died under unspeakable sufferings,40 while a fourth member of the family, Eleazar, was

the leader of Israel's forlorn hope, and nobly died at Masada, in the closing drama of the

Jewish war of independence.41 Of such stuff were the Galilean Zealots made. But we

have to take this intense Nationalist tendency also into account in the history of Jesus, the

more so that at least one of His disciples, and he a member of His family, had at one time

belonged to the party. Only the Kingdom of which Jesus was the King was, as He

Himself said, not of this world, and of far different conception from that for which the

Nationalists longed.

At the time when Jesus went up to the feast, Quirinius was, as already stated, Governor of

Syria. The taxing and the rising of Judas were alike past; and the Roman Governor,

dissatisfied with the trimming of Joazar, and distrustful of him, had appointed in his stead

Ananos, the son of Seth, the Annas of infamous memory in the New Testament. With

brief interruption, he or his son held the Pontifical office till, under the Procuratorship of

Pilate, Caiaphas, the son- in-law of Annas, succeeded to that dignity. It has already been

stated that, subject to the Roman Governors of Syria, the rule of Palestine devolved on

Procurators, of whom Coponius was the first. Of him and his immediate successors -

Marcus Ambivius,42 Annius Rufus,43 and Valerius Gratus,44 we know little. They were,

indeed, guilty of the most grievous fiscal oppressions, but they seem to have respected, so

far as was in them, the religious feelings of the Jews. We know, that they even re moved

the image of the Emperor from the standards of the Roman soldiers before marching

them into Jerusalem, so as to avoid the appearance of a cultus of the Cæsars. It was

reserved for Pontius Pilate to force this hated emblem on the Jews, and otherwise to set

their most sacred feelings at defiance. But we may notice, even at this stage, with what

critical periods in Jewish history the public appearance of Christ synchronised. His first

visit to the Temple followed upon the Roman possession of Judæa, the t axing, and the

national rising, as also the institution of Annas to the High-Priesthood. And the

commencement of His public Ministry was contemporaneous with the accession of

Pilate, and the institution of Caiaphas. Whether viewed subjectively or objective ly, these

things also have a deep bearing upon the history of the Christ.

It was, as we reckon it, in spring a.d. 9, that Jesus for the first time went up to the Paschal

Feast in Jerusalem. Coponius would be there as the Procurator; and Annas ruled in the

Temple as High-Priest, when He appeared among its doctors. But far other than political

thoughts must have occupied the mind of Christ. Indeed, for a time a brief calm had

fallen upon the land. There was nothing to provoke active resistance, and the party of the

Zealots, although existing, and striking deeper root in the hearts of the people, was, for

the time, rather what Josephus called it, 'the philosophical party' - their minds busy with

an ideal, which their hands were not yet preparing to make a reality. And so, when,

according to ancient wont,45 the festive company from Nazareth, soon swelled by other