­ent, there­fore, that John’s an­nounce­ment of the com­ing king­dom had not less than half a dozen dif­fer­ent mean­ings in the minds of those who lis­tened to his im­pas­sioned preach­ing. But no mat­ter what sig­nif­i­cance they at­tached to the phrases which John em­ployed, each of these var­i­ous groups of Jew­ish-king­dom ex­pec­tants was in­trigued by the procla­ma­tions of this sin­cere, en­thu­si­as­tic, rough-and-ready preacher of righ­teous­ness and re­pen­tance, who so solemnly ex­horted his hear­ers to “flee from the wrath to come.”

• political matters › national history began with Abraham

136:1.1The Jews en­ter­tained many ideas about the ex­pected de­liv­erer, and each of these dif­fer­ent schools of Mes­sianic teach­ing was able to point to state­ments in the He­brew scrip­tures as proof of their con­tentions. In a gen­eral way, the Jews re­garded their na­tional his­tory as be­gin­ning with Abra­ham and cul­mi­nat­ing in the Mes­siah and the new age of the king­dom of God. In ear­lier times they had en­vis­aged this de­liv­erer as “the ser­vant of the Lord,” then as “the Son of Man,” while lat­terly some even went so far as to re­fer to the Mes­siah as the “Son of God.” But no mat­ter whether he was called the “seed of Abra­ham” or “the son of David,” all were agreed that he was to be the Mes­siah, the “anointed one.” Thus did the con­cept evolve from the “ser­vant of the Lord” to the “son of David,” “Son of Man,” and “Son of God.”

136:1.2In the days of John and Je­sus the more learned Jews had de­vel­oped an idea of the com­ing Mes­siah as the per­fected and rep­re­sen­ta­tive Is­raelite, com­bin­ing in him­self as the “ser­vant of the Lord” the three­fold of­fice of prophet, priest, and king.

136:1.3The Jews de­voutly be­lieved that, as Moses had de­liv­ered their fa­thers from Egyp­tian bond­age by mirac­u­lous won­ders, so would the com­ing Mes­siah de­liver the Jew­ish peo­ple from Ro­man dom­i­na­tion by even greater mir­a­cles of power and mar­vels of racial tri­umph. The rab­bis had gath­ered to­gether al­most five hun­dred pas­sages from the Scrip­tures which, not­with­stand­ing their ap­par­ent con­tra­dic­tions, they averred were pro­phetic of the com­ing Mes­siah. And amidst all these de­tails of time, tech­nique, and func­tion, they al­most com­pletely lost sight of the per­son­al­ity of the prom­ised Mes­siah. They were look­ing for a restora­tion of Jew­ish na­tional glory—Is­rael’s tem­po­ral ex­al­ta­tion—rather than for the sal­va­tion of the world. It there­fore be­comes ev­i­dent that Je­sus of Naz­a­reth could never sat­isfy this ma­te­ri­al­is­tic Mes­sianic con­cept of the Jew­ish mind. Many of their re­puted Mes­sianic pre­dic­tions, had they but viewed these pro­phetic ut­ter­ances in a dif­fer­ent light, would have very nat­u­rally pre­pared their minds for a rec­og­ni­tion of Je­sus as the ter­mi­na­tor of one age and the in­au­gu­ra­tor of a new and bet­ter dis­pen­sa­tion of mercy and sal­va­tion for all na­tions.

136:1.4The Jews had been brought up to be­lieve in the doc­trine of the Shek­inah. But this re­puted sym­bol of the Di­vine Pres­ence was not to be seen in the tem­ple. They be­lieved that the com­ing of the Mes­siah would ef­fect its restora­tion. They held con­fus­ing ideas about racial sin and the sup­posed evil na­ture of man. Some taught that Adam’s sin had cursed the hu­man race, and that the Mes­siah would re­move this curse and re­store man to di­vine fa­vor. Oth­ers taught that God, in cre­at­ing man, had put into his be­ing both good and evil na­tures; that when he ob­served the out­work­ing of this ar­range­ment, he was greatly dis­ap­pointed, and that “He re­pented that he had thus made man.” And those who taught this be­lieved that the Mes­siah was to come in or­der to re­deem man from this in­her­ent evil na­ture.

136:1.5The ma­jor­ity of the Jews be­lieved that they con­tin­ued to lan­guish un­der Ro­man rule be­cause of their na­tional sins and be­cause of the half­heart­ed­ness of the gen­tile pros­e­lytes. The Jew­ish na­tion had not whole­heart­edly re­pented; there­fore did the Mes­siah de­lay his com­ing. There was much talk about re­pen­tance; where­fore the mighty and im­me­di­ate ap­peal of John’s preach­ing, “Re­pent and be bap­tized, for the king­dom of heaven is at hand.” And the king­dom of heaven could mean only one thing to any de­vout Jew: The com­ing of the Mes­siah.

136:1.6There was one fea­ture of the be­stowal of Mi­chael which was ut­terly for­eign to the Jew­ish con­cep­tion of the Mes­siah, and that was the union of the two na­tures, the hu­man and the di­vine. The Jews had var­i­ously con­ceived of the Mes­siah as per­fected hu­man, super­hu­man, and even as di­vine, but they never en­ter­tained the con­cept of the union of the hu­man and the di­vine. And this was the great stum­bling block of Je­sus’ early dis­ci­ples. They grasped the hu­man con­cept of the Mes­siah as the son of David, as pre­sented by the ear­lier proph­ets; as the Son of Man, the super­hu­man idea of Daniel and some of the later proph­ets; and even as the Son of God, as de­picted by the au­thor of the Book of Enoch and by cer­tain of his con­tem­po­raries; but never had they for a sin­gle mo­ment en­ter­tained the true con­cept of the union in one earth per­son­al­ity of the two na­tures, the hu­man and the di­vine. The in­car­na­tion of the Cre­ator in the form of the crea­ture had not been re­vealed be­fore­hand. It was re­vealed only in Je­sus; the world knew noth­ing of such things un­til the Cre­ator Son was made flesh and dwelt among the mor­tals of the realm.

• attitudes › vibrant with expectation of a misconceived Messiah

136:2.1Je­sus was bap­tized at the very height of John’s preach­ing when Pales­tine was aflame with the ex­pectancy of his mes­sage—“the king­dom of God is at hand”—when all Jewry was en­gaged in se­ri­ous and solemn self-ex­am­i­na­tion. The Jew­ish sense of racial sol­i­dar­ity was very pro­found. The Jews not only be­lieved that the sins of the fa­ther might af­flict his chil­dren, but they firmly be­lieved that the sin of one in­di­vid­ual might curse the na­tion. Ac­cord­ingly, not all who sub­mit­ted to John’s bap­tism re­garded them­selves as be­ing guilty of the spe­cific sins which John de­nounced. Many de­vout souls were bap­tized by John for the good of Is­rael. They feared lest some sin of ig­no­rance on their part might de­lay the com­ing of the Mes­siah. They felt them­selves to be­long to a guilty and sin-cursed na­tion, and they pre­sented them­selves for bap­tism that they might by so do­ing man­i­fest fruits of race pen­i­tence. It is there­fore ev­i­dent that Je­sus in no sense re­ceived John’s bap­tism as a rite of re­pen­tance or for the re­mis­sion of sins. In ac­cept­ing bap­tism at the hands of John, Je­sus was only fol­low­ing the ex­am­ple of many pi­ous Is­raelites.

• attitudes › nurtured on miracles

136:6.6The Jews were ex­pect­ing a Mes­siah who would do even greater won­ders than Moses, who was re­puted to have brought forth wa­ter from the rock in a desert place and to have fed their fore­fa­thers with manna in the wilder­ness. Je­sus knew the sort of Mes­siah his com­pa­tri­ots ex­pected, and he had all the pow­ers and pre­rog­a­tives to mea­sure up to their most san­guine ex­pec­ta­tions, but he de­cided against such a mag­nif­i­cent pro­gram of power and glory. Je­sus looked upon such a course of ex­pected mir­a­cle work­ing as a hark­ing back to the olden days of ig­no­rant magic and the de­graded prac­tices of the sav­age med­i­cine men. Pos­si­bly, for the sal­va­tion of his crea­tures, he might ac­cel­er­ate nat­u­ral law, but to tran­scend his own laws, ei­ther for the ben­e­fit of him­self or the over­aw­ing of his fel­low men, that he would not do. And the Mas­ter’s de­ci­sion was fi­nal.

136:6.7Je­sus sor­rowed for his peo­ple; he fully un­der­stood how they had been led up to the ex­pec­ta­tion of the com­ing Mes­siah, the time when “the earth will yield its fruits ten thou­sand­fold, and on one vine there will be a thou­sand branches, and each branch will pro­duce a thou­sand clus­ters, and each clus­ter will pro­duce a thou­sand grapes, and each grape will pro­duce a gal­lon of wine.” The Jews be­lieved the Mes­siah would usher in an era of mirac­u­lous plenty. The He­brews had long been nur­tured on tra­di­tions of mir­a­cles and leg­ends of won­ders.

136:6.8He was not a Mes­siah com­ing to mul­ti­ply bread and wine. He came not to min­is­ter to tem­po­ral needs only; he came to re­veal his Fa­ther in heaven to his chil­dren on earth, while he sought to lead his earth chil­dren to join him in a sin­cere ef­fort so to live as to do the will of the Fa­ther in heaven.

• attitudes › nurtured on miracles

136:8.1The next great prob­lem with which this God-man wres­tled and which he pres­ently de­cided in ac­cor­dance with the will of the Fa­ther in heaven, con­cerned the ques­tion as to whether or not any of his super­hu­man pow­ers should be em­ployed for the pur­pose of at­tract­ing the at­ten­tion and win­ning the ad­her­ence of his fel­low men. Should he in any man­ner lend his uni­verse pow­ers to the grat­i­fi­ca­tion of the Jew­ish han­ker­ing for the spec­tac­u­lar and the mar­velous? He de­cided that he should not. He set­tled upon a pol­icy of pro­ce­dure which elim­i­nated all such prac­tices as the method of bring­ing his mis­sion to the no­tice of men. And he con­sis­tently lived up to this great de­ci­sion. Even when he per­mit­ted the man­i­fes­ta­tion of nu­mer­ous time-short­en­ing min­is­tra­tions of mercy, he al­most in­vari­ably ad­mon­ished the re­cip­i­ents of his heal­ing min­istry to tell no man about the ben­e­fits they had re­ceived. And al­ways did he refuse the taunt­ing chal­lenge of his en­e­mies to “show us a sign” in proof and dem­on­stra­tion of his di­vin­ity.

• clamored to be fed, for miracles, that Jesus become king

136:9.13Through­out his pub­lic min­istry he was con­fronted with the ne­ces­sity of deal­ing with three con­stantly re­cur­ring sit­u­a­tions: the clamor to be fed, the in­sis­tence on mir­a­cles, and the fi­nal re­quest that he al­low his fol­low­ers to make him king. But Je­sus never de­parted from the de­ci­sions which he made dur­ing these days of his iso­la­tion in the Perean hills.

• attitudes › nurtured on miracles

137:6.5Je­sus in­structed them to take up their reg­u­lar du­ties un­til “the hour of the king­dom comes.” And to en­cour­age them, he set an ex­am­ple by go­ing back reg­u­larly to work in the boat­shop. In ex­plain­ing that they should spend three hours ev­ery evening in study and prepa­ra­tion for their fu­ture work, Je­sus fur­ther said: “We will all re­main here­about un­til the Fa­ther bids me call you. Each of you must now re­turn to his ac­cus­tomed work just as if noth­ing had hap­pened. Tell no man about me and re­mem­ber that my king­dom is not to come with noise and glamor, but rather must it come through the great change which my Fa­ther will have wrought in your hearts and in the hearts of those who shall be called to join you in the coun­cils of the king­dom. You are now my friends; I trust you and I love you; you are soon to be­come my per­sonal as­so­ciates. Be pa­tient, be gen­tle. Be ever obe­di­ent to the Fa­ther’s will. Make your­selves ready for the call of the king­dom. While you will ex­pe­ri­ence great joy in the ser­vice of my Fa­ther, you should also be pre­pared for trou­ble, for I warn you that it will be only through much tribu­la­tion that many will en­ter the king­dom. But those who have found the king­dom, their joy will be full, and they shall be called the blest of all the earth. But do not en­ter­tain false hope; the world will stum­ble at my words. Even you, my friends, do not fully per­ceive what I am un­fold­ing to your con­fused minds. Make no mis­take; we go forth to la­bor for a gen­er­a­tion of sign seek­ers. They will de­mand won­der-work­ing as the proof that I am sent by my Fa­ther, and they will be slow to rec­og­nize in the rev­e­la­tion of my Fa­ther’s love the cre­den­tials of my mis­sion.”

• attitudes › history of ill-feeling with Samaritans

137:7.11In the very midst of Pales­tine there lived the Samar­i­tans, with whom “the Jews had no deal­ings,” not­with­stand­ing that they held many views sim­i­lar to the Jew­ish teach­ings.

• attitudes › God was Father of race, not individual

142:2.2When Ja­cob fin­ished speak­ing, Je­sus re­plied: “Ja­cob, you have well stated the teach­ings of the olden proph­ets who taught the chil­dren of their gen­er­a­tion in ac­cor­dance with the light of their day. Our Fa­ther in Par­a­dise is change­less. But the con­cept of his na­ture has en­larged and grown from the days of Moses down through the times of Amos and even to the gen­er­a­tion of the prophet Isa­iah. And now have I come in the flesh to re­veal the Fa­ther in new glory and to show forth his love and mercy to all men on all worlds. As the gospel of this king­dom shall spread over the world with its mes­sage of good cheer and good will to all men, there will grow up im­proved and bet­ter re­la­tions among the fam­i­lies of all na­tions. As time passes, fa­thers and their chil­dren will love each other more, and thus will be brought about a bet­ter un­der­stand­ing of the love of the Fa­ther in heaven for his chil­dren on earth. Re­mem­ber, Ja­cob, that a good and true fa­ther not only loves his fam­ily as a whole—as a fam­ily—but he also truly loves and af­fec­tion­ately cares for each in­di­vid­ual mem­ber.”

• attitudes › God was Father of race, not individual

142:2.3Af­ter con­sid­er­able dis­cus­sion of the heav­enly Fa­ther’s char­ac­ter, Je­sus paused to say: “You, Ja­cob, be­ing a fa­ther of many, know well the truth of my words.” And Ja­cob said: “But, Mas­ter, who told you I was the fa­ther of six chil­dren? How did you know this about me?” And the Mas­ter replied: “Suf­fice it to say that the Fa­ther and the Son know all things, for in­deed they see all. Lov­ing your chil­dren as a fa­ther on earth, you must now ac­cept as a re­al­ity the love of the heav­enly Fa­ther for you—not just for all the chil­dren of Abra­ham, but for you, your in­di­vid­ual soul.”

143:4.1For more than six hun­dred years the Jews of Judea, and later on those of Gal­i­lee also, had been at en­mity with the Samar­i­tans. This ill feel­ing be­tween the Jews and the Samar­i­tans came about in this way: About seven hun­dred years B.C., Sar­gon, king of As­syria, in sub­du­ing a re­volt in cen­tral Pales­tine, car­ried away and into cap­tiv­ity over twenty-five thou­sand Jews of the north­ern king­dom of Is­rael and in­stalled in their place an al­most equal num­ber of the de­scen­dants of the Cuthites, Sepharvites, and the Hamath­ites. Later on, Ashur­ba­n­i­pal sent still other colonies to dwell in Samaria.

143:4.2The re­li­gious en­mity be­tween the Jews and the Samar­i­tans dated from the re­turn of the for­mer from the Baby­lo­nian cap­tiv­ity, when the Samar­i­tans worked to pre­vent the re­build­ing of Je­ru­sa­lem. Later they of­fended the Jews by ex­tend­ing friendly as­sis­tance to the armies of Alexan­der. In re­turn for their friend­ship Alexan­der gave the Samar­i­tans per­mis­sion to build a tem­ple on Mount Ger­izim, where they wor­shiped Yah­weh and their tribal gods and of­fered sac­ri­fices much af­ter the or­der of the tem­ple ser­vices at Je­ru­sa­lem. At least they con­tin­ued this wor­ship up to the time of the Mac­cabees, when John Hyr­canus de­stroyed their tem­ple on Mount Ger­izim. The Apos­tle Philip, in his labors for the Samar­i­tans af­ter the death of Je­sus, held many meet­ings on the site of this old Samar­i­tan tem­ple.

143:4.3The an­tag­o­nisms be­tween the Jews and the Samar­i­tans were time-hon­ored and his­toric; in­creas­ingly since the days of Alexan­der they had had no deal­ings with each other. The twelve apos­tles were not averse to preach­ing in the Greek and other gen­tile cities of the De­capo­lis and Syria, but it was a se­vere test of their loy­alty to the Mas­ter when he said, “Let us go into Samaria.” But in the year and more they had been with Je­sus, they had de­vel­oped a form of per­sonal loy­alty which tran­scended even their faith in his teach­ings and their prej­u­dices against the Samar­i­tans.

• attitudes › God was Father of race, not individual

145:2.4“You well know that, while a kind­hearted fa­ther loves his fam­ily as a whole, he so re­gards them as a group be­cause of his strong af­fec­tion for each in­di­vid­ual mem­ber of that fam­ily. No longer must you ap­proach the Fa­ther in heaven as a child of Is­rael but as a child of God. As a group, you are in­deed the chil­dren of Is­rael, but as in­di­vid­u­als, each one of you is a child of God. I have come, not to re­veal the Fa­ther to the chil­dren of Is­rael, but rather to bring this knowl­edge of God and the rev­e­la­tion of his love and mercy to the in­di­vid­ual be­liever as a gen­uine per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence. The proph­ets have all taught you that Yah­weh cares for his peo­ple, that God loves Is­rael. But I have come among you to pro­claim a greater truth, one which many of the later proph­ets also grasped, that God loves you—ev­ery one of you—as in­di­vid­u­als. All these gen­er­a­tions have you had a na­tional or racial re­li­gion; now have I come to give you a per­sonal re­li­gion.

• attitudes › saw God in everything that happened

148:5.4“Na­than­iel, it is our mis­sion to help men solve their spir­i­tual prob­lems and in this way to quicken their minds so that they may be the bet­ter pre­pared and in­spired to go about solv­ing their man­i­fold ma­te­rial prob­lems. I know of your con­fu­sion as you have read the Scrip­tures. All too of­ten there has pre­vailed a ten­dency to as­cribe to God the re­spon­si­bil­ity for ev­ery­thing which ig­no­rant man fails to un­der­stand. The Fa­ther is not per­son­ally re­spon­si­ble for all you may fail to com­pre­hend. Do not doubt the love of the Fa­ther just be­cause some just and wise law of his or­dain­ing chances to af­flict you be­cause you have in­no­cently or de­lib­er­ately trans­gressed such a di­vine or­di­nance.

• attitudes › spiritually stagnant; crystallized truth into a creed

155:3.3The apos­tles learned that the Jews were spir­i­tu­ally stag­nant and dy­ing be­cause they had crys­tal­lized truth into a creed; that when truth be­comes for­mu­lated as a bound­ary line of self-righ­teous ex­clu­sive­ness in­stead of serv­ing as sign­posts of spir­i­tual guid­ance and prog­ress, such teach­ings lose their cre­ative and life-giv­ing power and ul­ti­mately be­come merely preser­va­tive and fos­siliz­ing.

• found God as no other whole race of men
• sorrows of a misunderstood despised people

155:6.10But watch, lest any of you look with dis­dain upon the chil­dren of Abra­ham be­cause they have fallen on these evil days of tra­di­tional bar­ren­ness. Our fore­fa­thers gave them­selves up to the per­sis­tent and pas­sion­ate search for God, and they found him as no other whole race of men have ever known him since the times of Adam, who knew much of this as he was him­self a Son of God. My Fa­ther has not failed to mark the long and un­tir­ing strug­gle of Is­rael, ever since the days of Moses, to find God and to know God. For weary gen­er­a­tions the Jews have not ceased to toil, sweat, groan, tra­vail, and en­dure the suf­fer­ings and ex­pe­ri­ence the sor­rows of a mis­un­der­stood and de­spised peo­ple, all in or­der that they might come a lit­tle nearer the dis­cov­ery of the truth about God. And, not­with­stand­ing all the fail­ures and fal­ter­ings of Is­rael, our fa­thers pro­gres­sively, from Moses to the times of Amos and Hosea, did re­veal in­creas­ingly to the whole world an ever clearer and more truth­ful pic­ture of the eter­nal God. And so was the way pre­pared for the still greater rev­e­la­tion of the Fa­ther which you have been called to share.

• attitudes › lacked humor

156:2.8Je­sus greatly en­joyed the keen sense of hu­mor which these gen­tiles ex­hib­ited. It was the sense of hu­mor dis­played by No­rana, the Syr­ian woman, as well as her great and per­sis­tent faith, that so touched the Mas­ter’s heart and ap­pealed to his mercy. Je­sus greatly re­gret­ted that his peo­ple—the Jews—were so lack­ing in hu­mor. He once said to Thomas: “My peo­ple take them­selves too se­ri­ously; they are just about de­void of an ap­pre­ci­a­tion of hu­mor. The bur­den­some re­li­gion of the Phar­isees could never have had ori­gin among a peo­ple with a sense of hu­mor. They also lack con­sis­tency; they strain at gnats and swal­low camels.”

• attitudes › saw God in everything that happened

156:5.4“It is not strange that you ask such ques­tions see­ing that you are be­gin­ning to know the Fa­ther as I know him, and not as the early He­brew proph­ets so dimly saw him. You well know how our fore­fa­thers were dis­posed to see God in al­most ev­ery­thing that hap­pened. They looked for the hand of God in all nat­u­ral oc­cur­rences and in ev­ery un­usual episode of hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence. They con­nected God with both good and evil. They thought he soft­ened the heart of Moses and hard­ened the heart of Pharaoh. When man had a strong urge to do some­thing, good or evil, he was in the habit of ac­count­ing for these un­usual emo­tions by re­mark­ing: ‘The Lord spoke to me say­ing, do thus and so, or go here and there.’ Ac­cord­ingly, since men so of­ten and so vi­o­lently ran into temp­ta­tion, it be­came the habit of our fore­fa­thers to be­lieve that God led them thither for test­ing, pun­ish­ing, or strength­en­ing. But you, in­deed, now know bet­ter. You know that men are all too of­ten led into temp­ta­tion by the urge of their own self­ish­ness and by the im­pulses of their an­i­mal na­tures. When you are in this way tempted, I ad­mon­ish you that, while you rec­og­nize temp­ta­tion hon­estly and sin­cerely for just what it is, you in­tel­li­gently redi­rect the en­er­gies of spirit, mind, and body, which are seek­ing ex­pres­sion, into higher chan­nels and to­ward more ide­al­is­tic goals. In this way may you trans­form your temp­ta­tions into the high­est types of up­lift­ing mor­tal min­istry while you al­most wholly avoid these waste­ful and weak­en­ing con­flicts be­tween the an­i­mal and spir­i­tual na­tures.

• attitudes › looked upon all others as gentile dogs

164:1.2But the lawyer was not wholly sin­cere in ask­ing this ques­tion, and de­sir­ing to jus­tify him­self while also hop­ing to em­bar­rass Je­sus, he ven­tured to ask still an­other ques­tion. Draw­ing a lit­tle closer to the Mas­ter, he said, “But, Teacher, I should like you to tell me just who is my neigh­bor?” The lawyer asked this ques­tion hop­ing to en­trap Je­sus into mak­ing some state­ment that would con­tra­vene the Jew­ish law which de­fined one’s neigh­bor as “the chil­dren of one’s peo­ple.” The Jews looked upon all oth­ers as “gen­tile dogs.” This lawyer was some­what fa­mil­iar with Je­sus’ teach­ings and there­fore well knew that the Mas­ter thought dif­fer­ently; thus he hoped to lead him into say­ing some­thing which could be con­strued as an at­tack upon the sa­cred law.

• attitudes › history of ill-feeling with Samaritans

164:1.4The lawyer an­swered, “He who showed mercy,” that he might re­frain from even speak­ing that odi­ous word, Samar­i­tan. The lawyer was forced to give the very an­swer to the ques­tion, “Who is my neigh­bor?” which Je­sus wished given, and which, if Je­sus had so stated, would have di­rectly in­volved him in the charge of heresy. Je­sus not only con­founded the dis­hon­est lawyer, but he told his hear­ers a story which was at the same time a beau­ti­ful ad­mo­ni­tion to all his fol­low­ers and a stun­ning re­buke to all Jews re­gard­ing their at­ti­tude to­ward the Samar­i­tans. And this story has con­tin­ued to pro­mote broth­erly love among all who have sub­se­quently be­lieved the gospel of Je­sus.

• attitudes › Judeans less willing to believe gospel

166:2.2Je­sus had just been ex­plain­ing to the twelve why the gen­tiles of Perea, to­gether with the less or­tho­dox Jews, were more will­ing to be­lieve the gospel preached by the sev­enty than were the more or­tho­dox and tra­di­tion-bound Jews of Judea. He had called their at­ten­tion to the fact that their mes­sage had like­wise been more read­ily re­ceived by the Galileans, and even by the Samar­i­tans. But the twelve apos­tles were hardly yet will­ing to en­ter­tain kind feel­ings for the long-de­spised Samar­i­tans.

• daily life › dead embalmed; buried on day of demise

167:4.3The Jews were in the habit of bury­ing their dead on the day of their demise; this was a nec­es­sary prac­tice in such a warm cli­mate. It of­ten hap­pened that they put in the tomb one who was merely co­matose, so that on the sec­ond or even the third day, such a one would come forth from the tomb. But it was the be­lief of the Jews that, while the spirit or soul might linger near the body for two or three days, it never tar­ried af­ter the third day; that de­cay was well ad­vanced by the fourth day, and that no one ever re­turned from the tomb af­ter the lapse of such a pe­riod. And it was for these rea­sons that Je­sus tar­ried yet two full days in Phil­a­del­phia be­fore he made ready to start for Beth­any.

• daily life › inheritance laws

169:1.6“A cer­tain man had two sons; one, the younger, was light­hearted and care­free, al­ways seek­ing for a good time and shirk­ing re­spon­si­bil­ity, while his older brother was se­ri­ous, sober, hard-work­ing, and will­ing to bear re­spon­si­bil­ity. Now these two broth­ers did not get along well to­gether; they were al­ways quar­rel­ing and bick­er­ing. The younger lad was cheer­ful and vi­va­cious, but in­do­lent and un­re­li­able; the older son was steady and in­dus­tri­ous, at the same time self-cen­tered, surly, and con­ceited. The younger son en­joyed play but shunned work; the older de­voted him­self to work but sel­dom played. This as­so­ci­a­tion be­came so dis­agree­able that the younger son came to his fa­ther and said: ‘Fa­ther, give me the third por­tion of your pos­ses­sions which would fall to me and al­low me to go out into the world to seek my own for­tune.’ And when the fa­ther heard this re­quest, know­ing how un­happy the young man was at home and with his older brother, he di­vided his prop­erty, giv­ing the youth his share.

• daily life › custom of son’s ring

169:1.9“Now this fa­ther had grieved much for his son; he had missed the cheer­ful, though thought­less, lad. This fa­ther loved this son and was al­ways on the look­out for his re­turn, so that on the day he ap­proached his home, even while he was yet afar off, the fa­ther saw him and, be­ing moved with lov­ing com­pas­sion, ran out to meet him, and with af­fec­tion­ate greet­ing he em­braced and kissed him. And af­ter they had thus met, the son looked up into his fa­ther’s tear­ful face and said: ‘Fa­ther, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight; I am no more wor­thy to be called a son’—but the lad did not find op­por­tu­nity to com­plete his con­fes­sion be­cause the over­joyed fa­ther said to the ser­vants who had by this time come run­ning up: ‘Bring quickly his best robe, the one I have saved, and put it on him and put the son’s ring on his hand and fetch san­dals for his feet.’

• daily life › annual income of 1 man bought bread for 5000

172:1.7It was be­cause of this re­buke, which he took as a per­sonal re­proof, that Ju­das Is­car­iot fi­nally made up his mind to seek re­venge for his hurt feel­ings. Many times had he en­ter­tained such ideas sub­con­sciously, but now he dared to think such wicked thoughts in his open and con­scious mind. And many oth­ers en­cour­aged him in this at­ti­tude since the cost of this oint­ment was a sum equal to the earn­ings of one man for one year—enough to pro­vide bread for five thou­sand per­sons. But Mary loved Je­sus; she had pro­vided this pre­cious oint­ment with which to em­balm his body in death, for she be­lieved his words when he fore­warned them that he must die, and it was not to be de­nied her if she changed her mind and chose to be­stow this of­fer­ing upon the Mas­ter while he yet lived.

• daily life › owned slaves

173:1.3But traf­fic in sac­ri­fi­cial an­i­mals and sundry mer­chan­dise was not the only way in which the courts of the tem­ple were pro­faned. At this time there was fos­tered an ex­ten­sive sys­tem of bank­ing and com­mer­cial ex­change which was car­ried on right within the tem­ple precincts. And this all came about in the fol­low­ing man­ner: Dur­ing the As­monean dy­nasty the Jews coined their own sil­ver money, and it had be­come the prac­tice to re­quire the tem­ple dues of one-half shekel and all other tem­ple fees to be paid with this Jew­ish coin. This reg­u­la­tion ne­ces­si­tated that money-chang­ers be li­censed to ex­change the many sorts of cur­rency in cir­cu­la­tion through­out Pales­tine and other prov­inces of the Ro­man Em­pire for this or­tho­dox shekel of Jew­ish coin­ing. The tem­ple head tax, payable by all ex­cept women, slaves, and mi­nors, was one-half shekel, a coin about the size of a ten-cent piece but twice as thick. By the times of Je­sus the priests had also been ex­empted from the pay­ment of tem­ple dues. Ac­cord­ingly, from the 15^th to the 25^th of the month pre­ced­ing the Pass­over, ac­cred­ited money-chang­ers erected their booths in the prin­ci­pal cities of Pales­tine for the pur­pose of pro­vid­ing the Jew­ish peo­ple with proper money to meet the tem­ple dues af­ter they had reached Je­ru­sa­lem. Af­ter this ten-day pe­riod these money-chang­ers moved on to Je­ru­sa­lem and pro­ceeded to set up their ex­change ta­bles in the courts of the tem­ple. They were per­mit­ted to charge the equiv­a­lent of from three to four cents com­mis­sion for the ex­change of a coin val­ued at about ten cents, and in case a coin of larger value was of­fered for ex­change, they were al­lowed to col­lect dou­ble. Like­wise did these tem­ple bankers profit from the ex­change of all money in­tended for the pur­chase of sac­ri­fi­cial an­i­mals and for the pay­ment of vows and the mak­ing of of­fer­ings.

• attitudes › watchword was authority

173:2.3It was al­to­gether proper that the tem­ple rulers and the of­fi­cers of the Jew­ish San­hedrin should ask this ques­tion of any­one who pre­sumed to teach and per­form in the ex­traor­di­nary man­ner which had been char­ac­ter­is­tic of Je­sus, es­pe­cially as con­cerned his re­cent con­duct in clear­ing the tem­ple of all com­merce. These traders and money-chang­ers all op­er­ated by di­rect li­cense from the high­est rulers, and a per­cent­age of their gains was sup­posed to go di­rectly into the tem­ple trea­sury. Do not for­get that au­thor­ity was the watch­word of all Jewry. The proph­ets were al­ways stir­ring up trou­ble be­cause they so boldly pre­sumed to teach with­out au­thor­ity, with­out hav­ing been duly in­structed in the rab­binic academies and sub­se­quently reg­u­larly or­dained by the San­hedrin. Lack of this au­thor­ity in pre­ten­tious pub­lic teach­ing was looked upon as in­di­cat­ing ei­ther ig­no­rant pre­sump­tion or open re­bel­lion. At this time only the San­hedrin could or­dain an el­der or teacher, and such a cer­e­mony had to take place in the pres­ence of at least three per­sons who had pre­vi­ously been so or­dained. Such an or­di­na­tion con­ferred the ti­tle of “rabbi” upon the teacher and also qual­i­fied him to act as a judge, “bind­ing and loos­ing such mat­ters as might be brought to him for ad­ju­di­ca­tion.”

• attitudes › majority refused to receive Jesus

173:4.4Je­sus saw a group of the Sad­ducees and Phar­isees mak­ing their way through the crowd, and he paused for a mo­ment un­til they drew near him, when he said: “You know how your fa­thers re­jected the proph­ets, and you well know that you are set in your hearts to re­ject the Son of Man.” And then, look­ing with search­ing gaze upon those priests and el­ders who were stand­ing near him, Je­sus said: “Did you never read in the Scrip­ture about the stone which the builders re­jected, and which, when the peo­ple had dis­cov­ered it, was made into the cor­ner­stone? And so once more do I warn you that, if you con­tinue to re­ject this gospel, pres­ently will the king­dom of God be taken away from you and be given to a peo­ple will­ing to re­ceive the good news and to bring forth the fruits of the spirit. And there is a mys­tery about this stone, see­ing that whoso falls upon it, while he is thereby bro­ken in pieces, shall be saved; but on whom­so­ever this stone falls, he will be ground to dust and his ashes scat­tered to the four winds.”

• attitudes › majority refused to receive Jesus

174:5.3“My Fa­ther sent me to this world to re­veal his lov­ing-kind­ness to the chil­dren of men, but those to whom I first came have re­fused to re­ceive me. True, in­deed, many of you have be­lieved my gospel for your­selves, but the chil­dren of Abra­ham and their lead­ers are about to re­ject me, and in so do­ing they will re­ject Him who sent me. I have freely pro­claimed the gospel of sal­va­tion to this peo­ple; I have told them of son­ship with joy, lib­erty, and life more abun­dant in the spirit. My Fa­ther has done many won­der­ful works among these fear-rid­den sons of men. But truly did the Prophet Isa­iah re­fer to this peo­ple when he wrote: ‘Lord, who has be­lieved our teach­ings? And to whom has the Lord been re­vealed?’ Truly have the lead­ers of my peo­ple de­lib­er­ately blinded their eyes that they see not, and hard­ened their hearts lest they be­lieve and be saved. All these years have I sought to heal them of their un­be­lief that they might be re­cip­i­ents of the Fa­ther’s eter­nal sal­va­tion. I know that not all have failed me; some of you have in­deed be­lieved my mes­sage. In this room now are a full score of men who were once mem­bers of the San­hedrin, or who were high in the coun­cils of the na­tion, al­beit even some of you still shrink from open con­fes­sion of the truth lest they cast you out of the syn­a­gogue. Some of you are tempted to love the glory of men more than the glory of God. But I am con­strained to show for­bear­ance since I fear for the safety and loy­alty of even some of those who have been so long near me, and who have lived so close by my side.

174:5.4“In this ban­quet cham­ber I per­ceive there are as­sem­bled Jews and gen­tiles in about equal num­bers, and I would ad­dress you as the first and last of such a group that I may in­struct in the af­fairs of the king­dom be­fore I go to my Fa­ther.”

174:5.5These Greeks had been in faith­ful at­ten­dance upon Je­sus’ teach­ing in the tem­ple. On Mon­day evening they had held a con­fer­ence at the home of Nicode­mus, which lasted un­til the dawn of day, and thirty of them had elected to en­ter the king­dom.

174:5.6As Je­sus stood be­fore them at this time, he per­ceived the end of one dis­pen­sa­tion and the be­gin­ning of an­other. Turn­ing his at­ten­tion to the Greeks, the Mas­ter said:

174:5.7“He who be­lieves this gospel, be­lieves not merely in me but in Him who sent me. When you look upon me, you see not only the Son of Man but also Him who sent me. I am the light of the world, and whoso­ever will be­lieve my teach­ing shall no longer abide in dark­ness. If you gen­tiles will hear me, you shall re­ceive the words of life and shall en­ter forth­with into the joy­ous lib­erty of the truth of son­ship with God. If my fel­low coun­try­men, the Jews, choose to re­ject me and to refuse my teach­ings, I will not sit in judg­ment on them, for I came not to judge the world but to of­fer it sal­va­tion. Nev­er­the­less, they who re­ject me and refuse to re­ceive my teach­ing shall be brought to judg­ment in due sea­son by my Fa­ther and those whom he has ap­pointed to sit in judg­ment on such as re­ject the gift of mercy and the truths of sal­va­tion. Re­mem­ber, all of you, that I speak not of my­self, but that I have faith­fully de­clared to you that which the Fa­ther com­manded I should re­veal to the chil­dren of men. And these words which the Fa­ther di­rected me to speak to the world are words of di­vine truth, ev­er­last­ing mercy, and eter­nal life.

174:5.8“But to both Jew and gen­tile I de­clare the hour has about come when the Son of Man will be glo­ri­fied. You well know that, ex­cept a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it abides alone; but if it dies in good soil, it springs up again to life and bears much fruit. He who self­ishly loves his life stands in dan­ger of los­ing it; but he who is will­ing to lay down his life for my sake and the gospel’s shall en­joy a more abun­dant ex­is­tence on earth and in heaven, life eter­nal. If you will truly fol­low me, even af­ter I have gone to my Fa­ther, then shall you be­come my dis­ci­ples and the sin­cere ser­vants of your fel­low mor­tals.

174:5.9“I know my hour is ap­proach­ing, and I am trou­bled. I per­ceive that my peo­ple are de­ter­mined to spurn the king­dom, but I am re­joiced to re­ceive these truth-seek­ing gen­tiles who come here to­day in­quir­ing for the way of light. Nev­er­the­less, my heart aches for my peo­ple, and my soul is dis­traught by that which lies just be­fore me. What shall I say as I look ahead and dis­cern what is about to be­fall me? Shall I say, Fa­ther save me from this aw­ful hour? No! For this very pur­pose have I come into the world and even to this hour. Rather will I say, and pray that you will join me: Fa­ther, glo­rify your name; your will be done.”

• attitudes › majority refused to receive Jesus

175:1.1“This long time have I been with you, go­ing up and down in the land pro­claim­ing the Fa­ther’s love for the chil­dren of men, and many have seen the light and, by faith, have en­tered into the king­dom of heaven. In con­nec­tion with this teach­ing and preach­ing the Fa­ther has done many won­der­ful works, even to the res­ur­rec­tion of the dead. Many sick and af­flicted have been made whole be­cause they be­lieved; but all of this procla­ma­tion of truth and heal­ing of dis­ease has not opened the eyes of those who refuse to see light, those who are de­ter­mined to re­ject this gospel of the king­dom.

• did not fulfill destiny as people with spiritual mission

175:1.5“As long as there is a chance that the Jews will turn to my Fa­ther and seek sal­va­tion, the God of Abra­ham, Isaac, and Ja­cob will keep his hands of mercy out­stretched to­ward you; but when you have once filled up your cup of im­pen­i­tence, and when once you have fi­nally re­jected my Fa­ther’s mercy, this na­tion will be left to its own coun­sels, and it shall speed­ily come to an in­glo­ri­ous end. This peo­ple was called to be­come the light of the world, to show forth the spir­i­tual glory of a God-know­ing race, but you have so far de­parted from the ful­fill­ment of your di­vine priv­i­leges that your lead­ers are about to com­mit the su­preme folly of all the ages in that they are on the verge of fi­nally re­ject­ing the gift of God to all men and for all ages—the rev­e­la­tion of the love of the Fa­ther in heaven for all his crea­tures on earth.

• kingdom of heaven taken from

175:1.6“And when you do once re­ject this rev­e­la­tion of God to man, the king­dom of heaven shall be given to other peo­ples, to those who will re­ceive it with joy and glad­ness. In the name of the Fa­ther who sent me, I solemnly warn you that you are about to lose your po­si­tion in the world as the stan­dard-bear­ers of eter­nal truth and the cus­to­di­ans of the di­vine law. I am just now of­fer­ing you your last chance to come for­ward and re­pent, to sig­nify your in­ten­tion to seek God with all your hearts and to en­ter, like lit­tle chil­dren and by sin­cere faith, into the se­cu­rity and sal­va­tion of the king­dom of heaven.

• attitudes › majority refused to receive Jesus

175:1.7“My Fa­ther has long worked for your sal­va­tion, and I came down to live among you and per­son­ally show you the way. Many of both the Jews and the Samar­i­tans, and even the gen­tiles, have be­lieved the gospel of the king­dom, but those who should be first to come for­ward and ac­cept the light of heaven have stead­fastly re­fused to be­lieve the rev­e­la­tion of the truth of God—God re­vealed in man and man up­lifted to God.

• kingdom of heaven taken from
• political matters › nation left in accordance with purely human status

175:2.1The fact that the spir­i­tual lead­ers and the re­li­gious teach­ers of the Jew­ish na­tion one­time re­jected the teach­ings of Je­sus and con­spired to bring about his cruel death, does not in any man­ner af­fect the sta­tus of any in­di­vid­ual Jew in his stand­ing be­fore God. And it should not cause those who pro­fess to be fol­low­ers of the Christ to be prej­u­diced against the Jew as a fel­low mor­tal. The Jews, as a na­tion, as a so­ciopo­lit­i­cal group, paid in full the ter­ri­ble price of re­ject­ing the Prince of Peace. Long since they ceased to be the spir­i­tual torch­bear­ers of di­vine truth to the races of man­kind, but this con­sti­tutes no valid rea­son why the in­di­vid­ual de­scen­dants of these long-ago Jews should be made to suf­fer the per­se­cu­tions which have been vis­ited upon them by in­tol­er­ant, un­wor­thy, and big­oted pro­fessed fol­low­ers of Je­sus of Naz­a­reth, who was, him­self, a Jew by nat­u­ral birth.

175:2.2Many times has this un­rea­son­ing and un-Christ­like ha­tred and per­se­cu­tion of mod­ern Jews ter­mi­nated in the suf­fer­ing and death of some in­no­cent and un­of­fend­ing Jew­ish in­di­vid­ual whose very an­ces­tors, in the times of Je­sus, heart­ily ac­cepted his gospel and pres­ently died un­flinch­ingly for that truth which they so whole­heart­edly be­lieved. What a shud­der of hor­ror passes over the on­look­ing ce­les­tial be­ings as they be­hold the pro­fessed fol­low­ers of Je­sus in­dulge them­selves in per­se­cut­ing, ha­rass­ing, and even mur­der­ing the later-day de­scen­dants of Pe­ter, Philip, Mat­thew, and oth­ers of the Pales­tinian Jews who so glo­ri­ously yielded up their lives as the first mar­tyrs of the gospel of the heav­enly king­dom!

175:2.3How cruel and un­rea­son­ing to com­pel in­no­cent chil­dren to suf­fer for the sins of their pro­gen­i­tors, mis­deeds of which they are wholly ig­no­rant, and for which they could in no way be re­spon­si­ble! And to do such wicked deeds in the name of one who taught his dis­ci­ples to love even their en­e­mies! It has be­come nec­es­sary, in this recital of the life of Je­sus, to por­tray the man­ner in which cer­tain of his fel­low Jews re­jected him and con­spired to bring about his ig­no­min­ious death; but we would warn all who read this nar­ra­tive that the pre­sen­ta­tion of such a his­tor­i­cal recital in no way jus­ti­fies the un­just ha­tred, nor con­dones the un­fair at­ti­tude of mind, which so many pro­fessed Chris­tians have main­tained to­ward in­di­vid­ual Jews for many cen­turies. King­dom be­liev­ers, those who fol­low the teach­ings of Je­sus, must cease to mis­treat the in­di­vid­ual Jew as one who is guilty of the re­jec­tion and cru­ci­fix­ion of Je­sus. The Fa­ther and his Cre­ator Son have never ceased to love the Jews. God is no re­specter of per­sons, and sal­va­tion is for the Jew as well as for the gen­tile.

• political matters › nation left in accordance with purely human status

175:3.2From this time on the Jews were left to fin­ish their brief and short lease of na­tional life wholly in ac­cor­dance with their purely hu­man sta­tus among the na­tions of Uran­tia. Is­rael had re­pu­di­ated the Son of the God who made a covenant with Abra­ham, and the plan to make the chil­dren of Abra­ham the light-bear­ers of truth to the world had been shat­tered. The di­vine covenant had been ab­ro­gated, and the end of the He­brew na­tion drew on apace.

• did not fulfill destiny as people with spiritual mission

176:1.2Je­sus paused while he looked down upon the city. The Mas­ter re­al­ized that the re­jec­tion of the spir­i­tual con­cept of the Mes­siah, the de­ter­mi­na­tion to cling per­sis­tently and blindly to the ma­te­rial mis­sion of the ex­pected de­liv­erer, would pres­ently bring the Jews in di­rect con­flict with the pow­er­ful Ro­man armies, and that such a con­test could only re­sult in the fi­nal and com­plete over­throw of the Jew­ish na­tion. When his peo­ple re­jected his spir­i­tual be­stowal and re­fused to re­ceive the light of heaven as it so mer­ci­fully shone upon them, they thereby sealed their doom as an in­de­pen­dent peo­ple with a spe­cial spir­i­tual mis­sion on earth. Even the Jew­ish lead­ers sub­se­quently rec­og­nized that it was this sec­u­lar idea of the Mes­siah which di­rectly led to the tur­bu­lence which even­tu­ally brought about their de­struc­tion.

• did not fulfill destiny as people with spiritual mission

182:3.9The ex­pe­ri­ence of part­ing with the apos­tles was a great strain on the hu­man heart of Je­sus; this sor­row of love bore down on him and made it more dif­fi­cult to face such a death as he well knew awaited him. He re­al­ized how weak and how ig­no­rant his apos­tles were, and he dreaded to leave them. He well knew that the time of his de­par­ture had come, but his hu­man heart longed to find out whether there might not pos­si­bly be some le­git­i­mate av­enue of es­cape from this ter­ri­ble plight of suf­fer­ing and sor­row. And when it had thus sought es­cape, and failed, it was will­ing to drink the cup. The di­vine mind of Mi­chael knew he had done his best for the twelve apos­tles; but the hu­man heart of Je­sus wished that more might have been done for them be­fore they should be left alone in the world. Je­sus’ heart was be­ing crushed; he truly loved his breth­ren. He was iso­lated from his fam­ily in the flesh; one of his cho­sen as­so­ciates was be­tray­ing him. His fa­ther Joseph’s peo­ple had re­jected him and thereby sealed their doom as a peo­ple with a spe­cial mis­sion on earth. His soul was tor­tured by baf­fled love and re­jected mercy. It was just one of those aw­ful hu­man mo­ments when ev­ery­thing seems to bear down with crush­ing cru­elty and ter­ri­ble agony.

• daily life › ordinarily provided safeguards of fairness in trials

184:3.4Or­di­nar­ily, the Jews, when try­ing a man on a cap­i­tal charge, pro­ceeded with great cau­tion and pro­vided ev­ery safe­guard of fair­ness in the se­lec­tion of wit­nesses and the en­tire con­duct of the trial. But on this oc­ca­sion, Cai­a­phas was more of a pros­e­cu­tor than an un­bi­ased judge.

• daily life › ordinarily provided safeguards of fairness in trials

184:3.6The Jew­ish law re­quired that at least two wit­nesses must agree upon any point be­fore a charge could be laid against the pris­oner. Ju­das could not be used as a wit­ness against Je­sus be­cause the Jew­ish law specif­i­cally for­bade the tes­ti­mony of a traitor. More than a score of false wit­nesses were on hand to tes­tify against Je­sus, but their tes­ti­mony was so con­tra­dic­tory and so ev­i­dently trumped up that the San­hedrists them­selves were very much ashamed of the per­for­mance. Je­sus stood there, look­ing down be­nignly upon these per­jur­ers, and his very coun­te­nance dis­con­certed the ly­ing wit­nesses. Through­out all this false tes­ti­mony the Mas­ter never said a word; he made no re­ply to their many false ac­cu­sa­tions.

• daily life › ordinarily provided safeguards of fairness in trials

184:4.1The Jew­ish law re­quired that, in the mat­ter of pass­ing the death sen­tence, there should be two ses­sions of the court. This sec­ond ses­sion was to be held on the day fol­low­ing the first, and the in­ter­ven­ing time was to be spent in fast­ing and mourn­ing by the mem­bers of the court. But these men could not await the next day for the con­fir­ma­tion of their de­ci­sion that Je­sus must die. They waited only one hour. In the mean­time Je­sus was left in the au­di­ence cham­ber in the cus­tody of the tem­ple guards, who, with the ser­vants of the high priest, amused them­selves by heap­ing ev­ery sort of in­dig­nity upon the Son of Man. They mocked him, spit upon him, and cru­elly buf­feted him. They would strike him in the face with a rod and then say, “Proph­esy to us, you the De­liv­erer, who it was that struck you.” And thus they went on for one full hour, re­vil­ing and mis­treat­ing this un­re­sist­ing man of Gal­i­lee.

• attitudes › willing to die for their religion

185:1.1If Pon­tius Pi­late had not been a rea­son­ably good gov­er­nor of the mi­nor prov­inces, Tiberius would hardly have suf­fered him to re­main as procu­ra­tor of Judea for ten years. Al­though he was a fairly good ad­min­is­tra­tor, he was a moral cow­ard. He was not a big enough man to com­pre­hend the na­ture of his task as gov­er­nor of the Jews. He failed to grasp the fact that these He­brews had a real re­li­gion, a faith for which they were will­ing to die, and that mil­lions upon mil­lions of them, scat­tered here and there through­out the em­pire, looked to Je­ru­sa­lem as the shrine of their faith and held the San­hedrin in re­spect as the high­est tri­bu­nal on earth.

• attitudes › deep-seated prejudice against all images
• attitudes › willing to die for their religion

185:1.3Pi­late’s dis­fa­vor with the Jews came about as a re­sult of a num­ber of un­for­tu­nate en­coun­ters. First, he failed to take se­ri­ously their deep-seated prej­u­dice against all im­ages as sym­bols of idol wor­ship. There­fore he per­mit­ted his sol­diers to en­ter Je­ru­sa­lem with­out re­mov­ing the im­ages of Cae­sar from their ban­ners, as had been the prac­tice of the Ro­man sol­diers un­der his pre­de­ces­sor. A large dep­u­ta­tion of Jews waited upon Pi­late for five days, im­plor­ing him to have these im­ages re­moved from the mil­i­tary stan­dards. He flatly re­fused to grant their pe­ti­tion and threat­ened them with in­stant death. Pi­late, him­self be­ing a skep­tic, did not un­der­stand that men of strong re­li­gious feel­ings will not hes­i­tate to die for their re­li­gious con­vic­tions; and there­fore was he dis­mayed when these Jews drew them­selves up de­fi­antly be­fore his palace, bowed their faces to the ground, and sent word that they were ready to die. Pi­late then re­al­ized that he had made a threat which he was un­will­ing to carry out. He sur­ren­dered, or­dered the im­ages re­moved from the stan­dards of his sol­diers in Je­ru­sa­lem, and found him­self from that day on to a large ex­tent sub­ject to the whims of the Jew­ish lead­ers, who had in this way dis­cov­ered his weak­ness in mak­ing threats which he feared to ex­e­cute.

185:1.4Pi­late sub­se­quently de­ter­mined to re­gain this lost pres­tige and ac­cord­ingly had the shields of the em­peror, such as were com­monly used in Cae­sar wor­ship, put up on the walls of Herod’s palace in Je­ru­sa­lem. When the Jews protested, he was adamant. When he re­fused to lis­ten to their protests, they promptly ap­pealed to Rome, and the em­peror as promptly or­dered the of­fend­ing shields re­moved. And then was Pi­late held in even lower es­teem than be­fore.

• daily life › owned slaves

186:1.2All of these Jews loathed Ju­das; they looked upon the be­trayer with only feel­ings of ut­ter con­tempt. Through­out the trial of Je­sus be­fore Cai­a­phas and dur­ing his ap­pear­ance be­fore Pi­late, Ju­das was pricked in his con­science about his traitorous con­duct. And he was also be­gin­ning to be­come some­what dis­il­lu­sioned re­gard­ing the re­ward he was to re­ceive as pay­ment for his ser­vices as Je­sus’ be­trayer. He did not like the cool­ness and aloof­ness of the Jew­ish au­thor­i­ties; nev­er­the­less, he ex­pected to be lib­er­ally re­warded for his cow­ardly con­duct. He an­tic­i­pated be­ing called be­fore the full meet­ing of the San­hedrin and there hear­ing him­self eu­lo­gized while they con­ferred upon him suit­able hon­ors in to­ken of the great ser­vice which he flat­tered him­self he had ren­dered his na­tion. Imag­ine, there­fore, the great sur­prise of this ego­tis­tic traitor when a ser­vant of the high priest, tap­ping him on the shoul­der, called him just out­side the hall and said: “Ju­das, I have been ap­pointed to pay you for the be­trayal of Je­sus. Here is your re­ward.” And thus speak­ing, the ser­vant of Cai­a­phas handed Ju­das a bag con­tain­ing thirty pieces of sil­ver—the cur­rent price of a good, healthy slave.

• Jesus the last to afford real national leadership

186:2.8The Mas­ter never dis­played the least in­ter­est in Pi­late’s well-meant but half­hearted ef­forts to ef­fect his re­lease. He re­ally pitied Pi­late and sin­cerely en­deav­ored to en­lighten his dark­ened mind. He was wholly pas­sive to all the Ro­man gov­er­nor’s ap­peals to the Jews to with­draw their crim­i­nal charges against him. Through­out the whole sor­row­ful or­deal he bore him­self with sim­ple dig­nity and un­os­ten­ta­tious majesty. He would not so much as cast re­flec­tions of in­sin­cer­ity upon his would-be mur­der­ers when they asked if he were “king of the Jews.” With but lit­tle qual­i­fy­ing ex­pla­na­tion he ac­cepted the des­ig­na­tion, know­ing that, while they had cho­sen to re­ject him, he would be the last to af­ford them real na­tional lead­er­ship, even in a spir­i­tual sense.

• attitudes › objected to public nakedness

187:2.2It was the cus­tom to re­move all clothes from those who were to be cru­ci­fied, but since the Jews greatly ob­jected to the pub­lic ex­po­sure of the naked hu­man form, the Ro­mans al­ways pro­vided a suit­able loin cloth for all per­sons cru­ci­fied at Je­ru­sa­lem. Ac­cord­ingly, af­ter Je­sus’ clothes had been re­moved, he was thus garbed be­fore he was put upon the cross.

• daily life › dead embalmed; buried on day of demise

188:1.4They car­ried the body into the tomb, a cham­ber about ten feet square, where they hur­riedly pre­pared it for burial. The Jews did not re­ally bury their dead; they ac­tu­ally em­balmed them. Joseph and Nicode­mus had brought with them large quan­ti­ties of myrrh and aloes, and they now wrapped the body with ban­dages sat­u­rated with these so­lu­tions. When the em­balm­ing was com­pleted, they tied a nap­kin about the face, wrapped the body in a linen sheet, and rev­er­ently placed it on a shelf in the tomb.

• daily life › restraint on women’s approach to strange men

190:0.5In view­ing the promi­nent part which Mary Mag­da­lene took in pro­claim­ing the Mas­ter’s res­ur­rec­tion, it should be re­corded that Mary was the chief spokesman for the women’s corps, as was Pe­ter for the apos­tles. Mary was not chief of the women work­ers, but she was their chief teacher and pub­lic spokesman. Mary had be­come a woman of great cir­cum­spec­tion, so that her bold­ness in speak­ing to a man whom she con­sid­ered to be the care­taker of Joseph’s gar­den only in­di­cates how hor­ri­fied she was to find the tomb empty. It was the depth and agony of her love, the full­ness of her de­vo­tion, that caused her to for­get, for a mo­ment, the con­ven­tional re­straints of a Jew­ish woman’s ap­proach to a strange man.

• contrasted with Greeks and Romans

191:5.3“Peace be upon you. For a full week have I tar­ried that I might ap­pear again when you were all pres­ent to hear once more the com­mis­sion to go into all the world and preach this gospel of the king­dom. Again I tell you: As the Fa­ther sent me into the world, so send I you. As I have re­vealed the Fa­ther, so shall you re­veal the di­vine love, not merely with words, but in your daily liv­ing. I send you forth, not to love the souls of men, but rather to love men. You are not merely to pro­claim the joys of heaven but also to ex­hibit in your daily ex­pe­ri­ence these spirit re­al­i­ties of the di­vine life since you al­ready have eter­nal life, as the gift of God, through faith. When you have faith, when power from on high, the Spirit of Truth, has come upon you, you will not hide your light here be­hind closed doors; you will make known the love and the mercy of God to all man­kind. Through fear you now flee from the facts of a dis­agree­able ex­pe­ri­ence, but when you shall have been bap­tized with the Spirit of Truth, you will bravely and joy­ously go forth to meet the new ex­pe­ri­ences of pro­claim­ing the good news of eter­nal life in the king­dom of God. You may tarry here and in Gal­i­lee for a short sea­son while you re­cover from the shock of the tran­si­tion from the false se­cu­rity of the au­thor­ity of tra­di­tion­al­ism to the new or­der of the au­thor­ity of facts, truth, and faith in the su­preme re­al­i­ties of liv­ing ex­pe­ri­ence. Your mis­sion to the world is founded on the fact that I lived a God-re­veal­ing life among you; on the truth that you and all other men are the sons of God; and it shall con­sist in the life which you will live among men—the ac­tual and liv­ing ex­pe­ri­ence of lov­ing men and serv­ing them, even as I have loved and served you. Let faith re­veal your light to the world; let the rev­e­la­tion of truth open the eyes blinded by tra­di­tion; let your lov­ing ser­vice ef­fec­tu­ally de­stroy the prej­u­dice en­gen­dered by ig­no­rance. By so draw­ing close to your fel­low men in un­der­stand­ing sym­pa­thy and with un­selfish de­vo­tion, you will lead them into a sav­ing knowl­edge of the Fa­ther’s love. The Jews have ex­tolled good­ness; the Greeks have ex­alted beauty; the Hin­dus preach de­vo­tion; the far­away as­cetics teach rev­er­ence; the Ro­mans de­mand loy­alty; but I re­quire of my dis­ci­ples life, even a life of lov­ing ser­vice for your broth­ers in the flesh.”

• attitudes › majority refused to receive Jesus

195:0.2Al­though the tra­di­tion-bound and priest-rid­den He­brews, as a peo­ple, re­fused to ac­cept ei­ther Je­sus’ gospel of the fa­ther­hood of God and the broth­er­hood of man or Pe­ter’s and Paul’s procla­ma­tion of the res­ur­rec­tion and as­cen­sion of Christ (sub­se­quent Chris­tian­ity), the rest of the Ro­man Em­pire was found to be re­cep­tive to the evolv­ing Chris­tian teach­ings. West­ern civ­i­liza­tion was at this time in­tel­lec­tual, war weary, and thor­oughly skep­ti­cal of all ex­ist­ing re­li­gions and uni­verse philoso­phies. The peo­ples of the West­ern world, the ben­e­fi­cia­ries of Greek cul­ture, had a revered tra­di­tion of a great past. They could con­tem­plate the in­her­i­tance of great ac­com­plish­ments in phi­los­o­phy, art, lit­er­a­ture, and po­lit­i­cal prog­ress. But with all these achieve­ments they had no soul-sat­is­fy­ing re­li­gion. Their spir­i­tual long­ings re­mained un­sat­is­fied.

• attitudes › majority refused to receive Jesus

195:0.5How did this new mes­sage of Jew­ish ori­gin, which had al­most failed in the land of its birth, so quickly and ef­fec­tively cap­ture the very best minds of the Ro­man Em­pire? The tri­umph of Chris­tian­ity over the philo­sophic re­li­gions and the mys­tery cults was due to:

• attitudes › took their religion too seriously; failed to evolve nontheologic philosophy of life

195:1.6The Greek revered beauty, the Jew ho­li­ness, but both peo­ples loved truth. For cen­turies the Greek had se­ri­ously thought and earnestly de­bated about all hu­man prob­lems—so­cial, eco­nomic, po­lit­i­cal, and philo­sophic—ex­cept re­li­gion. Few Greeks had paid much at­ten­tion to re­li­gion; they did not take even their own re­li­gion very se­ri­ously. For cen­turies the Jews had ne­glected these other fields of thought while they de­voted their minds to re­li­gion. They took their re­li­gion very se­ri­ously, too se­ri­ously. As il­lu­mi­nated by the con­tent of Je­sus’ mes­sage, the united prod­uct of the cen­turies of the thought of these two peo­ples now be­came the driv­ing power of a new or­der of hu­man so­ci­ety and, to a cer­tain ex­tent, of a new or­der of hu­man re­li­gious be­lief and prac­tice.