Chapter 5. First Visit to The Temple, and Education of Jesus.

Chapter 5. First Visit to The Temple, and Education of Jesus. somebody

40. Jesus, When Twelve Years Old, in the Temple. (Chapter 5. First Visit to The Temple, and Education of Jesus.) (The Life of Jesus Critically Examined) (Studies on Bible & Early Christianity)

40. Jesus, When Twelve Years Old, in the Temple. (Chapter 5. First Visit to The Temple, and Education of Jesus.) (The Life of Jesus Critically Examined) (Studies on Bible & Early Christianity) somebody

40. Jesus, When Twelve Years Old, in the Temple.

The Gospel of Matthew passes in silence over the entire period from the return of the parents of Jesus out of Egypt, to the baptism of Jesus by John; and even Luke has nothing to tell us of the long interval between the early childhood of Jesus and his maturity, beyond a single incidenthis demeanour on a visit to the temple in his twelfth year (ii. 41-52). This story, out of the early youth of Jesus is, as Hess has truly remarked,? distinguished from the narratives hitherto considered, belonging to his childhood, by the circumstance that Jesus no longer, a,s in the latter, holds a merely passive position, but presents an active proof of his high destination; a proof which has always been especially valued, as indicating the moment in which the consciousness of that destination was kindled in Jesus.

In his twelfth year, the period at which, according to Jewish {P.192} usage, the boy became capable of an independent participation in the sacred rites, the parents of Jesus, as this narrative informs us, took him for the first time to the Passover. At the expiration of the feast, the parents bent their way homewards; that their son was missing gave them no immediate anxiety, because they supposed him to be among their travelling companions, and it was not until after they had accomplished a day's journey, and in vain sought their son among their kinsfolk and acquaintance, that they turned back to Jerusalem to look for him there. This conduct on the part of the parents of Jesus may with reason excite surprise. It seems inconsistent with the carefulness which it has been thought incumbent on us to attribute to them, that they should have allowed the divine child entrusted to their keeping, to remain so long out of their sight; and hence they have on many sides been accused of neglect and a dereliction of duty, in the instance before us. It has been urged, as a general consideration in vindication of Joseph and Mary, that the greater freedom permitted to the boy is easily conceivable as part of a liberal method of education; but even according to our modern ideas, it would seem more than liberal for parents to let a boy of twelve years remain out of their sight during so long an interval as our narrative supposes; how far less reconcilable must it then be with the more rigid views of education held by the ancients, not excepting the Jews? It is remarked however, that viewing the case as an extraordinary one, the parents of Jesus knew their child, and they could therefore very well confide in his understanding and character, so far as to be in no fear that any danger would accrue to him from his unusual freedom; but we can perceive from their subsequent anxiety, that they were not so entirely at ease on that head. Thus their conduct must be admitted to be such as we should not have anticipated: but it is not consequently incredible, nor does it suffice to render the entire narrative improbable, for the parents of Jesus are no saints to us, that we should not impute to them any fault.

Returned to Jerusalem, they find their son on the third day in the temple, doubtless in one of the outer halls, in the midst of an assembly of doctors, engaged in a conversation with them, and exciting universal astonishment (v. 45 f.) From some indications it would seem that Jesus held a higher position in the presence of the doctors, than could belong to a boy of twelve years. The word kaqezomenon (sitting) has excited scruples, for according to Jewish records, it was not until after the death of the Rabbi Gamaliel, an event long subsequent to the one described in our narrative, that the pupils of the rabbis sat, they having previously been required to stand when in the school; but this Jewish tradition is of doubtful authority. It has also been thought a difficulty, that Jesus does {P.193} not merely hear the doctors, but also asks them questions, thus appearing to assume the position of their teacher. Such is indeed the representation of the apocryphal Gospels, for in them Jesus, before he is twelve years old, perplexes all the doctors by his questions, and reveals to his instructor in the alphabet the mystical significance of the characters; while at the above visit to the temple he proposes controversial questions, such as that touching the Messiah's being at once David's Son and Lord, (Matth. xxii. 41) and proceeds to throw light on all departments of knowledge. If the expressions e)rwtan and a)pokrinesqai implied that Jesus played the part of a teacher in this scene, so unnatural a feature in the Gospel narrative would render the whole suspicious. But there is nothing to render this interpretation of the words necessary, for according to Jewish custom, rabbinical teaching was of such a kind that not only did the masters interrogate the pupils, but the pupils interrogated the masters, when they wished for explanations on any point. We may with the more probability suppose that the writer intended to attribute to Jesus such questions as suited a boy, because he, apparently not without design, refers the astonishment of the doctors, not to his questions, but to that in which he could best show himself in the light of an intelligent pupil, namely, to his answers. A more formidable difficulty is the statement, that the boy Jesus sat in the midst of the doctors. For we learn from Paul (Acts xxii. 3.) the position that became a pupil, when he says that he was brought up at the feet of Gamaliel: it being the custom for the rabbis to be placed on chairs, while their pupils sat on the ground, and did not take their places among their masters. It has indeed been thought that the phrase e)n mesw might be so explained as to signify, either that Jesus sat between the doctors, who are supposed to have been elevated on chairs, while Jesus and the other pupils are pictured as sitting on the ground between them, or merely that he was in the company of doctors, that is, in the synagogue but according to the strict sense of the words, the expression kaqezesqai e)n mesw tinwn appears to signify, if not as Schottgen believes, in majorem Jesu gloriam, a place of preeminent honour, at least a position of equal dignity with that occupied by the rest. It need only be asked, would it harmonize with the spirit of our narrative to substitute "sitting at the feet of" (the doctors) for "sitting in their midst"? the answer will certainly be in the negative, and it will then be inevitable to admit, that our narrative places Jesus in another relation to the doctors than that of a learner, though the latter is the only natural one for a boy of twelve, however highly gifted. For Olshausen's {P.194} position, that in Jesus nothing was formed from without, by the instrumentality of another's wisdom, because this would be inconsistent with the character of the Messiah, as absolutely self-determined, contradicts a dogma of the Church which he himself advances, namely, that Jesus in his manifestation as man, followed the regular course of human development. For not only is it in the nature of this development to be gradual, but also, and still more essentially, to be dependent, whether it be mental or physical, on the interchange of reception and influence.

To deny this in relation to the physical life of Jesusto say, for example, that the food which he took did not serve for the nourishment and growth of his body by real assimilation, but merely furnished occasion for him to reproduce himself from within, would strike every one as Docetism; and if the analogous proposition in relation to his spiritual development, namely, that he appropriated nothing from without, and used what he heard from others merely as a voice to evoke one truth after another from the recesses of his own mind-is this anything else than a more refined Docetism? Truly, if we attempt to form a conception of the conversation of Jesus with the doctors in the temple according to this theory, we make anything but a natural scene of it. It is not to be supposed that he taught, nor properly speaking that he was taught, but that the discourse of the doctors merely gave an impetus to his power of teaching himself, and was the occasion for an ever-brightening light to rise upon him, especially on the subject of his own destination. But in that case he would certainly have given utterance to his newly acquired knowledge; so that the position of a teacher on the part of the boy would return upon us, a position which Olshausen himself pronounces to be preposterous. At least such an indirect mode of teaching is involved as Ness subscribes to, when he supposes that Jesus, even thus early, made the first attempt to combat the prejudices which dominated in the synagogue, exposing to the doctors, by means of good-humoured questions and requests for explanation, such as are willingly permitted to a boy, the weakness of many of their dogmas. But even such a position on the part of a boy of twelve, is inconsistent with the true process of human development, through which it behoved the God-Man himself to pass. Discourse of this kind from a boy must, we grant, have excited the astonishment of all the hearers; nevertheless the expression Ecistanto pantej oi( a)kouontej au)tou (v. 47), looks too much like a panegyrical formula.

The narrative proceeds to tell us how the mother of Jesus reproached her son when she had found him thus, asking him why he had not spared his parents the anguish of their sorrowful search? {P.195} To this Jesus returns an answer which forms the point of the entire narrative; he asks whether they might not have known that he was to be sought nowhere else than in the house of his Father, in the temple? (v. 48 f.) One might be inclined to understand this designation of God generally, as implying that God was the Father of all men, and only in this sense the Father of Jesus. But ths interpretation is forbidden, not only by the addition of the pronoun mou, the above sense requiring h(mwn (as in Matt. vi. 9), but still more absolutely by the circumstance that the parents of Jesus did not understand these words (v. 50), a decided indication that they must have a special meaning, which can here be no other than the mystery of the Messiahship of Jesus, who as Messiah, was ui(oj qeou in a peculiar sense. But that Jesus in his twelfth year had already the consciousness of his Messiahship is a position which, although it may be consistently adopted from the orthodox point of view, and although it is not opposed to the regular human form of the development of Jesus, which even orthodoxy maintains, we are not here bound to examine. So also the natural explanation, which retains the above narrative as a history, though void of the miraculous, and which accordingly supposes the parents of Jesus, owing to a particular combination of circumstances, to have come even before his birth to a conviction of his Messiahship, and to have instilled this conviction into their son from his earliest childhood, this too may make it plain how Jesus could be so clear as to his Messianic relation to God; but it can only do so by the hypothesis of an unprecedented coincidence of extraordinary accidents. We, on the contrary, who have renounced the previous incidents as historical, either in the supernatural or the natural sense, are unable to comprehend how the consciousness of his Messianic destination could be so early developed in Jesus. For though the consciousness of a more subjective vocation, as that of a poet or an artist, which is dependent solely on the internal gifts of the individual, (gifts which cannot long remain latent,) may possibly be awakened very early; an objective vocation, in which the conditions of external reality are a chief co-operator, as the vocation of the statesman, the general, the reformer of religion, can hardly be so early evident to the most highly endowed individual, because for this a knowledge of contemporary circumstances would be requisite, which only long observation and mature experience can confer. of the latter kind is the vocation of the Messiah, and if this is implied in the words by which Jesus in his twelfth year justified his lingering in the temple, he cannot have uttered the words at that period.

{P.196} In another point of view also, it is worthy of notice that the parents of Jesus are said (v. 50) not to have understood the words which he addressed to them. What did these words signify? That God was his Father, in whose house it behoved him to be. But that her son would have a peculiar relation to the temple she might infer, both from the above title, and from the striking reception which he had met with at his first presentation in the temple, when yet an infant. The parents of Jesus, or at least Mary, of whom it is repeatedly noticed that she carefully kept in her heart the extraordinary communications concerning her son, ought not to have been in the dark a single moment as to the meaning of his language on this occasion. But even at the presentation in the temple, we are told that the parents of Jesus marvelled at the discourse of Simeon (v. 33), which is merely saying in other words that they did not understand him. And their wonder is not referred to the declaration of Simeon that their boy would be a cause not only of the rising again, but of the fall of many in Israel, and that a sword would pierce through the heart of his mother (an aspect of his vocation and destiny on which nothing had previously been communicated to the parents of Jesus, and at which therefore they might naturally wonder); for these disclosures are not made by Simeon until after the wonder of the parents, which is caused only by Simeon's expressions of joy at the sight of the Saviour, who would be the glory of Israel, and a light even to the Gentiles. And here again there is no intimation that the wonder was excited by the idea that Jesus would bear this relation to the heathens, which indeed it could not well be, since this more extended destination of the Messiah had been predicted in the Old Testament.

There remains therefore as a reason for the wonder in question, merely the fact of the child's Messiahship, declared by Simeon; a fact which had been long ago announced to them by angels, and which was acknowledged by Mary in her song of praise. We have just a parallel difficulty in the present case, it being as inconceivable that the parents of Jesus should not understand his allusion to his Messianic character, as that they should wonder at the declaration of it by Simeon. We must therefore draw this conclusion: if the parents of Jesus did not understand these expressions of their son when twelve years old, those earlier communications cannot have happened; or, if the earlier communications really occurred, the subsequent expressions of Jesus cannot have remained incomprehensible to them. Having done away with those earlier incidents as historical, we might content ourselves with this later want of comprehension, were it not fair to mistrust the whole of a narrative whose later portions agree so ill with the preceding. For it is the character not of an historical record, but of a marvellous legend, to represent its personages as so permanently in a state of wonder, that they not only at the first appearance of the extraordinary, but even at the second, third, tenth repetition, when one would expect them to be familiarized with it, continually are astonished and do not understand- obviously with the view of exalting the more highly the divine impartation by this lasting incomprehensibleness. So, to draw an example from the later history of Jesus, the divine decree of his suffering {P.197} and death is set forth in all its loftiness in the Gospel narratives by the circumstance, that even the repeated, explicit disclosures of Jesus on this subject, remain throughout incomprehensible to the disciples; as here the mystery of the Messiahship of Jesus is exalted by the circumstance, that his parents, often as it has been announced to them, at every fresh word on the subject are astonished anew and do not understand.

The twofold form of conclusion, that the mother of Jesus kept all these sayings in her heart (v. 51), and that the boy grew in wisdom and stature, and so forth, we have already recognised as a favourite form of conclusion and transition in the heroic legend of the Hebrews; in particular, that which relates to the growth of the boy is almost verbally parallel with a passage relating to Samuel, as in two former instances similar expressions appeared to have been borrowed from the story of Samson.


41. This narrative also mythical (Chapter 5. First Visit to The Temple, and Education of Jesus.) (The Life of Jesus Critically Examined) (Studies on Bible & Early Christianity)

41. This narrative also mythical (Chapter 5. First Visit to The Temple, and Education of Jesus.) (The Life of Jesus Critically Examined) (Studies on Bible & Early Christianity) somebody

41. This narrative also mythical

THUS here again we must acknowledge the influence of the legend; but as the main part of the incident is thoroughly natural, we might in this instance prefer the middle course, and after disengaging the mythical, seek to preserve a residue of history. We might suppose that the parents of Jesus really took their son to Jerusalem in his early youth, and that after having lost sight of him, (probably before their departure,) they found him in the temple where, eager for instruction, he sat at the feet of the rabbis. When called to account, he declared that his favourite abode was in the house of God; a sentiment which rejoiced his parents, and won the approbation of the bystanders. The rest of the story we might suppose to have been added by the aggrandizing legend, after Jesus was acknowledged as the Messiah. Here all the difficulties in our narrative, the idea of the boy sitting in the midst of the doctors, his claiming God as his father in a special sense, and the departure of the parents without their sou, would be rejected; but the journey of Jesus when twelve years old, the eagerness for knowledge then manifested by him, and his attachment to the temple, are retained.

To these particulars there is nothing to object negatively, for they contain nothing improbable in itself; but their historical truth must become doubtful if we can show, positively, a strong interest of the legend, out of which the entire narrative, and especially these intrinsically not improbable particulars, might have arisen.

That in the case of great men who in their riper age have been distinguished by mental superiority, the very first presaging {P.198} movements of their mind are eagerly gleaned, and if they are not to be ascertained historically, are invented under the guidance of probability, is well known. In the Hebrew history and legend especially, we find manifold proofs of this tendency. Thus of Samuel it is said in the Old Testament itself, that even as a boy he received a divine revelation and the gift of prophecy (1 Sam. iii), and with respect to Moses, on whose boyish years the Old Testament narrative is silent, a subsequent tradition, followed by Josephus and Philo, had .striking proofs to relate of his early development. As in the narrative before us Jesus shews himself wise beyond his years; so this tradition attributes a like precocity to Moses; as Jesus turning away from the idle tumult of the city in all the excitement of festival tune, finds his favourite entertainment in the temple among the doctors; so the boy Moses was not attracted by childish sports, but by serious occupation, and very early it was necessary to give him tutors, whom, however, like Jesus in his twelfth year, he quickly surpassed, f

According to Jewish custom and opinion, the twelfth year formed an epoch in development to which especial proofs of awakening genius were the rather attached, because in the twelfth year, as with us in the fourteenth, the boy was regarded as having outgrown the period of childhood. Accordingly it was believed of Moses, that in his twelfth year he left the house of his father, to become an independent organ of the divine revelations. The Old Testament leaves it uncertain how early the gift of prophecy was imparted to Samuel, but he was said by a later tradition to have prophesied from his twelfth year: and in like manner the wise judgments of Solomon and Daniel (1 Kings iii.23ff.) were supposed to have been given when they were only twelve.

It in the case of these Old Testament heroes, the spirit that impelled them manifested itself according to common opinion so early as in their twelfth year, it was argued that it could not have remained longer concealed in Jesus; and if Samuel and David showed themselves at that age in their later capacity of divinely inspired seers, Solomon in that of a wise ruler, so Jesus at the corresponding period in his life must have shown himself in the character to which he subsequently established his claim, that namely, of the Son of God and Teacher of Mankind. It is, in fact, the obvious aim of Luke to pass over no epoch in the early life of Jesus, without surrounding him with divine radiance, with significant prognostics of the future; in this style he treats his birth, mentions the circumcision at least emphatically, but above all avails himself of the presentation in the temple. There yet remained according to Jewish manners one epoch, the twelfth year, -with the first journey to the Passover; how could he do otherwise than, following the legend, adorn this point in the development of Jesus as we find that he has done in his narrative? and how could we do otherwise than regard his narrative as a legendary embellishment of this period in the life of Jesus, from which we learn nothing of his real development, but merely something of the exalted notions which were entertained in the primitive Church of the early ripened mind of Jesus?

{P.199} But how this story can be numbered among myths is found by some altogether inconceivable. It bears, thinks Heydenreich, a thoroughly historical character (this is the very point to be proved) and the stamp of the highest simplicity (like every popular legend in its original form); it contains no tincture of the miraculous, wherein the primary characteristic of a myth (but not of every myth) is held to consist; it is so remote from all embellishment that there is not the slightest detail of the conversation of Jesus with the doctors (the legend was satisfied with the dramatic trait, sitting in the midst of the doctors: as a dictum, v. 49. was alone important, and towards this the narrator hastens without delay); indeed, even the conversation between Jesus and his mother is only given in a fragmentary aphoristic manner (there is no trace of an omission); finally, the inventor of a legend would have made Jesus speak differently to his mother, instead of putting into his mouth words which might be construed into irreverence and indifference.

In this last observation Heydenreich agrees with Schleiermacher, who finds in the behaviour of Jesus to his mother, liable as it is to be misinterpreted, a sure guarantee that the whole history was not invented to supply something remarkable concerning Jesus, in connection with the period at which the holy things of the temple and the law were first opened to him.

In combating the assertion, that an inventor would scarcely have attributed to Jesus so much apparent harshness towards his mother, we need not appeal to the apocryphal Evangelium Thomae, which {P.200} makes the boy Jesus say to his foster-father Joseph: insipientissime fecisti; for even in the legend or history of the canonical Gospels, corresponding traits are to be found. In the narrative of the wedding at Cana, we find this rough address to his mother: "woman, what concern is that to you and to me?" (John ii. 4); and in the account of the visit paid to Jesus by his mother and brethren, the striking circumstance that he apparently wishes to take no notice of his relatives (Matt. xii. 46). If these are real incidents, then the legend had an historical precedent to warrant the introduction of a similar feature, even into the early youth of Jesus; if, on the other hand, they are only legends, they are the most vivid proofs that an inducement was not wanting for the invention of such features. Where this inducement lay, it is easy to see. The figure of Jesus would stand in the higher relief from the obscure background of his contracted family relations, if it were often seen that his parents were unable to comprehend his elevated mind, and if even he himself sometimes made them feel his superiority-so far as this could happen without detriment to his filial obedience, which, it should be observed, our narrative expressly preserves.


42. On the External Life of Jesus Up to the Time of His Public Appearance. (Chapter 5. First Visit to The Temple, and Education of Jesus.) (The Life of Jesus Critically Examined) (Studies on Bible & Early Christianity)

42. On the External Life of Jesus Up to the Time of His Public Appearance. (Chapter 5. First Visit to The Temple, and Education of Jesus.) (The Life of Jesus Critically Examined) (Studies on Bible & Early Christianity) somebody

42. On the External Life of Jesus Up to the Time of His Public Appearance.

WHAT were the external conditions under which Jesus lived, from the scene just considered up to the time of his public appearance? On this subject our canonical Gospels give scarcely an indication.

First, as to his place of residence, all that we learn explicitly is this: that both at the beginning and at the end of this obscure period he dwelt at Nazareth. According to Luke ii. 51, Jesus when twelve years old returned there with his parents, and according to Matthew iii. 13. (Mark i. 9), he, when thirty years old (comp. Luke iii. 23), came from thence to be baptized by John. Thus our evangelists appear to suppose, that Jesus had in the interim resided in Galilee, and, more particularly, in Nazareth. this supposition, however, does not exclude journeys, such as those to the feasts in Jerusalem.

The employment of Jesus during the years of his boyhood and youth seems, from an intimation in our Gospels, to have been determined by the trade of his father, who is there called a tektwn (Matt. xiii. 55.). This Greek word, used to designate the trade of Joseph, is generally understood in the sense of faber lignarius (carpenter); a few only, on mystical grounds, discover in it a faber ferrarius (blacksmith), aurarius (goldsmith), or caementarius (mason). The works in wood which he executed are held of different magnitude by different authors: according to Justin and the Evangelium Thomae, they were ploughs and yokes, and in that case he would be what we call a wheelwright: according to the Evangelium Infantiae Arabicum, they were doors, milkvessels, sieves and coffers, and once Joseph makes a throne for the king; so that here he is represented partly as a cabinet-maker and partly as a cooper. The Protevangelium Jacobi, on the other hand, makes him work at buildings, without doubt as a carpenter. In these labours of the father Jesus appears to have shared, according to an expression of Mark, who makes the Nazarenes ask concerning Jesus, not merely as in the parallel passage of Matthew: Is not this the carpenter's son? but Is not this the carpenter? (vi. 3.) It is true that in replying to the taunt of Celsus that the teacher of the Christians was a carpenter by trade, Origen says, he must have forgotten that in none of the Gospels received by the churches is Jesus himself called a carpenter. The above passage in Mark has in fact a various reading, which Origen must have taken, unless he be supposed altogether to have overlooked the passage, and which is preferred by some modern critics. But here Beza has justly remarked that "fortasse, mutuvit aliquis, existimans, hanc artem Christi majestati parum convenire;" whereas there could hardly be an interest which would render the contrary alteration desirable. Moreover Fathers of the Church and apocryphal writings represent Jesus, in accordance with the more generally accepted reading, as following the trade of his father. Justin attaches especial importance to the fact that Jesus made ploughs and yokes or scales, as symbols of active life and of justice. In the Evangelium Infantiae, Jesus goes about with Joseph to the places where the latter has work, to help him in such a manner that if Joseph made anything too long or too short, Jesus, by a touch or by merely stretching out his hand, gave to the object its rig-lit size; an assistance which was very useful to his foster-father, because, as the apocryphal text naively remarks: "nec admodum peritus erat artis fabrilis."

Apart from the apocryphal descriptions, there are many reasons for believing that the above intimation as to the youthful employment of Jesus is correct. In the first place, it accords with the Jewish custom which prescribed, even for one destined for a learned career, or in general to any spiritual occupation, the acquisition of some handicraft; thus Paul, the pupil of the rabbis, was also a tent-maker (Acts xviii. 3). Next, as our previous examinations have shown that we know nothing historical

of extraordinary plans or expectations on the part of Jesus' parents in relation to their son, so nothing is more natural that to suppose that Jesus early practised the trade of his father. Further, the Christian must have had interest in denying rather than inventing this opinion as to their Messiah's youthful occupation, since it often drew down on them the ridicule of their opponents. Thus Celsus could not abstain from a reflection on this subject, for which reason Origen will know nothing of any designation of Jesus as a tektwn in the New Testament; and everyone knows the scoffing question of Libanius about the carpenter's son, a question which seems to have been provided with so striking an answer, only ex eventu.

It may certainly be said in opposition to this, that the notion of Jesus having been a carpenter seems to be founded on a mere inference from the trade of the father as to the occupation of the son; whereas the latter was just as likely to apply himself to some other branch of industry; indeed, that perhaps the whole tradition of the carpentry of Joseph and Jesus owes its origin to the symbolical significance shown by Justin. As however, the allusion in our Gospels to the trade of Joseph is very brief and bare, and is nowhere used allegorically in the New Testament, nor entered into more minutely, it is not to be contested that he really was a carpenter; but it must remain uncertain whether Jesus shared in this occupation.

What were the circumstances of Jesus and his parents, as to fortune? the answer to this question has been the object of many dissertations. It is evident that the ascription of pressing poverty to Jesus, on the part of orthodox theologians, rested on dogmatical and aesthetic grounds. On the one hand, they wished to maintain even in this point the status exinanitionis, and on the other, to depict as strikingly as possible the contrast between the morfh qeou (form of God) and the morfh doulou (form of a servant). That this contrast is set forth by Paul (Phil. ii. 6, ff.) merely characterizes the obscure and laborious life to which he submitted after his heavenly pre-existence, and instead of playing the part of king which the Jewish imagination attributed to the messiah, is also to be regarded as established. The expression of Jesus himself, "The Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head" (Matt. viii.10) may possibly import merely his voluntary renunciation of the peaceful enjoyment of fortune, for the sake of devoting himself to the wandering life of the Messiah. There is only one other particular bearing on the point in question, namely that Mary presented, as an offering of purification, doves (Luke ii. 24), according to Lev xii. 8, the offering of the poor; which certainly proves that the author of this information conceived the parents of Jesus to have been in by no means brilliant circumstances; but what shall assure us that he also was not induced to make this representation by unhistorical motives? Meanwhile, we are just as far from having tenable ground for maintaining the contrary proposition, that Jesus possessed property; at least it is inadmissible to adduce the coat without seam (John xix, 23) until we shall have inquired more closely what kind of relation it has to the subject.