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 Toward the understanding, of Jesus aM.o 
 
 III 
 
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Toward the Understanding 
 of Jesus 
 
 and other historical studies 
 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
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Toward the Understanding 
 of Jesus 
 
 and other historical studies 
 
 BY 
 
 Vladimir G. Simkhovitch 
 
 jQeto gork 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 1921 
 
 AU rights reserved 
 
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PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 
 
 Copyright, 1921, 
 By the MACMILLAN COMPANY. 
 
 Set up and printed. Published November, igzi. 
 
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PREFACE 
 
 Problems of history are problems of understanding. 
 Three such problems of historical understanding are 
 treated in this book. 
 
 The first study deals with the historical problem 
 presented by the teachings of Jesus. The problem Is 
 — ivhy such unprecedented teachings at that particular 
 time? This study, therefore, deals, if you please, with 
 the "fullness of time." To the scientific historian 
 everything that has happened, happened In the "full- 
 ness of time" and to understand intimately and realis- 
 tically that "fullness" is the task of history. In this 
 particular study, therefore, we are endeavoring to 
 understand the particular circumstances and conditions 
 that make so great an historical event as the insight 
 of Jesus historically intelligible to us. 
 
 In dealing with the gospel texts I have not at- 
 tempted to utilize critical literature. Text-criticism to 
 my way of thinking already presupposes a clear-cut 
 understanding of the controlling factors In the his- 
 torical situation. 
 
 "Rome's Fall Reconsidered" was first published In 
 "The Political Science Quarterly" In 191 6. After the 
 essay was in print I was glad to hear, that the 
 famous German chemist, Justus Liebig, who con- 
 
VI PREFACE 
 
 tributed so much to agricultural chemistry, expressed 
 in one of his agricultural works the idea that the decay 
 of the Roman Empire was due to the decay of its agri- 
 culture. I certainly would have paid just tribute to 
 Liebig had I been aware of it while writing my study. 
 But I was not. 
 
 To the reader "Rome's Fall Reconsidered" may 
 seem , an obvious continuation of my "Hay and 
 History" which was published first in "The Political 
 Science Quarterly" in 19 13. The general thesis is 
 clearly developed there, yet it was another circumstance 
 that led me to reconsider Rome's Fall. 
 
 In examining various data relating to the English 
 Enclosures I became convinced that they were due not 
 to the greater profit received by raising wool, but to 
 the hopeless condition of English agriculture due to 
 the exhaustion of the fields. This conviction is but 
 briefly indicated in my Rome's Fall. The thesis was 
 most convincingly established by a gifted student of 
 mine, Miss Harriet Bradley.* In the meantime re- 
 searches in the history of the productivity of human 
 labor led me to read the Scriptores Rei Rusticae, the 
 ancient agricultural writers. Great, therefore, was my 
 surprise to find Varro's plaintive descriptions of the 
 abandonment of agriculture in Rome and of their turn- 
 ing fields into pastures. Varro's "contra leges et 
 segetibus fecit prata" sounded remarkably like the 
 familiar outcries of the early Enclosure movement. 
 This similarity impelled me to reexamine the decay of 
 
 * Harriet Bradjey, The Enclosures in England, Columbia Univer- 
 sity Studies in History, Economics and Public Lata, 1918. 
 
PREFACE VU 
 
 the classical civilization. The results of this examina- 
 tion I present to the reader. 
 
 I am indebted to many intimate friends for their 
 long-suffering patience in reading my studies in manu- 
 script and for their valuable comments and criticisms. 
 
 Vladimir G. Simkhovitch. 
 
 Columbia University, 
 October, 1921. 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 FACE 
 
 Preface v 
 
 Toward the Understanding of Jesus .... i 
 
 Rome's Fall Reconsidered 84 
 
 Hay and History 140 
 
Toward the Understanding 
 of Jesus 
 
 and other historical studies 
 
TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING 
 OF JESUS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 The teachings of Christ are an historical event. 
 Let us try to understand them historically. Without 
 an historical understanding we have before us not 
 teachings but texts. There is hardly a text in the four 
 gospels that is not apparently conflicting with other 
 texts. Yet an insight is won when the teachings of 
 Jesus are viewed and understood historically. 
 
 The test of true understanding is to see in seeming 
 contradictions but differing aspects of the same funda- 
 mental forces, to perceive in the endless expressions of 
 life but one flow of life and to trace that flow to its 
 sources. The test of true understanding is an under- 
 standing free from contradictions. So long as we find 
 contradictions it is certain that what we hold in our 
 hands are fragments; and though we may try to ar- 
 range them logically, the complete sphere of Jesus' 
 own life and the life he preached we do not understand. 
 
 The gospels themselves contain practically nothing 
 that throws light on Jesus' life as a whole. Little is 
 
2 TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 
 
 to be found about his life and development before his 
 ministry. Yet it is clear that when he entered upon 
 his ministry he felt called to do so, and it is clear that 
 such a mission develops slowly. What do we know of 
 the long years while Jesus was thinking and feeling 
 and praying, the years while the life was ripening 
 which he afterwards preached and finally sacrificed? 
 Under what circumstances he was developing, what 
 he was doing, what influences impressed themselves 
 upon his life and thought before he was thirty — what 
 do we know about it? Nothing! The episode from 
 Jesus' childhood, when he remained in the temple 
 listening and asking questions of the learned men 
 there, only emphasizes our lack of knowledge. For if 
 Jesus in his childhood was so eager and mentally so 
 keen, what was his mind doing during the eighteen or 
 twenty years which followed that episode ? Luke tells 
 us "And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in 
 favor with God and man." ^ That is all we know 
 about the growth and development of Jesus' life and 
 mind. Was his inner life dormant or non-existent all 
 these years? Did he not grow at all? Had his ideas 
 no sources whatsoever, no development of any kind; 
 were they utterly uncorrected with the lives of his fel- 
 low men? What was Jesus, a phantom abstractly ex- 
 isting in a vacuum, or a historical personality really 
 living and suffering in a given time and place ? 
 
 There can be but one relevant answer to the ques- 
 tion : Jesus was a historical personality. We all live 
 and die and most of us are forgotten. Personalities 
 'Luke 2:52. 
 
TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 3 
 
 who are remembered, whom written records of human 
 existence cannot overlook and our memory cannot for- 
 get, are personalities whose individual lives greatly af- 
 fected many lives. A personality in other words ac- 
 quires historical importance when it deals with the 
 many, when its ideas, actions, words are understood 
 by the many, affect the many. If a multitude gathers 
 around one, it means that what the one is teaching is of 
 interest to so many individuals that they form a multi- 
 tude around him. 
 
 The more limited is our knowledge of thf one, the 
 more important is the light that may be shed by the 
 many. The many seldom present difficult problems, 
 for it is never very difficult to find out what in a given 
 situation they had in common. What were their com- 
 mon conditions of existence, what were their common 
 hopes, what were their fears, interests, purposes? 
 Once we find that out, the reactions of the many are 
 not difficult to understand. The particular historical 
 conditions under which Jesus developed, lived, min- 
 istered and died are bound to help us understand his 
 life and hence his teachings more intimately. How 
 the Greeks or the Romans, the Gauls, the Goths or 
 the Slavs at various times conceived and pictured to 
 themselves Jesus and his teachings is an interesting 
 problem in itself. It is the history of Christianity, it 
 is the story of Jesus in the course of human history. 
 The history of these interpretations of Jesus is a his- 
 tory of assimilations, in a sense a history of mankind. 
 But it is not the history of mankind that interests us 
 here. These interpretations can only confuse us. Nor 
 
4 TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 
 
 are we interested in a composite picture of Jesus in 
 history throughout the ages of faith. What we are 
 searching for is that definite, concrete, historical Jesus 
 who can give coherence to his teachings. Our quest 
 is the historical truth. Let us therefore go to the docu- 
 ments; but let us be clear in our mind as to their 
 value. 
 
 For historical truth is not a bundle of documents. 
 Documents are the raw material, but not the struc- 
 ture. Historical truth is such a constructive insight 
 into a given situation as to carry with it conviction of 
 real life. Social life is then moving within its condi- 
 tions of existence ; and personalities, in their words and 
 deeds, are correlated with their fellow men and appear 
 in their historical, that is, their representative capacity. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 In the year seventy after Christ the temple of 
 Jerusalem was destroyed, Jerusalem was sacked, and 
 the population either slain, crucified or sold into 
 slavery. It is estimated that over a million and two 
 hundred thousand perished. Josephus tells us about 
 the destruction of Jerusalem that "the multitude of 
 those that therein perished exceeded all the destruc- 
 tions that either men or God ever brought upon the 
 world." 1 
 
 The conventional history usually begins this war on 
 August sixth of the year 66, when the Romans and 
 other Gentiles were massacred by the Jews of Jeru- 
 salem. This date is so artificial that Mommsen for 
 instance suggests A. D. 44 as the year from which the 
 Jewish-Roman war might better be dated. 
 
 It has been customary to put the outbreak of the war in the 
 year 66; with equal and perhaps better warrant we might name 
 for it the year 44. Since the death of Agrippa, warfare in Judea 
 had never ceased, and alongside of the local feuds, which Jews 
 fought with Jews, there went on constantly the war of Roman 
 troops against the seceders in the mountains, the Zealots, as the 
 Jews named them, or, according to Roman designation, the 
 Robbers.^ 
 
 'Josephus: Jewish Wars, VI, 9, 4. 
 
 ° Mommsen: The Provinces of the Roman Empire, v. 3, p. 221-222. 
 (New York, 1887.) 
 
 5 
 
6 TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 
 
 But to date the beginning of the revolt against Rome 
 with the death of Agrippa in the year 44 is also quite 
 arbitrary. For the revolt had been brewing and re- 
 peatedly breaking out here and there long before that. 
 If we should follow the opinion of a contemporary 
 historian, Josephus, we should have to date the be- 
 ginnings back to the revolt of Judas, the Galilean, or 
 Judas, the Gaulonite, to whose revolutionary activities 
 and doctrines Josephus attributes all the ensuing mis- 
 fortunes of the Jewish nation, which culminated in the 
 destruction of Jerusalem and its temple. The occasion 
 of that uprising was the census of Quirinius for tax- 
 ation purposes in the year 6 A. D. Josephus tells us 
 that one Judas, the Gaulonite, with a Pharisee named 
 Saddouk, urged the Jews to revolt, both preaching 
 that "this taxation was no better than an introduction 
 of slavery, and exhorting the nation to assert its 
 liberty." Josephus proceeds to inform us about these 
 men and their doctrine : 
 
 All sorts of misfortunes sprung from these men, and the nation 
 was infected with this doctrine to an incredible degree ; one violent 
 war came upon us after another .... the sedition at last so in- 
 creased that the very temple of God was burnt down by their 
 enemies' fire.^ 
 
 Toward the end of the same chapter he gives us some 
 information about the so-called philosophy of Judas, 
 the Gaulonite or the Galilean, as well as of his follow- 
 ers. 
 
 These men agree in all other things with the Pharisaic notions; 
 but they have an inviolable attachment to liberty, and say that 
 'Josephus: Antiquities, XVIII, i, t. 
 
TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS ^ 
 
 God is to be their only Lord and Master. They also do not mind 
 dying any death, nor indeed do they heed the deaths of their 
 relations and friends, nor could the fear of death make them 
 call any man their master. And since this immutable resolution 
 of theirs is well known to a great many, I shall speak no further 
 about that matter; nor am I afraid that anything I have said of 
 them should be disbelieved, rather do I fear that what I have 
 said does not adequately express the determination that they 
 show when they undergo pain.^ 
 
 As a matter of fact the Jewish struggle for inde- 
 pendence and the Zealot movement did not begin even 
 with Judas the Gaulonite. Judas himself only con- 
 tinued the work of his father, Ezechias of Galilee,^ 
 who with his very large following was killed by young 
 Herod when the latter was only the captain, srpaTjjiof , 
 of Galilee under Hyrcanus, the ethnarch of Judea. 
 That was in the year 46 B. C. Even then the San- 
 hedrin of Jerusalem must have had strong sympathies 
 with Ezechias, for Herod was accused before that body 
 for killing Ezechias and his followers, and he would 
 have fared badly had not Sextus Caesar, the Roman 
 governor of Syria, requested from Hyrcanus Herod's 
 acquittal.^ 
 
 Nor does the rebellion of the Jews begin with 
 Ezechias. The rebellion of the Jews against Rome 
 rather begins with the power of Rome over the Jews ; 
 and in the same degree as the Roman power over the 
 Jews increased, did the political reaction against that 
 power, the revolution against Rome, increase and 
 
 ^Josephus: Antiquities, XVIII, i, 6. 
 
 ^Schurer: Geschichte des Jiidischen Volkes im Zeitalter Jesu Christi, 
 V. I, p. 420. (4th ed., Leipzig, 1901). 
 
 'Josephus: Antiq., XIV, 9, 3-5. Jewish Wars, I, 10, 6-9. 
 
8 TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 
 
 spread. The Jewish revolutionists against Rome were 
 called by the Romans bandits or robbers. Later they 
 were called scitarii, "men with knives." The polite 
 Josephus followed the Romans in calling them robbers ; 
 but whenever he tells us about the constant war- 
 fare, about either the Romans' or Herod's exploits 
 against the robbers, it becomes clear that they are 
 religious patriots who are fighting and dying for 
 their country. So, for instance, Josephus describes one 
 of Herod's expeditions against some Galilean robbers : 
 
 Now these men slew the robbers and their families . . . and as 
 Herod was desirous of saving some of them, he issued a proclama- 
 tion to them . . . but not one of them came willingly to him, and 
 those that were compelled to come preferred death to captivity. 
 . . . And here a certain old man, the father of seven children . . . 
 slew his children one after another. . . . Herod was near enough 
 to see this sight and compassion moved him, and he stretched out his 
 right hand to the old man and besought him to spare his children; 
 yet did he not relent at all upon what he said, but reproached 
 Herod on the lowliness of his descent, and slew his wife as well as 
 his children; and when he had thrown their dead bodies down the 
 precipice, he at last threw himself down after them.^ 
 
 It is obvious here that we are dealing not with mer- 
 cenary bandits, but with political and religious devotees 
 who prefer death to submission. The Zealot move- 
 ment, judging from Josephus's narrative, is of much 
 older date than the revolt of Judas the Gaulonite, but 
 that particular Galilean's uprising must have especially 
 impressed itself upon the memory of men, for it is 
 mentioned by way of illustration or characterization 
 even in the Acts. 
 
 After this man rose up Judas of Galilee in the days of the taxing 
 [,i.e., the enrolment] and drew away much people after him: he 
 
 'Josephus: Jewish Wars, I, i6, 4. 
 
TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 9 
 
 also perished; and all, even as many as obeyed him, were dis- 
 persed.^ 
 
 Still more important the outbreak becomes when 
 we consider what happened at the same time. For 
 it was this very Census of Quirinius and this very en- 
 rolment which, according to Luke, brought Joseph 
 and Mary from Nazareth to Bethlehem where Mary 
 gave birth to Jesus.^ The chronology and details of 
 Luke's narrative present many puzzles, important no 
 doubt to the historian of dates and places, but not rele- 
 vant in a history of ideas. The slight chronological 
 discrepancies here we may overlook. For after all 
 so far as influence and ideas are concerned, it does 
 not matter whether the uprisings of Judas took place 
 in the year i or in the year 7 after the birth of Christ. 
 Certain it is that the great events under the shadow 
 of which Jesus spent his childhood were memories of 
 Herod's bloody rule, the annexation of Judea to the 
 Roman province of Syria, and the revolt against Rome 
 of Judas of Galilee. ] 
 
 The importance of Judas's uprising Is attested to 
 us by Josephus. The ideas for which Judas stood did 
 not die with him, but were spreading and increasing till 
 all of Judea and Galilee were in a veritable conflagra- 
 tion. Is it reasonable to suppose that Jesus paid no 
 attention to what was going on around him? Is it 
 reasonable to suppose that the souls of his fellow 
 men, their ideas and ideals could be a matter of in- 
 difference to him? 
 
 You must remember that if there was a difference 
 
 'Acts 5:37. 
 'Luke 2:1-6. 
 
lO TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 
 
 between the Pharisees and the Zealots it was only in 
 the method and the degree of their antagonism to 
 Rome. The immediate followers of Judas grasped 
 the sword as their answer to Roman taxation. But 
 all the Jews in Jerusalem and throughout Judea re- 
 sented the idea of paying tribute. Josephus tells us 
 that they took the report of taxation "heinously," 
 and that it took a great deal of persuasion on the part 
 of the high priest Joazar to make them submit to the 
 taxation.^ It is clear, however, that the difference in 
 attitude between the Zealots and the Pharisees was 
 that the former resisted with the drawn sword, while 
 the submission of the latter was but passive resistance, 
 with a heart full of resentment but with an arm too 
 feeble or a mind too cautious to grasp the sword. 
 Hence the Pharisaic question, "Is it lawful to give 
 tribute unto Caesar, or not?" ^ The inquirer knew 
 as well as Jesus how unpopular the answer Yes would 
 be with a Jewish audience. Jesus answered, however, 
 in the affirmative, pointing out that they have lost their 
 independence, that on their tribute coin is the image 
 of Caesar. Hence there is nothing left but to "render 
 therefore unto Caesar the things that are Cesar's." * 
 
 In the year 6 Judea was annexed to Syria; in the 
 year 70 Jerusalem and its temple were destroyed. Be- 
 tween these two dates Jesus preached and was crucified 
 on Golgotha. During all that time the life of the lit- 
 tle nation was a terrific drama; its patriotic emotions 
 were aroused to the highest pitch and then still more 
 
 'Josephus: Antiquities, XVIII, i, i. 
 
 'Matthew 2a: 17. 
 
 'Ibid. 
 
TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS II 
 
 inflamed by the identification of national politics with 
 a national religion. Is it reasonable to assume that 
 what was going on before Jesus' eyes was a closed 
 book, that the agonizing problems of his people were 
 a matter of indifference to him, that he had given them 
 no consideration, that he was not taking a definite at- 
 titude towards the great and all-absorbing problem 
 of the very people whom he taught? 
 
 In this setting, the Jewish nationalist could not sepa- 
 rate religion from patriotism. Roman taxation, for 
 instance, is certainly a purely political question, but 
 Judas made a religious issue of it; and the Pharisaic 
 interrogator of Jesus asked whether it was "lawful," 
 that is, religiously permissible. Jesus therefore could 
 not meditate about the religious problems of the peo- 
 ple to whom he ministered without giving considera- 
 tion to their engrossing political problem. That he 
 had profoundly considered the problems of his day 
 and wondered what the future contained for his people 
 is shown by his reproach to the Pharisees : 
 
 The Pharisees also with the Sadducees came, and tempting de- 
 sired him that he would shew them a sign from heaven. But he 
 answered and said unto them, When it is evening, ye say. It will 
 be fair weather: for the sky is red. And in the morning. It will 
 be foul weather to-day: for the sky is red and lowering. O, ye 
 hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not dis- 
 cern the signs of the times ? ^ 
 
 'Matthew 16:1-3. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 Called upon to examine the origin and causes of 
 the spreading resentment, of the fermenting revolu- 
 tion against Rome's rule, one curious circumstance is 
 bound to attract our attention. This circumstance is 
 that the Jews themselves petitioned Rome for Judea's 
 annexation to the Roman province of Syria. Rome, on 
 the other hand, did not grant the petition immediately. 
 Only after years of Archelaus's misrule in Jerusalem 
 was he finally deposed and Judea annexed in 6 A. D. 
 Of course there were good reasons for the Jewish 
 petition; the Immediate concrete situation must have 
 suggested precisely such action both on the part of 
 Judea and on the part of Rome. But behind the Im- 
 mediate situation a vista is opened on the character and 
 quality of Jewish political Independence. 
 
 The events themselves are simple enough; judged 
 by themselves they are insignificant ; but valued psycho- 
 logically, viewed as indications, what a light they throw 
 upon Jewish nationalism and anationalism, upon Jew- 
 ish political life with Its dreams, its aspirations, its 
 struggles and Its fate. One has only to glance at the 
 position of the heirs of Herod before Caesar's throne; 
 one has only to listen to the petitions and supplications 
 of Herod's heirs and of the Judean ambassadors to 
 realize that the political doom has long ceased to be 
 a specter and a threat, but has been accepted by the 
 
 12 
 
TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 1 3 
 
 Jewish statesmen as an actual status quo, as a matter 
 of fact, whether the plain people realize it in their 
 every-day life or not. 
 
 Thus it seems that in their petitions they were 
 haggling over minor terms and comforts; only details 
 of submission appear to have worried them. In 
 reality they were trying to save their culture and their 
 religion. But why did the Jewish ambassadors de- 
 mand provincial annexation? Why did eight thou- 
 sand Jewish residents in Rome second Jerusalem's peti- 
 tion? Did they not prefer to be at least nominally 
 independent? Fifty Jewish ambassadors were pros- 
 trated before the throne of Caesar begging for annexa- 
 tion; the entire Jewish population of Rome was sup- 
 porting these ambassadors and opposing the claims of 
 Herod's heirs. Where then was Jewish patriotism, 
 where the exclusive nationalism, clothed in all-consum- 
 ing religious fervor? Fifty ambassadors were not 
 likely to represent one particular clique; the entire 
 Jewish populace in Rome could not be moved by con- 
 siderations of sheer expediency. On questions of rea- 
 son, feasibility, and expediency we divide; only on 
 the most elemental emotions are we united. Hence 
 their petition could not possibly have gone against 
 those essentials which then constituted Jews as Jews; 
 it could not go contrary to their religion and their 
 nationalism. 
 
 Indeed it did not. Their supplications were dictated 
 by austere and conservative religious nationalism. It 
 was not for minor comforts they were bargaining. 
 Rather did they feel that where the question at issue 
 
14 TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 
 
 was between so-called political independence and re- 
 ligion, then indeed it was their religion, as they un- 
 derstood it, their Jewish culture that they could not 
 possibly sacrifice. It was in reality a phase of the 
 nationalistic struggle, although it took the curious form 
 of a petition for annexation. If they should be man- 
 aged by a Roman procurator, they hoped for complete 
 cultural autonomy, and they expected to manage their 
 own local affairs. Ruled by a Herodian prince, they 
 were quite helpless to do so ; for the Herodians, while 
 nominally Jews, were striving hard to be culturally 
 Romans. Naturally enough the cultural aspiration of 
 their entire entourage was also Roman and anational; 
 and this anationalism was insidious and widespread, 
 especially in upper-class circles. 
 
 The Jews' petition for annexation was therefore to 
 be an exchange of their sham political independence 
 for very real cultural autonomy. In other words, com- 
 plete independence looked to the more enlightened 
 part of the population like a forlorn hope; and the 
 struggle was waged for a home rule that would not 
 infringe upon religious traditions. Statesmen they 
 may perhaps have been, to follow these tactics; but 
 they were certainly not philosophers. They did not 
 realize that the growing religious and cultural con- 
 servatism and nationalism were an ideological expres- 
 sion of their political unrest; were but the spiritual 
 flavor of their national and political struggle for in- 
 dependence. They did not realize that their religious 
 culture and their political nationalism were so inti- 
 mately tied up together that they could be served only 
 
TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 1 5 
 
 by the sword. Hence it was most unlikely that cul- 
 tural autonomy could really accept and adjust itself to 
 the political downfall and the annexation as a province 
 for which they were petitioning. Besides, so far as 
 Rome was concerned, there was but one practical alter- 
 native. A Herodian government under Rome, offering 
 no resistance to Rome, was precarious and under- 
 mining. It was tantamount to a complete cultural sur- 
 render. 
 
 Among the abuses of Herod, which the ambassadors 
 quoted as reason for annexation, is the frank state- 
 ment, that 
 
 Herod did not abstain from making many innovations, according 
 to his own inclinations. . . . That he never stopped adorning the 
 cities that lay in their neighborhood, but that the cities belonging 
 to his ow^n government wrere ruined and utterly destroyed.-^ 
 
 Just how was Herod adorning the cities of the Gen- 
 tiles? It Is not uninteresting or unimportant. In 
 Samaria Herod built 
 
 a very large temple to Caesar, and had laid round about it . . . 
 the city Sebaste, from Sebastus or Augustus. 
 
 With similar temples to Csesar he filled Judea, and 
 when in honor of Caesar 
 
 he had filled his own country with temples, he poured out the like 
 plentiful marks of his esteem into his province, and built many 
 cities which he called Cesareas.^ 
 
 In one of these Cesareas Herod also erected an 
 
 amphitheater, and theater, and market-place, in a manner agree- 
 able to that denomination; and appointed games every fifth year 
 
 *Josephus: Antiquities, XVIII, z, 2. 
 'Josephus: Jewish Wars, I, zi, 2-4. 
 
1 6 TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 
 
 and called them . . . Caesar's games, and he himself proposed the 
 largest prizes upon the hundred and ninety-second Olympiad.'- 
 
 Herod went farther still in emphasizing his adher- 
 ence to so-called Greco-Roman culture. He built 
 amphitheaters in Tripoli, Damascus and Ptolomeis, 
 agoras at Berytus and Tyre, theaters in Sidon and 
 Damascus. 
 
 And when Apollo's temple had been burned down, he rebuilt 
 it at his own expense. . . . What need I speak of the presents he 
 made to the Lycians and Samnians? or of his great liberality 
 through all Ionia? . . . And are not the Athenians and Lacede- 
 monians, the Nicopolitans and that Pergamus which is in Mysia, 
 full of donations that Herod presented them with? ^ 
 
 As Herod's most splendid gift Josephus regards the 
 endowment of the Olympic games, which were suffer- 
 ing much from lack of funds. 
 
 What favors he bestowed on the Eleans was a donation not 
 only in common to all Greece, but to all the habitable earth as far 
 as the glory of the Olympic games reached.* 
 
 As a matter of fact Herod even took part in these 
 games himself. 
 
 These activities of Herod are obviously too strenu- 
 ous, too consistent to be casual. Inwardly anything 
 but a Roman gentleman, he took the world-culture, 
 Hellenism, for his ideal, and made outward assimila- 
 tion to that culture his ardent endeavor. He was far 
 from being a unique specimen in Judea. Many felt 
 as he did, but they belonged to the upper classes and 
 were certainly a small minority. The bulk of the popu- 
 
 ' Josephus: Jewish Wars, I, 21, 8. 
 'Josephus: Jewish Wars, I, 21, 11. 
 'Josephus: Jfewish Wars, I, 2i, 12. 
 
TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS I7 
 
 lation resented and resisted the Greco-Roman culture ; 
 they resisted it religiously as sacrilege and nationalis- 
 tically as treason. 
 
 It was a tangible incident of precisely such nature 
 which led to the break, to a revolt and a petition for 
 annexation. 
 
 Josephus reports the speech which Herod made to 
 the people of Jerusalem when he was about to rebuild 
 their temple. He told them what made his under- 
 taking possible : 
 
 I have had peace a long time, and have gained great riches and 
 large revenues, and, what is the principal thing of all, I am at 
 amity with and well regarded by the Romans, who) if I may say so, 
 are the rulers of the whole world?- 
 
 Subordination to Rome, however, was emphasized in 
 more than speeches. The very temple of Jerusalem 
 was to bear witness thereto. A large Roman eagle 
 made out of gold at vast expense was erected over the 
 principal gate of the temple. Since any kind of image 
 was forbidden to Jews by the law and the prophets, 
 that Roman eagle was not exactly cherished. Resist- 
 ance against Herod just then was useless. When 
 Herod's health began to fail, however, the Jews 
 started an agitation to remove from the temple the 
 eagle which in their eyes was both a sacrilege and a 
 national insult. The leaders of the movement were 
 the most eloquent two Jews of their time: Judas, the 
 son of Saripheus, and Matthias, the son of Margalo- 
 thus, both teachers of the law. They realized that 
 Herod would punish their deed with death. But they 
 
 ^Josephus: Antiquities, XV, 2, i. 
 
1 8 TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 
 
 felt that those who die for such a deed "will die for 
 the preservation and observation of the law of their 
 fathers and will also acquire everlasting fame and com- 
 mendation." ^ The eagle was pulled down and cut to 
 pieces by a number of young men under the leadership 
 of this Matthias and Judas, and Herod ordered all 
 of them to be burned alive.* 
 
 These men were honored by the Jews as martyrs. 
 When in the course of time Herod died and Archelaus 
 succeeded him, Archelaus, pending Rome's confirma- 
 tion of his succession, was very anxious to please the 
 people and avoid annexation. The people demanded 
 lower taxes, lower duties on commodities, freedom 
 for prisoners. All these demands Archelaus gladly 
 granted. But then the people began to mourn the 
 rebels whom Herod had burned. Let us quote Jose- 
 phus again: 
 
 They lamented those that were put to death by Herod, because 
 they had cut down the golden eagle that had been over the gate of 
 the temple. Nor was this mourning of a private nature, but the 
 lamentations were very great, the mourning solemn, and the 
 weeping such as was loudly heard over all the city, as being for 
 those men who had perished for the laws of their country and for 
 the temple. They cried out that a punishment ought to be in- 
 flicted for these men upon those that were honored by Herod.' 
 
 Not being able to appease the multitudes, Archelaus 
 resorted to force. About three thousand Jews were 
 slaughtered by his soldiers. It was this incident which 
 led to a general uprising and an intervention of the 
 
 'Josephus: Antiquities, XVII, 6, z. 
 'Josephus: Antiquities, XVII, 6, 3-4. 
 'Josephus: Jewish Wars, II, i, 2. 
 
TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS ig 
 
 Roman forces, and to the deputation from Jerusalem 
 which petitioned annexation. 
 
 Should an impression be gained that the Hero- 
 dians were responsible for Hellenizing the people and 
 Romanizing the commonwealth, this impression is 
 completely out of focus and erroneous. The Hero- 
 dians themselves were pawns in the game, mere inci- 
 dents that may serve as illustrations. The Hellenistic 
 tendency, the tendency toward world culture and 
 toward a Judaic anationalism filled the pages of Jewish 
 history, not only long before the Herodian dynasty, 
 but even long before the Hasmonean ascendency. In 
 fact it was the popular and religious reaction to that 
 very tendency that culminated in the Maccabean 
 struggles. 
 
 The prelude to the Maccabean struggles introduces 
 us to an educated upper class, Hellenized and Helleniz- 
 ing, and to an opposing party called "the pious" or 
 "the Chassidim." It was not the Chassidim who had 
 the upper hand. The government was in the hands 
 of the Hellenistic party. The high priest was a cer- 
 tain Jason, who was hardly behind Herod in his "cul- 
 tural" tendencies. He, too, sent many gifts to pagan 
 festivals, such as the sacrificial festival of Hercules at 
 the games in Tyre. He, too, erected a Greek gym- 
 nasium under the castle of Jerusalem; and the author 
 of the Second Maccabees reports to us that he caused 
 the noblest of the young men to dress like Greeks. 
 
 And thus there was an extreme of Greek fashions, and an ad- 
 vance of alien religion, by reason of the exceeding profaneness 
 of Jason that ungodly man and no high priest ; so that the priests 
 
20 TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 
 
 had no more any zeal for the services of the altar, but despising 
 the sanctuary, and neglecting the sacrifices, they hastened to enjoy 
 that which was unlawfully provided in the palaestra after the sum- 
 mons of the discus; making of no account the honors of their 
 fathers, and thinking the glories of the Greeks the best of all.^ 
 
 Hellenism was rapidly encroaching upon Judaism, 
 and the Hellenistic party had full sway in Jerusalem. 
 Frankly they were none too proud of being Jews. 
 They conspired openly with Antiochus Epiphanes 
 against those who held fast to the traditions, and en- 
 couraged him to accelerate the Hellenization and 
 abbreviate its process. He prohibited the exercise of 
 Jewish rites, on pain of torture and death; he forbade 
 the Jews to remain Jews, to worship the God of their 
 fathers, and by force compelled them to sacrifice to 
 the gods of Olympus and of the Hellenic world. 
 
 When thus a war of extermination was waged by 
 the Syrian king against the Jews ; when no other alter- 
 native was left them but to sacrifice either their lives 
 or their religion, then they arose determined to defend 
 both in an unequal struggle. Under the leadership of 
 Matthias and, after his death, of his son Judas, the 
 Maccabee, the Jews inflicted severe punishment upon 
 the generals of Antiochus. Wherever the victorious 
 arms of the Maccabeans went, they swept before them 
 all Hellenism and anationalism. The Maccabean 
 family established themselves first as popular leaders 
 and later as a theocratic dynasty of high priests and 
 rulers of the people, the Hasmonean dynasty. 
 
 Such is the epitome of a phase of the struggle which 
 lasted decades. Most of the details, of course, are 
 
 ^11 Maccabees 4:13-15. 
 
TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 21 
 
 of no interest to us. And yet there are pages in the 
 history of these struggles which are important for 
 later reference and which we should remember. 
 First of all, Judas the Maccabee, whilst struggling 
 against heathendom, is forced to seek an "alliance" 
 with Rome.^ For it became early enough quite clear 
 that no amount of courage could avail the little nation 
 in the long run against the superior strength of Syria. 
 So we find Simon, the brother of Judas, who suc- 
 ceeded him in leadership, again sending ambassadors 
 to Rome in 139 B. C, who brought with them rich 
 gifts and sought the renewal of Judas' covenant of 
 friendship. Thus already in the days of their struggle 
 for independence from Syria the Jews were obliged to 
 seek the protection of Rome. This same protection 
 led not very much later to intervention and de- 
 pendence. 
 
 Another detail that should be borne in mind is that 
 Judas Maccabaeus, even in the days when fortune 
 smiled upon him and victory accompanied his arms 
 everywhere, could not undertake to secure Judaism in 
 either Galilee or Gilead. There the Gentiles were so 
 numerous and so strong that the early Maccabees did 
 not even undertake to Judaize these provinces. The 
 first book of Maccabees and Josephus ^ inform us that 
 Judas went to Gilead with one army and sent his 
 brother Simon with another army three thousand men 
 strong into Galilee. After many battles against the 
 heathen in Galilee and as many victories, Simon 
 gathered all the Jews in Galilee with their households 
 
 *I Maccabees S; Josephus: Antiquities, XII, 10, 6. 
 
 "I Maccabees 4:60-61. Josephus: Antiquities, XII, 7, 7. 
 
22 TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 
 
 and their goods and convoyed them amid great re- 
 joicing to Judea where they could be secure. 
 
 One hundred and fifty years later, when Jesus lived 
 among the people of Galilee, it was of course a differ- 
 ent Galilee. Judaism was strong there and at times 
 peculiarly intolerant of Roman domination, as the re- 
 bellion of Judas, the Gaulonite, or even that of his 
 father proved. But there is also little doubt about 
 the large Gentile population in Galilee, much larger 
 than in any part of Judea proper. Where two races 
 are living side by side with differing traditions and 
 differing religions, two social phenomena can as a rule 
 be observed: greater mutual understanding than else- 
 where and greater tolerance under ordinary circum- 
 stances, for the strangers are not strange to them; 
 but in times of excitement, greater antagonism, race 
 hatred and general intolerance, for strangers are near 
 at hand. Thus in Galilee, where Jews and Gentiles 
 came in close contact, there was the basis for relations 
 more antagonistic as well as more friendly. When 
 the Jew was friendly he was likely to speculate and 
 wonder whether after all his Heavenly Father were 
 not the father of the Gentile fisherman and farmer as 
 well. When, however, the Jew of Galilee was un- 
 friendly, the very proximity and daily contact with 
 the Gentile must have made him peculiarly jealous 
 of Jewish Independence. For Jewish independence 
 meant Jewish ascendency in a mixed population, while 
 Jewish dependence involved not only national degrada- 
 tion, but also particular and immediate personal degra- 
 dation in the Jew's relative position to his Gentile 
 neighbor. 
 
TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 23 
 
 Among the upper classes of Jerusalem, Philhellen- 
 ism was probably never completely stamped out. It 
 is well to remember that assimilation and admiration 
 for foreign habits and ideas are much more likely to 
 be found on the top than at the bottom of society; 
 for what characterizes the lower and humbler strata 
 is their traditionalism. Here is another detail of the 
 Maccabean struggle that may serve as an illustration; 
 for the very chronicles of Maccabees emphasize indi- 
 rectly the fact that it was difficult to eradicate Hellen- 
 ism. The first book tells us about Jonathan, the 
 brother of Judas : 
 
 The sword was now at rest in Israel, and Jonathan dwelt in 
 Michmash; and he began to judge the people, and drove out the 
 ungodly from Israel.^ 
 
 The ungodly were of course the Jews with Hellenis- 
 tic tendencies. Yet how difficult it was for him to 
 drive out Philhellenes is shown by the fact that Jona- 
 than had to hve in Michmash. He lived in Michmash 
 because Jerusalem was at the time in the hands of 
 that very ungodly Hellenistic party. 
 
 True, soon enough Jerusalem was in the hands of 
 the Maccabeans, but no sooner did the Hasmonean 
 dynasty completely establish itself than it, too, began 
 to follow the trend toward the world culture. Thus 
 we find John Hyrcanus abandoning the Pharisees, the 
 strictly orthodox party, and associating with the Sad- 
 ducees. Neither the Pharisees nor the Sadducees were 
 a sect with static dogmas, as text-books of theology 
 are likely to present them to us. Rather do both sects 
 represent potential tendencies and viewpoints. The 
 
 'I Maccabees, 9:73. 
 
24 TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 
 
 Pharisees accepted traditional interpretations of the 
 law, for they were traditionalists. The Sadducees ac- 
 cepted the national and religious minimum; the law, 
 but not the added traditions. They were the rich 
 upper class; the populace were with the Pharisees. 
 
 The Sadducees are able to persuade none but the rich, and have 
 not the populace obsequious to them; but the Pharisees have the 
 multitude on their side.'^ 
 
 The law itself, obviously could never be so cul- 
 turally isolating as the law plus the entire body of 
 sanctified traditions. The well-to-do liberals could 
 easily be persuaded to drop the traditional additions 
 and interpretations, but not so the populace. Neither 
 was the populace in the habit of giving themselves 
 Greek names. But all the sons of Hyrcanus have 
 Greek names : Aristobulus, Antigonus, Alexander. To 
 be sure, as a high priest Aristobulus had use for a He- 
 brew name as well, which happened to be Yehuda — 
 Judas. This king, according to Josephus, either so 
 favored Greek ideas that he was known as a lover of 
 Hellenism, as a Philhellen, or actually adopted the 
 title Philhellen.^ Aristobulus's successor and brother, 
 Alexander Jannaeus, even introduced bilingual coins 
 with the two inscriptions in Greek and Hebrew, and 
 incidentally adopted the title Melek — ^a^iKevs. 
 
 All this tends to show that the Hellenistic tendency 
 was not of Herodian making. It existed fully as 
 strongly in the pre-Maccabean period; it was checked 
 by the nationalistic and religious revolt of the Macca- 
 
 * Josephus: Antiquities, XIII, 19, 6. 
 ' Josephus : Antiquities, XIII, 11, 3. 
 
TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 25 
 
 beans ; it revived again under the Hasmonean dynasty. 
 And as the little Jewish kingdom was becoming more 
 and more a dependency of Rome, two tendencies were 
 rapidly developing; that of submission to Rome and 
 cultural assimilation among the upper class, and that 
 of growing nationalism and religious orthodoxy. The 
 nationalism and religious orthodoxy became one and 
 indivisible, yet the accent was on the religion, for 
 tradition was bound up with religion. Tradition was 
 religious, and what else after all was nationality but 
 the sum total of traditions? 
 
 Romanization threatened the very life of their tradi- 
 tion; it interfered with their religion. A Herodian 
 prince ruling by the grace of Rome was sure to inter- 
 fere much more than a Roman administrator. At least 
 they thought so. They wanted independence; but if 
 no independence was to be had, the next best thing was 
 cultural home rule under a Sanhedrin of their own 
 choosing, autonomy that would guarantee them their 
 own religious traditions. Such autonomy was unthink- 
 able under a Herodian prince. It was quite conceiv- 
 able under a Roman governor. Hence their petition 
 for annexation to Syria. Interesting it is that the 
 vicissitudes of their national history, a long, long his- 
 tory that was dating back to their Babylonian cap- 
 tivity, taught the Jews to consider themselves primarily 
 a religious entity; interesting it is that the Jews them- 
 selves were petitioning to be permitted to render to 
 Caesar what is Caesar's for the sake of being free to 
 give to their God what is God's. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 The annexation of Judea to the province of Syria, 
 in spite of the possibility which it offered of greater 
 cultural autonomy, could neither solve the problem 
 nor save the situation. Granting even that orthodoxy 
 in Jerusalem had a freer hand under a Roman proc- 
 urator than it could have had under a Herodian 
 prince, that more tenacious orthodoxy was in itself but 
 a reaction against the encroaching national doom. By 
 annexation the national doom was being not averted 
 but consummated. True enough, any Roman Pontius 
 Pilate would have let the Jews have their own way in 
 religious matters. He would have washed his hands 
 of them, while a Herodian king would wash his hands 
 in the blood of his Jewish adversaries. But what was 
 nationalistic orthodoxy gaining? Subjectively and 
 psychologically the Jews were losing, more irrevocably 
 than ever. 
 
 Where cultural assimilation preceded political and 
 territorial absorption by Rome, the final act was felt 
 but little. The death of a nation was made easy. The 
 process of assimilation involved in fact a cultural com- 
 promise. The Romans themselves were culturally 
 proselytized by Greece, by Egypt, by Mithraism, even 
 by Judaism. Assimilation involved to some extent an 
 exchange of cultural concepts. Jewish proselytism was 
 
 26 
 
TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 27 
 
 but an incident of assimilation, not of Jewish national- 
 ism. The Roman lady who became converted to 
 Judaism and sent money to the temple remained a 
 Roman lady. She might have chosen to worship Isis 
 without becoming an Egyptian; she chose Jehovah 
 without ceasing to be a Roman. Proselytism without 
 national absorption was already a first step to assimila- 
 tion, for it involved the denationalization of a national 
 religion. 
 
 The process of Jewish assimilation was cut short in 
 Judea by dramatic political events and the nationalistic 
 reaction of the masses. The brutal aggression of 
 Antiochus Epiphanes put an end to all assimilation and 
 caused the Maccabean revolt. True enough, the culti- 
 vated and educated Jews realized quite well that they 
 dealt with Rome, the ruler of the habitable earth. 
 Whether a Herodian prince, or a Josephus, or a high 
 priest like Joazar — any one of them knew what the 
 Roman Empire was, knew that a conflict with that 
 Empire could end in but one way. But the plain people 
 knew only their traditional religion and glimpsed but 
 vaguely the insuperable power of Rome. 
 
 Now that Rome was establishing herself firmly and 
 frankly as Judea's avowed lord, the increased national 
 feeling, the bitter national antagonism of the Jews was 
 equally frank. The religion of their forefathers be- 
 came the unfurled banner of a nation at bay. From 
 now on, whether in passive resistance or in open re- 
 bellion, the only lord and master they recognized was 
 the Lord of Hosts, the God of Abraham, Isaac and 
 
28 TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 
 
 Jacob, with whom they were In covenant, and who 
 must send the great Deliverer to save his people in 
 their hour of need. 
 
 Greater and greater became the pressure; greater 
 and greater grew that need. Where was the Messiah? 
 Would he come in the future? Oh, but there was no 
 longer any future ; it was then and there that he must 
 come. Yea, to save his people he must have come al- 
 ready, must be among them, only unrecognized, un- 
 known to them — Messiah, the anointed of God, the 
 Christ. 
 
 Shall we now ask the question under what influences 
 Jesus developed; what problems absorbed him before 
 he began his ministry? Or is such a question super- 
 fluous? The central problem of his people was so 
 enveloping that we can take for granted that Jesus' 
 religious and intellectual life revolved around it, and 
 that his own development consisted in the gradual solu- 
 tion of this very problem. To repeat, at the given 
 time there was but one problem for the Jews — a single, 
 all-absorbing national problem, that became under the 
 circumstances the religious problem as well. It was 
 the problem of existence, the problem of escape from 
 certain annihilation. 
 
 One was the problem, but the solutions were several. 
 Clearly the Jewish nationalists and the Herodians 
 could not possibly agree upon the same solution. Even 
 the religious nationalists of the time differed consider- 
 ably. Yet in spite of all their differences as to method, 
 their hope was the same. This hope was the national 
 salvation, and their reliance was upon Messiah, the 
 
TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 29 
 
 Christ, the anointed King. Do you remember the song 
 of Zacharias? 
 
 Blessed be the Lord God of Israel; for he hath visited and 
 redeemed his people, And hath raised up a horn of salvation for 
 us in the house of his servant David; As he spake by the mouth 
 of his holy prophets, which have been since the world began: That 
 we should be saved from our enemies, and from the hand of all 
 that hate us ; To perform the merqr promised to our fathers, and 
 to remember his holy covenant.'- 
 
 Faith in the immediate national Deliverer was the 
 great need. That faith, though it attached itself to 
 God's own promises, indicated in the law and the 
 prophets, really opened a flood-gate of new religious 
 interpretations, and new religious beliefs. The law 
 and the prophets were given and standardized; they 
 contained no detailed information about the great 
 need-, the actual means of deliverance and salvation. 
 Here was a free region for mystic, religious and po- 
 litical speculation. Such speculation could not be 
 standardized. It was like a set of popular supplements 
 to the existing religion. Being of immediate signifi- 
 cance, offering solutions of the immediate great prob- 
 lem, the free supplements had great weight. Of 
 course the law was observed and revered traditionally, 
 but interest was centered on these popular additions to 
 the canonic scriptures. In scrutinizing the future, they 
 were reinterpreting the past. Attached to the tradi- 
 tional religion, they were yet inevitably modifying the 
 very law. Not only were Messiah and his kingdom an 
 immediate political necessity and therefore the center 
 
 ^ Luke 1 : 68-74. 
 
30 TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 
 
 of interest, but theologically they fulfilled God's own 
 part in the covenant with his chosen people. The old 
 law laid out all the paths of conduct for its people. 
 It never undertook, however, to regulate the ways of 
 God. Interest was now concentrated upon these very 
 ways of God, a realm offering unlimited freedom to 
 new vision, new insight, new interpretation. 
 
 Intellectual, political and spiritual life was height- 
 ened and intensified. That is characteristic of all 
 critical periods. Do not let us assume that orthodoxy 
 was weakened. Not at all. There was now room for 
 deeply religious heterodoxy, but orthodoxy itself be- 
 came much intensified. The tension bordered on hys- 
 teria ; as is indicated in the eschatological literature of 
 the time and by the prevalence of nervous maladies 
 among the people in the days of Christ's ministry. 
 
 This great nervous strain was part of the crisis. It 
 is precisely such a crisis that leads the many to the 
 border of hysteria or to nervous anomalies of one kind 
 or another, and that leads the few to the most extraor- 
 dinary social, intellectual and moral achievements. 
 There should be nothing mystical about the trite ob- 
 servation that every crisis produces its great men. The 
 fact is that under ordinary conditions of existence, 
 when we are quite sane and safe, we are using but a 
 small fraction of our potential intellectual and emo- 
 tional powers. It is precisely such social strain pro- 
 duced by a crisis that increases not our potential capac- 
 ity, but the percentage of capacity at which we are 
 actually working, thinking, feeling. Such a crisis, while 
 greatly increasing numerically the broad base of the 
 
TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 3 1 
 
 intellectually and emotionally active members of so- 
 ciety, quickens as well the activities of the individual, 
 and further heightens the individual lives through their 
 manifold interreactions. Greater achievement in both 
 quantity and quality is almost inevitable. All dimen- 
 sions are enlarged. Creative ability is enlarged; de- 
 structive folly is enlarged; all human activities, all ele- 
 ments of friction are increased for good and for evil; 
 and the scale must be larger for the outstanding per- 
 sonalities who are to marshal the enlarged forces of 
 life. 
 
 All dimensions being enlarged, single figures are not 
 outstanding unless they are of heroic size. Hence they 
 tower long afterwards over life's subsided flow, when 
 humanity is again resting in routine existence from its 
 mental strain or physical exhaustion. Conditions that 
 call for intensified life with its ecstasy and hysteria, 
 and its greater mental effort, are in their very nature 
 Inimical to all routine orthodoxy, political, religious 
 or social. For orthodoxy is in Its essence an estab- 
 lished routine, and a crisis means exactly that the 
 routine Is endangered. Orthodoxy Is the standardized 
 organization, the delimitation of the flow of life at its 
 low average level; it cannot hold within its banks the 
 rushing freshets of a quickened life. Who in these 
 troubled waters will undertake to discover where 
 orthodoxy ends and heterodoxy begins ? 
 
 The entire literature of the time is a fragmentary 
 expression of this quickened life of the nation. The 
 records of every Messianic hope contain a preamble 
 somewhat similar to the especially well phrased pas- 
 
32 TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 
 
 sage in the Second Esdras, which, although written 
 after Christ, expresses concisely the spirit of the con- 
 stant Jewish question. 
 
 All this have I spoken before thee, O Lord, because thou hast 
 said that for our sakes thou madest this world. As for the other 
 nations, which also came from Adam, thou hast said that they are 
 nothing, and are like unto spittle: and thou hast likened the 
 abundance of them unto a drop that falleth from a vessel. And 
 now, O Lord, behold, these nations, which are reputed as nothing, 
 be lords over us, and devour us. But we thy people, whom thou 
 hast called thy firstborn, thy only begotten, and thy fervent lover, 
 are given into their hands. If the world now be made for our 
 sakes, why do we not possess for an inheritance our world ? How 
 long shall it endure?^ 
 
 This in the main is the preface to the entire vast 
 popular literature, political and prophetic, which 
 covers a period of about three centuries, and of which 
 but sample specimens survive. Conceived at different 
 times under varying influences and conditions the char- 
 acter of the Messiah varied. A century or so before 
 Christ Messianic quality was attributed to the early 
 Maccabean leaders; a century after Christ the last 
 great rebel leader Bar-Kochbah was viewed as the 
 Messiah. Conceived under different oppressions, con- 
 templated from different viewpoints, the scope and 
 character of the Messianic kingdom differed widely. 
 It will not be in keeping with our purpose to go through 
 the entire gamut of tones and variations of salvation 
 which this literature, in so far as it survives, offers us. 
 It suffices that all this literature has one common pur- 
 
 ^11 Esdras 6, 55-59. The Apocrypha, Revised Version, 1894. See 
 IV Esdras in Charles: Apocrypha and Fseudoepigrapha of the Old 
 Testament, v. a, p. 579. 
 
TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 33 
 
 pose: finally, somehow, it saves the Jew; the promises 
 that it holds out to the Gentile world are less encour- 
 aging. Let us quote, for example, from the Assump- 
 tion of Moses, written in all probability about A. D. 
 7-29. Like most of the Messianic literature it is re- 
 plete with all kinds of heavenly signs, such supernat- 
 ural signs as were demanded and made the criterion 
 of Jesus's Christhood. 
 
 And the earth shall tremble; to its confines shall it be shaken: 
 and the high mountains shall be made low and the hills shall be 
 shaken and fall. And the horns of the sun shall be broken and 
 he shall be turned into darkness; and the moon shall not give 
 her light and the circle of the stars shall be disturbed. And 
 the sea shall retire in the abyss, and the fountains of water 
 shall fail and the rivers shall dry up. For the Most High 
 will arise, the Eternal God alone, and he will appear to punish the 
 Gentiles, and he will destroy all their idols. Then thou, O Israel, 
 shalt be happy and thou shalt mount upon the neck and wings 
 of the eagle,'^ and they shall be ended and God will exalt thee. 
 . . . And thou shalt look from on high and see thy enemies in 
 Gehenna and thou shalt recognize them and rejoice. And thou 
 shalt give thanks and confess thy Creator.^ 
 
 In the so-called Psalter of Solomon, written after 
 Pompey's invasion of Judea somewhere between 63 
 and 48 B. C, the tenor is more or less the same, ex- 
 cept that the hope is centered on a king of the House 
 of David. 
 
 Behold, O Lord, and raise up unto them their king, the son 
 of David, at the time in which Thou seest, O God, that he may 
 
 '/.^., triumph over Rome. 
 
 "The Assumption of Moses, 10, 4-10. R. H. Charles: The Apocrypha 
 and Pseudoepigrapha of the Old Testament. Oxford, 1913. V. 2, 
 p. 420-421. 
 
34 TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 
 
 reign over Israel, Thy servant. And gird him with strength that 
 he may shatter unrighteous rulers, and that he may purge Jeru- 
 salem from nations that trample her down to destruction.^ 
 
 As in practically all the literature of this type, the 
 Messianic hope and prayer spring from desperate po- 
 litical conditions no longer to be borne. 
 
 The lawless one laid waste our land so that none inhabited it. 
 They destroyed young and old and their children together. In 
 the heat of his anger he sent them away even unto the west. And 
 (he exposed) the rulers of the land unsparingly to derision.^ 
 
 The King of the house of David (as it was written 
 under the non-Davidic Hasmonean dynasty) will crush 
 the Gentiles, chastise the sinners, cleanse Israel and 
 send the Messiah, the xp'o'^os Kuptos, the Lord's 
 anointed, the king anointed of the Lord.^ Here, as in 
 all pre-Christian documents, the chief function of the 
 Messiah is the overthrow of the oppressors, the crush- 
 ing of the ungodly powers. 
 
 But there are also other notes in this literature of 
 woe and hope. While in the main the problem of the 
 time was to rid the nation of foreign oppression, the 
 very familiarity with the omnipresent Gentiles was 
 tending to undermine racial exclusiveness. Literary 
 expression is naturally more conservative than actual 
 life. For faltering and hesitating is the surrender of 
 the literary tradition to life. It surrenders indirectly 
 and incompletely. Sacred to tradition were the curses 
 heaped upon the heads of the Gentiles ; profane, secu- 
 
 ^The Assumption of Moses, lo, 4-10. R. H. Charles: The Apocrypha 
 and Pseudoepigrapha of the Old Testament. Oxford, 1913. V. a, 
 p. 649. 
 
 "Charles: Apocrypha. Oxford, 1913. V. 2, p. 648. 
 
 'Ibid., p. 650-651. Psalms 18:8, 17:36. 
 
TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 35 
 
 lar and new were the growing familiarity, the en- 
 forced intimaqr with the Gentile world. This new 
 familiarity could not but affect the traditional and nar- 
 row outlook. In some of the popular literature, as, 
 for instance, in "The Testaments of the Twelve 
 Patriarchs," salvation is promised not only to the 
 Jews, but also to the Gentiles, who are to be saved 
 through Israel. On the other hand, the conduct of a 
 good Gentile will be the standard by which Israel will 
 be judged by the Lord. "And he shall convict Israel 
 through the chosen Gentiles, as he convicted Esau 
 through the Medianites who loved their brethren." ^ 
 
 The apocryphal literature went even farther; in its 
 happier moments it cherished the visions and 
 prophecies of Isaiah of eternal and universal peace and 
 the future brotherhood of mankind. Incidentally how 
 many of the beautiful sentiments in Virgil, in his 
 Georgics and his Eclogues, especially in the fourth, so- 
 called Messianic Eclogue, are copied outright from 
 the Jewish Sybillines, who interpreted to the Greco- 
 Roman world the old visions of Isaiah ! 
 
 To some Jews of the time the visions of Isaiah were 
 more than prophetic memories and quotations. There 
 on the brink of war, they were benedictions of peace ; 
 on the threshold of death they were songs of love and 
 life. Songs of love and life when most hearts were 
 filled with mortal fear. How could fear-oppressed 
 hearts hsten to such songs? They could not. Only 
 by hatred greater than their fear could that mortal 
 fear be overcome. Hatred overcame their fear of 
 
 ^Testament of Benjamin, 9:3, 9:10. Charles: Apocrypha. Oxford, 
 1913. V. 2, p. 358-3S9- 
 
36 TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 
 
 death, and hastened them into the arms of death. The 
 struggle with Rome meant death. Was there no other 
 way, no other solution ? 
 
 Desperate was the external situation, desperate the 
 inner pain of souls searching for a way out, instinc- 
 tively reaching towards light and life. Thus all hope 
 and aspiration were centered in the coming of a Christ 
 whose mission is so wonderfully expressed in Luke: 
 "To give light to them that sit in darkness, and in 
 the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way 
 of peace." ^ 
 
 ' Luke 1 : 79. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 In the year 70 the national tragedy was consum- 
 mated. The temple was burned and Jerusalem de- 
 stroyed ; its inhabitants were delivered unto the sword, 
 crucified, sold into slavery and scattered to the four 
 corners of the earth. So long protracted was the 
 tragedy that Jesus' whole life and ministry occurred 
 in the midst of it. The events of life do not come to 
 us named and labeled; neither did Judea's life on the 
 eve of its great historical catastrophe carry banners 
 spelling "tragedy." But even a superficial glance at 
 Jesus' life shows us the imminence of the disaster, and 
 how concretely Jesus' life was bound up with the po- 
 litical destiny of Judea. For was not Jesus born in 
 the days of the tax-enrolment? Did not In all prob- 
 ability the same tax-enrolment start the rebellion of 
 Judas the Gaulonite? Did the battle-cry of Judas, 
 "No tribute to the Romans," ever die out in Jesus' 
 lifetime? 
 
 Multitudes followed Jesus. Shall we assume that 
 his message was in no wise related to the paramount 
 interest of the people? What did Jesus mean when 
 he reiterated that he was sent to save the lost sheep 
 of Israel? What did his followers have in mind when 
 they perceived in him their Savior, their Messiah, 
 their Christ? What was Messiah's function, what did 
 the people of the time expect from their Messiah? 
 
 37 
 
38 TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 
 
 They expected their national salvation. What that 
 national salvation meant was clear enough. Luke 
 states it: "That we should be saved from our enemies, 
 and from the hand of all that hate us." ^ He repeats 
 it a few verses later: "That he would grant unto us 
 that we, being delivered out of the hand of our 
 enemies, might serve him without fear." * 
 
 Now when one talks about national enemies, one is 
 talking about a given historical moment. It was there- 
 fore about a given and dreaded historical moment that 
 Christ was speaking when he said: 
 
 O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets and 
 stonest them that are sent unto thee, how often would I have 
 gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her 
 chickens under her wings, and ye would not.* 
 
 And we see clearly a definite historical moment when 
 we read: 
 
 See ye not all these things? verily I say unto you. There shall 
 not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown 
 down.* 
 
 The inevitable end of the tragedy towards which 
 the children of Israel were so swiftly tending was only 
 too obvious. "And when ye shall see Jerusalem com- 
 passed with armies, then know that the desolation 
 thereof is nigh." ° Or as Mark states it: 
 
 But when ye see the abomination of desolation . . . standing 
 
 where it ought not (let him that readeth understand), then let 
 
 them that be in Judea flee to the mountains: And let him that 
 
 ^Luke 1:71. 
 " Luke 1 : 74. 
 ' Matthew 23 : 37. 
 'Matthew 24:3. 
 " Luke 21 :2o. 
 
TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 39 
 
 is on the housetop not go down into the house, neither enter 
 therein, to take anything out of his house: And let him that is 
 in the field not turn back again for to take up his garment. 
 But woe unto them that are with child, and to them that give 
 suck in those days! And pray ye that your flight be not in the 
 winter.^ 
 
 I have always found that it takes an enormous 
 amount of learning to get away from the most obvious 
 and simple truth. So our modern theologians are ex- 
 plaining this statement eschatologically ; that is, they see 
 in it a prophecy of the end of the world. If it refers to 
 the end of the world what difference does it make 
 whether that end is to come in the winter or in the 
 summer? Such obvious misinterpretation of this text 
 indicates a complete lack of understanding of other 
 texts. For indeed no understanding of the sayings of 
 Christ is at all possible without at least a rudimentary 
 insight into the historical background. 
 
 If we do not have before us the clear perspective of 
 events which are inevitably coming unless the nation 
 change its mind, how can we understand the following 
 passage : 
 
 There were present at that season some that told him of the 
 Galileans, whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. 
 And Jesus answering said unto them. Suppose ye that these Gali- 
 leans were sinners above all the Galileans, because they suffered 
 such things? I tell you, Nay; but, except ye repent, ye shall all 
 likewise perish.^ 
 
 Generally speaking, repentance, the Greek tieravoia, 
 a change of mind, has to be and can only be individual, 
 
 *Mark 13:14-18. 
 'Luke 13:1-3. 
 
40 TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 
 
 personal. Yet it is not with an individual, but with a 
 national situation that Jesus was here clearly dealing. 
 The Galilean patriots whom Pilate had slain were 
 not sinners above all sinners ; they were average repre- 
 sentatives of the nation as a whole. They were a good 
 sample and so was their fate. They perished, and 
 the entire nation will perish if its mind is not changed. 
 It is true that Christ's clear insight was not shared 
 by his contemporaries. The populace could not see 
 where their Pharisee and Zealot leaders were leading 
 them and what fate they were preparing for them- 
 selves. The greater was the sorrow of Jesus; for 
 perdition was in full sight yet hidden from their eyes. 
 
 And when he was come near, he beheld the city, and wept over 
 it, Saying, If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy 
 day, the things which belong unto thy peace! but now they are 
 hid from thine eyes. For the days shall come upon thee, that 
 thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee 
 round, and keep thee in on every side, and they shall lay thee even 
 with the ground, and thy children within thee; and they shall not 
 leave in thee one stone upon another; because thou knowest not 
 the time of thy visitation.^ 
 
 Such texts not only invite examination of the con- 
 crete historical background; they actually supply, 
 though in a fragmentary way, the very incidents of the 
 historical situation. Does not the fourth gospel give 
 us in nuce a complete insight into the entire situation by 
 telling us what Caiaphas and the chief priests thought? 
 "If we let him thus alone, all men will believe on him: 
 and the Romans shall come and take away both our 
 place and nation." ^ So they decided that it is expedi- 
 
 ^Luke 19:41-44. 
 'John 11:48. 
 
TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 4 1 
 
 ent "that one man should die for the people, and that 
 the whole nation perish not." ^ 
 
 The primary concern of the Pharisees and priests 
 was also the fate of the nation. The Pharisees could 
 probably have overlooked the heresies in Christ's re- 
 ligious teachings, as they overlooked those of the Sad- 
 ducees, who denied such traditional canons as the im- 
 mortality of the soul. The great and fundamental 
 cleavage was constituted by Christ's non-resistance to 
 Rome. Of course they could not use that as an ac- 
 cusation when they were seeking his condemnation at 
 the hands of a Roman procurator, and they had to 
 invent some other charges. 
 
 Even the Roman procurator seems to have had an 
 insight into the situation, for he exerted himself to 
 save Christ. According to the account in Luke, Herod, 
 too, whose rule was not of the gentlest, found also no 
 fault with Christ. For while neither of them of 
 course understood Christ, they did understand that 
 he was against rebellion. 
 
 And Pilate, when he had called together the chief priests and 
 the rulers and the people, said unto them, Ye have brought this 
 man unto me, as one that perverteth the people: and behold, I, 
 having examined him before you, have found no fault in this man 
 touching those things -whereoi ye accuse him: No, nor yet 
 Herod: for I sent you to him; and lo, nothing worthy of death 
 is done unto him.^ 
 
 But Pilate could not persuade them, and because of 
 the tumult^ he did not dare resist them. In so tense 
 
 * John n: 50. 
 ^Luke 23:13-15. 
 ' Matthew 27 :24. 
 
42 TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 
 
 a situation he feared to provoke an outbreak of the 
 rebellion. 
 
 Pilate offered to release Jesus because of the Pass- 
 over feast. It was the exercise of a customary preroga- 
 tive. 
 
 And they cried out all at once, saying, Away with this man, 
 and release unto us Barabbas: (Who for a certain sedition made 
 in the city, and for murder, was cast into prison.) Pilate there- 
 fore, willing to release Jesus, spake again to them. But they 
 cried, saying. Crucify him, crucify him.^ 
 
 Mark's information about Barabbas is perhaps more 
 specific. 
 
 And there was one named Barabbas, which lay bound with them 
 that had made insurrection with him, who had committed murder 
 in the insurrection.^ 
 
 Thus Christ was delivered unto his enemies and the 
 rebel leader Barabbas was released. The patriots had 
 won the day. They knew not what they were doing, 
 nor realized that they were sealing the fate of their 
 nation. To Jesus, however, it was quite clear; hence 
 when the women of Jerusalem followed him on the 
 way to • Golgotha bewailing and lamenting him he 
 turned to them and said: 
 
 Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep for your- 
 selves, and for your children. For, behold, the days are coming, 
 in the which they shall say. Blessed are the barren, arid the 
 wombs that never bare, and the paps which never gave suck. Then 
 shall they begin to say to the mountains, Fall on us; and to the 
 hills, Cover us.^ 
 
 'Luke 23:18-21. 
 'Mark 15:7. 
 'lake 23:28-31. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 The vision of the inevitable consequences of the 
 brewing rebellion — ^was it Christ's unique insight, 
 shared by no one? Hardly so. Many intellectuals 
 probably foresaw and feared the outcome, but they 
 felt powerless against the national passion. Inter- 
 esting as an illustration is what Josephus tells us about 
 himself. 
 
 I therefore endeavored to put a stop to these tumultuous per- 
 sons, and persuaded them to change their minds; and laid before 
 their eyes against whom it was that they were going to fight, 
 and told them that they were inferior to the Romans not only 
 in martial skill, but also in good fortune; and desired them not 
 rashly, and after the most foolish manner, to bring on the dan- 
 gers of the most terrible mischief upon their country, upon their 
 families, and upon themselves. And this I said with vehement 
 exhortation, because I foresaw that the end of such a war would 
 be most unfortunate to us. But I could not persuade them; for 
 the madness of desperate men was quite too hard for me.''^ 
 
 Of course, Josephus realized that in arguing against 
 the rebellion he was provoking the hostility and 
 vengeance of the populace, who indeed might regard 
 him as a traitor. 
 
 I was then afraid, lest by inculcating these things so often, I 
 should incur their hatred and their suspicions, as if I were of 
 our enemy's party, and should run into the danger of being 
 seized by them and slain.^ 
 
 'Josephus: Life, 4. 
 'Josephus: Life, 5. 
 
 43 
 
44 TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 
 
 We quote Josephus here not as an Individual, but 
 as a representative of a type, to clarify to ourselves 
 the attitude of Jesus. For on the surface may it not 
 seem that Jesus held the same view as Josephus? 
 Jesus, of course, opposed resistance to Rome. Hence 
 does it not seem that they v?ere in agreement toward 
 the all-absorbing problem of the time? It may seem 
 so, but it is not true. If it were true, nothing would 
 have happened. Nothing happened when Josephus 
 was speaking or writing. His writings are a matter 
 of indifference to us and of no consequence. If Jesus 
 had been thinking like Josephus there would have 
 been no teachings of Jesus. 
 
 Those who favored non-resistance to Rome could 
 be divided into two main types. One type welcomed 
 and aspired to the universal Roman civilization. Com- 
 plete assimilation, Greco-Roman culture was their 
 ideal. Jewish national exclusiveness to them was noth- 
 ing but provincial backwardness. They were an in- 
 evitable upper-class provincial phenomenon in the uni- 
 versalization of Rome and the Hellenization of the 
 ancient world. To be a gentleman meant to them to 
 be a Roman. In their hearts they accepted Rome. 
 Their attitude towards religion was, of course, purely 
 formal. There was, therefore, no occasion for any 
 struggle whatsoever. Such a type could, of cours'e, 
 be neither numerous nor influential, but it undoubtedly 
 existed. Rome could not expand politically without 
 universalizing its own civilization, and such assimila- 
 tion naturally appealed first of all to the upper class. 
 
 The other t5T)e of non-resistant was undoubtedly 
 
TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 45 
 
 numerous and significant. These were men who knew 
 enough about the world at large to see clearly what 
 resistance to Rome implied and foreboded. They knew 
 that resistance was a physical impossibility and only 
 invited complete destruction and devastation. They 
 did not love Rome because they could not fight; they 
 hated her the more. Their non-resistance was with 
 a glowing eye and a heart full of hate, but with an 
 arm that did not dare to strike. It was a prudent and 
 practical attitude enough, but under the given circum- 
 stances it could not stem the tide. Sooner or later 
 it was certain to be swept away by the tide of active 
 resistance. 
 
 It could not stem the tide of brave, exalted re- 
 sistance; it could not still the storm and allay the 
 rising waves, because inwardly it shared their fury. It 
 had no remedy against war, for it was itself latent 
 war, counselling prudence. Prudence — is it really 
 so prudent? Expediency — is it really so practical? 
 Was it a livable life that prudence and expediency were 
 dictating? They were counselling and preparing a 
 life of outward submission and inward rage, a cring- 
 ing life of stinging defeat with an inevitable outbreak 
 at the end, when the accumulated burden of resent- 
 ment should become unbearable. 
 
 It was all what we call very natural ; in other words 
 the solutions and alternatives, whether of rebellion or 
 submission, were of the kind that float on the surface, 
 that are obvious. They were in complete conformity 
 with the age-long popular way of thinking and feeling. 
 They offered but a stereotyped choice, and neither alter- 
 
46 TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 
 
 native contained a single new reaction, whether of 
 thought or of feeling. These reactions, these ideas 
 were so different from those which Jesus taught, that 
 to teach as he did, Jesus must have had quite differ- 
 ent inner reactions and experiences. Differing re- 
 actions, differing experiences, differing thoughts we 
 reach and obtain only in a life that differs from the 
 ordinary ease with its easy conclusions ; in other words, 
 in a life of inner struggle. Only in struggle life lifts 
 itself out from the inherited and habitual grooves of 
 feeling and of thought. In this struggle of Jesus' life, 
 extraordinary insights and unique discoveries were 
 reached, which in a fragmentary way are revealed to 
 us in the gospels. 
 
 The problem that led to that inner struggle was 
 neither secret nor precious; it was shouted from the 
 housetops. But Jesus' solution, unlike the solution 
 of Josephus, was unique. Historically considered, the 
 problem was very local. Even from a religious point 
 of view it was a provincial problem; yet Jesus' solu- 
 tion became the most universal achievement in the an- 
 nals of mankind. 
 
 What the problem was historically speaking we 
 know. But how does it present itself to an individual ? 
 It presents itself in the form of alternatives. I can 
 not help feeling that the temptations of Jesus are prob- 
 ably parables of alternatives, of political and religious 
 choices. Under this interpretation all the common 
 popular solutions looked to Jesus like temptations of 
 the Devil. 
 
 One solution could be expressed something like this : 
 
TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 47 
 
 Here is the holy city; here is the temple of God; 
 and here are God's chosen people — His very own. 
 Can God allow them to perish ? Certainly not. Hence 
 even the combat with the entire world, whose name 
 is Rome, can not end but with the victory of God's 
 own and only people. 
 
 Cast thyself down: for it is written, He shall give his angels 
 charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee 
 up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone. Jesus 
 said unto him . . . Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.'- 
 
 Jesus did not accept the Zealot nationalist solution. 
 There was, of course, an alternative in exactly the op- 
 posite direction: to let the Roman civilization super- 
 sede Judaism. Let the Jews frankly accept Rome 
 and its culture, let them become Romans; then indeed 
 the entire world will be theirs, and the glory of the 
 Romans will be theirs as well. 
 
 Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, 
 and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory 
 of them; and saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, 
 if thou wilt fall down and worship me. Then Jesus saith unto 
 him. Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt wor- 
 ship the Lord thy God and him only shalt thou serve.^ 
 
 Between these two extreme solutions were, of course, 
 many intermediary positions, chief among them the 
 one that had no other aspiration than to live, and to 
 live by bread alone. Such a solution neither sought 
 nor required any religious sanction. But Jesus did. 
 
 Jesus was against resistance to Rome; but did he 
 teach that it is expedient to submit, even with hatred 
 in one's heart? Or did he teach: 
 
 ^ Matthew 4 :6-7. ^ Matthew 4 :8-io. 
 
48 TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 
 
 Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy 
 neighbor, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, love your 
 enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate 
 you, and pray for them which despitefuUy use you and persecute 
 you; That ye may be the children of your Father which is 
 in heaven: for he maketh his sun rise on the evil and on the 
 good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.^ 
 
 Here indeed is quite a different solution of the prob- 
 lem, a solution that came to Jesus on fiery wings of 
 exaltation. 
 
 The solution of every problem has some starting 
 point. The starting point for Jesus was clearly the all- 
 absorbing problem of the time. Jesus originally either 
 resented the aggression of Rome, or he did not. If he 
 did not, there was no occasion for any inner exertion. 
 If he did resent, if he felt bitterly about it, what was 
 he to do with himself and his resentment in this crisis? 
 How could a proud spirit justify non-resistance to 
 Rome ? A proud spirit could not. But when the proud 
 spirit exhausted itself in the struggle, came humility 
 and acceptance, and with it exaltation embracing heaven 
 and earth. The veil had fallen from the eyes, the 
 simple meaning of the hidden things was revealed, and 
 a new insight was won. With the certainty that only 
 inner experience gives, Jesus could now show the way 
 to the lost sheep of Israel. 
 
 Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I 
 will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me ; for 
 I am meek and lowly in heart; and ye shall find rest unto your 
 souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light,^ 
 
 ^Matthew 5:43-45. 
 ' Matthew 1 1 :38-30. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 Several years before the birth of Christ the Jews 
 petitioned Rome for annexation to the Roman province 
 of Syria, which petition Rome at that time rejected. 
 The petitioners preferred to lose their quasi political 
 independence under a Herodian prince for the sake 
 of maintaining their religious traditions, for the sake 
 of securing a cultural home-rule under a Roman proc- 
 urator. The fifty Jewish ambassadors and the eight 
 thousand Jews in the city of Rome who petitioned the 
 Emperor were meeting a practical situation. This 
 situation forced them to discount political inde- 
 pendence altogether, and hence all that was left to 
 save and safeguard was what had maintained them as 
 a cultural entity throughout the ages — the traditional 
 faith of their fathers. 
 
 A generation passed, and a similar problem, a simi- 
 lar alternative presented itself to Jesus; similar, but 
 not identical, for the fullness of time was at hand; and 
 on a wide and crowded road the children of Israel 
 were rushing headlong toward their own perdition. 
 The loud nationalist call to rebellion, the fervent hope 
 for a Messiah, God's anointed leader and the re- 
 deemer of Israel, stirred the deepest emotions that 
 human breasts could hold. Here was not a time for 
 greater prudence, the time had come for the greater 
 
 passions. 
 
 49 
 
50 TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 
 
 When Christ In ecstatic humility accepted submis- 
 sion to Rome, with that acceptance went as compensa- 
 tion the highest conceivable type of national consola- 
 tion. Of course, it was not a material consolation for 
 which the multitudes were looking, the great consola- 
 tion was of a spiritual nature. The essence of this 
 consolation was not wholly a stranger in the ideological 
 literature of the nation. In the non-canonic literature 
 of the time one finds many intimations of the universal 
 mission of Zion; and in the canonic scriptures the 
 noblest expression of this idea in the famous lines 
 of Isaiah: 
 
 And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain 
 of the Lord's house shall be established in the top of the moun- 
 tains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall 
 flow unto it. And many people shall go and say, Come ye, and 
 let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God 
 of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his 
 paths : for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the 
 Lord from Jerusalem. And he shall judge among the nations, 
 and shall rebuke many people; and they shall beat their swords 
 into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks : nation shall 
 not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any, 
 more.^ 
 
 Of course, Isaiah's Zion is judging, Jesus' Zion is 
 saving. Still in Isaiah Is an indication of Christ's con- 
 solation for the children of Israel. Though they 
 were losing their political independence, how trifling 
 it is in the light of their universal calling. They were 
 indeed to be God's chosen people, God's light in a 
 world of darkness ; "for salvation is of the Jews." ^ 
 
 'Isaiah 2:2-4. 
 *John 4:22. 
 
TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 5 1 
 
 Now let US turn to the gospels, to the opening pas- 
 sage In the Sermon on the Mount, and consider it not 
 from a religious but from a historical viewpoint. It 
 begins with blessings upon the humble: "Blessed are 
 the poor in spirit; for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 
 Blessed are they that mourn:" (I dare say one mourns 
 the loss of one's national independence) "for they 
 shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek: for they 
 shall inherit the earth." ^ Of course, humility, mourn- 
 ing (which means accepting the will of God as Job 
 did; the Jews still in personal mourning recite the book 
 of Job) meekness, hungering and thirsting after 
 righteousness, are all spiritual terms; and to inherit 
 the earth means but a spiritual inheritance. Therein is 
 the consolation. This is further clarified in the passage 
 beginning, "Ye are the salt of the earth." Clearly it 
 is not addressed to the world at large, for then there 
 would have been no earth left, only salt. It might 
 have been said in other words, You are the chosen 
 people, but for what were you chosen? Chosen to 
 carry to the world a spiritual message. If you have 
 no spiritual message for the world what are you good 
 for? 
 
 But if the salt have lost his savor, wherewith shall it [the 
 earth] be salted? It is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be 
 cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men.^ 
 
 The same idea only with different imagery is carried 
 out in the following verses : 
 
 Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill can- 
 not be hid. Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a 
 
 'Matthew 5:3-5. 
 ° Matthew 5:13. 
 
52 TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 
 
 bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are 
 in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may 
 see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in 
 heaven.^ 
 
 Christ says your Father, not their father, because he 
 is addressing the chosen people as the children of God, 
 who have a spiritual mission to perform. 
 
 So far as the law and prophets are concerned there 
 is no infringement upon them in the Sermon on the 
 Mount. It was not less piety or less righteousness that 
 Jesus preached. 
 
 Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: 
 I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill.^ 
 
 Why then do we find in the Beatitudes this passage? 
 
 Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: 
 for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are ye, when men 
 shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of 
 evil against you falsely, for my sake.' 
 
 Are the public hatred and persecution here referred 
 to due to contemporary religious bigotry, religious 
 intolerance, which could not listen to a more spiritual 
 interpretation without violence ? Were the people and 
 their leaders so intolerant of greater religious fervor 
 or greater liberalism than their own little minds by 
 chance were capable of? What little we know about 
 actual conditions and circumstances of the time would 
 hardly support such a view. The circumstances forced 
 a very unusual degree of religious toleration. 
 
 First of all, the Sadducees and Pharisees had to 
 learn to get along and worship in the same temple. 
 
 ^Matthew 5:14-16. 
 "Matthew 5:17. 
 'Matthew 5:10-1 1. 
 
TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 53 
 
 Secondly, nobody seemed to disturb the "sinners," 
 that is, the outright and outspoken religious liberals. 
 The differences between the Sadducees and the Phari- 
 sees must have been tremendous. We are told that 
 the Talmud places the Sadducees on a level with the 
 Samaritans.^ The Sadducees did not accept the rab- 
 binic traditional interpretations of the Bible. The 
 Pharisees, on the other hand, regarded it as "more 
 culpable to teach contrary to the precepts of the scribes 
 than contrary to the Torah itself." ^ Still more drastic 
 is the difference between the sects in their attitude 
 toward immortality. The idea of resurrection or im- 
 mortality of the soul was completely rejected by the 
 Sadducees. Great as were their differences of view- 
 point, these varying sects did not persecute each other. 
 Why then should Jesus assume that his followers 
 will be reviled and persecuted? Is it because of the 
 Christhood of Jesus? But did not his own people in 
 Nazareth try to kill him before he acknowledged his 
 Christhood? One does not need to look very far to 
 find the reason for the antagonism to Jesus. Was it 
 not he who in the midst of the brewing rebellion was 
 teaching : 
 
 That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy 
 right cheek, turn to him the other also.' 
 
 ^ Nidda IV, 2. "The daughters of the Zaddukim are, if they walk 
 in the ways of their fathers, equal to Samaritan women. If they walk 
 openly in the ways of Israel, they are equal to Israelitish women. R. 
 Joses says: They are looked upon as Israelitish women, unless it is 
 proved that they walk in the ways of their fathers."— Quoted m 
 Schiirer's History of the Jewish People in the Time of Jesus Christ. 
 Second Division, v. a (English translation), p. 8. _ 
 
 'Sanhedrin 11, 3. — Schiirer, Ibid., p. 12. 
 
 'Matthew 5:39. 
 
54 TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 
 
 It was Jesus who was teaching: 
 
 But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse 
 you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which 
 despitefully use you, and persecute you.^ 
 
 Under the circumstances, therefore, those who un- 
 derstood and followed Jesus were certain of meeting 
 violent antagonism from a people that was on the 
 eve of rebellion and disaster. Political passions were, 
 of course, clothed in traditional religious terms. Mes- 
 sianic hopes in no wise changed the tribal traditional 
 morality of the people: such hopes rather enhanced 
 it. What then could save the people? Only that 
 great spiritual experience, the passionate and humble 
 submission to the will of God; only a rebirth in spirit 
 could save them from their traditional reactions. With- 
 out this new glowing spirit, the old tribal morality, 
 the standards of flesh were sure to prevail. 
 
 Verily, verily, I say unto thee. Except a man be born again, he 
 cannot see the kingdom of God.^ 
 
 The Zealot movement as such was of relatively re- 
 cent origin, but was linked to the most ancient tradi- 
 tions : tribal morality and religious orthodoxy. Ortho- 
 doxy, on the other hand, no matter how genuinely de- 
 vout and pious it may be, is in its very nature a his- 
 torical, inherited, traditional formulation and observ- 
 ance. In the historical moment that we are dealing 
 with only a religious fervor of so passionate a nature 
 that it could overcome traditions and habits and all the 
 emotions aroused by the day, only such fervor could 
 
 'Matthew 544. 
 'John 3:3. 
 
TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 55 
 
 save the people from perdition. The call was, there- 
 fore, for a greater ruling religious passion, a passion of 
 which clearly not everybody was capable. Only a part 
 of the nation at best could free itself from the tradi- 
 tional nationalistic reactions, from the traditional habits 
 and the traditional viewpoint. 
 
 For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and 
 the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against 
 her mother in law. And a man's foes shall be they of his own 
 household.^ 
 
 Did the Zealots ever try to save their lives ? For the 
 God of their fathers and the freedom of their country 
 they would unflinchingly sacrifice not only their own 
 lives, but the lives of all who were dear to them. What 
 doubt could there be how they were bound to view the 
 teaching of Christ even if their own brother, their 
 own child should profess it? 
 
 And the brother shall deliver up the brother to death, and the 
 father the child; and the children shall rise up against their 
 parents, and cause them to be put to death.^ 
 
 He to whom the ties of life, the ties of old were too 
 strong — he really could not be Jesus' disciple. Hence 
 the extraordinary text: 
 
 If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, 
 and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own 
 life also, he cannot be my disciple.^ 
 
 It was the call for a religious revival. The very 
 call for repentance was nothing else. Love God, your 
 Father, with all your heart and all your soul. Submit 
 
 ^Matthew 10:35-36. 
 "Matthew 10 ai. 
 'Luke 14:36. 
 
S6 TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 
 
 gladly to His will. Pray that not your will but His 
 be done here on earth as in heaven. That is all. This 
 simple call for a spiritual revival was, however, offen- 
 sive to the prevailing political sentiment as well as to 
 organized religion. The inevitable situation devel- 
 oped. All worship of God is the product of a religious 
 organization with its teachings, formulas, observances, 
 rituals, and traditions of the elders. An organization, 
 even to maintain a spiritual entity, is in its very nature 
 a physical, material instrument, whose object is to 
 provide the many with at least a minimum of spiritual- 
 ity. But when the day came when not a minimum but 
 a maximum of possible human spirituality was called 
 for, then indeed all the traditional trappings of the 
 old organization conflicted with the very object for 
 which they had been created. The vehicles of a re- 
 ligion were too heavy to permit any soaring of the 
 spirit. Yet without such new spiritual content, with- 
 out a newly felt relationship to their heavenly father, 
 without a universal mission, there was no consola- 
 tion left for those who were about to perish. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 Were the reactions of so unique a religious per- 
 sonality only emotional, or did Jesus have also a unique 
 intellectual insight ? There is no question in my mind 
 that Christ's deep conviction that his is the Way and 
 the Truth was based on knowledge, intellectual knowl- 
 edge, scientific knowledge if you please. Before he 
 felt that he was the Redeemer, he knew himself to 
 be the great Discoverer. Of course, this is a modern 
 mode of expression. We in the twentieth century talk 
 and think of our discoveries, of our personal achieve- 
 ments; but to Jesus a concrete and self-evident intel- 
 lectual insight was a gift of God. Truth could only 
 come from the source of all truth; from the Father 
 that is in heaven. 
 
 Is the complete revelation of Christ's intellectual 
 discoveries in the gospels ? Could it be there ? What 
 are the gospels? At a certain time, Christ taught. 
 Multitudes were gathered around. He talked to them 
 and answered questions. His sayings on these occa- 
 sions were remembered, sometimes possibly verbally, 
 sometimes inaccurately. At different times after 
 Christ, these sayings were gathered and edited. To 
 them were added records of his deeds, of his healing, 
 and other material which human memory and tradition 
 associated with Christ. Christ did not write a philo- 
 
 57 
 
58 TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 
 
 sophical treatise about his knowledge of life and of 
 God. 
 
 Take any contemporary example. Let us assume 
 that a great Christian philosopher and thinker, for ex- 
 ample Tolstoi, on the basis of his insight into what 
 he considers truth, is trying to teach his fellow men, 
 as Tolstoi actually did. But now let us assume that 
 all his literary and religious writings were not written, 
 but that the only records left to us were his pedagogical 
 efforts, his little tales and stories for the peasants 
 (which, incidentally, I believe have never been trans- 
 lated out of Russian). All his little tales for the edu- 
 cation and spiritual uplift of the peasant are based on 
 a rather profound and complex intellectual insight. 
 But you could hardly expect to find dissertations on 
 philosophy in stories written for the poor, ignorant 
 peasants of Russia. Yet I venture to say, were all 
 the works of Tolstoi destroyed and only these simple 
 folk-tales left, that it would take a very naive scholar 
 not to see the intellectual and religious system that lies 
 behind these tales written for poor, degraded toilers 
 of the soil. 
 
 This is a hypothetical example. We are actually in- 
 finitely better off with the gospels. True, they are 
 largely teachings of conduct. True, they are sayings 
 addressed to men and women from whom much could 
 not be expected intellectually. True, there is no at- 
 tempt at a philosophical and theological dissertation; 
 and yet there was no need for followers of Christ to 
 go to an Aristotle for philosophy. For a greater than 
 Aristotle is there in the very sayings as they have 
 been recorded and have come down to us in the gospels. 
 
TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 59 
 
 What is a philosopher? A lover of wisdom it means 
 philologically. And what is wisdom? A relative in- 
 sight into truth, very relative indeed. What then shall 
 we call Christ, who knew that he had not a relative 
 but an absolute insight ? Moreover, use all your mod- 
 ern little scientific standards, and you cannot get away 
 from the fact that Christ's insight was one which fu- 
 ture generations may rediscover but can never upset. 
 Is it, therefore, surprising that Christ knew quite 
 well that he was wiser than Solomon ? 
 
 The queen of the south shall rise up in the judgment with this 
 generation, and shall condemn it: for she came from the utter- 
 most parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and, be- 
 hold, a greater than Solomon is here.^ 
 
 What that great revelation was we will discuss pres- 
 ently. And it is for this insight that the great thanks- 
 giving was rendered by Christ, probably approximately 
 expressed in Luke : 
 
 I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou 
 has hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed 
 them unto babes: even so. Father; for so it seemed good in 
 thy sight.^ . . . For I tell you, that many prophets and kings have 
 desired to see those things which ye see, and have not seen them; 
 and to hear those things which ye hear, and have not heard them.* 
 
 It is because back of all the teaching was an in- 
 sight that carried with it complete conviction of self- 
 evident truth that Jesus taught "as one having author- 
 ity, and not as the scribes," * and that Jesus could 
 say to Nicodemus : 
 
 ^Matthew 12:42. 
 'Luke 10: 31. 
 °Luke 10:24. 
 'Matthew 7:29. 
 
6o TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 
 
 Verily, verily, I say unto thee, We speak that we do know, 
 and testify that we have seen; and ye receive not our witness.^ 
 
 What is it that Jesus knew, and what is it that he 
 had seen in his own experience, that was hidden from 
 the kings and prophets? It is condensed in a very 
 brief formula — ^The kingdom of heaven is in us. This 
 formulation, however, may be likened to the summit 
 of a mountain. The entire broad base, the vast ex- 
 panse of the mountain's height and breadth support 
 and lead up to the peak. That mountain peak is but 
 the crowning glory of the mountain's vastness, a vast- 
 ness of insight based on experience. Christ was speak- 
 ing of what he knew, of what he had seen. What did 
 he see, what did he experience? All that he experi- 
 enced we do not know ; but an outline here and there 
 suggests its depth and indicates its bulk. 
 
 From our historical analysis of the situation it be- 
 comes quite evident that Jesus had to resent deeply 
 the loss of Jewish national independence and the ag- 
 gression of Rome. Had he not resented it there would 
 have been no cause for his fervent humility and ac- 
 ceptance. The fervor and ultimate depth of the 
 reconciliation leave under the given historical cir- 
 cumstances no doubt as to the character of the struggle 
 which preceded it. What happened? National humili- 
 ation was hurting and burning. The balm for that 
 burning humiliation was humility. For humility can- 
 not be humiliated. Did humility change the outside 
 world? Not in the least. Only an inward change took 
 place; yet that inward change completely altered the 
 
 ^John 3:11. 
 
TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 6 1 
 
 so-called facts of life and of existence. Thus he asked 
 his people to learn from him, 
 
 For I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto 
 your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.^ 
 
 Parallel with the great emotion was the intellectual 
 insight, that what counts in life and constitutes life is 
 the inner reaction; and that so-called outward facts to 
 which we have no inner reactions are not part of our 
 life. The outward world is our world only in so far as 
 we react to it. Great may be the bulk of yonder dis- 
 tant star; and in the scheme of the universe its sig- 
 nificance may be greater than that of our little planet. 
 But in our life its bulk and gravity count for little ; for 
 to our reactions it is but one of innumerable little stars 
 which in no wise affect our lives. The same, of course, 
 is true about things nearer home. In so far as we do 
 not react towards some phenomena of life those phe- 
 nomena do not exist for us. It is our reaction, our at- 
 titude that so far as we are concerned gives to any 
 phenomenon its place and meaning in our life. It is, 
 therefore, with the inner attitude which determines our 
 reactions and thus regulates all the events of our lives 
 that Christ was dealing. Christ was illustrating this 
 viewpoint of his when he said: 
 
 The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, 
 thy whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy 
 whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light 
 that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness I^ 
 
 You can see that Christ is fully conscious of this 
 principle, and expresses it, we may say formulates it 
 
 ^Matthew 11:29-30. 
 'Matthew 6:28-23. 
 
62 TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 
 
 intellectually, in connection with many cures which are 
 reported in the gospels. I am talking about the mir- 
 aculous cures. Christ's attitude toward miracles in 
 general can be seen in the so-called tenjptations in the 
 desert. You know what he thought of the Pharisees 
 when they asked him for a sign in heaven. He con- 
 sidered a generation that wants a sign "a wicked and 
 adulterous generation"; for, of course, all such signs 
 would have been outward forces and hence meaning- 
 less. On the other hand, see what he says to the peo- 
 ple who come to him afflicted with bodily ills. We 
 have a statement in Matthew: 
 
 And when he was come into the house, the blind men came to 
 him: and Jesus saith unto them, Believe ye that I am able to do 
 this? They said unto him, Yea, Lord. Then touched he their 
 eyes, saying. According to your faith be it unto you.^ 
 
 Here are two blind men praying him to heal them. He 
 asks them whether they think he can do so; that is, 
 whether they have such inner faith. Then all that he 
 tells them is, "According to your faith be it unto you." 
 In the same chapter you will find a woman who in- 
 sisted on touching the garment of Christ. She was 
 cured of her ailment. She did not even ask Christ to 
 cure her, but she had an inner faith. Christ became 
 aware of the cure only post facto. He tells her, "Thy 
 faith hath made thee whole." ^ On another occa- 
 sion he is again confronted by a blind man. Again 
 he cures him and says to him, "Go thy way; thy faith 
 hath made thee whole. "^ A similar formula you will 
 find in other cases.* 
 
 ^Matthew 9:28-29. 'Mark 10:52. 
 
 'Matthew 9:22. *Luke 17:19, I8^3. 
 
TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 63 
 
 We also know, on the other hand, that in many 
 cities, like Nazareth and other places where people 
 did not believe in Jesus, he could not perform any 
 miracles. These miracles, therefore, and Christ was 
 quite conscious of it, were acts of faith, inner acts of 
 the afflicted. True enough, the children of Israel, with- 
 out any faith in him, in fact with doubt instead of faith, 
 wanted from him some miraculous signs in heaven to 
 prove his Christhood. Such signs, of course, were not 
 given. 
 
 The record of one of these cures links the cure with 
 forgiveness of sin, which is intellectually very interest- 
 ing and exciting. It shows how highly systematized 
 was Christ's intellectual insight. It cannot be a mere 
 chance interpolation of the editor of the gospels. Do 
 you remember the case of the man sick of the palsy? ^ 
 This man had faith in Christ and wanted to be cured. 
 Christ says to him, "Thy sins are forgiven," and the 
 Pharisees wonder who the man can be who has power 
 to forgive sins. But Christ identifies his healing and 
 his forgiving sins in the statement, "Whether it is 
 easier, to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, 
 Rise up and walk?" He identifies the two acts because 
 
 ^Luke 5:18-23. And, behold, men brought in a bed a man which 
 was taken with a palsy: and they sought means to bring him in, and to 
 lay him before him. And when they could not find by what way they 
 might bring him in because of the multitude, they went upon the 
 housetop, and let him down through the tiling with his couch into 
 the midst before Jesus. And when he saw their faith, he said unto 
 him, Man, thy sins are forgiven thee. And the scribes and the 
 Pharisees began to reason, saying. Who is this which speaketh blas- 
 phemies? Who can forgive sins, but God alone? But when Jesus 
 perceived their thoughts, he answering said unto them. What reason 
 ye in your hearts? Whether it is easier, to say, Tiiy sins be for- 
 given thee; or to say, Rise up and walk? 
 
64 TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 
 
 both the cure and the forgiveness of sin are made pos- 
 sible by the inner act of the man himself. This be- 
 comes even more evident in the case of the woman who 
 loved much. Here are the verses : 
 
 And he said unto her, Thy sins are forgiven. And they that 
 sat at meat with him began to say within themselves, Who is 
 this that forgiveth sins also? And he said to the woman, Thy 
 faith hath saved thee; go in peace.^ 
 
 Now, perhaps, we understand why Christ tried to 
 explain and elucidate his own acts to the scribes and 
 Pharisees by the acts of John the Baptist. 
 
 The baptism of John, whence was it? from heaven, or of men? 
 And they reasoned with themselves, saying. If we shall say, From 
 heaven; he will say unto us. Why did ye not then believe him?^ 
 
 The three synoptic gospels have obviously one source 
 for the record of this conversation, and the wording of 
 this source seems rather ambiguous. It looks as if 
 Christ refused to explain to the Pharisees the char- 
 acter of his authority, or tried to put the Pharisees in 
 the diflScult position of having either to accept or deny 
 the authority of John. As a matter of fact, that con- 
 versation is marvellous in its explicitness, and again It 
 shows how systematic and thought out is the insight 
 of Christ. What was John the Baptist doing? He 
 denied that he was Christ, he did not even acknowledge 
 himself as a prophet. He called himself "a voice cry- 
 ing in the wilderness," and described his mission as 
 to make the path straight for him that was to come. 
 Yet John was remitting sins, for baptism was a token 
 of the remission of sins. Now, did John discriminate 
 among the people who came to him to be baptized? 
 
 ^Luke 7:48-50. 
 'Matthew 21:35. 
 
TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 65 
 
 Did he refuse baptism or remission of sin to any one ? 
 He did not. If they repented and changed their at- 
 titude and were yearning for remission of their sins, 
 they were baptized. A change of mind has already 
 taken place; in their repentance was the remission of 
 their sins. Publicans and harlots repented and their 
 sins were forgiven, the baptism was but a token 
 thereof. 
 
 It was difficult for the Pharisees to understand it. 
 Religion to them was largely a matter of outward reg- 
 ulation, the ultimate significance of the inner attitude 
 was incomprehensible to them. If they lived up to all 
 their religious regulations they had consciousness but 
 of their piety and righteousness. They had no yearn- 
 ing for spiritual rebirth, and nothing could be done 
 for them. They were cleansing and polishing the out- 
 side of the cup. 
 
 We know that the Jews expected God to send their 
 deliverer, and expected that with him a new rule would 
 begin, by a ruler sent from God himself — the kingdom 
 of heaven. So far, therefore, as the masses are con- 
 cerned, the deliverance of the Jews and the kingdom 
 of heaven were acts of God, external acts. I daresay 
 they would have expected the kingdom to be inaugu- 
 rated by signal victories over the Gentiles, by God's 
 judgment and chastisement of publicans and sinners, 
 and what not. 
 
 All this from the viewpoint of Christ's intellectual 
 insight was futile nonsense; for no external act could 
 solve this or any other situation. One could not enter 
 into the kingdom of heaven without a rebirth in spirit. 
 
66 TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 
 
 It was only through a rebirth in spirit that one could 
 enter therein. The kingdom of heaven was but an 
 inner change in us. True enough, the inner spiritual 
 change may be gradual. It may be like the plant that 
 grows from a tiny mustard seed. It may be like a 
 leaven, which raises the loaf gradually. But the leav- 
 ening and the growth are inner acts, not outward 
 manifestations. Was it not a completely different con- 
 cept from the one which then prevailed? Indeed it 
 was. And that is why Christ told the Jews that they 
 knew neither the Father nor the Son : 
 
 Ye neither know me nor my Father: if ye had known me, ye 
 should have known my Father also.-"^ 
 
 According to the popular conception, Christ was to 
 inaugurate the kingdom of heaven. Christ was to 
 save the lost sheep of Israel, to save them in the last 
 moment from impending destruction. Now Jesus 
 knew quite well that his way was not simply one way 
 to save the children of Israel, but the one and only 
 way. That way was to instruct them in the kingdom 
 of heaven. Thus Christhood, the kingdom of heaven, 
 and the salvation of Israel remain linked together, as 
 in the popular concept. But in Jesus' concept there 
 appears this difference : that Christhood and the salva- 
 tion of Israel and the kingdom of heaven postulated 
 the spiritual rebirth of the people. 
 
 And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom 
 of God should come, he answered them and said, The kingdom 
 
 'John 8:19. 
 
TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 6^ 
 
 of God Cometh not with observation: Neither shall they say, Lo 
 here ! or, lo there ! for, behold, the kingdonn of God is within you.^ 
 
 But the Pharisees could neither enter into that king- 
 dom themselves nor could they suffer others to enter 
 therein. 
 
 ^Luke 17:30-21. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 According to Josephus, John the Baptist was put 
 to death for purely political reasons. He tells us : 
 
 Now when many came in crowds about him, for they were 
 greatly moved by hearing his words, Herod, who feared lest the 
 great influence John had over the people might put it into his 
 power and inclination to raise a rebellion (for they seemed ready 
 to do anything he should advise) thought it best, by putting him to 
 death, to prevent any mischief he might cause; and not bring him- 
 self into difficulties by sparing a man who might make him repent 
 of it when it should be too late.^ 
 
 John the Baptist, therefore, according to the very 
 plausible testimony of Josephus, was put to death for 
 political reasons. What did John the Baptist do ? He 
 announced the coming of the Messiah. The Messiah, 
 in the general and universal understanding of the time, 
 was to be the deliverer of the Jews from Roman op- 
 pression. Herod, who had received his appointment 
 as tetrarch of Galilee from Rome, was but an admin- 
 istrative Instrument of his Roman sovereign. To him 
 the coming of Christ could mean nothing but rebellion 
 against Rome, under a leadership which the people 
 would acclaim as divine. Whatever may have been 
 the flavor of John's religious and moral preachings, to 
 Herod he was but the herald of a revolution, with 
 great moral power over the people, who came to him 
 In multitudes. Since the fate of the Herodlans was 
 
 * Josephus: Antiquities, XVIII, s, a. 
 
 68 
 
TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 69 
 
 tied up with the power of Rome, Herod put the pre- 
 cursor of what looked to him like the coming revolu- 
 tion, to death. To the Jewish populace, the Christ 
 was the deliverer who was to come to deliver them 
 from foreign rule and oppression. To a Herod or a 
 Pilate, or any Roman administrative agent, the Christ 
 who was to come was the leader of the expected re- 
 bellion. For what looked to the so-called Jewish 
 patriot like deliverance, of course, meant rebellion to 
 the forces of Rome. 
 
 John was put to death by Herod for announcing the 
 coming of the Christ. Yet when Pontius Pilate sent 
 that very Christ to Herod, Herod did not put him 
 to death, but sent him back to Pilate; and neither 
 Pilate nor Herod could find any fault with him. The 
 Jews, on the other hand, who were praying so fervently 
 for the coming of the Christ, sought from Pilate 
 Jesus' execution and the deliverance of the rebel leader, 
 Barabbas. 
 
 These historical episodes throw light on the wide 
 gulf between the two concepts of Christhood; that of 
 the populace, and that of Jesus. The concept of the 
 populace was a heavensent king of the house of David, 
 with a supernatural sword in his hand, ruling, judging 
 and avenging. Very different was Jesus' concept of 
 his Christhood. 
 
 A very large number of the plain people believed in 
 Jesus. They saw before them a personality whose 
 like they had never seen before. They believed him 
 to be the one who was to come; that is, the Christ 
 that they expected, whose functions and attributes 
 
70 TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 
 
 were those popularly attributed to the coming Messiah. 
 Even Christ's own disciple, Simon Peter, who accord- 
 ing to the gospels first acknowledged him to be the 
 Christ, even he seems to have understood Christhood 
 in quite a different sense from that of Jesus, and, in 
 all probability, in the ordinary sense of the people. 
 The way Christ took it is described : 
 
 But he turned, and said unto Peter, Get thee behind me, Satan: 
 thou art an ofEense unto me: for thou savorest not the things that 
 be of God, but those that be of men.^ 
 
 The popular interpretation of Christhood and the 
 popular faith in Jesus as the Messiah are also indicated 
 by Jesus' having to hide himself in a mountain lest 
 the populace should by force make him king. 
 
 When Jesus therefore perceived that they would come and take 
 him by force, to make him a king, he departed again into a moun- 
 tain himself alone.^ 
 
 There is little doubt that so great an impression was 
 
 made by Jesus upon his day and generation that had 
 
 he wanted to be a king and lead his people as the 
 
 Messiah they expected should have done, he would 
 
 have been joyfully acclaimed throughout Judea. Yet 
 
 Jesus chose and had to choose the cross. Why did 
 
 he have to reject the throne? Why did he have to 
 
 choose a cross? Why did he have to change the 
 
 definite meaning that so concrete a word as Christ or 
 
 Messiah had in his time? It could be answered by 
 
 quoting John : 
 
 I am come a light into the world, that whosoever believeth on 
 
 me should not abide in darkness.* 
 
 ^Matthew 16:33. 'John 12:4.6. 
 
 'John 6:15. 
 
TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 7 1 
 
 This is an answer; but let me give one less subtle, 
 more concrete. 
 
 It has been indicated in the foreword to this study, 
 I believe, that our attempt here is neither theological 
 nor philosophical, but an attempt at historical under- 
 standing. Understanding, however, is not a vain 
 repetition of many words and enumeration of various 
 parts of something. It is an understanding of the 
 inner cohesion of these parts, that gives them an entity 
 and intellectual unity. To me personally it seems 
 childish not to see in Christ's teachings an overwhelm- 
 ing intellectual system. The towering parts that are 
 its components are parts of the same system, not in- 
 dependent units. The truth of the insight, the co- 
 hesion of the system were self-evident to Christ; so 
 much so that he knew that they had an absolute qual- 
 ity; that is, coming from God. Because of the sys- 
 tematic nature of the insight, the conclusions drawn 
 were inevitable and mandatory. 
 
 Just so inevitable was a revision of the concept of 
 Christhood. Had all the popular functions of Christ- 
 hood been excluded from Jesus' concept, then in- 
 deed Jesus would have simply brushed away the en- 
 tire concept. He would have said, "No, I am not 
 he that is to come," or "He will come," or he would 
 have said, "Indeed he never will come." But the 
 primary and elementary function of the Christ that was 
 to come was what? The saving of the Jews, was it 
 not? Jesus knew quite well that the only thing that 
 could possibly save them was his insight, as expressed 
 in his teachings. He, therefore, completely fulfilled 
 
72 TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 
 
 the fundamental meaning of Christhood. No one but 
 himself, moreover, could possibly fulfill it. That he 
 considered it his primary function is shown in the way 
 he commanded his disciples: 
 
 These twelve Jesus sent forth, and commanded them, saying. 
 Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the 
 Samaritans enter ye not: But go rather to the lost sheep of the 
 house of Israel.^ 
 
 While he was instructing his people into the king- 
 dom of heaven, leading them to a spiritual rebirth, 
 Jesus nevertheless kept constantly before them the 
 pragmatic importance of his teachings, which could 
 save them from imminent destruction. He does not 
 hesitate to show the plain people that the very political 
 and social situation, that is, the times in which they 
 were living, demanded from them a changed attitude 
 of mind unless they were to perish ; though, of course, 
 it would have been preferable that they change their 
 attitude, not because of the existing political situation, 
 but because it was right that they should. So for in- 
 stance we find in Luke these sayings : 
 
 And he said also to the people, When ye see a doud rise out 
 of the west, straightway ye say, There cometh a shower; and so 
 it is. And when ye see the south wind blow, ye say. There will 
 be heat; and it cometh to pass. Ye hypocrites, ye can discern the 
 face of the sky and of the earth; but how is it that ye do not 
 discern this time? Yea, and why even of yourselves judge ye not 
 what is right? ^ 
 
 But they really could not judge what was right, for 
 their minds were filled with the conglomeration of 
 
 '•Matthew 10:5-6. 
 "Luke I3:s4-S7' 
 
TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 73 
 
 popular ideas in which the coming of Christ and his 
 kingdom, the salvation of Israel, the tribute to Caesar, 
 and endless other religious and secular ideas of the 
 time were all mixed up and intertwined. 
 
 The popular current concepts presented a curious 
 mixture of things religious and things political, of 
 things natural and supernatural. They were products 
 of an emotional panic which was hysterically fusing 
 and confusing things. In the Messianic, apocalyptic 
 and eschatological literature of the time the world was 
 to come to an end; but what really did come to an end 
 in that literature was the last shred of thinking ca- 
 pacity and common sense. In Christ, on the other 
 hand, in his teachings, his ministry, entirely apart from 
 any of his other functions or qualities, the one thing 
 that stands out monumentally is his intellectual 
 grandeur, and the purity and unswerving consistency 
 of its simple straight lines. The continuation of a 
 straight line excludes doubt as to its direction. The 
 line of Jesus' intellectual insight had to lead to a re- 
 casting of the concept of Christhood, no matter how 
 widely the concept he arrived at might vary from the 
 confused and uncertain one which prevailed. 
 
 The two salient points common and fundamental to 
 all prevailing concepts of the Messiah were the salva- 
 tion of Israel and the inauguration of the kingdom. 
 Since the kingdom could only be within the souls of 
 men, since salvation of Israel from immediate de- 
 struction was dependent on the humility and non- 
 resistance which would accompany a spiritual rebirth, 
 Jesus knew that he was the Christ, and that any other 
 
74 TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 
 
 Christ who might arise, a Christ who would be a 
 popular leader, was bound to be a false Christ. It 
 was equally self-evident that the Messiah of the popu- 
 lar imagination, the man on horseback, of the con- 
 quering hero type, could accomplish nothing but de- 
 struction. He could accomplish nothing because the 
 only conquest required for entrance into the kingdom 
 of heaven was an inner conquest. Even if material con- 
 flict should be crowned with victory, what would such 
 victories of the flesh avail? How could the Messiah 
 of the popular imagination lead the Jews to a rebirth 
 of the spirit, and to the gates of the kingdom that is 
 within us and that cometh not with observation? How 
 could men possibly enter into the kingdom, supposing 
 some external changes to take place, if they themselves 
 remained unchanged? But if our entrance into the 
 kingdom is entirely a matter of changing our own at- 
 titude, of our own rebirth, what else could Christ 
 be but a light to those that sit in darkness, and their 
 minister? 
 
 "Ye know that they which are accounted to rule over the 
 Gentiles exercise lordship over them; and their great ones exer- 
 cise authority upon them. But so shall it not be among you: but 
 whosoever vsrill be great among you, shall be your minister: And 
 whosoever of you will be the chiefest, shall be servant of all. 
 For even the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to 
 minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.^ 
 
 All the ideas of Jesus were correlated; they were 
 closely fitted parts of one great intellectual concept, 
 and all of the same spirit, a different spirit from the one 
 prevailing. 
 
 *Mark 10:42-45. 
 
TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 75 
 
 There can be no doubt that many, very many be- 
 lieved in him; but how many understood him? Cer- 
 tainly very few. The gospels themselves as they come 
 to us testify to the lack of understanding even among 
 the disciples. So we are told : 
 
 And they understood none of these things: and this saying was 
 hid from them, neither knew they the things which were spoken.'- 
 
 The great trouble was that Christ was teaching an in- 
 sight, preaching ideas, while the people could only 
 understand things. So, for instance, even so simple 
 a metaphor as "the leaven of the Pharisees and the 
 leaven of Herod" was understood literally and ma- 
 terially. 
 
 And they reasoned among themselves, saying. It is because we 
 have no bread. And when Jesus knew it, he saith unto them, Why 
 reason ye, because ye have no bread? perceive ye not yet, neither 
 understand? have ye your heart yet hardened? Having eyes, see 
 ye not? and having ears, hear ye not? and do ye not remember?^ 
 
 You will find any number of references in the gospels 
 to this lack of understanding. Some are even humor- 
 ous; for Jesus, of course, could not help seeing that 
 they were hopelessly mixing his teachings with the 
 old traditional ideas. 
 
 Therefore every scribe which is instructed unto the kingdom of 
 heaven, is like unto a man that is a householder, which bringeth 
 forth out of his treasure things new and old.* 
 
 The scribes had difficulty in grasping the meaning 
 of Jesus' message; but was it any easier for those 
 who were not scribes ? To illustrate and illuminate his 
 
 'Luke 18:34. 
 '■Mark 8:i6-ig. 
 ° Matthew 13:53. 
 
76 TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 
 
 teachings Christ used parables, but they did not help 
 very much. 
 
 Therefore speak I to them in parables: because they seeing see 
 not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand. And 
 in them is fulfilled the prophecy of Esaias, which saith| By hearing 
 ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, 
 and shall not perceive: For this people's heart is waxed gross, 
 and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; 
 lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with 
 their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be 
 converted, and I should heal them.^ 
 
 And yet there is no doubt that multitudes believed 
 in him, and that faith did wonders for them. The 
 more reason is it for us to ask ourselves. Why was not 
 their faith abiding? Why was it that the multitudes 
 who greeted him with "Hosanna," the very same, per- 
 haps, cried but a few days later, "Crucify him" ? Why 
 was it that Jesus knew that he must be rejected by 
 his generation and suffer many things in Jerusalem? 
 And not only Jesus knew it, but his brethren, who did 
 not believe in him, taunted him, and asked him why 
 he was not going to Jerusalem. 
 
 Then Jesus said unto them. My time is not yet come: but 
 your time is always ready. The world cannot hate you; but me 
 it hateth, because I testify of it, that the works thereof are evil. 
 Go ye up unto this feast: I go not up yet unto this feast; for 
 my time is not yet full come.'' 
 
 Let US try to confront the situation, and find our- 
 selves in it. Jesus might have been followed and 
 grasped in one of two ways : first, his teachings might 
 have been understood, believed in, and followed with 
 
 * Matthew 13:13-15. 
 ''John 7:6-8. 
 
TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 77 
 
 abiding conviction because of that understanding. Cer- 
 tainly he laid emphasis on understanding, and pointed 
 out that 
 
 When any one heareth the word of the kingdom, and under- 
 standeth it not, then cometh the wicked one, and catcheth away 
 that which was sown in his heart. This is he which received seed 
 by the wayside.^ . . . But he that received seed into the good 
 ground is he that heareth the word, and understandeth it; which 
 also beareth fruit, and bringeth forth; some a hundredfold, some 
 sixty, some thirty.^ 
 
 The alternative possibility is that the teaichings 
 might not have been intellectually understood, but 
 that Jesus might have been felt and grasped emo- 
 tionally, and followed because of the people's faith 
 in him. Have we any definite evidence that Christ's 
 unified intellectual insight was understood and 
 mentally grasped? After nineteen hundred years of 
 all kinds of theology, philosophy and science, we can 
 understand it to-day. Whatever one may think of our 
 intellectual achievements, be they profound or not, 
 it is fair, I believe, to say that we at least can grasp 
 an intellectual insight if it is laid before us; thus sci- 
 ence and philosophy have really paved the way to an 
 understanding of Christ. But I frankly fail to see how 
 in Christ's generation, in Judea and by the shore of 
 Galilee, there could be many who would understand 
 him. The political emotional elements in the situa- 
 tion would also have worked against a sympathetic 
 understanding, for all that the scribes could understand 
 and did understand was that if men should truly be- 
 
 ^ Matthew 13:19. 
 "Matthew 13:23. 
 
78 TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 
 
 lieve in him, then "The Romans shall come and take 
 away both our place and nation." ^ There was alto- 
 gether too tremendous a difference in the intellectual 
 level ; and I cannot see how an intellectual understand- 
 ing of Christ was at all possible. 
 
 Quite different is it with faith, and it may well be 
 observed that so-called intellectual understanding does 
 play a role only in the history of so-called ideas; that 
 is, understanding plays a role in the history of under- 
 standing — a trite enough observation. It plays an in- 
 finitely small role in the history of mankind. Man- 
 kind and understanding are two different things. You 
 perhaps witness from time to time great commotions 
 in the name of ideas. It was so in the past, is per- 
 haps so in the present. Do not think for a moment 
 that it is understanding of the ideas which moves man- 
 kind; it is their faith In the ideas. This is true about 
 the so-called masses, it is true about so-called intel- 
 lectuals; when at certain times numbers of persons 
 call themselves positivists, Kantians, Hegelians, Marx- 
 ists, all you will find there is sincere and really power- 
 ful faith in the concepts of Comte or Kant or Hegel 
 or Marx. That faith is clothed (because it is so 
 scientific, because it is after the fall of Adam and no 
 longer in a state of innocence) it has to be clothed in 
 phrases and excerpts — rags of the believers' particu- 
 lar master. So it is with faith; and as it is, so it was, 
 and so perhaps it will be. But there are certain funda- 
 mental conditions, subject not to faith but to under- 
 standing, that at a given time determine the general 
 *John 11:48. 
 
TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 79 
 
 characteristics of a prevailing faith. The faith that 
 had to prevail in the generation of Jesus was a faith 
 in Christ, their Christ, their Messiah. And they be- 
 lieved in Jesus. 
 
 But here was a fatal tragedy involved in that very 
 faith; for one concept was the concept of the Messiah 
 of Jesus' generation, and different, as we pointed out, 
 was Jesus' concept of his own Christhood. If the 
 insight of Jesus could have been intellectually grasped, 
 they could and would inevitably have come to that 
 concept of Christhood that Jesus taught. But the 
 Messiah was too definite a concept of faith to be 
 modified without a sign in heaven. Multitudes be- 
 lieved in Jesus; and the whole of Galilee and Judea 
 would have been swept by Jesus, could he have been 
 the king and the Messiah of their faith. For when- 
 ever they believed in him, they believed in him as their 
 Messiah, their anointed king. "Hosanna, blessed is 
 the king of Israel that cometh in the name of the 
 Lord." ^ They believed in him, but they believed 
 in him with their faith, not with his faith. How could 
 they modify so deeply ingrained a concept of faith, 
 and a concept of deliverance that the political situation 
 seemed to them so concretely to demand? Where in- 
 tellectual understanding was lacking, nothing short of 
 a sign in heaven, an intervention by God himself, could 
 modify their faith. And in this respect, if we come 
 to think of it, we must remember that even the faith 
 of the early Christian community after the death of 
 Jesus was based first upon a sign in heaven, the resur- 
 
 *John la: 13. 
 
80 TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 
 
 rection. Nor was the current faith in the Messiah 
 so drastically changed, for he was to come again and 
 reign in glory. Even after the resurrection the "Acts" 
 are reporting the old primary concern: 
 
 When they therefore were come together, they asked of him, 
 saying, Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the kingdom 
 to Israel?'- 
 
 Jesus knew that he had to be rejected by his gen- 
 eration. And the Pharisees knew just how to shatter 
 the faith in Jesus as the Messiah. For indeed all they 
 had to ask him was the question whether it were 
 lawful to pay tribute to Caesar. The Messiah that 
 was to deliver the children of Israel from the Cssars 
 and all oppression, that Messiah could not command 
 them to pay the tribute. But Jesus, who came to de- 
 liver them from themselves and from their imminent 
 destruction, of course, had to tell them to recognize 
 the fact that on their tribute money were the name and 
 the superscription of Caesar, hence to render unto 
 Caesar what was Caesar's, but to give unto God what 
 was God's. 
 
 Jesus had to be rejected by his generation, and he 
 knew It. If he was to be rejected by his generation 
 and suffer for the truth to which he came to bear wit- 
 ness, then indeed he could not save the lost sheep of 
 Israel from their imminent destruction. Rejected by 
 his generation and not understood by his people, of 
 what avail was his instruction into the kingdom? 
 Will not the people to whom he ministered after all 
 
 *Acts i:6. 
 
TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 8 1 
 
 be the very last to enter the kingdom, If indeed they 
 are to enter therein at all? Will not his very disciples 
 be offended and deny him, when he, instead of reigning 
 in power, is apprehended like a malefactor and suffers 
 at the hands of his enemies? And true enough, when 
 he was apprehended as a malefactor, then the disciples 
 forsook him and fled.^ They were offended, they for- 
 sook him, for neither was his kingdom of this earth, 
 nor was there any heavenly intervention in his behalf. 
 If there had been, his enemies would have believed in 
 him as well. Did not the priests and scribes say. 
 
 Let Christ the King of Israel descend now from the cross, that 
 we may see and believe.^ 
 
 Thus Christ had to experience a greater passion than 
 the physical one. 
 
 It is generally said that human passions are blind, 
 blind to causes, conditions, consequences; blind, that 
 is, having no insight into more general conditions of 
 existence. And because it is so, "If the blind lead the 
 blind, both shall fall into the ditch." * On the other 
 hand, to every historical moment, transient as it is. 
 Its momentary passions are by far more absorbing and 
 exciting than a general insight, if ever so true, into life. 
 These passions of the moment have naturally enough 
 their spokesmen. More universal viewpoints may also 
 have their spokesmen. But in a conflict between the 
 moment and eternity, which is it that is going im- 
 mediately to conquer? Unquestionably the moment; 
 
 ^Matthew 26:56. 
 'Mark 15:3,2. 
 ' Matthew 15:14. 
 
82 TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 
 
 for it is the moment that is passionate, blind and ag- 
 gressive. "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest 
 the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto 
 thee."^ Of course Jerusalem killeth her prophets. 
 For what is a prophet? If he is a true prophet, is he 
 not so because of his insight into life in general and 
 into the inevitable consequences of our momentary 
 passionate actions? Then because of this very insight 
 he can never qualify as a popular leader, the hero of 
 the passing moment. Popularity is hardly the role 
 of a true prophet. Therefore Christ says : 
 
 Woe unto you when all men shall speak well of you, for so did 
 your fathers unto the false prophets.^ 
 
 The greater a general insight is the more it is at vari- 
 ance with the vociferous passions of the moment. 
 Now, when we come to the insight that Christ taught, 
 it was so universal that it was not even understood by 
 the moment. Only its points of variance were felt 
 and resented by an aroused nation on the eve of its re- 
 bellion and its destruction. And Christ was crucified. 
 The kingdom was to be within us. The kingdom 
 was a matter of attitude and of understanding. But 
 the kingdom was also after all like a mustard seed, 
 which is the smallest of seeds, but which grows in 
 time. 
 
 Another parable put he forth unto them, saying, The kingdom 
 of heaven is like to a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, 
 and sowed in his field: Which indeed is the least of all seeds: 
 but when it is grown, it is the greatest among herbs, and becometh 
 
 'Matthew 23:37. 
 "Luke 6:25. 
 
TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 83 
 
 a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches 
 thereof.^ 
 
 And so after all is human assimilation of all knowl- 
 edge, and all insight. It is a matter of slow growth. 
 
 'Matthew 13:31-32. 
 
ROME'S FALL RECONSIDERED 
 
 The great Roman writers with whom we are fa- 
 miliar seem to have been quite conscious of Rome's 
 progressive disintegration. Testimony from the eye- 
 witnesses of the process is, of course, of the utmost 
 importance. Let us hear to what fundamental factors 
 they themselves attributed the decline of their common- 
 wealth. 
 
 Probably no handy quotation has pursued us through 
 our school years with such persistence as Pliny's 
 "Latifundia perdidere Italiam, jam vera et pro- 
 vincias." ^ The elder Pliny was not merely a man of 
 great learning, but a much traveled statesman of large 
 and varied experience. Is it not interesting that he 
 does not present us with a catalog of factors that 
 were leading Rome to its destruction? On the con- 
 trary, without any apology he is crisply pointing to 
 one predominating factor, which he names. The large 
 estates, the latifundia, were ruining Rome as well as 
 its provinces. 
 
 More rhetorical in form, but similar in meaning, is 
 the arraignment of the vast latifundia and their own- 
 ers in Seneca's letters.^ Seneca himself was one of the 
 richest land-owners of Rome, but as a statesman he 
 gave warning, in public, of what the wealthy land- 
 
 *Plinius, Historia Naturalis, xviii, 7. 
 ' Seneca, Epistolae, 89. 
 
 84 
 
TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 85 
 
 owners did not care to hear in private. Seneca asks: 
 "How far will you extend the bounds of your posses- 
 sions? An estate which formerly held a whole nation, 
 is now too narrow for a single lord." ^ In fact, Cicero 
 had already reported the statement of the tribune 
 Philippus that the entire commonwealth could not 
 muster two thousand property owners.^ The concen- 
 tration of landed property must have been impressive. 
 The latifundia, according to one view, therefore, 
 were the calise of ruin; but there was a more popular 
 version of the decline, namely, corruptio : the corrup- 
 tion of morals, the corruption brought by wealth, the 
 corruption brought by poverty, the all-pervading moral 
 corruption of Rome. Livy invites us to follow first 
 the gradual sinking of the national character, later 
 on the more rapid tempo of its downward course until 
 the days are reached when "we can endure neither our 
 vices nor their remedies." ^ And what great Roman 
 of that period did not complain of corruption? Read 
 Tiberius' famous letter to the Senate, which Tacitus 
 has transmitted to us. The Senate complained of lux- 
 ury and corruption and called on the emperor for 
 action and Tiberius answered : 
 
 That these excesses are censured at entertainments and in pri- 
 vate circles, I know quite well. And yet, let a law be made with 
 equal penalties, and the very men who call for a reform would 
 be the first to make objections. The public peace, they would 
 say, is disturbed; illustrious families are in danger of ruin. . . ,* 
 
 '"Non esse in civitate duo milia hominum qui rem haberent." 
 Cicero, De Officiis, ii, 73. 
 'Livius, i, Praefatio. 
 ' Tadtus, Annates, iii, 34. 
 
86 TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 
 
 Perhaps the most striking expression^ of the pro- 
 gressive moral deterioration of the Romans is in Hor- 
 ace's ode "Ad Romanos" •? Damnosa quid non im- 
 minuit dies? Aetas parentum pejor avis tulit nos nequi- 
 ores, mox daturos progeniem vitiosiorem — "What does 
 ruinous time not impair? The age of our parents, more 
 degenerate than that of our grandfathers, produced us, 
 even more worthless, and we shall give birth to a 
 still more vicious progeny!" A cheerful prospect! 
 But why such a note of despair? What is the cause 
 of this moral corruption and degeneracy of which all 
 Roman writers of the period complain? 
 
 In that very same ode Horace tells us why he takes 
 so desperate a view of things. The great deeds of 
 the Romans were the deeds of a sturdy farmer race : 
 sed rusticorum mascula militium Proles, Sabellis docta 
 ligonibus Versare glebas.^ These farmers' sons ex- 
 isted no longer. If they could not maintain them- 
 selves on their farms, still worse were the chances 
 for a respectable existence in Rome. There they lost 
 what little they had and became demoralized, de- 
 pendent paupers.* 
 
 The two complaints, the two Roman explanations 
 of their own decline and disintegration reduce them- 
 selves, therefore, to one single explanation. For it Is 
 
 'Among the picturesque characterizations of Roman degeneracy 
 Columella deserves a very high place v?ith his "Nam sic juvenum cor- 
 pora fluxa et resoluta sunt, ut nihil mors mutatura videatur." "For so 
 limp and dissolute are the bodies of the young men, that it does not 
 seem as if death could make any change in them !" Columella, i, Prae- 
 fatio. 
 
 "Horatius, Carmina, iii, 6. 
 
 ' Ibid. 
 
 'Juvenalis, iii, 2i et seg.; Martialis, iv, 5. 
 
TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 87 
 
 clear that the latlfundia and corruption are but differ- 
 ent aspects of the same social phenomenon. If the 
 moral disintegration was due to the disappearance 
 of the self-supporting, self-respecting farmer class, and 
 the inordinate wealth and fantastic luxury of the small 
 upper class, the latifundia were but the real estate 
 expression of the same phenomenon. Innumerable 
 small farms had been replaced by extraordinarily large 
 estates — the latifundia. 
 
 I do not doubt for a moment that the Romans were 
 quite conscious of the connection between the latifundia 
 and the corruption. Take, for instance, Sallust, who 
 states it very clearly in his so-called epistles to Cassar: 
 When the people were gradually deprived of their lands, and 
 idleness and want left them without a place to live on, they began 
 to covet other men's property and to regard their liberty and the 
 interests of their country as objects for sale. Thus the people who 
 had been sovereign and who had governed all nations, became 
 gradually degenerate; and instead of maintaining their common 
 dominion brought upon themselves individual servitude.''- 
 
 We are therefore justified, I believe. In stating that 
 the contemporary witnesses of the decline of Rome 
 had only one explanation of its cause ; but while some 
 emphasized its moral aspect and others Its economic, 
 still others, like Sallust or Pseudo-Sallust, have em- 
 phasized the political effect of the economic and moral 
 disintegration of Rome. 
 
 The small farms disappeared. Why did they dis- 
 appear? If we go back again to Roman literature 
 to see just how the small farms disappeared and just 
 how their place was taken by single latifundia, we find 
 
 * Sallust, Epist, i, 5. 
 
88 TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 
 
 little material that may be considered as a direct an- 
 swer to our question. Such little material as we do 
 find seems to suggest violence. Thus we are told in the 
 Metamorphoses of Apuleius how the rich man, after 
 despoiling his poor neighbor of his flocks, "resolved to 
 dispossess him of his scanty acres and, inventing some 
 empty quarrel over the boundaries, claimed the whole 
 property for himself." ^ An intimation of similar pro- 
 ceedings is to be found in Sallust's "Jugurthine War" : 
 
 The parents and children of the soldiers, meantime, if they 
 chanced to dwell near a powerful neighbor, were driven from 
 their homes. Thus avarice, leagued with power, invaded, violated 
 and laid waste everything without moderation or restraint, disre- 
 garding alike reason and religion till it rushed headlong, as it were, 
 to its own destruction.^ 
 
 Similar is the meaning of Horace's famous "Ode on 
 Roman Luxury and Avarice" : 
 
 Quid, quod usque proximos 
 
 Revellis agri terminos et ultra 
 
 Limites clientum 
 
 Salis avarus? Pellitur paternos 
 
 In sinu ferens deos 
 
 Et uxor et vir sordidosque natos.3 
 
 These and one or two similar stories * are about 
 the only material at hand that bears directly on the 
 wiping-out of small farms. Shall we therefore reach 
 the conclusion that the innumerable small farms were 
 wiped out by the violence of the few rich ? Have we 
 any other material relating to the life of the petty 
 
 'Apuleius, Metam., ix, 35. 
 
 ' Sallust, Jugurt., xli. 
 
 ' Horatius, Carmina, ii, 18. 
 
 'Quintilian, Apes Pauperis, xiii, 4; Seneca, Epist, 90, 39. 
 
TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 89 
 
 Roman farmer? None of any consequence. That be- 
 ing the case, it would be contrary to common sense to 
 assume that small farming, once spread over the 
 Italian countryside, was wiped out by violence. There 
 is reproof and horror in the quotations cited; the au- 
 thors are shocked, and we are shocked only by the 
 unusual. Hence, the element of violence is empha- 
 sized in the material quoted, because it is exceptional. 
 It takes too deep a mind to follow what is slow and 
 uneventful, to find beauty in the deep ruts of a muddy 
 country road, and treasures in the day-by-day life of 
 the most humble. The story of the plain farmer we 
 can expect to find in neither literature nor history. 
 History as well as literature is a mountain-climbing 
 expedition. 
 
 What do we know about Roman farmers that is 
 not legendary in its nature? We know that in the 
 earlier period of the Republic they considered seven 
 jugera as ample for the support of a Roman farmer 
 and his family. That is supposed to have been the 
 size of the allotments after the expulsion of the kings ; 
 that was the size of the allotments in the colonies 
 established by Manius Curius after his great conquests. 
 It is he who is credited with the statement that "the 
 man must be looked upon as a dangerous citizen, for 
 whom seven jugera of land are not enough." ^ 
 
 Why did the seven-jugera farms disappear? Why 
 was their place taken by the large private domains, 
 the latifundia? That we are dealing here with the 
 
 ' Flinius. Historia Naturalis, xviii, 4, 3. Also Valerius Maximus, iv, 
 3, 5. Sextus Aurelius Victor, De Viris Illustribus Urbis Romae, xxxiii, 
 gives fourteen jugera as the size of the allotment. 
 
90 TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 
 
 fundamental problem of the Roman commonwealth is 
 indicated by all its external struggles. Only glance 
 at the way the problem Is formulated by Tiberius 
 Gracchus : 
 
 The wild beasts of Italy have their dens and hiding places, while 
 the brave men who spill their blood in her defense have nothing 
 left but air and light. Houseless and without a spot of ground 
 to rest upon, they wander about with their wives and children. 
 Their commanders do but mock them when they exhort the sol- 
 diers in battle to defend their tombs and temples against the en- 
 emy; for out of so many Romans not one has a family altar or 
 ancestral tomb. The private soldiers are called masters of the 
 world, but fight and die to maintain the luxury and wealth of 
 others; and they are called masters of the world without pos- 
 sessing a single clod to call their own.^ 
 
 Unfortunately, about the process of the expropria- 
 tion of the farmer class Tiberius Gracchus does not 
 tell us any more than did Sallust or Pseudo-Sallust in 
 his letter to Caesar; but an interesting clue may be 
 found in the size of the Gracchan allotments : they were 
 to be thirty jugera each. Why not seven? Later on 
 we know that the triumviral assignments were, accord- 
 ing to Trentinus, fifty jugera, the assignments of Caesar 
 the dictator were sixty-six and one-third jugera. In 
 the Augustinian colony, Emerita, we learn from 
 Hyginus, the assignments were four hundred jugera.^ 
 How then could seven jugera suffice for the farmers 
 of early Rome? Did not the ancients speculate on 
 the subject? Yes, they did. Pliny discusses this very 
 problem. He is wondering about the productivity of 
 the soil in the olden days, and here is what he tells us : 
 
 'Plutarch, Tiberius Gracchus, ix. 
 
 ' Mommsen, Zum romischen Bodenrecht. Historische Schriften, v. 2, 
 vjii, 1, 81. 
 
TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 9 1 
 
 What, then, was the cause of such fertility? In those days the 
 lands were tilled by the hands of generals, and there is reason to 
 believe that the soil exulted beneath a ploughshare crowned with 
 laurel, and a husbandman graced with triumphs; whether it is 
 that they gave the seed the same care that they had given the con- 
 duct of wars, and arranged their fields with the same diligent 
 attention as their camp, or whether it is that under the hands of 
 honest men everything grows more gladly, since it is more carefully 
 tended.^ 
 
 Pliny may have been right in his explanation or he 
 may have been wrong. The important thing is that 
 the simple circumstance that a Roman could in former 
 generations make a living on seven jugera distinctly 
 required explanation. 
 
 There were other explanations. Is not one offered, 
 for instance, by Lucretius' lines at the end of his sec- 
 ond book? What does Lucretius tell us about mother 
 earth in general and his Roman soil in particular? 
 
 At first she corn and wine, and oil did bear 
 
 And tender fruit, without the tiller's care; 
 
 She brought forth herbs, which now the feeble soil 
 
 Can scarce afford to all our pain and toil. 
 
 We labor, sweat, and yet by all this strife 
 
 Can scarce get corn and wine enough for life. 
 
 Our men, our oxen, groan, and never cease. 
 
 So fast our labors grow, our fruits decrease. 
 
 Nay oft the farmers with a sigh complain. 
 
 That they have labor'd all the year in vain, 
 
 And looking back on former ages, bless 
 
 With anxious thoughts their parents' happiness 
 
 Content with what the willing soil did yield. 
 Though each man then enjoyed a narrower field.^ 
 
 ^ Plinius, H. N., xviii, 4. 
 
 ^Thomas Creech's translation. London, 1683, Book 2, 1, 1111-1125. 
 
92 TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 
 
 This statement is of great importance, but only if 
 corroborated by facts. To accept Lucretius' evidence 
 by itself as sufficient and conclusive would be rather 
 hasty. Lucretius as a philosopher is dealing here with 
 the decay of the world, and hence the question nat- 
 urally suggests itself: Did the actual situation, as 
 he observed it, lead him to such a conclusion, or did 
 his philosophy color his observations? 
 
 If the lines cited from Lucretius are a true statement 
 of fact, the economic, and hence also social and politi- 
 cal, effects of such conditions were bound to be so dis- 
 astrous that it would be reasonable for us to expect 
 a fairly general outcry. 
 
 A general outcry is, of course, important historical 
 evidence, but it is not the cause that malces us complain, 
 it is the effect, the situation in which we happen to find 
 ourselves. A meat-market riot is as much concerned 
 with the cause of the high cost of living, as the Roman 
 
 It is somewhat inaccurate, but it seems to me the most poetical trans- 
 lation of Lucretius. 
 Lucretius Carus, De Rerum Natura, Libri Sex, ii, ii 57-1 174. 
 
 Praeterea nitidas fruges vinetaque laeta 
 Sponte sua primum mortalibus ipsa creavit, 
 Ipse dedit dulcis fetus et pabula laeta; 
 Quae nunc vix nostro grandescunt aucta labore, 
 Conterimusque boves et viris agricolarum, 
 Conficimus ferrum, vix arvis suppeditati: 
 Usque adeo parcunt fetus augentque labore. 
 lamque caput quassans grandis suspirat arator 
 Crebrius, incassum manuum cecidisse labores, 
 Et cum tempora temporibus praesentia confert 
 Praeteritis, laudat fortunas saepe parentis. 
 Tristis item vetulae vitis sator atque victae 
 Temporis incusat momen, caelumque fatigat, 
 Et crepat, antiquum genus ut pietate repletum 
 Perfacile angustis tolerarit finibus aevom, 
 Cum minor esset agri multo modus ante viritim: 
 Nee tenet omnia paulatim tabescere et ire 
 Ad capulum, spatio aetatis defessa vetusto. 
 
TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 93 
 
 sumptuary and moral laws were concerned with the 
 cause of the much-complained-of corruption. The ef- 
 fects one can always see; of the effects one constantly 
 hears: but the cause one must find. So It Is, so It was; 
 hence Virgil's "Felix qui potuit re rum cognoscere 
 causas." 
 
 Nor are we always primarily interested In the true 
 cause. There are situations where one is inclined to 
 search for a life-preserver rather than for the cause 
 of shipwreck. It is therefore wise to remember that 
 the attitude of the Impartial onlooker is likely to be 
 quite different from that of the dramatis persona. 
 Goethe Indicates this difference : 
 
 Wherein do gods 
 Differ from mortals? 
 In that the former 
 See endless billows 
 Heaving before them; 
 Us doth the billow- 
 Lift up and swallow 
 So that we perish. 
 
 So it happens that the true causes of things are 
 hardly discussed In the markets and meeting-places. 
 It is the future, not the past, that worries politicians. 
 Remedies, not causes, are what they are bound to 
 discuss. For life is purposeful, and only to its dis- 
 sector is it a chain of causes. But Rome was not with- 
 out dissecting scholars. 
 
 Let us therefore go and see how the great agricul- 
 tural scholars of the time analyzed the situation. Let 
 us read thoughtfully the writings of Columella. He 
 was writing under the Princlpate, about 60 A. D. 
 How does he begin his work? The preface begins: 
 
94 TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 
 
 I frequently hear the most illustrious men of our country com- 
 plaining that either the sterility of our soil or the unseasonable 
 weather has for many years been diminishing the productivity of 
 the land. Others give a rational background to their complaints, 
 claiming that the soil became tired and exhausted from excessive 
 productivity in the past, and hence can no longer furnish suste- 
 nance to mortals with its former liberality.-"^ 
 
 Columella does not agree with such a point of 
 view. He ascribes the lack of productivity to poor 
 farming; and hence he gives us instructions how to 
 farm well. But is it not of the utmost significance that 
 he published a voluminous treatise distinctly directed 
 against a prevailing exhaustion-of-the-soil theory? 
 These opening lines of Columella are far from acci- 
 dental. Furthermore we learn from him a very im- 
 portant thing, and that is, that nearly all agricultural 
 writers of antiquity (whose writings are lost to us) 
 viewed their contemporary agricultural situation as due 
 to the exhaustion of the soil; or, as they put it, as the 
 result of the soil's old age. 
 
 Attention is called to the opening paragraph of 
 Columella's second book, chapter i: 
 
 You ask me, Publius Silvinus — and I hasten to reply to you — 
 why I began my former book by practically/ contradicting the early 
 opinion of nearly all writers on agriculture, and by rejecting as 
 false their idea that the soil, worn out by long cultivation and 
 exhausted, is suffering from old age^^ 
 
 'Columella, De Re Rustica, Lib. i, Ad Pub. Silvinum, praefatio: 
 "Saepe numero dvitatis nostrae principes audio culpantes mode agro- 
 rum infoecunditatem, modo caeli per multa jam tempera noxiam 
 frugibus intemperiem: quosdam etiam praedictas querimonias velut 
 ratione certa raitigantes, quod existiment, ubertate nimia prioris aevi 
 defatigatum et effoetum solum nequire pristina benignitate praebere 
 mortalibus alimenta." 
 
 " Columella : ii, i : "Quaeris ex me, Publi Silvine, quod ego sine 
 cunctatione non recuso docere, cur priore libro veterum opinionem fere 
 
TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 95 
 
 Hence we learn that the ideas of Lucretius were 
 not peculiar to him alone, but (if we accept the testi- 
 mony of Columella) they were the common conception 
 of nearly all who seriously thought about and sci- 
 entifically discussed the agricultural affairs of antiquity. 
 If the works to which Columella is referring had sur- 
 vived and had been preserved to us, there would have 
 been little left for us to discuss. 
 
 Columella refuted the exhaustion-of-soil conception. 
 Let us see how he did it. We find in his book three 
 arguments. First of all, the Creator has bestowed 
 upon soil perpetual fecundity; hence it is impious to 
 regard the soil as affected with sterility as with a dis- 
 ease. Divine and everlasting youth was allotted to 
 our common parent, mother-earth; it is silly to assume 
 that she is ageing like a human being.^ 
 
 His second argument is particularly directed against 
 Tremellius, whose writings (lost to us) he especially 
 esteems. Tremellius is of the opinion that mother- 
 earth has, like a woman, reached that point of her 
 life when sterility takes the place of her former fecun- 
 dity. To this Columella replies that he would have 
 accepted Tremellius' view had the soil been com- 
 pletely unproductive. But he argues that we do not 
 regard a woman as having reached the barren age, 
 simply because she no longer gives birth to triplets 
 and twins. Furthermore, when a woman has reached 
 that age, the bearing of children cannot be restored 
 
 omnium, qui de cultu agrorum locuti sunt, a principio confestim re- 
 pulerim, falsamque sententiam repudiaverim censentium, longo aevi 
 situ longique jam temporis exercitatione fatigatam et effoetam hu- 
 mum consenuisse." 
 'Columella, i, praefatio. 
 
g6 TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 
 
 to her, while the land, if abandoned for a time, will be 
 found upon the return of the cultivator more fertile.^ 
 
 And, finally. Columella is therefore of the opinion 
 that the soil would never diminish in its productivity if 
 properly taken care of and frequently manured.^ 
 
 Very sound and sensible was his conclusion, but 
 whether his advice could be followed is another ques- 
 tion. What interests us is to ascertain not the state 
 of the theory, but the state of the actual practice. 
 That is the crucial and deciding question. Fortun- 
 ately Columella answers this question in the third 
 chapter of his third book, where he urges going into 
 vine culture rather than into the cultivation of grain, 
 because in the greater part of Italy no one can recall 
 when grain produced four- fold. "Nam frumenta 
 majore quidem parte Italiae quando cum quarto re- 
 sponderint, vix meminisse possumus." * In other 
 words, if it did not produce four-fold, it produced 
 three-fold or two-fold. In what situation would our 
 modern farmers be, if the average productivity of their 
 wheat, corn, barley, etc., should be somewhere between 
 four and six bushels an acre, a productivity which 
 would completely assure and enforce the abandonment 
 of farming? But the Romans were In a worse situa- 
 tion. We now plough in a nine- or ten-hour day about 
 two acres with an average team, even in heavy clay 
 or sod. The Romans ploughed in light soil a jugerum, 
 which is five-eighths of an acre ; in heavy soil but half 
 a jugerum. But that Is not all; we plough but once; 
 
 ' Columella, ii, i. 
 'Ibid. 
 'Columella, iii, 3. 
 
TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 97 
 
 they, for lack of effective harrows, had to plough 
 corn land anywhere from five to nine times. Now one 
 can figure out where the Italian farmer found him- 
 self in the days of Columella 1 The game was up; 
 but what stopped it? Many are the answers. Some 
 tell us it was stopped by constant warfare. But Colu- 
 mella complains that the old Sabine quirites and 
 Roman ancestors, in spite of the fire and sword to 
 which they themselves were subjected, and in spite of 
 the hostile invasion which laid waste their fields, never- 
 theless laid up greater store of corn than his con- 
 temporaries were able to do, although during the long- 
 continued peace they might have improved their agri- 
 culture.^ 
 
 When Columella wrote in A. D. 60, Italy certainly 
 was enjoying a long protracted peace. Furthermore, 
 one must remember that war as such, even if it should 
 drive the farmers away from the land and keep them 
 from cultivation for years, does not in any way ex- 
 haust the soil. For if the soil is not exhausted it will 
 grow over with weeds and bushes, which will prevent 
 the washing-away of the top soil, and when again put 
 under the plough, the farmer will find his soil im- 
 proved, because of the decayed weeds and other veg- 
 etable matter. If, on the other hand, the soil was 
 abandoned when substantially so exhausted that it 
 would not readily cover with weeds, then the top soil 
 would gradually wash off and make its reclaiming 
 difficult and costly. 
 
 ' "Veteres illi Sabini Quirites atavique Romani, quamquam inter 
 ferrum et ignes hosticisque incursionibus vastatas fruges, largius tamen 
 condidere quam nos, quibus diuturna permittente pace prolatare licuit 
 rem rusticam." Columella, i, praefatio. 
 
98 TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 
 
 The writers of the Principate look back to the 
 sturdy past of the days of Cato the Censor. They 
 were mistaken. For even in Cato's day agriculture had 
 already declined in the greater part of Italy. His 
 Husbandry, the earliest Roman agricultural book that 
 has come down to us, practically disregards the cultiva- 
 tion of grain crops. His attention is devoted to the 
 cultivation of the vine and olive. 
 
 Cato, when asked what is the most profitable thing in the man- 
 agement of one's estate, answered: "Good pasturage," "What 
 is the next best?" "Fairly good pasturage." "What is the third 
 best?" "Bad pasturage." "What is the fourth best?" "Tilling 
 the soil." 1 
 
 Such a statement requires no comment. And as a mat- 
 ter of fact, even in Cato's day Italy had to rely upon 
 Sicily as its granary.^ 
 
 Again it has been said that the free distribution and 
 sale of corn at low prices in Rome ruined Roman agri- 
 culture. Mommsen takes this attitude in his Roman 
 history, and it is generally accepted — ^but he is taking 
 the effect for the cause. Importations of corn began 
 when relief had to be given to the growing proletariat 
 of Rome. Mommsen himself, in a later piece of re- 
 search, admits that one often hears of high prices, 
 and only exceptionally of low prices, of corn so that 
 
 ' 'Cicero, De Officiis, ii, 25: ". . . illud est Catonis senis: a quo cum 
 quaereretur quid maxime in re familiari expediret, respondit: 'Bene 
 pascere'; quid secundum: 'Satis bene pascere'; quid tertium: 'Male 
 pascere' ; quid quartum : 'Arare.' " 
 
 'Cato called Sicily the nourisher of the Roman people "nutricem 
 plebis Romanae Siciliara nominabat." Cicero, In Verr., ii, 2. Livy 
 called even the single town of Syracuse: "Horreum atque aerarium 
 quondam populi Romani." Livius, xxvi, 32. 
 
TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 99 
 
 as a whole rather too little than too much was pro- 
 duced.^ 
 
 No evidence has come down to us that would in- 
 dicate difficulties in disposing of grain; all the bitter 
 complaints that we hear are about hardships and diffi- 
 culties in raising grain. Look at Cato. What he 
 thought of tillage we have heard. Yet Plutarch tells 
 us: "As Cato grew more eager to make money he 
 declared that farming was more an amusement than 
 a source of income and preferred investing his money 
 in remunerative undertakings, such as marshes that 
 required draining. . . ." ^ 
 
 Here is the story in a nut-shell. An undrained 
 marsh has never been tilled, and therefore never 
 robbed of its fertility. Since one would hardly select 
 low flats for vineyards, which require at least a slope, 
 it is obvious that Cato drained the marshes for pur- 
 poses of tillage. The initial expenses of drainage are 
 heavy, yet Cato regarded the results as very remunera- 
 tive, and that, in spite of Sicilian corn on the Roman 
 market. To drain a rich marsh was obviously easier 
 for the Romans than to reclaim large tracts of ordi- 
 nary exhausted soil. 
 
 It is interesting that the lands that were first taken 
 up by Roman cultivators were also, judging from our 
 sources, the first to be exhausted. It was in Latium, 
 where once seven jugera were ample to support a 
 
 ^Mommsen, "Boden- und Geldwirtschaft der romischen Kaiserzeit" 
 in his "Historische Schriften," Bd. ii, xxxvii, p. 604; "Es ist nicht selten 
 von teuren Kompreisen, nur ausnahmsweise von besonders niedrigen 
 die Rede, so dass ira Ganzen wohl eher zu vyenig als zu viel produciert 
 ward." 
 
 "Plutarch, Marcus Cato., xxi. 
 
lOO TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 
 
 family, that Varro finds an example of notoriously 
 sterile soil. He mentions Pupinia in Latium: "Wit- 
 ness Pupinia, where the foliage is meager, the vines 
 looked starved, where the scant straw never stools, 
 nor the fig tree blooms, and trees and parched 
 meadows are largely covered with moss." ^ 
 
 Two hundred years later Columella no longer 
 singles out Pupinia, but refers to entire Latium as a 
 country where the population would have died of 
 starvation, had it not been for imported grain. So 
 it came to pass 
 
 that in that very land, in Saturn's own country, where gods taught 
 their children how to till the soil, there at public auction we have 
 to contract for corn imported from provinces beyond the seas, 
 that we may not suffer from starvation, and wine we have to 
 import from the Cyclades, from the regions of Boetia and Gaul.^ 
 
 As the productivity of the soil diminished, and the 
 crops could no longer repay the laborer, then the same 
 process that occurred in England in the 15th and i6th 
 centuries, the turning of arable land into pasturage, 
 began in Italy, about two centuries before Christ. In 
 Rome, too, this process was met by hostile legislation, 
 as was the case in England, but without avail. As 
 in England, so in Rome, it became a matter not of 
 choice but of necessity, although even the thinking 
 heads of both nations refused to admit it at the time, 
 
 ' "Ut in Pupinia neque arbores prolixas, neque vites feraces, neque 
 stramenta videre crassa possis, neque ficum mariscam, et arbores 
 plerasque, ac prata retorrida, et muscosa." Varro, De Re Rustica, i, 9. 
 
 " "Itaque in hoc Latio et Saturnia terra, ubi dii cultus agrorum pro- 
 geniem suam docuerant, ibi nunc ad hastam locamus, ut nobis ex trans- 
 marinis provinciis advehatur frumentum, ne fame laboremus; et vinde- 
 mias condimus ex insulis Cycladibus ac regionibus Boeticis Gallicis- 
 que." Columella, i, praefatio. 
 
TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS lOI 
 
 and preferred to ascribe the change to greed and cor- 
 ruption. In England they blamed the poor sheep ; in 
 Rome they blamed the attractions of city life. So we 
 hear Varro lamenting: 
 
 Our very com that is to feed us has to be imported for us 
 from Africa and Sardinia, while our vintages come in ships from 
 the islands of Cos and Chios. And so it happened that those lands 
 which the shepherds who founded the city taught their children 
 to cultivate are now by their descendants converted out of greed 
 from cornfields back into pastures, violating even the law, since 
 they fail to distinguish between agriculture and pasturage, for a 
 shepherd is one thing and a ploughman another.^ 
 
 It seems to me that the progressive exhaustion of 
 Roman soil is, judging by all the sources at our dis- 
 posal, completely established ; but there prevails in lit- 
 erature a diametrically contrary version of the story — 
 that of Rodbertus, who is regarded by economists as 
 their authority. Rodbertus, too, quotes Columella's 
 statement about crops not producing in Italy the fourth 
 grain. He also refers to Varro's statement quoted 
 above, but he explains it all "propter avaritiam." It 
 is through avarice that all good soil was put under 
 pasturage, because cattle^raising paid better. The 
 fact that soil produced next to nothing when cultivated 
 is explained by him thus : only the very poorest soil 
 was under the plow, because wine, oil, and fruits were 
 so much more profitable. The type of production 
 
 ^ ". . . frumentum locamus, qui nobis advehat, qui saturi fiamus 
 ex Africa, et Sardinia; et navibus vindemiam condimus ex insula 
 Coa, et Chia. Itaque in qua terra culturam agri docuerunt pastores 
 progeniem suam, qui condiderunt urbem, ibi contra progenies eorum, 
 propter avaritiam contra leges ex segetibus fecit prata, ignorantes non 
 idem esse agriculturam et pastionem. Alius enim opilio, et arator." 
 Varro, ii, De Re Pecuaria, praefatio. 
 
102 TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 
 
 changed, but became by no means worse, and agri- 
 culture was certainly not to blame, if Italy was not pro- 
 ducing its own grain. "Der Ackerbau selbst war also 
 unschuldig daran, wenn Italien nicht mehr seinen 
 ganzen Getreidebedarf lieferte." ^ 
 
 The statement of Rodbertus' can with difficulty be 
 taken seriously. First of all, the Romans not only 
 failed to produce their grain; they failed to produce 
 their vintage as well, in spite of the premium put on 
 Italian wine by prohibiting the planting of vines in 
 Gaul. Secondly, as a farmer, Rodbertus must have 
 realized that if they practised rotation of crops, which 
 he assumes, the fact that the Romans of Columella's 
 time could not produce a fourth grain would indicate 
 sterility, not of their poorest field, but of all their 
 arable fields. Thirdly, to assume that the Romans 
 would select their very worst fields, not out of necessity 
 but out of choice, that they would be satisfied to plough 
 and work and harvest those fields for a gain of one 
 or two bushels over and above the bushel of seed, is 
 to assume that the Romans had become insane. 
 
 The soil of Italy did not get exhausted over night. 
 It was a long process and many were its stages. Be- 
 sides, exhaustion is a very relative term ; not only rela- 
 tive from an agro-technical point of view, but also rela- 
 tive to the physical needs as well as the economic ca- 
 pacities of the owner. 
 
 The expropriation of the Roman peasantry, the con- 
 centration of ownership of land in the hands of the 
 few, to which the Romans ascribed the ruin of the 
 
 '^ Rodbertus, Zur Geschichte der agrarischen Entwickelung Roms. 
 Hildebrand's Jahrbiicher Bd. ii, 1864, pp. 218-19. 
 
TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS IO3 
 
 Empire, is also a very gradual process and runs parallel 
 with the process of soil exhaustion. Compared with 
 the seven-jugera holdings of the early Republic, the 
 hundred- or hundred and fifty-acre plantations to which 
 Cato refers are large estates. These "estates" of 
 Cato, which in size correspond to an average American 
 farm, gradually disappear and their place is taken 
 toward the end of the Republic and under the Princi- 
 pate by vast domains measuring thousands and thou- 
 sands of acres. The process of transformation was 
 slow but constant. This process was not only agoniz- 
 ing to the people ; it was sapping the very life of Rome 
 as a nation, decreasing its population, undermining 
 its morale and convulsing its political fabric. The 
 beginnings of this process are almost lost in the dark- 
 ness of Rome's legendary period. For the first violent 
 expression of Roman social life to which we are in- 
 troduced is the outcry of the indebted and bonded 
 farmer class. In the growing wholesale indebtedness 
 of the Roman farmer some historians have seen the 
 key to Rome's political struggles, but the cause of this 
 indebtedness was either not discerned or was viewed 
 more or less as a mystery. So, for instance, Biichsen- 
 schijtz tells us that if the origin and character of the 
 debts are veiled for us in darkness, the fact remains 
 that the plebeians were the debtors and the patricians 
 the creditors. The division between rich and poor 
 coincides with the division of the orders, and the 
 struggle of the debtors against the creditors was there- 
 fore fought out as a purely political struggle.^ 
 
 '"1st somit die Enstehung und das Wesen dieser Schulden fur uns 
 sehr im Dunkel gehiillt, so wird die Sache noch dadurch bedenk- 
 
104 TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 
 
 There are two kinds of indebtedness : debts for pro- 
 ductive purposes and debts for purposes of consump- 
 tion. If the reports of American banks should show 
 a growing extension of credit it would be fair to as- 
 sume a growing extension of industry, because banks 
 as a rule deal with credit for productive purposes only. 
 If, on the other hand, the report should reach us that 
 the volume of business of our pawnshops had greatly 
 increased, it would indicate that poverty is on the 
 increase, that the incomes of the borrowers are in- 
 sufficient to meet their ordinary expenses and hence 
 that they are borrowing for purposes of consumption. 
 The wholesale indebtedness of the Roman farmer 
 class obviously suggests indebtedness for purposes of 
 consumption. 
 
 If the farmer is borrowing to meet the exigencies 
 of a so-called bad year, his distress is temporary, and 
 he is likely to square himself during the next good year; 
 but if his distress is due to the progressive deteriora- 
 tion of his farm, he will be unable to extricate him- 
 self. Such indebtedness is hopeless. The increasing 
 weight of accumulated interest on the loan and the 
 decreasing) productivity of the land seal the fate of 
 the landowner. He certainly is not in an economic 
 position to increase his land-holdings to a point where 
 the larger product might supply his wants. Because 
 
 licher, dass als Schuldner die Plebejer, als Glaubiger die Patricier 
 erscheinen, der Unterschied von reich und arm genau mit dem Unter- 
 schiede der Stande zusammenfallt und infolge dessen der aus der 
 Schuldnot entstandene Zwist zu einem Kampfe der Stande ges- 
 taltet und lediglich als solcher ausgefochten wird." B. Buch- 
 senschiitz, Bemerkungen uber die romische Volkswirtschaft der Konigs- 
 zeit (Wissenschaftliche Beilage zum Program des Friedrichs-Wer- 
 derschen Gymnasiums zu Berlin iS86), p. 34. 
 
TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS IO5 
 
 he does not have enough land, what little he has will 
 be taken from him and be given to him that has both 
 land and economic capacity. In this way a farmer will 
 be driven off the land and the holdings of some one 
 else increased. That is the process of concentration 
 of landed property. If this process should appear as 
 a general phenomenon, as it did in both Rome and 
 Greece, it would be a factor of momentous social sig- 
 nificance. 
 
 The entire history of Rome is but a series of illustra- 
 tions of this story. Steady is the legislation against 
 interest and drastic are the measures against the money 
 lenders, but even in spite of social revolutions and 
 social wars, the concentration of landed property is 
 unchecked. Because of this peculiar character of credit 
 in certain historical periods, money-lending was not a 
 savory occupation. The gentleman, therefore, who 
 in our industrial and mercantile life is a pillar of society 
 and a respectable financier, is known by a different 
 name in agricultural communities. His name is 
 Usurer. Not that his profits from money-lending are 
 any larger, but that he is lending money for purposes 
 of consumption to a man as a rule already economically 
 doomed, while the "banker" is lending money for pro- 
 ductive purposes and as a rule to the advantage of 
 the borrower. Hence the different attitude towards 
 the "financier" now and in ages past. Cato, when 
 asked what he thought of money-lending, answered: 
 "What do you think of murder?" ^ 
 
 One must not, however, get the idea that all con- 
 
 ' Cicero, De Officiis, ii, 25. 
 
Io6 TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 
 
 centration. of real property is necessarily due to in- 
 debtedness. Just as one is as a rule unwilling to part 
 with a lucrative piece of property, one may be willing 
 and anxious to part with property that is unproductive, 
 and that even without pressure of debts. 
 
 We have pretty illustrations of this in Roman litera- 
 ture. Cicero, in his second harangue against P. S. 
 RuUus, tells us that Publius Lentulus was sent by the 
 Senate to purchase a private farm in Campania that 
 projected into the public domain, but he was unable 
 to purchase the farm for any money, because its owner 
 could not be induced to part with his most productive 
 parcel of land.^ Let us read carefully, on the other 
 hand, a most remarkable letter of the younger Pliny 
 to Calvisius Rufus, from whom he is soliciting advice. 
 The younger Pliny is contemplating the increase of 
 his latifundia by adding an enormous neighboring 
 estate, which is offered as a bargain. Here are two 
 extracts from his letter: 
 
 I feel tempted to purchase, first, because of the convenience and 
 pleasure of uniting adjacent estates. . . . But the fertility of the 
 land is overtaxed by poor tenants. For the last proprietor was 
 constantly selling their whole stock, and though he reduced the 
 arrears of the tenants for the time, he weakened their efficiency 
 for the future, and as their capital failed them their arrears once 
 more began to mount up. I must therefore set them up again; 
 and it will cost the more because I must provide them with honest 
 slaves; slaves working in chains, I do not own any, nor does any 
 landowner in that part of the country. Now let me tell you the 
 price at which I think I can purchase the property. It is three 
 million sesterces, though at one time the price was five, but owing 
 
 * Cicero, De OfiScis, ii, 2$. 
 
TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS IO7 
 
 to the poverty of the tenants and the general difficulty of the time 
 the rents have fallen off and the price has therefore dropped also.^ 
 
 Here we have the typical latifundia of imperial 
 Rome, sublet to tenants. They could not pay their 
 rent; the owner thereupon sold their stock, which did 
 not strengthen their productive and paying capacity. 
 The fertility of the estate is admittedly impaired by 
 this lack of stock and it is offered as a bargain. Is the 
 younger Pliny attracted by it as a money-making prop- 
 osition? Hardly. But "praedia agris meis vicina atque 
 etiam inserta" and the "pulchritudo iugendi" — the old 
 story of rounding up one's estate, by buying the ad- 
 joining one. The elder Pliny in telling us how the lati- 
 fundia were ruining Rome must have had in mind pre- 
 cisely such purchases as his nephew contemplated, for 
 without any too obvious connection he adds: "With 
 that greatness of mind which was so peculiarly his own, 
 Cnaeus Pompeius would never purchase the land that 
 belonged to a neighbor." ^ 
 
 Still, do not let us simplify the process of concentra- 
 tion too much. It undoubtedly had as an underlying 
 cause the relative unproductivity of the soil. The 
 process of concentration followed many parallel 
 routes. Indebtedness was undoubtedly the greatest 
 factor in abolishing small holdings. Unproductivity 
 of agriculture naturally led to cattle-ranches, which re- 
 quired much larger holdings. Wealthy men acquired 
 and accumulated vast domains rather for the pleasure 
 of possession than as a paying investment. But the 
 process of deterioration went on, and legislative inter- 
 
 ^Plinius Secundus, Epist., iii, 19. 
 'Plinius, H. N., xviii, 7. 
 
I08 TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 
 
 ferences could neither stop the robbing of the soil nor 
 the depreciation of land values. Negligent cultivation 
 of one's own land was punishable, so was conversion 
 of arable land into pasturage ; but neither law proved 
 effective. To maintain land values, as early as 218 
 B. C, the Claudian law excluded senatorial houses 
 from mercantile occupations and compelled them to 
 invest in Italian land. After Trajan's time, one third 
 of their wealth had to be invested in land. Tiber- 
 ius, in A. D. 33, put in force an old law and compelled 
 all bankers to invest, so far as can be made out, two- 
 thirds of their working capital in Italian lands.^ Such 
 measures maintained for a time the land values, but 
 they could not touch the underlying cause — the process 
 of spoliation and exhaustion of the fields as well as 
 the process of proletarization, corruption and depopu- 
 lation of the nation. 
 
 Some questions suggest themselves in this connec- 
 tion. First of all, did not the Romans know how to 
 conserve or improve their soil and thereby make their 
 agricultural labor more productive? The answer to 
 this can be only that the Roman knowledge of rational 
 and intensive agriculture was so great as to be fairly 
 startling. The knowledge of the Roman Scriptores 
 Rei Rusticae is superior to any agricultural practice 
 of the Middle Ages or even of modern Europe at the 
 beginning of the 19th century. 
 
 Why then did the Roman farmers fail to improve 
 their methods of agriculture, even when pressed by 
 necessity to do so, even when threatened with extermi- 
 
 ^ See Mommsen, Boden- undGeldwirtschaft der romischen Kaiseizeit. 
 Historische Schiiften, Bd. ii, xxxvii, p. 595. 
 
TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS IO9 
 
 nation? It was easier said than done. Behind our 
 abstract agricultural reflections are concrete individual 
 farms. The owners of the rundown farms are im- 
 poverished, and when a farmer is economically sink- 
 ing he is not in a position to improve his land. 
 
 Only one with sufficient resources can improve his 
 land. By improving land we add to our capital, while 
 by robbing land we add immediately to our income ; in 
 doing so, however, we diminish out of all proportion 
 our capital as farmers, the productive value of our 
 farm land. The individual farmer can therefore im- 
 prove his land only when in an economically strong 
 position. A farmer who is failing to make a living 
 on his farm is more likely to exploit his farm to the 
 utmost; and when there is no room for further ex- 
 ploitation, he is likely to meet the deficit by borrow- 
 ing, thus pledging the future productivity of his farm. 
 Such is the process that as a rule leads to his losing 
 possession of his homestead and his fields, and to his 
 complete proletarization. 
 
 The exceptional man might pull himself up under 
 adverse conditions, but, on the other hand, a man of 
 such exceptional resourcefulness and ability will not 
 permit such deterioration of his farm. But whatever 
 the exceptional man may or may not do, here we are 
 dealing with the average men, the habitual victims of 
 circumstances. In this connection let me point out that 
 already Columella as well as Tremellius fully realized 
 the situation, and they therefore regarded the ability 
 to lay out money as the essential condition for im- 
 proved agriculture. "For neither knowledge nor effort 
 
no TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 
 
 can be of any use to any person whatsoever, without 
 those expenses which the operations require." ^ 
 
 The great agricultural knowledge of the Romans 
 must not, however, be dismissed lightly. It opens up 
 many serious questions. All that is implied by the 
 agricultural revolution, the seeding of grasses and 
 legumes, the rotation of crops, yes, even green manur- 
 ing, all that was perfectly known to the Romans ; why 
 was it not practised for two thousand years or more? 
 I do not know. It shows up so-called intellectual 
 knowledge in rather an unenviable light, but that is 
 not an answer. 
 
 The only interesting and important conclusions we 
 may draw from the agricultural history of antiquity, 
 the Middle Ages and modern times is that the talk 
 about agricultural evolution from an extensive to an 
 intensive culture belongs in the class of generalizations 
 which should not be taken seriously. The opposite 
 development is the more likely — probably the develop- 
 ment from the intensive garden plot culture to exten- 
 sive agriculture. Thus the farming of the Romans, on 
 seven-jugera farms was, like the farming of the Chi- 
 nese and Japanese, very intensive, their small grain 
 fields being planted in rows, hoed and weeded and 
 carefully manured with excrements and ashes and 
 stable dung. The experience of China and Japan has 
 proven that on very small land plots such intensive 
 agriculture can maintain itself indefinitely without any 
 
 *"Qui studium agricolationi dederit, antiquissima sciat haec sibi 
 advocanda, prudentiam rei, f acultatem impendendi, voluntatem agendi. 
 Nam is demum cultissimum rus habebit, ut ait Tremellius, qui et colere 
 sciet et potefit et volet. Neque enim scire aut velle cuiquam satis 
 fuerit sine sumptibus, quos exigunt opera." Columella, i, i. 
 
TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS III 
 
 recourse to scientific repletion of the soil by mineral 
 fertilizers. Why did Rome fail, where China and 
 Japan succeeded, after a fashion ? We do not know. 
 Certain it is that the intensive agriculture in Rome 
 was ill-fated and that Virgil was well justified in draw- 
 ing from it the conclusion: "Thus fate drags all to 
 ruin with a backward pull, as when a rower hardly 
 drives his boat against the stream: if once he drop 
 his arms, forthwith the rushing current whirls him 
 down." 
 
 Already in Cato's time the growing of grain crops 
 was so utterly unprofitable that he did not even take 
 the trouble to instruct us on this point. All he could 
 tell us was that plowing was less profitable than the 
 worst pasture. In the case of Varro, instruction ,on 
 intensive grain-raising is a tradition of earlier times. 
 His preface to the second book frankly admits that 
 there is no use talking of crop-raising, when agriculture 
 has been abandoned for grazing. In the case of 
 Columella the literary tradition is still more pro- 
 nounced. The estates, he tells us, are as large as prov- 
 inces ; nowhere in Italy in the memory of mankind have 
 they raised a four-fold grain crop ; yet he outlines for 
 us a most intensive culture of grain which is evidently 
 a long extinct tradition. The mistakes that he occa- 
 sionally makes also prove that he never was an eye- 
 witness to the operations, in spite of his wide experi- 
 ence. Thus he suggests seeding alfalfa one cyathus 
 for fifty square feet, which amounts to several bushels 
 per acre — an Impossible proposition. The well-known 
 botanist, Mattioli, who wrote in the i6th century, tells 
 
112 TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 
 
 US that while alfalfa was obviously grown once upon a 
 time in Italy, he has never found any one who has seen 
 the plant in its seed.^ I believe that Columella was 
 even in his own time in Mattioli's position. 
 
 In her early days Italy was famous for her wheat, 
 which provided not only her own population but also 
 that of Greece. The fertility of Italian soil was prob- 
 ably the reason for the establishment of Greek colonies 
 in southern Italy. The importation of Italian wheat 
 into Greece in Sophocles' time is still famous. But 
 in Cato's time Italy was already dependent upon Sicily, 
 which Rome's great old man called the provider for 
 the Roman people. In all probability this dependence 
 upon Sicily as its granary was the paramount reason 
 for Rome's conflict with Carthage. Province after 
 province was turned by Rome into a desert, for Rome's 
 exactions naturally compelled greater exploitation of 
 the conquered soil and its more rapid exhaustion. 
 Province after province was conquered by Rome to 
 feed the growing proletariat with its corn and to en- 
 rich the prosperous with the loot. The devastations 
 of war abroad and at home helped the process along. 
 The only exception to the rule of spoliation and ex- 
 haustion was Egypt, because of the overflow of the 
 Nile. For this reason Egypt played a unique role 
 in the Empire. Tacitus tells the story in a nut-shell. 
 
 'Pietro Andrea Mattioli, Discorsi ne i sei libri di Dioscoride. Ven- 
 etia (1621) iii, 117, p. 491. Ordinary varieties of clover were regarded 
 by the same writer as rare medicinal plants. So Trifolium Asphaltine 
 could occasionally be found on uncultivated fields near Lucca, Tri- 
 folium pratense near Naples. See also the German edition of Mat- 
 tioli's "Kreuterbuch." (1586) iii, 86, p. 291. 
 
TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS II3 
 
 He is describing Germanicus' travels in the east, in- 
 cluding Egypt : 
 
 Another point appeared to him [Tiberius] of greater moment. 
 Among other rules, Augustus had established the maxim of state 
 policy that Egypt should be considered forbidden ground, which 
 neither the senators nor the Roman knights should presume to 
 tread upon, without the express permission of the prince. This 
 was no doubt a wise precaution. It was seen that whoever made 
 himself master of Alexandria, with the strongholds which by sea 
 and land were the keys of the whole province, might with a small 
 force, make head against the power of Rome, and, by blocking up 
 the plentiful corn country, reduce all Italy to a famine^ 
 
 To provide with grain the dwindling population of 
 Italy was a life and death question to the Empire even 
 in the days of Tiberius, and Tiberius freely admitted 
 it. When his attention was called by the aediles to 
 the growing luxury of the rich and their breaking the 
 sumptuary laws Tiberius answers : 
 
 But after all, is the mischief, of which the sediles complain, the 
 worst of our grievances ? Compare it with other evils, and it van- 
 ishes into nothing. But no one considers how much Italy stands 
 in need of foreign supplies, and how the commonwealth is every 
 day at the mercy of the winds and waves? The produce of 
 colonies is imported to feed the landlord and his slaves. Should 
 these resources fail, will our groves and our villas support us? 
 That care is left to the ruler. Should he neglect it, the common- 
 wealth would be lost.^ 
 
 The commonwealth was not yet lost in Tiberius' 
 days, but it was already doomed and Rome knew it. 
 The fundamental trouble could not be cured. In Italy, 
 
 'Tacitus, Ann., ii. 59. 
 ° Tacitus, Ann., iii, 54. 
 
114 TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 
 
 labor could not support life, and men and women were 
 not reared to maintain the population and Rome's 
 dominion over the world. Yet Rome's livelihood was 
 its dominion; it lived, as Seneca put it, on "the spoils 
 of all nations." And in view of the fact only too 
 obvious that Italy's population was dwindling, it was 
 quite natural for Seneca to point out to his fellow- 
 citizens, that what one nation has taken from all na- 
 tions, may be retaken even more easily by all of them 
 from the one.^ 
 
 But we are told that Italy's depopulation was due 
 to the civil strife and wars, to the ever-increasing 
 marsh areas, and growing unhealthiness, and to a thou- 
 sand and one other cherished explanations — all of 
 them to a large extent based on contemporary docu- 
 ments and to a greater or lesser extent true, but all 
 of them, at best, important symptoms or minor effects 
 rather than fundamental causes. Thus they ascribe 
 the lack of daily bread from which Rome was suffering 
 to the circumstance that Italy found it more profitable 
 to grow vines, to go into grazing and leave the grain 
 production to its provinces. Of course, if in Nero's 
 days the fourth grain could not be produced anywhere 
 in Italy, it is perfectly true that it was profitable for 
 Italy to leave grain production to the provinces. To 
 claim for Italy a choice in the matter is somewhat 
 misleading. 
 
 Misleading as well is the talk about economic dif- 
 ferentiation : Italy producing this or that, while Africa 
 or Spain or Sicily produced grain. The truth is that 
 
 * Seneca, Epist., 87. 
 
TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS II5 
 
 the granaries of Rome, with the exception of Egypt, 
 were undergoing the same process of exhaustion and 
 devastation. Recall Sicily, Sardinia, northwestern 
 Africa and Spain, not to mention Greece which ante- 
 dated even Italy in her exhaustion. Neither can the 
 opinion be taken under serious consideration which re- 
 gards the growing insalubrity of Italian lowlands as 
 the cause of depopulation, which led to undermined 
 national strength, a diminishing agricultural area, etc. 
 For those who hold such an opinion seem to forget 
 that many other provinces of the Empire underwent 
 the same process of rapid depopulation without turn- 
 ing into swamps, but rather that many parts of them, 
 like Libya, for instance, were turning into arid deserts. 
 As a matter of fact, the same fundamental causes that 
 were increasing the swampiness of Latium and Cam- 
 pania were turning northwestern Africa and portions 
 of Asia into deserts. These causes were, or this cause 
 was : agri deserti — abandoned fields. Any farmer who 
 is working his fields takes care that they shall drain 
 properly. On any large farm one has dry land and wet 
 land. Some lands drain rapidly and are fit for early 
 plowing and sowing, while other lands perhaps sit- 
 uated in hollows remain wet for a longer time. There 
 are many ways in which the farmer attends to a more 
 or less proper drainage. Only advanced farmers in 
 modern times are putting in tile drains that do not 
 choke and that permanently improve wet or springy 
 land. As a rule the farmer in times past did what 
 most farmers do now. They drained wet fields every 
 year by draining furrows perhaps a week or so be- 
 
Il6 TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 
 
 fore plowing time, or If the situation required they 
 drained them with somewhat more permanent open 
 ditches, or they drained the superfluous water with 
 deep ditches filled with stones and covered with earth. 
 In England and In western Europe the medieval 
 farmer was cultivating most of his land In ridges — an 
 extremely wasteful system of drainage. You can find 
 pictures of It In medieval manuscripts. Just as every 
 road, as a matter of routine, Is so built as to allow the 
 water to drain, so is minor drainage a matter of daily 
 farming routine to such an extent that the farmer is 
 actually not even conscious of it. But all this minor 
 everyday drainage has to be repeated every year; even 
 more permanent drainage, such as the open ditches, 
 must be kept open, and stone ditches have to be 
 watched lest they fill up with dirt and choke. But what 
 happens when the fields fail to reward labor and are 
 abandoned? If the highlands are not capable of cover- 
 ing themselves readily with vegetation, the top soil is 
 washed away and a desert Is left, while the deserted 
 lowlands with clogged-up drainage are bound to turn 
 swampy and unhealthful. That swampy lands breed 
 mosquitoes and that mosquitoes are responsible for 
 malaria the Romans seem to have known quite well. 
 Already Varro had advised against the use of slaves 
 for work In marshy lands, and advocated taking, 
 chances with the health of hired freemen;^ for, as 
 he explains in a previous chapter, "animalia quaedam 
 minuta" that breed In swamps cause grave maladies.^ 
 
 ' Varro, i, 17. 
 'Idem, i, 12. 
 
TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS II7 
 
 Columella describes the mosquito in still more unmis- 
 takable terms: "infestis aculeis armata animalia." ^ 
 
 It is therefore only reasonable to assume, so far as 
 Campania and Latium are concerned, that the popula- 
 tion was not driven out by malarial mosquitoes, but 
 that mosquitoes took peaceable possession of the lands 
 already abandoned by their cultivators. Thus in the 
 year 395 the abandoned fields of Campania alone 
 amounted to something over 528,000 jugera.^ 
 
 Much more plausible is the opinion that the depopu- 
 lation of Italy as well as the devastation of its fields 
 was due to wars and civil strife. This argument is 
 self-evident and can be supported by endless quotations 
 from the great Roman authors. Obvious as the argu- 
 ment is, it does not, however, stand up well under 
 further scrutiny. For the analysis of the actual data 
 at our command is most perplexing. The steady 
 shrinkage of population in the ancient world did not 
 follow, curiously enough, in the wake of its bloodiest 
 wars, but in times of complete peace. The fearful 
 losses of Rome's greatest wars, on the other hand, 
 losses, for instance, occasioned by the Punic Wars, were 
 rapidly made up, and in spite of further wars the 
 population was steadily increasing. The same was 
 true about the temporary decrease of population occa- 
 sioned by a plague. Different was the situation in the 
 period under discussion. Losses occasioned by wars 
 and plagues were never made up, and during the long- 
 est and profoundest peace that Rome ever enjoyed the 
 Roman population was steadily shrinking and its na- 
 
 ' Columella, i, 5. 
 
 "Cod. Theodos., xi, 28, z. 
 
ir8 TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 
 
 tional strength steadily melting away. Quite similar 
 was the process of depopulation in Greece. There, 
 too, the losses of the bloodiest wars were made up 
 and the country was becoming depopulated under most 
 peaceful auspices. These, I believe, are facts gen- 
 erally acknowledged by historians holding diverse 
 points of view. Professor Eduard Meyer sums up the 
 situation as follows : ^ 
 
 There is no doubt that the two hundred years of peace brought 
 about by the Principate at first effected an increase of population 
 in all parts of the Empire, except where, as in Italy, Sicily, Greece, 
 the economic and social conditions interfered or even enforced a 
 backward tendency. In northern Africa, Spain and Gaul, in the 
 Danube provinces, in Asia Minor, in Syria, we therefore find signs 
 of prosperity everyivhere. All the more striking is the inner dis- 
 solution of antique life and culture which followed so soon after- 
 ward. Thus, after all, during two centuries of peace, under a 
 careful and circumspect government, the wealth and the popu- 
 lation and even to a much greater extent, the very capacity of the 
 Empire, were dwindling continuously. The economic decline that 
 had devastated Greece and Italy spread thence to the provinces 
 of Sicily, Spain, Africa, Gaul, one after another. The great civil- 
 ized state \_Culturstaat] was hardly capable any longer of raising 
 armies to hold down barbarian tribes like the Marcomanni. The 
 devastation wrought by the plague in the population of the Em- 
 pire under the Emperor Marcus was never overcome. Our 
 sources, it is true, will not permit us to give this development 
 statistical expression. The terrible struggles of the third cen- 
 tury, the continual uprising of the armies and provinces against 
 each other hastened the process and completed the downfall of the 
 State. The new State erected by Diocletian and Constantine saved, 
 it is true, the ruins of ancient civilization and gave new stiffening 
 to the East. It could not, however, maintain the West against 
 
 'Ed. Meyer. "Die Bevolkerung des Altertums," Handworterbuch 
 der Staatswissenschaften, 3te Aufiage (1909) Bd. ii, pp. 911-912, 
 
TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS II9 
 
 the barbarians, who had first been called as soldiers to the em- 
 pire and then were entering it as uninvited guests. Here, there- 
 fore, depopulation progresses with the devastation and the decline 
 of civilization, finding its most striking expression in the dwindling 
 and complete disappearance of innumerable prosperous communi- 
 ties. 
 
 This is a summary of facts which can hardly be con- 
 tested. It is therefore evident that the steady shrink- 
 age of population and the crumbling of the Empire can- 
 not be attributed to wars. It stands to reason that 
 permanent desertion of entire countrysides cannot be 
 caused by temporary devastations of war, for war can- 
 not rob the fields of their fertility. Exhaustion of 
 the soil, on" the other hand, will lead to its desertion 
 in time of peace and of course still more so in times 
 of war. The "economic and social conditions," to 
 which Meyer refers — conditions which since the later 
 period of the Republic were increasingly depopulating 
 Italy, Sicily and Greece, conditions that the Principate 
 and its peace could not cure — were plain exhaustion of 
 soil. 
 
 The inner decay to which Meyer refers, which in an 
 era of complete peace was depopulating the Empire 
 and its provinces, that "inner decay" which made the 
 mighty Empire fall and crumble, that "inner decay" 
 in all its manifold manifestations was in the last 
 analysis entirely based upon the endless stretches of 
 barren, sterile and abandoned fields of Italy and its 
 provinces. 
 
 Roughly speaking, Roman political and economic 
 life found itself involved in a series of vicious circles. 
 It is only too well known that as long as Italian land 
 
I20 TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 
 
 was productive and of value, the struggle for that land 
 was the keynote if not the very content of Rome's 
 political struggles. The wealthy were either in lawful 
 possession or were unlawfully using the public land, 
 and hence they were opposed to its subdivision among 
 colonists. 
 
 Rome was not without patriots and prophets, to 
 whose vision it was revealed what the Fates had in 
 store for it. They were the great land reformers — 
 and according to tradition they all had to die. Thus, 
 Spurius Cassius, a consul and a triumphator, is said 
 to have been executed in 486 B. C. Marcus Manlius, 
 Rome's greatest hero, who saved its capitol in the 
 Gallic siege, was executed in 384 B. C. The Gracchi, 
 though foully murdered, after a fashion succeeded; 
 but it was already too late. As the Roman farmers 
 were vanishing from the countryside and the farm 
 centers, the small municipalities were losing their sig- 
 nificance and the population of the city of Rome was 
 increasing. 
 
 In proportion as the Roman fields were becoming 
 exhausted, Rome had to rely upon grain from other 
 lands. The conquest of grain-producing countries 
 opened new rich fields of exploitation to the Roman 
 money-men and to its statesmen with an eye on plun- 
 der. But to keep the people alive on the bread and 
 to satisfy the appetite of the wealthy with the loot of 
 foreign lands, great armies and a manhood superior 
 to that of the barbarians was required. 
 
 As foreign provinces and not Italian lands became 
 the source of Roman wealth, as the population of 
 
TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 121 
 
 Rome became too large, too motley, too complex an 
 element to handle, then indeed even the optlmates be- 
 came strong advocates of colonial assignments. Thus 
 we find the versatile Cicero, who once so eloquently 
 opposed colonization, supporting the colonial projects 
 of the tribune Flavius, because by such measure could 
 "et sentinam urbis exhauriri et Italiae solitudinem fre- 
 quentari" ^ — "the city might be emptied of the dregs 
 of the populace and the deserted parts of Italy 
 repeopled." But the colonies of the later Republic 
 and the Principate could not be successful. It was not 
 a surplus of a farming population that was now being 
 settled in new colonies. Rome permitted its farming 
 population to be wiped out, and then tried to make 
 farmers out of idle city paupers and old army veterans. 
 But army veterans or city rabble will not make suc- 
 cessful farmers, even on good soil; and as a rule the 
 land assigned to the new colonies in Italy had already 
 ceased to be paying farming land. The colonies did 
 anything but flourish ; the colonists as a rule were quite 
 willing to part with their allotments as soon as they 
 could legally do so. Thus the same Cicero pointed 
 out how some vast colonies of Sulla turned in no time 
 into latifundia owned by a few.^ Later on, the sources 
 no longer report to us that the colonists were selling 
 their allotments, they do report that they deserted 
 them. So, for instance, Tacitus tells us that "the 
 veteran soldiers entitled to their discharge from serv- 
 ice, were settled in Tarentum and Antium so as to in- 
 
 ^ Cicero, Epistolae ad Atticum, i, 19. 
 
 ^ "At videmus, ut longinqua mittamus, agrum Praenestinum a paucis 
 possideri." Cicero, De lege agr., ii, 28. 
 
122 TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 
 
 crease the population of these deserted localities, but 
 many of them wandered back to the different prov- 
 inces, in which they had served." ^ . 
 
 On the face of it, it was a hard proposition even 
 for good farmers fresh from the soil; for the fields 
 assigned to them were already abandoned for good 
 and sufficient reasons. To settle there old veterans 
 without families and to expect them to succeed on these 
 abandoned fields, was to expect miracles. As a rule, 
 expected miracles fail to materialize. The country- 
 sides remained abandoned; "Italiae vastitas" stared 
 the contemporaries in the face; and Italy's great his- 
 torians marveled how sections of Italy that in their 
 times were almost entirely deserted could in former 
 days send forth legion after legion of invincible war- 
 riors. The historians marveled, and surmised that 
 these country districts were once upon a time thickly 
 settled. Strange, but true I "Simile veri est . . . in- 
 numerabilem multitudinem liberorum capitum in eis 
 fuisse locis, quae nunc, vix seminario exiguo militum 
 relicto, servitia Romana ab solitudine vindicant." ^ 
 
 But perhaps no other historical document is so com- 
 plete as Dio Chrysostom's story of the EubcEan 
 Hunter. The time is the first century A. D. and the 
 place happens to be Euboea. There, too, the small 
 farms first became consolidated into latifundia, and 
 then these latifundia were abandoned. 
 
 Nearly f*o-thirds of tjnr^land is desolate from neglect and lack 
 of inhabitants. I too possess a vast acreage (many plethra), like 
 many others, I suppose, and not only in the mountains but in the 
 
 'Tacitus, Ann., xiv, 27. 
 'Livius, vi, I a. 
 
TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 1 23 
 
 valley. Should any one care to cultivate them he could not only 
 have them rent-free, but I would gladly pay him money in addi- 
 tion.^ 
 
 The local orator introduced to us by Dio goes on 
 urging the citizens to take up the cultivation of aban- 
 doned land, for deserted land is a useless possession. 
 Let any one cultivate as much as his capital may allow 
 him to do, for it may save the remaining population 
 from its two cardinal ills — idleness and poverty. The 
 orator is suggesting that the land should be given to 
 any one rent-free for the first ten years, and later on 
 for a moderate tax upon the productivity of the soil, 
 but the tenant should not pay any taxes upon his cattle. 
 Should an alien care to take up land, he should be 
 welcomed to do so and he should remain exempt from 
 taxes for five years but pay for his land later double 
 the rate of a citizen. If, however, an alien bring under 
 cultivation 200 plethra then citizenship should be be- 
 stowed upon him as a reward so that many should aim 
 at such an achievement.^ 
 
 The picture of Dio is undoubtedly true to life ; and 
 we must remember that these conditions were grad- 
 ually encroaching not only upon Italy and Greece but 
 upon the other provinces with the exception of Egypt. 
 Material which characterizes the later Empire you will 
 find in the Church Fathers, as, for instance, Salvianus 
 talking about Spain, of which but the name remains, 
 of Africa that was, of Gaul that is devastated.' Of 
 
 ^Dio Chrysostomos, Oratio, vii. 
 
 'Ibid. 
 
 ' "Denique sciunt hoc Hispaniae, quibus solum nomen. relictum est, 
 sciunt Africae, quae fuerunt, sciunt Galliae devastatae. . . ." Salvi 
 anus, De Gubernatione Dei, iv, 4. 
 
124 TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 
 
 course, Salvianus, Theodoretus in his letter to the Au- 
 gusta Pulcheria/ Basilius, Libanius and many others 
 put the blame on the oppressive taxes. In a sense they 
 are right. But two points must be considered. First 
 of all, when the productivity of the soil is very slight, 
 even a light tax is oppressive. Secondly, it must be 
 borne in mind that if economic conditions are prevent- 
 ing a portion of the population from supplying their 
 quota for the needs of the state, the tax quota of those 
 that have not yet been economically wiped out may 
 have to be large. Since we know that a substantial 
 part of the population has become so proletarized as 
 to be a charge upon the public, some other part of the 
 population had to bear the increased burden. The in- 
 creasing tax pressure, whether relative or absolute, is 
 in the case of Rome, therefore, obviously largely due 
 to agricultural decline. In their turn, disproportionate 
 taxes ruthlessly collected are quite sufficient to compel 
 the farmer to tax the productivity of his land to its 
 uttermost and thus to hasten the process of spoliation. 
 Let us now see what effect the exhaustion of the soil 
 and the desertion of the fields had upon the body poli- 
 tic. For a farmer, children are a blessing. For, if a 
 laborer is worth his hire, children are certainly worth 
 more than their keep. In fact, lack of children is even 
 now a hardship to a farmer; but in olden days with 
 the much more primitive instruments of production it 
 was a calamity. The less the productivity of labor, the 
 greater is the effort, the greater the mass of human 
 labor, the larger the cooperation required by a farm- 
 
 ' Theodoretus, Epist., xliii. 
 
TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 1 25 
 
 ing unit. For such a cooperation, if children were 
 lacking, men had to be bought or hired. Under cer- 
 tain conditions several families had to cooperate and 
 live in a relatively large group to meet the exigencies 
 of farming. You will find it in Greece, in the five-gen- 
 eration groups of the Welsh, in Slavonic Zadrugas, 
 etc. 
 
 But that is another story. Certain it is that under 
 wholesome circumstances, in the past as well as in the 
 present, race-suicide is not a farmer's pastime, unless 
 the density of population in its relation to the available 
 land area has reached a saturation point. But what 
 do we see in Rome already in the first century after 
 Christ? The Roman writers marveled at Egypt and 
 the prodigious fertility of the Egyptian race. Thus 
 so scholarly and enlightened a writer as Columella 
 firmly believed that to Egyptians and Libyans (north- 
 west Africa was then still a granary) most exceptional 
 capacity for the propagation of their kind was given. 
 Their women, he tells us, are bearing twins every year.^ 
 The elder Pliny is not satisfied with twins; he insists 
 upon Egyptian triplets, yea, even triplets did not 
 suffice ; the Egyptians seem to have gotten the habit of 
 being born in litters. He explains the phenomenon 
 by the woman drinking the fruitful (fetifer) water 
 of the Nile.^ Many other contemporary writers mar- 
 veled at Egypt's great population, yet all that Egypt in 
 matter of population can be credited with is that it 
 held its own — seven millions — or possibly increased 
 half a million in the course of the three centuries that 
 
 * Columella, iii, 8. 
 ""Plin. H., N., vii, 33- 
 
126 TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 
 
 elapsed between the Ptolemys and Vespasian. Egypt 
 was the only province whose soil could not become ex- 
 hausted, because of the overflows of the Nile, and 
 Egypt was the only province which maintained its popu- 
 lation. This was regarded as a marvel. From the 
 Roman point of view, a marvel it probably was. For 
 the general depopulation had become in Rome a mat- 
 ter of grave concern. 
 
 In Rome birth-control and a disinclination to mar- 
 riage became widespread. So Ovid tells us : "Raraque 
 in hoc aevo quae velit esse parens." Of course the 
 women were blamed. It is a subject that always in- 
 vited loquaciousness; but we have any amount of evi- 
 dence that we are dealing here, not with Rome's par- 
 ticular depravity, but with a phenomenon that hai>^s 
 closely together with the decay of the farming pop<ila- 
 tion. Polybius is one of the many who discussed the 
 subject. First of all we find that the same phenomenon 
 is characteristic of Greek city life. The casual con- 
 nections, the reasons that Polybius giyeSj may be of 
 doubtful value to us, but his statements of fact are of 
 importance. Here are two. In one Polybius tells us that 
 in his time Greece was suffering from childlessness and 
 general depopulation, the cities were becoming deserted 
 and the fields were not yielding, though they have 
 known neither war nor plague. The people became 
 greedy idlers. They did not care any longer to marry; 
 if they did marry they did not care to bring up more 
 than one or two children that they might inherit the 
 undivided fortune of their parents.^ This is one state- 
 
 ^ Polybius, xxxvii, 9. 
 
TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 1 27 
 
 ment; in another Polybius tells us that the farmers con- 
 stitute the most prolific portion of the population. In 
 a certain portion of the Peloponnesus in Elis, farming 
 was still flourishing, the countryside was thickly popu- 
 lated.^ These two statements taken together certainly 
 throw light on the situation. But there is another 
 mistake which we must beware of: we must not paint 
 the devil blacker than he is, and we must not regard, 
 great wealth as the sole cause of corruption, nor Rome 
 as its seat and abode. Suppose we make a little ex- 
 cursion to the small provincial town of Ilion, and fol- 
 low Eduard Meyer's calculations on the basis of Schlie- 
 mann's Trojan excavations. We find a list of 102 citi- 
 zens, enumerated with their families, 38 of whom are 
 married, 64 not married. Of the 38 married families, 
 17 are childless, 21 have children. The 21 families 
 having children have, all told, 19 sons and 12 daugh- 
 ters. Seventeen families have no children, 14 have 
 one child, 4-have two children, 3 have three children. 
 There is no family which had more than three chil- 
 dren. Several widowed mothers live with their re- 
 spective sons, eight widows live by themselves. Thirty 
 aliens who have obtained citizenship are also men- 
 tioned in the record, of whom few have wife or child; 
 one had his mother living with him.^ This statistical 
 miniature picture leaves one speechless. We have no 
 statistical data for Rome. The situation in Rome was 
 certainly not worse than in that romantic little town 
 of Troy. Certain, however, it is that the degree of de- 
 
 ' Polybius, iv, 73. 
 
 'Eduard Meyer, Kleine Schriften. Halle, 1910, p. 167. 
 
128 TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 
 
 population was such as to compel extraordinary meas- 
 ures. And so it came to pass that morals and children 
 became political issues. Recall the puritanic campaigns 
 of Csesar's heir, remember the laws against adultery, 
 and laws restricting the property rights of unmarried 
 men and childless couples. Special privileges were 
 granted to parents of moderate-size families — ^but the 
 "jus trium liberorum" was as a matter of fact con- 
 ferred even on confirmed old bachelors! It became 
 an honorary degree ! The gravity of the situation was 
 clear to every one,^ and hence Augustus distributed 
 large stipends to parents of sons and daughters 
 — one thousand sesterces for each child.^ Later 
 the rearing of children was encouraged in a systematic 
 way by large special alimentary foundations, from the 
 interest of which regular stipends were given to 
 a large number of children both in Rome and through- 
 out Italy.* The great foundations were first es- 
 tablished by the Emperors Nerva and Trajan. Their 
 example was followed not only by the Emperors 
 Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, Marcus Aurellus, Alexander 
 Severus and others, but also by private philanthropists. 
 It became a type of philanthropy that particularly com- 
 mended itself not only in Italy but also in the provinces. 
 These foundations provided not only for boys, but for 
 
 ^ Speaking of the Censor Metellus' famous remarks about matri- 
 mony, Gellius points out: "Quod fuit rerum omnium validissimum 
 atque verissimum, persuasit, civitatem autem salvam esse sine matri- 
 moniorum frequentia non posse." Gellius, i, 6. 
 
 ' "lis, qui c plebe regionis sibi revisenti filios iiliasque approbarent, 
 singula nummorum milia pro singulis dividebat.'' Suetonius Augus- 
 tus, xlvi. 
 
 ' For sources see Marquardt, Romische Staatsverwaltung, Bd. ii, 
 (2nd ed., 1884), pp. 141-147. 
 
TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 1 29 
 
 girls as well; and special foundations were also estab- 
 lished for girls alone. So Antoninus Pius, in honor of 
 his wife Faustina, established a large foundation to 
 provide exclusively for young girls — the puellae Faus- 
 tinianae. 
 
 In the beginning of the fourth century we find still 
 more far-reaching alimentary attempts. To put an 
 end to infanticide Emperor Constantine in 315 orders 
 his fiscal administration to provide for the children 
 of all poor parents residing in Italy, who have not the 
 means to provide for and educate their children.* 
 
 The same Emperor Constantine issues a similar law 
 for Africa in 322, ordering the treasury to provide for 
 the children of poor parents, so as to put an end to 
 their selling or pledging their own children, or, even 
 worse, having them starve to death. For, adds Con- 
 stantine : "Abhorret enim nostris moribus, ut quem- 
 quam fame confici vel ad indignum facinus prorumpere 
 concedamus." ^ The sentiment is a noble one, but back 
 of all these measures is the more and more pressing 
 necessity of maintaining the Roman population if the 
 Roman state is to be maintained. 
 
 The alimentary provisions could obviously be of 
 value only as measures of relief. They were trying to 
 affect the results of a certain given situation, without 
 
 ^ Cod. Theod., xi, 27, i. "Aereis tabuHs vel cerussatis aut linteis 
 mappis scribta per omnes civitates Italiae proponatur lex, quae paren- 
 tum manus a parricidio arceat votumque vertat in melius. Officiumque 
 tuum haec cura perstringat, ut, si quis parens adferat subolem, quam 
 pro paupertate educare non possit, nee in alimentis nee in veste in- 
 pertienda tardetur, cum educatio nascentis infantiae moras ferre non 
 possit. Ad quam rem et fiscum nostrum et rem privatam indiscreta 
 iussimus praebere obsequia." 
 
 ^Cod. Theod., xi, 27, z. 
 
130 TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 
 
 in the least affecting that situation itself. This prob- 
 ably was clear to the Roman administration. Thus 
 we witness under the Principate almost frantic attempts 
 to create a farmer class and to repopulate the country 
 districts. Caesar and Augustus made the greatest 
 efforts in that direction. Augustus established not less 
 than twenty-eight colonies. His successors followed 
 in his footsteps. Nerva went so far as to spend the 
 vast sum of 60 million sesterces in purchasing private 
 latifundia in Italy and dividing them among colonists. 
 
 Soon we see the government attempting much more 
 drastic measures; we are confronted by legislation as 
 unprecedented as it was amazing from the legal point 
 of view. But these measures had become matters of 
 course and of necessity probably long before Pertinax. 
 For Pertinax's short reign they happen to be recorded. 
 So Herodian tells us that throughout Italy and in the 
 provinces every one was permitted to take possession 
 of waste land and abandoned fields, even if they were 
 the Emperor's own property, and whosoever was till- 
 ing those fields was to become the rightful owner and 
 proprietor of the soil.^ 
 
 Dio Chrysostom's flights of oratory have actually 
 become stern realities. There can be little doubt that 
 the agrarian situation throughout the Empire was very 
 much like the one in Euboea described by Dio. Nor 
 can there be doubt as to the cause for the desertion 
 of the fields. 
 
 If this actual situation is kept in mind, the agrarian 
 legislation as embodied in the Theodosian and Jus- 
 
 ^ Herodian, ii, 4, 6. 
 
TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS I3I 
 
 tinian codes begins to have a stern meaning. Decrees 
 of that type must have been issued by both 
 Hadrian and Trajan, judging from the inscriptions 
 of Ara legis Hadrianae and Henschir Mettich.^ It 
 goes without saying that the situation did not improve 
 in the following period. Whosoever wants land, 
 waste deserted land, is cordially welcome to it. 
 "Quicunque possidere loca et desertis voluerint, triennii 
 immunitate potlantur." ^ Still more explicit is the law 
 of Valentinian, Arcadius and Theodosius * which first 
 of all encourages every one to cultivate abandoned 
 fields or fields that have been without cultivation for 
 a long time. The original rightful owner of such fields 
 is to have but two years in which he may claim back 
 his property, fully compensating the new occupant for 
 all his outlays. After a period of two years all the 
 property rights of the former owner are to be extin- 
 guished in favor of the new occupant. 
 
 Such legislation is conceivable only with a back- 
 ground of endless stretches of abandoned and untilled 
 land. But the law was not successful, since the en- 
 couragement was not sufficient to induce voluntary re- 
 clamation of abandoned farm-land. The reclamation 
 
 ^Ludwig Mitteis, Zur Geschichte der Erbpacht im Altertum. Ab- 
 handlungen der Konigl. Sachsichen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften 
 Fhilologisch-Historische Classe, Bd. xx, pp. 28-33. 
 
 ' Cod. Theod. v, ii, 8. 
 
 'C. J., xi, 59, 8; Cod. Theod. v, 11, iz. "Qui agros domino 
 cessante desertos vel longe positos vel in finitimis ad privatum pariter 
 publicumque conpendium excolere festinat, voluntate suae nostrum 
 noverit adesse responsum: ita tamen, ut si vacanti ac destitute solo 
 novus cultor insederit ac vetus dominus intra biennium eadem ad 
 suum ius voluerit revocare, restitutis primitus quae expensa con- 
 stiterit facultatem loci proprii consequatur, nam si biennii fuerit tem- 
 pus emensum, omni possessionis et dominii carebit iure qui siluit" 
 
132 TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 
 
 of barren land is thereupon ordered as an obligation 
 upon every possessor of estates under cultivation. He 
 is to cultivate the barren and waste land within his 
 estate. Nor can the possessors of estates sell their 
 land under cultivation without at the same time dis- 
 posing of the barren and unprofitable parts of their 
 estate which the purchaser is to cultivate. The legis- 
 lation was knpwn as the 'eTrt/JoXiy or "iunctio," the 
 "imposition of desert to fertile land." 
 
 Let us face now the problem of the so-called origin 
 of the colonate in Europe. The problem has been 
 much discussed, for it is of vital importance, not 
 merely as a detail in Roman history but as a tableau 
 that introduces us into the Middle Ages. It is the 
 problem of the origin of medieval serfdom. Instead 
 of arguing with the many different conceptions of the 
 origin of the colonate, let us conceive its origin as 
 intimately correlated with the land legislation and 
 with the legislation regarding slaves. If so, all these 
 correlated problems are state problems relating to the 
 unprofitableness of farming as a universal social phe- 
 nomenon. And if so conceived the very text of the 
 law suggests the answer and leaves no problem to 
 be solved. 
 
 In the introduction to the eightieth novella of Jus- 
 tinian, we are told that provinces are gradually be- 
 coming depopulated and that our great city is bur- 
 dened by all sorts of people, especially farmers, who 
 have abandoned their homes and deserted their fields. 
 Why they were deserting their fields was obvious. 
 What kind of people were living and working on the 
 
TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 133 
 
 fields? They had all kinds of names, but there were 
 but two different varieties : slaves and freemen. The 
 slaves were trained agricultural slaves; the freemen 
 were tenant farmers. When agriculture became very 
 unproductive and the owner of the estate got no profit 
 from his slaves and his estate, his natural tendency 
 was to dispose of his slaves otherwise. The interests 
 of the state were opposed to such tendency. The rem- 
 nant of the agricultural population had to be saved. 
 Hence the law prohibits the removal of the agricul- 
 tural slave from the soil. It improves his condition. 
 He is decreed to be attached to the soil; he may not 
 be sold without the soil; he may marry; he may not 
 be separated from his family. The purpose in this 
 cannot be doubted; but such enactment does not yet 
 keep the entire agricultural population on the soil. 
 There is another large category — the free tenant. His 
 freedom was never before questioned, but the legis- 
 lator is not in a mood to bother about niceties of the 
 law. The free tenant is deserting the fields rapidly. 
 To prevent this he too Is being bound to the soil, he 
 becomes a serf. The date of the enactment is lacking, 
 as is the original decree, but there are numerous de- 
 crees against fugitive slaves and coloni,^ and special 
 drastic legislation against tricky evasions of the law. 
 Notice especially the following decree : 
 
 Just as in the case of persons bound to the soil by birth {origi- 
 narii), so in that of slaves settled on agricultural land and listed 
 as liable to the poll-tax, it is absolutely forbidden that they be sold 
 off the land. Nor by tricky misconstruction shall the law be so 
 evaded, as has repeatedly been done in the case of originarii, that 
 
 'C. J., xi, 48, 6; ibid., xi, 48, 11. 
 
134 TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 
 
 an entire estate shall be deprived of tillage by transferring a small 
 portion thereof to the purchaser of the slaves. On the contrary, 
 whenever an entire estate or a definite portion thereof conies into 
 any one's hands, there shall go with it just so many slaves and 
 originarii as were settled on such entire estate or portion thereof 
 in the time of its former owners and possessors; and the pur- 
 chaser may regard the price paid as money lost, since in spite of 
 the sale, action will lie on the part of the vendor to recover the 
 slaves and also their children born after the sale. And if for 
 any reason the vendor shall have neglected to enforce his legal 
 right and shall have died without bringing suit, we give the action 
 for recovery both in favor of his heirs and against the heirs of 
 the purchaser, depriving the latter of the plea of prescription by 
 lapse of time; for no one is to doubt that he who buys anything 
 against express statutory prohibitions is a dishonest possessor.^ 
 
 This decree is important not alone because it recog- 
 nizes no time limitation and gives action of recovery 
 even to the heirs of the seller against the heirs of the 
 purchaser — an unusually drastic measure. It is im- 
 portant also because it tells the story: it explains the 
 reason why. 
 
 Here is obviously a common evasion. Why a com- 
 mon evasion? Because the evasion is lucrative. What 
 Is the policy of the state ? It is to maintain agriculture 
 even against the Interest of the owner of the slaves. 
 
 Here you have the raison d'etre and origin of the 
 Roman colonate. It is fundamentally the very same 
 reason that led to the emphyteusis, the kin,^okii- 
 the same reason that inspired the entire agrarian legis- 
 lation of the doomed empire. 
 
 There are endless details relating to this as to any 
 other subject; they are outside of our scope. For our 
 
 'C. J., xi, 48, 7. 
 
TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS I35 
 
 set task was not to write about Rome's life, but about 
 Rome's end. There is, of course, abundant material 
 that we cannot touch upon here. 
 
 For instance, the material relating to early Chris- 
 tianity in its popular acceptance, through its spiritual 
 reflections of existing conditions, furthers understand- 
 ing. For the road that started at Golgotha led to 
 Rome and through the Roman Empire. What were 
 the aspirations of those who traveled it? Did they 
 in no way reflect the conditions of the time? What 
 do theologians tell us about the apostolic age ? What 
 is its peculiar characteristic? It is recognized and un- 
 questioned that early Christianity was an end-of-the- 
 world religion. 
 
 So writes Cyprian to Demetrianus : 
 
 You have said that all these things are caused by us, and that 
 to us ought to be attributed the misfortunes wherewith the world 
 is now shaken and distressed, because we do not w<rfship your gods. 
 And in this behalf, since you are ignorant of divine knowledge, and 
 a stranger to the truth, you must in the first place know this, 
 that the world has now grown old, and stands no longer in its 
 pristine strength; nor has it that vigor and force which it formerly 
 possessed. This, even were we silent, and if we alleged no proofs 
 from the sacred Scriptures and from the divine declarations, the 
 world, itself is now announcing, and bearing witness to its decline 
 by tbji testitnoHy of its failing estate.^ 
 
 That much we have perhaps heard before, but here 
 is a new note: "Although the vine should fail and 
 the olive deceive and the grass languish with drought 
 on the parched field, what is this to Christians?" ^ 
 
 Perhaps even more expressive is somewhere in 
 
 ' Cyprianus, to Demetrianus, ii. 
 'Ibid., xi. 
 
136 TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 
 
 Lactantius this sentence: "There will be a dreadful 
 and detestable time in which no one would choose to 
 live. In fine, such will be the condition of things that 
 lamentations will follow the living and congratulations 
 the dead." 
 
 Quite adequate illustrations to this text you may 
 find in the pictures of misery and desoFation in Sal- 
 vian's "De gubernatione Dei." Is not the material 
 basis to be found in such conditions for celibacy, as- 
 ceticism, monasticism? And were not the same con- 
 ditions after all responsible for Roman childlessness, 
 though quite unaccompanied by mortification of the 
 flesh? It may be difficult for us to understand an 
 atmosphere of social and political doom. Let us go 
 back then to another people, to another city, that 
 were about to be destroyed by Rome. Jesus was 
 carrying the cross, followed by lamenting men and 
 women : 
 
 But Jesus turning unto them said: Daughters of Jerusalem, 
 weep not for me, but weep for yourselves and your children. For 
 behold, the days are coming, in which they shall say, Blessed are 
 the barren, and the wombs that never bare, and the breasts that 
 never gave suck. Then shall they begin to say to the mountains, 
 Fall on us ; and to the hills, Cover us.^ 
 
 Here, however, we are touching upon a subject which 
 should be treated by itself. 
 
 It is claimed that there is but one understanding; 
 the misunderstandings are legion. To guard against 
 misunderstandings is impossible. Yet I know that 
 many a charitable reader will sympathetically suggest 
 that while the exhaustion of Roman soil was an im- 
 
 *Luke 23, 28-30. 
 
TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 137 
 
 portant factor I can hardly mean to insist that it was 
 the sole factor responsible for Roman decline and fall. 
 For it is not credible that so rich and so complex a 
 texture of life should depend upon any single factor. 
 
 Such would not be my assertion, nor is it my at- 
 tempt. I have not undertaken to explain the complex 
 fabric of R^ihan life; we are dealing here with the 
 relatively simple problem of its disintegration. All 
 that this study shows is that the progressive exhaus- 
 tion of the soil was quite sufficient to doom Rome, as 
 lack of oxygen in the air would doom the strongest 
 living being. His moral or immoral character, his 
 strength or his weakness, his genius or his mental de- 
 fects, would not affect the circumstances of his death : 
 he would have lived had he had oxygen; he died be- 
 cause he had none. But it must be remembered that 
 while the presence of oxygen does not explain his life, 
 the absence of it is sufficient to explain his death. 
 
 There is one other misunderstanding which I should 
 like to guard against. So far as argumentation is con- 
 cerned, this essay might be considered a continuation 
 to the study published some time ago, dealing with 
 the medieval village community.^ The reader will 
 find there this statement: 
 
 Go to the ruins of ancient and rich civilizations in Asia Minor, 
 northern Africa or elsewhere. Look at the unpeopled valleys, 
 at the dead and buried cities, and you can decipher there the prom- 
 ise and the prophecy that the law of soil exhaustion held in store 
 for all of us. It is but the story of an abandoned farm on a 
 gigantic scale. Depleted of humus by constant cropping, land 
 
 ' Simkhovitch ; "Hay and History." Political Science Quarterly, 
 vol. xxviii, pp. 385-403, September, 1913. 
 
138 TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 
 
 could no longer reward labor and support life; so the people 
 abandoned it. Deserted, it became a desert; the light soil was 
 washed by the rain and blown around by shifting winds.^ 
 
 I should hate to be responsible for a new fetish, an 
 interpretation of historical life through exhaustion of 
 soil. It is silly. 
 
 First of all deeply and gratefully is it felt that life 
 with all its pain and its glory can be lived; word or 
 brush may aspire toward its all too inadequate expres- 
 sion, but never will the scholar methodically and me- 
 chanically figure it out and interpret it. 
 
 But it is a mistake to think that social science is 
 dealing with life. It is not. It deals with the back- 
 ground of life. It deals with common things, with 
 what lives had in common, common conditions of ex- 
 istence, common purposes that these conditions sug- 
 gest. They can and must be scientifically explained 
 and determined, if social science is to be taken seri- 
 ously. Scientific determination is accurate determina- 
 tion. What forces that circumscribe and govern our 
 life must we unquestionably accept? Obviously, the 
 physical forces. Under certain conditions we are born, 
 we live and die. The limits of our mortal existence 
 we cannot transgress. Nor can- we change the heavenly 
 course of suns and planets; we do not govern the sea- 
 sons of the year; they regulate our life. 
 
 Within the laws of nature our lives begin and end. 
 They limit and compass our existence.^ But the laws 
 of nature without our active participation do neither 
 
 * Simkhovitch, op. cit, p. 400. 
 
 ' With apologies to Goethe's "Nach ewigen ehernen grossen Gesetzen 
 miissen wir alle unseres Daseins Kreise vollenden." 
 
TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS I39 
 
 feed nor clothe us. This active participation we call 
 our work, our labor. Social labor varies in its pro- 
 ductivity. At all times this productivity had and has 
 its limits. These limits of the productivity of our 
 labor become, for society, physical conditions of ex- 
 istence. Within these limits our entire social life must 
 move. These limits life must accept as mandatory 
 and implacable ; to them it must adjust itself. 
 
 The history of the productivity of our labor is the 
 foundation of a scientific economic history, and the 
 backbone of any and all history. Every law, every 
 statute, every institution has obviously some purpose. 
 But how are we to understand the purposes of the 
 past unless we know the conditions which those pur- 
 poses were to meet? The accurate knowledge of the 
 productivity of our labor can explain to us why things 
 were as they were, why they became what they are 
 and what one may expect from the future. 
 
 In this study, however, which is not concerned with 
 the details of Rome's life, one single, major and strik- 
 ingly variable productivity factor suffices to solve the 
 problem. That factor — the exhaustion of Roman soil 
 and the devastation of Roman provinces — sheds 
 enough light for us to behold the dread outlines of 
 its doom. 
 
HAY AND HISTORY 
 
 What is here to be discussed concretely is the vil- 
 lage community. This has already been, by actual 
 count, considered in more than a thousand books and 
 essays, and written about under titles more seemly 
 and more modest. Yet I venture to tax the patience 
 of the reader with the old story once more; not even 
 with the story, because all I am offering here is an 
 interpretation. 
 
 I ask only this question: Can the reader tell me why 
 the village community was so prevalent in Europe, 
 regardless of race and clime? The reader, if he be- 
 long to one school, will say that the village community 
 is a survival of an early Teutonic or even of a uni- 
 versal ancient custom. If he belong to another school, 
 he will cautiously answer that wherever we meet this 
 institution in the past it is invariably in connection with 
 the manorial system. Thus the thousand contribu- 
 tions to the subject do not answer the question why. 
 Those of one school practically say that it existed but 
 they do not know why ; those of the other school inti- 
 mate that the lords of the manor introduced it but 
 that they do not know why. Worse yet, not only has 
 the question why not been answered; it has not even 
 been asked. 
 
 Hence there is after all a justification for one more 
 essay on the subject, in which the simple question is 
 asked and a plain answer given. 
 
 140 
 
TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS I41 
 
 This is an interpretation, not a story, and it is possi- 
 ble that some kindly reader may come to the conclu- 
 sion that after all the writer is more interested in a 
 problem of which the village community is but a mani- 
 festation, — the problem of the life and death of the 
 land and the peoples thereon. Possibly so. Blit let us 
 be concrete, let us talk village community. 
 
 First of all, what have the discussions been about? 
 The controversy covers several problems: did or did 
 not the early Teutons have a "Mark Association"; 
 is or is not the village community of to-day a survival 
 of a system when all land was universally held in com- 
 mon ownership; do we find the Mark Genossenschaft, 
 the community of free Mark associates, in England, 
 Scandinavia, and among the Slavs; is or is not the vil- 
 lage community in Germany, Russia, France, England, 
 elsewhere, after all but a product of serfdom and the 
 manorial system ; is or is not the Roman villa responsi- 
 ble for the manorial organization of western Europe ? 
 
 These are the main problems that have been dis- 
 cussed for many decades under the general heading of 
 "village community." The controversies have been too 
 often acrimonious. While they have unquestion- 
 ably added to the sum total of our knowledge about 
 miscellaneous historical subjects of importance, the 
 real problem has been obscured rather than illuminated 
 by the wealth of historical data. 
 
 Let us see what is the real problem that a village 
 community presents. There are thousands of old vil- 
 lages in Europe, where the holdings of the individual 
 peasants have never been inclosed. The holdings of 
 
142 TOWARD THE UNDE 
 
 one are intermixed with the holdings of his neighbors 
 in the open fields. Let us examine such a village. 
 
 First of all, we find all the homesteads grouped to- 
 gether. In some localities they form one long street; 
 in others, two streets ; in still others, they are laid out 
 in a semi-circle. Near the homesteads are the barns, 
 stables, hovels, vegetable gardens and a few fruit trees, 
 but never the field that belongs to the individual 
 farmer. 
 
 The farming land presents a curious sight. It looks 
 like a patchwork quilt. You see a number of land 
 areas, of flats, of plots, as a rule square or oblong in 
 shape, each of them divided into very numerous, nar- 
 row strips of land. Sometimes the three fields of the 
 village form three quite uniform flats, subdivided into 
 numerous strips, long and narrow, running in the same 
 direction; but oftener you will find that each of the 
 three fields is made up of many such flats, each of them 
 subdivided into strips or ribbons of land. These 
 strips belong to different owners, but they are not 
 fenced. They are separated from each other by balks 
 of turf, or unplowed land. Strips in some patches are, 
 at times, so narrow that one wonders how they could 
 be cultivated. 
 
 The individual peasant may own ten, twenty, or 
 more strips in each of the three farming fields, but the 
 strips of the individual farmer, even in the same field, 
 do not adjoin each other. They are at times quite a 
 distance apart. They are the farmer's individual prop- 
 erty which he has inherited and which he may sell. 
 But in the use of his property he is necessarily re- 
 
Survey of the village Bishleben, reproduced from August Meitzen's Atlas — Supplement of his work, "Siedelung und Agrarwesen der Westgermanen, der Kelten, Romer, Finnen und Slaven." Berlin, 1895. 
 
TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 143 
 
 stricted. First of all he is restricted in the rotation of 
 crops, and type of tillage. The third field is the fallow 
 field on which the cattle of all the villagers pasture. 
 The cattle are also pastured on the stubble as soon as 
 the harvest is removed. Hence it becomes necessary 
 for all the members of the community not only to sow 
 the same crop on the same field, but to sow at the 
 same time and to harvest at the same time. 
 
 Besides the cultivated fields the village as a rule has 
 some waste that serves as a permanent pasture, woods, 
 and a meadow. None of this is subdivided or fenced. 
 It is used in common, with restrictions varying in dif- 
 ferent localities. As a rule with a definite acreage In 
 the cultivated fields goes a proportionate and quite 
 definite acreage in the meadows. Let us say that a 
 certain farmer owns two acres of meadow land. It 
 is left, however, to a yearly drawing of lots to deter- 
 mine where his two acres are to be located. He will 
 get neither more nor less than the two acres to which 
 he has a title, but the location of these two acres may 
 vary from year to year. As soon as the meadow hay 
 is mowed, the entire meadow is thrown open for com- 
 mon pasturage of all members of the village com- 
 munity. Sometimes all varieties of cattle are allowed 
 there; oftener sheep will be restricted to the waste 
 and fallow fields or to a special part of the meadow. 
 
 This is the organization of the village community 
 as we find It still In numberless localities of northern, 
 western, and southeastern Europe, an institution that 
 has given rise to so prodigious a literature. 
 
 It is not an idle problem, either. Agriculture was 
 
144 TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 
 
 until recently the sole basis of state and society. It is, 
 and will remain, of paramount significance. Anything 
 so fundamentally characteristic as is the village com- 
 munity of European farming is of fundamental eco- 
 nomic and historical importance. The problem of 
 the village community is not a new one. The en- 
 closure of the commons shook, the very foundations 
 of sixteenth-century England. Yet curiously enough it 
 became a scientific and bookish problem only in the 
 nineteenth century. This bookish spirit is nowhere so 
 well expressed as in Wagner's rejoinder to Faust: 
 
 I often had myself fantastic notions, 
 
 But never have I felt the like emotions. 
 
 'Tis tiresome .on green woods and fields to look, 
 
 The bird's wing crave I not in slightest measure. 
 
 How otherwise bears us the mental pleasure 
 
 From page to page, from book to book! 
 
 Then grow the winter nights so lovely fair, 
 
 A warm and blissful life all limbs pervading. 
 
 And oh ! unroll'st thou e'en an ancient parchment rare, 
 
 All Heaven descends to thee that knows no fading. 
 
 Tiresome as it may be to look at green woods and 
 fields, let us do so for a change. If we should take 
 with us a plain American farmer and show him a Euro- 
 pean village community he could not possibly believe 
 his eyes. First of all he would observe the homestead 
 with the farm buildings all clustered together, far 
 away from the farming land. This would naturally 
 look to him just as if an American farming community 
 should live in a city, keeping there the horses, fodder, 
 etc., but going out every morning to farm somewhere 
 in the country. The American farmer would hardly 
 
TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 1 45 
 
 know what to think about such a situation. True, he 
 knows of wealthy farmers who live in the town in the 
 winter, or even go visiting or traveling in the winter, 
 but they can do so because during the season they are 
 on their jobs without wasting a minute of their own 
 or of their horses' time. What are we to tell this 
 plain American farmer? We consult all the books 
 and find that they are unanimous on this point. In fact 
 it is the only point on which the various writers are 
 unanimous. The European peasant lives in villages 
 for protection. Protection of what? The farm land, 
 the crops, the cattle on the pastures? Of course not. 
 They live in villages for their own protection, for the 
 protection of themselves. Shall we give this answer 
 to the sturdy son of an American pioneer? His com- 
 ment could easily be guessed, as well as his praise and 
 thanksgiving for having come from a different stock. 
 But that is where our farmer is quite mistaken. His 
 stock, whether English or Irish, German or Scandi- 
 navian, Magyar or Slav, have all lived in precisely 
 such villages in the old country. 
 
 But, curiously, if we consult documentary evidence 
 we shall find that early agricultural pioneers and set- 
 tlers in newly colonized European territory, where they 
 needed "protection" the most, lived as a matter of 
 fact not in villages but on single farms. Their "vil- 
 lages" consisted of single homesteads, but as the popu- 
 lation grew even these communities often developed 
 the same uniform type as the European village, with 
 all the homesteads huddled together. Instead, how- 
 ever, of consulting thousands of documents let us try 
 
146 TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 
 
 another method. Let us giv£ our poor ancestors the 
 benefit of the doubt and assume that they had some 
 common sense. If they so universally persisted in hold- 
 ing to an arrangement so obviously and seriously in- 
 convenient there must have been some good reason for 
 it. When we proceed on this assumption, we almost 
 invariably find that a "good reason" is a plain, techni- 
 cal, and economic necessity. So it is in the case of the 
 European village. Where would you locate the farm- 
 houses, if not together in a special area? Would you 
 put the house and garden on the farm land? If so, 
 to which of the farmer's numerous and widely scat- 
 tered strips and ribbons of land would you attach his 
 homestead? And if his house were securely attached 
 to one of his strips, would he not be just as far away 
 from all his other strips as when he lives in the vil- 
 lage? Furthermore, if his homestead and garden 
 should be located on one of his strips in one of the 
 three farming fields, he would find himself every third 
 year on a fallow field, where the cattle of all his 
 neighbors are grazing, and perhaps miles away from 
 the strips he is cultivating in the two other fields; be- 
 sides his buildings and his garden would interfere every 
 year with pasturing on the stubble. 
 
 Thus the village community and the possession of 
 isolated, intermixed strips of land necessitate living 
 together outside the area given over to tillage, and 
 thus there is formed a village street. 
 
 Now let us turn to the farming land. 
 
 The reader, of course, knows that in no occupation 
 is the time element of so decisive importance as in 
 
Survey of the village Friedberg in Wetterau, reproduced from Meitzen's "Siedlung und Agrarwesen," Vol. Ill, Atlas. 
 
TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 1 47 
 
 farming. If the land is not ploughed and the crop 
 is not planted at the right time, the partial loss, and 
 at times the total ruin, of a crop may be confidently 
 expected. This is particularly the case on heavy clay- 
 land, which drains very slowly. If you do not happen 
 to plough the land and plant your crop at an early 
 favorable moment, a single rain may delay your work 
 for some time, and just as the ground is about fit for 
 work another rain will emphasize the point that farm- 
 ing brooks no delay. Yet if the farmer should be 
 driven in despair to plough and to sow in the wet he 
 would have good cause to remember one of Tusser's 
 "Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry," — that 
 "who soweth in rain he shall reap it with tears." 
 
 Thus farming is in a sense a race with the season, 
 with the weather as a constantly menacing and incal- 
 culable element. That is why from time immemorial 
 the farming season has taxed the effort of men and 
 beasts to the very limit of their physical endurance. 
 
 Now let us have another look at the village com- 
 munity. 
 
 Let us take an English example : South Luffenham 
 in Rutland was not inclosed until 1879. It had 1074 
 acres, divided into 1238 pieces or strips, among 
 twenty-two owners. Think of a farmer who has to 
 attend forty-odd acres in nearly sixty scattered pieces, 
 dotting a surface of over 1,000 acres! Think of the 
 waste of time and effort in cultivating such land strips ! 
 But this happens to be a small village community. 
 Imagine a large community, where the acreage of the 
 Individual farmer Is scattered In Intermixed strips 
 
148 TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 
 
 over an area of many thousand acres! Why should 
 humanity have so handicapped itself intentionally? 
 
 It is a survival, you will say. Quite true. One finds 
 the situation in the Middle Ages whether the farmer 
 was freeman or serf. But does the word "survival" 
 in this particular case explain why there was a survival ? 
 Anything that is serviceable or even indifferent may 
 survive. But is it sensible to assume that a most seri- 
 ous and burdensome handicap can survive without 
 sufficient reason for surviving? But perhaps you do 
 not belong to the school which believes that the village 
 community is a survival from the dawn of civilization; 
 perhaps you accept the only possible alternative, that 
 the village community is a product of the manorial 
 system ? 
 
 It is clear that the intermixed strips of land result 
 in waste of energy of both men and beasts. If the 
 man Is a serf, the loss of his time and the impairment 
 of his efficiency is in the last analysis the loss of the 
 lord. The serf must be provided with a living from 
 the product of his labor and only the surplus over this 
 goes to the landlord. The lack of productivity is 
 therefore the landlord's loss. Why then should the 
 landlords have introduced such a system in England 
 as well as in Roumania, in Germany as well as in Rus- 
 sia, in France as well as in Hungary? How can such 
 uniformity be explained? Manorial systems varied 
 from age to age and from locality to locality. Here 
 they commuted services to money rent, there the land- 
 lord would not even reserve a domain but left every- 
 
TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS I49 
 
 thing to the peasants for an "obrok," a heavy rental 
 paid in produce. They have varied the internal work- 
 ings of the village community. In Russia, for in- 
 stance, they introduced periodical redivisions of the 
 land-allotments of the serfs. The serfs there did not 
 have a virgate-system. Their holdings varied and were 
 dependent upon the fluctuations in the size of the in- 
 dividual serf families, upon the increase of the entire 
 serf population of the manor, and upon the acreage 
 of the manor that could be set aside for the serfs. One 
 could go not only from country to country but from 
 county to county, yes even from manor to manor, and 
 write a story of greater or lesser variations in agrarian 
 relationships, but the underlying basis was the same vil- 
 lage community! There were times and localities in 
 which the serf had no claims or rights sanctioned by 
 custom, where the landlord's arbitrary power could 
 not be disputed; and yet the village community was 
 there ! How then is the village community to be ex- 
 plained? 
 
 We have seen that the village community was a 
 time-robbing and in many other respects a handicap- 
 ping institution. Already in the sixteenth century Fitz- 
 herbert and Tusser were heaping curses upon the vil- 
 lage community. Discussing this system Tusser says : 
 
 What drudgerie more ansrwhere? 
 Lesse good thereof where can you tell? 
 
 Why then did such an institution persist in surviving? 
 There must have been some circumstance either of a 
 compelling or of a compensating nature. Where are 
 
150 TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 
 
 we to look for it if not in the prevailing methods of 
 farming, the treatment of the soil, and the crops that 
 were cultivated? 
 
 There are some very suggestive lines in Lucretius. 
 At the end of the second book where he discourses 
 about the world's growing old, he says about the earth : 
 
 She brought forth herbs, which now the feeble soil 
 Can scarce afford to all our pain and toil. 
 We labor, sweat, and yet by all this strife 
 Can scarce get corn and wine enough for life. 
 Our men and oxen groan and never cease, 
 So fast our labors grow, our fruits decrease. 
 Nay oft the farmers with a sigh complain 
 That they have labor'd all the year in vain. . . . 
 
 But did not people know about improving the soil 
 with manure, and making it productive ? Yes, indeed, 
 they knew all about it and practiced manuring. But 
 to have manure for the improvement of the soil one 
 has to keep cattle. Did they not keep cattle? Yes, 
 indeed, they kept cattle ; but the question is, could the 
 individual farmer keep on his land enough cattle to 
 improve or to maintain the productivity of his entire 
 farm? With the cattle kept upon his entire farm he 
 could undoubtedly have fertilizer enough to maintain 
 the productivity of at least a certain portion, but if 
 he should apply manure to a part only, the rest of the 
 land would rapidly deteriorate. If he chose rather to 
 distribute an insufficient amount over his entire farm, 
 the whole would gradually be depleted of nitrogen, 
 humus, etc., and steadily lose in productivity. 
 
 Let us examine the medieval situation. 
 
 The field crops were : first year, wheat or rye ; sec- 
 
TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS I5I 
 
 ond, oats or barley or beans; third, fallow. Where in 
 this schedule does grass-seeding come and where are 
 the hayfields ? There were none. The economist who 
 knows so much about the industrial revolution has 
 overlooked another revolution that is of fully as great 
 importance, a revolution that fundamentally changed 
 the basis of agriculture, that abolished the law of 
 diminishing returns as expressed by Lucretius, later 
 discovered by the economists {in its original version) 
 just at the time when it ceased to be true. This great 
 revolution was the introduction of grass-seed and of 
 the "great trefoils," the various clovers, including 
 later on Lucerne or alfalfa. 
 
 There were no hayfields, therefore, before the latter 
 half of the seventeenth century. How then could they 
 keep cattle? They had straw and meadow grass. 
 Meadow grass could grow only in very definite places 
 on low and moist land that followed as a rule the 
 course of a stream. This gave the meadow a mon- 
 opolistic value, which it lost after the introduction of 
 grass and clover in the rotation of crops. That ex- 
 plains why we find in Thorold Rogers' work that farm- 
 ing land in the last six centuries increased in value 
 sixty times, and meadow land but twelve times. It 
 simply means that six centuries ago meadow land was, 
 in comparison with land under tillage, five times as 
 valuable, relatively, as it is to-day; and it further em- 
 phasizes how indispensable a little bit of meadow was 
 to a farm. 
 
 The meadow was used first of all for mowing, and 
 after the hay crop was gathered it was used for pas- 
 
152 TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 
 
 turage. The right of pasturage was as a rule limited 
 to the number of cattle that the commoner could keep 
 through the winter. It is the German Ueberwinter- 
 ungsmassstab which we find prevailing in England and 
 elsewhere. There was no necessity for stinting the 
 common pasturage any more definitely. The stern 
 sway of the winter scarcity attended to that. The 
 quantity of meadow hay gathered was a mere trifle, 
 because the proportion of meadow land to the tillage 
 fields was slight. So, for instance, in Hewsted, Suffolk, 
 in 1285, on seven manors together that proportion was 
 but I to 24. 
 
 We must remember that even turnips, which were 
 known as garden roots to Tusser, were not introduced 
 as a field crop before the end of the seventeenth cen- 
 tury. Thus the wintering of cattle was a most pre- 
 carious enterprise. Only an extremely limited number 
 of cattle could be kept barely alive through the win- 
 ter. The value of cows as milk producers was slight, 
 even in the summer; in the winter it was trifling. 
 Hence the saying: 
 
 A swine doth sooner than a cowe 
 Bring an ox to the plough. 
 
 Because of scarcity of milk in the winter, the farmer 
 aimed, as a rule, to have his cows fresh late in the fall, 
 yet four-fifths of the total annual yield of milk was 
 in the months from April to September, when the cows 
 were on pasture. But even then Walter of Henley, 
 the thirteenth-century bailiff, who shows a distinct 
 tendency to. exaggerate rather than to underestimate, 
 expects but three and one-half pounds of butter from 
 
TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 1 53 
 
 three cows in one week. Only a good-for-nothing 
 farmer to-day will keep a cow that is not doing better 
 than Walter's three cows put together. But on the 
 other hand, nothing could be expected from cows kept 
 during the winter almost entirely on straw and tree 
 loppings. Even straw was scarce, because of the ex- 
 haustion of the soil.^ Barn manure was therefore 
 obviously produced in inadequate quantities. The im- 
 possibility of getting a sufficient amount of manure for 
 the fields is adequately indicated by the miserable petti- 
 ness of English manorial regulations, which required 
 the sheep of the commoners to be folded on the domain 
 of the lord. 
 
 It is not within our province to go into agrotechnical 
 details and describe what the medieval farmer knew 
 but seldom practised, for lack of time and because of 
 poor means of communication, in the way of liming 
 sour clay ground, etc. Plant production is determined 
 by that one of the necessary elements which is available 
 in the least quantity. It is a matter of record that 
 the medieval farmer had not enough and could not 
 have quite enough manure to maintain the productivity 
 of the soil. To improve its productivity was out of 
 the question. 
 
 If any good farmer should to-day take up a worn- 
 out farm, which still has some fair fields, but others 
 that have grown wild, and still others that are bare, 
 washed and gullied, he should be able to make all the 
 
 ^In the years 1243-8 the average yield of wheat at Combe, Oxford- 
 shire, was 5 bushels per acre, of barley a little over 5, oats 7. The 
 Pipe Roll of the Bishopric of Winchester gives an average yield of 
 wheat over a large area in 1398-9 at 4.3 bushels per acre. Curlier, 
 "Short History of English Agriculture," p. 33. 
 
154 TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 
 
 fields look alike in a very few years. As fast as fodder 
 can be produced stock will be added, the poor lands 
 heavily manured, farmed around and turned perhaps 
 into an alfalfa field that will rejuvenate the soil. 
 
 Compare again the sentiment of Lucretius, "So fast 
 our labors grow, our fruits decrease," with a statement 
 in a recent Bulletin of the U. S. Department of Agri- 
 culture about the introduction of sweet clover — 
 Melolitus alba — in Kentucky. 
 
 A decade ago many farms were coming to be abandoned, owing 
 to their low productive capacity. Many of the fields contained 
 gullies, which washed, making the farms even less valuable. Sweet 
 clover was introduced as a bee plant in some of the waste places 
 in this section and proved so efficient as a soil-improver that it 
 has been largely utilized on a great many farms in this section. 
 ... As a result of the introduction of sweet clover many of these 
 farms are no longer abandoned but are producing satisfactory in- 
 comes for those who are working them. The fields are utilized 
 as pastures and for hay while the soil is being built up and the 
 gullies stopped from washing. When the process of natur^ rec- 
 lamation has gone far enough the ground is plowed and put into 
 corn.^ 
 
 It is only for the sake of the concrete example given 
 in the Bulletin, picked up by chance, that I mention 
 sweet clover, which is, as a matter of fact, an inferior 
 fodder plant and far inferior to alfalfa as a soil reno- 
 vator. It only shows that improvement of poor soil 
 can be and is undertaken as a matter of course and of 
 daily routine by every civilized farmer in modem 
 times. The attitude towards a variety of soils of dif- 
 ferent qualities is quite different in modern times from 
 what it used to be. In the Middle Ages, or rather in 
 
 ' U. S. Dept. of Agriculture Bulletin 485, pp. 34-35. 
 
TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OP JESUS I55 
 
 the dark ages of agriculture, the state in which the land 
 was found was by and large the upper limit of its pro- 
 ductive capacity. It might deteriorate, it was likely 
 to deteriorate, but it was not likely to be improved. 
 Let us see what is the result of such an attitude. 
 
 If two of us chance to be joint heirs to a two- 
 hundred-acre farm containing fields and patches of ever 
 so many different qualities, what are we likely to do? 
 In our day and generation we will divide it in two more 
 or less even parts, and call it fair. I have before me 
 some documents that show us that that was not the 
 way an equitable division of an ancestral farm was 
 carried through in the past. 
 
 Let us go to a region where the existence of a vil- 
 lage community was out of the question. It is in the 
 northernmost Russia.^ The settlements there were 
 single isolated farms (German, Einzelhof, Latin, 
 Mansus). They called these farms "villages." Later 
 on, when they actually had villages with several farms 
 in each, they would still call their farms their "vil- 
 lage," situated in village so and so. So, for instance, 
 in a certain district which numbered seventeen villages 
 in 1 65 1, eight of these villages still consisted of one 
 farm each, five of two farms, one of three, three of 
 four farms. 
 
 The farms were private property, which could be 
 bought and sold, inherited, mortgaged or disposed of 
 by will and testament. It is important to observe what 
 
 ^ Detailed information, documents and authorities are given in 
 the first few chapters of my book, "Die Feldgemeinschaft in Russland," 
 Jena, 1898. A mass of facts and information is there, but I passed 
 the real problem without ever noticing it. 
 
156 TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 
 
 occurs when they are divided among heirs, when the 
 "village" that consisted of one farm becomes a village 
 of two, three or more farms. Both wills and tax-books 
 contain complete descriptions of the farm lands. And 
 what do we find there? Was a farm when divided 
 between two heirs divided into two parts ? Not at all. 
 Here is an example: "Village" Novinki (Newlands) 
 divided into ten different plots, each of these plots 
 divided evenly between the two heirs. Another farm 
 (Village Towra) is divided according to quality into 
 twenty-two such plots,' and each of these plots into two 
 shares. 
 
 I need hardly point out that the moment the land 
 strips of one owner are intermixed with the land strips 
 of his neighbors, we have before us a village com- 
 munity. One could not have a right of way to the 
 various strips, nor pasture on them when they are lying 
 fallow or in stubble, without a uniform — ^which means 
 compulsory — rotation of crops. 
 
 The principle of equity that prompted such a di- 
 vision of inherited property is obvious. Would some 
 eastern tribesman who left behind him four sons, four 
 camels, four horses, four sheep and four dogs, leave 
 to one of his sons four camels and to the other four 
 dogs? Or are his heirs likely to receive share and 
 share alike the different kinds of property left by their 
 father? Sufficient reason has been given for showing 
 why in the dark ages of agriculture a meadow was al- 
 together a different type of property from an arable 
 field, and why under the agrotechnical conditions then 
 prevailing arable fields of different quality were con- 
 
TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF- JESUS 1 57 
 
 sidered a different and a permanently different kind of 
 property, equitably divisible only in strips. 
 
 A small garden plot could be improved, but poor 
 farming land had no chance of betterment. If its con- 
 dition altered, it would only be for the worse. Under 
 these circumstances the equitable division of a farm 
 made up of pieces of land of different qualities led in- 
 evitably to the strip system. 
 
 Does the manorial system present to us a situation 
 so vastly different? Whether we find serfs or cus- 
 tomary tenants, whether the services are commuted 
 or not, the obligations resting on those who were till- 
 ing the ground were as a rule uniform. One serf was 
 required to perform the same services as another. If 
 the services were commuted the rents and fines were 
 as a rule uniform, a uniformity sanctioned by custom 
 if not by law. Under these circumstances it was ob- 
 vious that serfs and tenants respectively had to be pro- 
 vided with land of equal value. 
 
 Under agricultural conditions as they existed there 
 was no way of getting around or of ignoring the differ- 
 ent qualities of soil. It was like mining: some soil 
 was pay dirt, other soil was not. Soil could not be im- 
 proved nor could hayfields be created, as we create 
 them to-day by throwing broadcast anywhere we please 
 some seeds of timothy or clover. They were neces- 
 sarily located in a certain and given place near the 
 brook. Equitable distribution meant access to a share 
 in the meadow, meant a division of fields into strips 
 that went through good and bad, dry and wet soil, 
 with rights of pasturage, of mast and firewood, etc.; 
 meant, in short, a village community. 
 
158 TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 
 
 Was the village community therefore necessary and 
 inevitable, in spite of all its inherent annoyances, which 
 Tusser characterized as "too much to be borne" ? It 
 is an idle question. The village community was dic- 
 tated neither by fate nor by fetich. There" were for 
 all we know local conditions that did not favor the 
 origin or spread of the village community, but we do 
 know and understand the situation which suggested the 
 village community as the sole prevailing method of 
 equitable distribution. It is no more a peculiarity of 
 the Slav and Teuton or the Aryan race in general, than 
 are clay and sand, stony hills and rich meadows peculi- 
 arities of the "Christlich germanische Cultur." Nor 
 should too much stress be laid on the "equitable" side 
 of distribution. If large estates were operated by 
 slaves fed by the master or by free laborers paid wages 
 in money or in produce, there would have been no 
 village community under the manorial system. But at 
 a given time, under the prevailing conditions, it was 
 found more convenient to let labor maintain itself. 
 For that purpose land had to be set aside for the la- 
 borers and then indeed the question of equitable dis- 
 tribution of that land had to arise. The solution was 
 the village community. 
 
 The situation was similar when small heirship prop- 
 erties required equitable division. Some historians 
 and sociologists find peculiar inner satisfaction when- 
 ever evidence shows that drawing of lots was resorted 
 to. The drawing of lots is to them a character certifi- 
 cate of the "primitlveness" of the institution, it proves 
 to them that the village community is a "survival" 
 
TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 1 59 
 
 from the times when all land whether under tillage or 
 not was held in common by the free associates of the 
 "mark," or its English, Irish, Russian, Indian, etc., 
 equivalent. 
 
 Other scholars, while acknowledging the reallot- 
 ment of meadow land, frown severely at any possible 
 allotment of arable land. But they are wrong. Sup- 
 pose four heirs inherit four horses, seemingly equally 
 good, but two of the heirs seem both to have a strong 
 predilection for the same horse. Will they be doomed 
 to serve as exhibits in the survival gallery if they match 
 pennies for the possession of the horse in question? 
 Contention is never profitable and drawing lots for 
 land strips is as good a way of avoiding difficulties as 
 any. Certainly it is a survival, but so is common sense. 
 For the custom of a periodical reallotment of land un- 
 der tillage, only Russia can be pointed to with assur- 
 ance. There reallotment was readjustment, because 
 the Russian manorial system did not grant to each 
 peasant family a "virgate" or "hufe" or a certain cus- 
 tomary unit of land for customary services or rents, 
 but divided the entire manor or part thereof among 
 the peasant families in proportion to the working ca- 
 pacity of these respective families. Therefore, as the 
 working capacity of the individual families increased, 
 the land of the manor had to be redivlded and the in- 
 dividual family holdings proportionately readjusted. 
 Such is the simple explanation of periodical reallot- 
 ment. The practice, moreover, is one of late origin. 
 Among some of the crown peasants it was as a matter 
 of fact introduced as late as 1 830-1 840, and introduced 
 
l6o TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 
 
 practically by force, in spite of the bitter opposition of 
 the landholding peasantry. 
 
 I know of places in northern Russia where in the 
 seventeenth century, land-strips, though intermixed and 
 under the usual restrictions of a village community, but 
 in private ownership, were seemingly redivided among 
 the several owners. But this was because of disputes 
 over the original division due, as a rule, to faulty sur- 
 veying. They had no trained surveyors with modem 
 instruments. When such contentions became a nuis- 
 ance, the contending parties as a rule signed a docu- 
 ment in which they expressed complete satisfaction 
 with their strips and boundaries and agreed for them- 
 selves, their heirs and assignees, never to demand an- 
 other redivision or adjustment. 
 
 The yearly reallotment of meadow land was a very 
 widespread custom in Europe. As a rule the com- 
 moner owned a definite amount of the meadow, let 
 us say an acre, or two acres, as the case might be. His 
 acreage in the meadow was always proportionate to 
 his acreage under tillage, but just which specific acre- 
 age of the meadow, which plot of the meadow, he was 
 to mow in the given year was left to lot. We know 
 that in the absence of herbage and clover, meadow land 
 was of the highest value. But since, after mowing, it 
 was used for common pasture, permanent fences of 
 individual meadow plots were out of the question. 
 Furthermore, permanent ownership of a specific por- 
 tion of the meadow had other difficulties. The site of 
 such a meadow we can easily imagine. It was in a 
 valley near a stream. The land as a rule was made 
 
TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS l6l 
 
 land, which had washed down from the hills or higher 
 grounds. Every one knows how wayward a meadow 
 stream is. It is prone to wander from year to year; 
 here it abandons its course, for reasons entirely of 
 its own choosing; there it makes a nice little lagoon, 
 or playfully deposits some very fine gravel on what 
 might have been good meadow grass. Every few years 
 such a stream is doing some surveying entirely of its 
 own. It will take a few rods of land from one farmer 
 by running through his land and give a few rods to 
 another farmer by adding to his land the course that 
 it abandoned. When the meadow portions are ex- 
 tremely small as well as extremely precious, a yearly 
 reallotment of the meadow acreage suggests itself as 
 a matter of equity as well as of common sense. 
 
 The introduction of grass seed and clovers marked 
 the end of the dark ages of agriculture. It is the great- 
 est of revolutions, the revolution against the supreme 
 law, the law of the land, the law of diminishing re- 
 turns and of soil exhaustion. 
 
 Go to the ruins of ancient and rich civilizations in 
 Asia Minor, northern Africa, or elsewhere. Look at 
 the unpeopled valleys, at the dead and buried cities, 
 and you can discipher there the promise and the 
 prophecy that the law of soil exhaustion held in store 
 for all of us. It is but the story of an abandoned farm 
 on a gigantic scale. Depleted of humus by constant 
 cropping, land could no longer reward labor and sup- 
 port life ; so the people abandoned it. Deserted, it be- 
 came a desert; the light soil was washed by the rain 
 and blown around by shifting winds. 
 
1 62 TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 
 
 Only with the introduction of grass seeding did it 
 become possible to keep a sufficient amount of stock 
 not only to maintain the fertility of the soil but steadily 
 to improve it. The soil instead of being taxed year 
 after year under the heavy strain of grain crops, was 
 being renovated by the legumes that gathered nitro- 
 gen from the air and stored it on tubercles attached 
 to their roots. The deep roots of the clover pene- 
 trated deeper than any plough ever touched. Legumes 
 like alfalfa, producing pound by pound more nutritious 
 fodder than did meadow grass, produced acre by acre 
 two and three times the amount. And when such a 
 field was turned under to make place for a grain crop, 
 the deep and heavy sod, the mass of decaying roots, 
 offered the farmer "virgin" soil, where previously even 
 five bushels of wheat could not be gathered. The tale 
 is a simple one, and it is told. 
 
 As for the historical controversy over the village 
 community, the real problem was not touched upon. 
 Deeds and codices were closely examined, but what one 
 could lay his hands upon remained unnoticed. The 
 village exists, the intermixed strips exist, the com- 
 mons exist. The problem, therefore, was first of all — 
 what is the village community, and secondly, why is 
 it? The question how it developed would then have 
 answered itself. But instead of this search for an ex- 
 planation we find a quest for the character of the pro- 
 totype of the present village community. This proto- 
 type was believed to have been found in an association 
 of freemen that held all land in common, whether 
 arable or not. With the discovery of this prototype. 
 
TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 1 63 
 
 the real problem, i.e., the explanation of the inter- 
 mixed strips, with resulting compulsory rotation of 
 crops and common pasturage — which constitute a vil- 
 lage community — was lost sight of. 
 
 Fustel de Coulanges was merciless in his criticism 
 of the documentary evidence submitted by Maurer and 
 others of his school. But just as Maurer failed to see 
 that his very documents prove personal and not com- 
 mon ownership, so did Fustel de Coulanges fail to see 
 anything but private estates in the personally owned 
 strips that were obviously within the boundaries and 
 under the restrictions of a village community. The 
 medieval expressions for the word boundaries are 
 marcha, marca, finis, or terminus (the Bavarian law 
 says terminus id est marca) . Fustel de Coulanges 
 quotes: "dono portionem meam quae est in marca 
 Odradesheim" and tells us later on: "In the examples 
 given by Maurer, I recognize the existence of the 
 Mark, but a mark which was the same thing as a villa, 
 that is a private estate." ^ To my way of thinking 
 one's portio within a Marca looks like private owner- 
 ship within the boundaries of a village community 
 named Odradesheim. 
 
 If the village community is strange or peculiar 
 among freemen, it is if anything even stranger among 
 serfs, where the landlord could make any arrangement 
 that may have pleased him. Yet this, Fustel de 
 Coulanges entirely overlooks when he sees nothing but 
 a private estate belonging to a monastery in a quota- 
 
 ^ Fustel de Coulanges, "The Origin of Property in Land," translated 
 by Margaret Ashley, with an introductory chapter by W. J. Ashley. 
 London, 1891, p. 35. 
 
1 64 TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 
 
 tion of his which unquestionably indicates a manorial 
 village community. " — rustici ecclesiae pro quantitate 
 et limitibus contenderent. Ego Hermannus abbas 
 . . . compromissum fuit ut maximus campus per 
 funiculos mensuraretur et cuilibet hubae 12 jugera de- 
 putarentur . . . in totidem partes secundus campus et 
 tertius divideretur. . . . Inchoata est ista divisio per 
 Alvinum monachum scribentem et fratzem Bertholdum 
 prepositum et Rudolf um officialem cum funicuUs men- 
 surantes." ^ How can several rustici have strips in the 
 three fields, without having their land intermixed, hence 
 having common pasture on the fallow and stubble 
 and therefore compulsory rotation of crops? Of 
 course, Fustel de Coulanges is right that the document 
 tells us not what Maurer supposed, but indicates rather 
 "a division among tenants carried on by the proprie- 
 tor." ^ But it tells us quite enough to forget Maurer 
 and pay some attention to the character of the farm- 
 ing indicated by the document. Such quotations, which 
 Maurer misunderstood as common ownership, and 
 Fustel de Coulanges misunderstood as private im- 
 restricted ownership could be found on page after page. 
 So, on the next page : "Another less rich can only give 
 a huba, but he gives at the same time the portion of 
 the forest to which his huba has a right," or in the 
 note on the same page (43) : "I will explain else- 
 where the meaning of portio. All I need say at pres- 
 ent is that this word, which occurs more than three 
 hundred times in our authorities, always means a part 
 belonging to an owner. A portio is spoken of as sold, 
 
 ^Ibid., p. 41. 
 'Ibid., p. 43. 
 
TOWARD THE UNDERSTANDING OF JESUS 1 65 
 
 bequeathed and given." Three hundred land trans- 
 actions are recorded. The land is sold, bequeathed or 
 given away. The land was personally owned. There 
 is no question about that. But was the use of the land 
 restricted or unrestricted? If unrestricted why are 
 the respective properties in 300 different transactions 
 characterized and legally described not as independent 
 units but as parts of units?' 
 
 I feel very ungrateful in criticizing Fustel de 
 Coulanges. I appreciate the work he has done. 
 And after all I am criticizing him not for what he has 
 done, but for what he failed to do, which is probably 
 unjust. 
 
 I must apologize for one other statement. I have 
 emphasized several times that the real problem has 
 been entirely overlooked. This is true but for one 
 exception and that exception is a remark made by 
 W. J. Ashley. In his introductory chapter to Fustel 
 de Coulanges' book, as early as 1 891, he wrote: 
 
 "In the medieval manor there were two elements, the seigneu- 
 rial — the relations of the tenants to the lord; and the com- 
 munal — the relations of the tenants to one another. The mark 
 theory taught that the seigneurial was grafted on to the com- 
 munal. The value of the work of M. Fustel de Coulanges and of 
 Mr. Seebohm Is in showing that we cannot find a time when the 
 seigneurial element was absent; and also in pointing to reasons, 
 in my opinion conclusive, for connecting that element with the Ro- 
 man villa. But the communal element is still an unsolved mys- 
 tery." ^ 
 
 It is the solution of this mystery that is here sub- 
 mitted to the reader. 
 'Fustel de Coulanges, op. cit., p. ziii. 
 
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