contrast, as we pass from the Forerunner to the Messiah, from the Temple to Galilee,
from the 'idiot' priest to the humble, unlettered family o f Nazareth. It is necessary here to
recall our general impression of Rabbinism: its conception of God,1 and of the highest
good and ultimate object of all things, as concentrated in learned study, pursued in
Academies; and then to think of the unmitigated contempt with which they were wont to
speak of Galilee, and of the Galileans, whose very patois was an offence; of the utter
abhorrence with which they regarded the unlettered country-people, in order to realise,
how such an household as that of Joseph and Mary would be regarded by the leaders of
Israel. A Messianic announcement, not the result of learned investigation, nor connected
with the Academies, but in the Sanctuary, to a 'rustic' priest; an Elijah unable to untie the
intellectual or ecclesiastical knots, of whose mission, indeed, this formed no part at all;
and a Messiah, the offspring of a Virgin in Galilee betrothed to a humble workman -
assuredly, such a picture of the fulfillment of Israel's hope could never have been
conceived by contemporary J udaism. There was in such a Messiah absolutely nothing -
past, present, or possible; intellectually, religiously, or even nationally - to attract, but all
to repel. And so we can, at the very outset of this history, understand the infinite contrast
which it embodied - with all the difficulties to its reception, even to those who became
disciples, as at almost every step of its progress they were, with ever fresh surprise,
recalled from all that they had formerly thought, to that which was so entirely new and
strange.
1. Terrible as it may sound, it is certainly the teaching of Rabbinism, that God occupied
so many hours every day in the study of the Law. Comp. Targ. Ps.-Jonathan on Deut.
xxxii. 4, and Abhod. Z. 3 b. Nay, Rabbinism goes farther in its darin g, and speaks of the
Almighty as arrayed in a white dress, or as occupying himself by day with the study of
the Bible, and by night with that of the six tractates of the Mishnah. Comp. also the
Targum on Cant. v. 10.
And yet, just as Zacharias may be described as the representative of the good and the true
in the Priesthood at that time, so the family of Nazareth as a typical Israelitish household.
We feel, that the scantiness of particulars here supplied by the Gospels, was intended to
prevent the human interest from overshadowing the grand central Fact, to which alone
attention was to be directed. For, the design of the Gospels was manifestly not to furnish
a biography of Jesus the Messiah, 2 but, in organic connection with the Old Testament, to
tell the history of the long-promised establishment of the Kingdom of God upon earth.
Yet what scanty details we possess of the 'Holy Family' and its surroundings may here
find a place.
2. The object which the Evangelists had in view was certainly not that of bio graphy, even
as the Old Testament contains no biography. The twofold object of their narratives is
indicated by St. Luke i. 4, and by St. John xx. 31.
The highlands which form the central portion of Palestine are broken by the wide, rich
plain of Jezreel, which severs Galilee from the rest of the land. This was always the great