Mark ii. 23. bition of the father might be entailed upon the son, he feared to settle there; and there- From the be fore, being directed by God in another vision, he retired into the dominions of his ginning of the brother Herod Antipas, in Galilee, to his former habitation in Nazareth, where the strange Matth. ix. 8. Occurrences of our Lord's birth were not so well known. † After this we have no cer- Luke vi. 1. tain account either of him or his parents, only that they annually repaired with him to Jerusalem at the passover; and that as his body increased in stature, so || more especially the faculties of his soul were enlarged, being highly replenished with wisdom and the grace of God. In the mean time (a) Archelaus, following the steps of his father, made himself so odious to the Jews, that the principal men among them, joining with those of Samaria, made a public complaint of him to Augustus; who, upon a full hearing both of his crimes and vindication, deprived him of his government, confiscated all his goods, banished him to Vienna, a city in Gaul, and reduced his dominions to the form of a Roman province, which for ever after was ruled by a governor sent from Rome, who was called by the name of Procurator, but in some cases was subject to the president or governor of Syria. When Palestine was reduced to this state, and our Blessed Saviour now advanced to the twelfth year of his age +2, he went up with his parents (according as their custom * This Antipas his father Herod had once appoint. ed to be his successor in his kingdom, but afterwards expunged him out of his will, and only made him tetrarch; but not long after his brother's accession to the throne, he went to Rome, with a purpose to dispute the kingdom with him, on pretence that his father's former will, by which he was constituted king, ought to take place before the latter, which was made when his understanding was not so perfect. Both the brothers procured able orators to set forth their pretensions before the emperor; but the emperor nevertheless refused to decide any thing concerning their affair, nor did he at length give Archelaus the title of a king, but only of an ethnarch, with one moiety of the territories which his father enjoyed; but these, in a few years after, he by his ill conduct forfeited. Of all the sons of Herod indeed, this Archelaus is said to have been of the most fierce and bloody temper. At his first accession to the government, (under the pretence of a mutiny) he had kil led near three thousand of his subjects; and therefore Joseph hearing of this, might well dread to go and settle in any part of his dominions; but as Antipas was a man of a more mild disposition, and the birth of Jesus not made so public in Galilee and at Nazareth as it was at Bethlehem, and even at Jerusalem, by the coming of the wise men, and what happened at the purification of the Blessed Virgin, it was thought more advisable to retreat into this village than to set up his abode in any populous city. Pool's Annotations. † N. B. That the vulgar Christian era, according to Dionysius Exiguus, which commences four years after the true time of Christ's birth, may begin to be computed much about this time, viz. from the beginning of the fourth year of Archelaus's, and thirty-first of Augustus's reign, computing from his victory over Anthony and Cleopatra. The words in the text are," Jesus increased in wisdom, and in stature, and in favour with God and man," Luke ii. 52. But if it be asked how he, who (a) Jewish Antiq. lib. 17. c. 12. et de Bello, Jud. + It is commonly observed by those that are learned in the customs and institutions of the Jewish church, that until a child was of twelve years old, he was not obliged to go to Jerusalem at the time of the Passover; and that though their youth were usually thirteen before they were brought before the masters of the synagogue to give an account of their proficiency in religion, (which answers in a great measure to the Christian rite of confirmation) yet since the season then appointed was accommodated to the capacities and attainments of children in general, without forbidding those of qualifications extraordinary, and whose genius (in the Jewish phrase) did run be Ann. Dom. 12. &c. Ær. Vulg. 8. &c. er 7. J, &c. or 1. 12, &c. aut. r. A. M. 4001, was) to Jerusalem at the time of the passover. His parents, after a stay of the whole &c. or 5110. seven days, having performed the usual ceremonies of the feast, were now returning Ann. Dom. with great numbers of their neighbours and acquaintance towards Galilee; and never doubting but that Jesus had joined himself with some of the company, they travelled on Vulg. 8, or 7. patiently for a whole day's journey; but when night came on, and among their relations and particular friends they could hear no tidings of him, it is not easy to imagine the greatness of their fears and | apprehensions, which made them return to Jerusalem with the utmost speed, to make all possible enquiry for him. At the end of three days they found him in one of the rooms of the temple, (probably in that of the grand Sanhedrim), sitting among the learned doctors and masters of Israel, hearing them discourse, and propounding such questions to them as raised the admiration of all that heard him, and made them astonished at the ripeness of his understanding. Nor were his parents less surprised to find him in that place; but when his mother told him with what impatience they had sought him, and in some measure blamed him for putting them in such a fright, the excuse which he made for himself was, “ Know ye not, that I must be employed in my Father's house?" words which, though she at that time did not rightly understand, she took care nevertheless for ever after to register in her mind! Being thus happily found by his parents he returned with them to Nazareth, and there living in all dutiful subjection to them, wrought (very probably) with his reputed father in the trade of a carpenter; and after his father's death (which is supposed to have happened about a year before the preaching of John the Baptist) (a) still continued in the same occupation, As indeed we can scarce help inferring, from the rude treatment of the Nazarenes his townsmen, as also from the total silence of the evangelists, as to the intermediate actions of his life +2, that though he "grew in favour with fore the commandment, to appear sooner, our Saviour It may seem a little strange, perhaps, that Mary his Divinity and Omnipotence, they suffered themselves to be carried away by their natural tenderness, and could not, without great concern, see themselves deprived of his company, uncertain of what had befallen him, or for what possible reason he should absent himself from theirs. It must not be denied however, that though something may be allowed to a parent's fondness, yet it does not appear from their whole conduct, and especially from Mary's complaint and our Saviour's reply, ver. 48, 49. that they had, as yet, a clear and perfect knowledge of his Divine nature in union with the human; and therefore the Evangelist has remarked upon them, "that they understood not the saying which he spake unto them," ver. 50. Calmet's Commentary, and Pool's Annotations. The words in the text are," after three days they found him;" but we need not from thence infer, that they were three days a-seeking him, but rather, that it was three days from the time they set out from Jerusalem; going on their journey the first day; returning to Jerusalem the second; and finding him in the temple on the third; for since they found him in the temple, which in all probability was the first place they sought for him in, we can hardly imagine that they should be three days in Jerusalem before they found him. Pool's Annotations. (a) Mark vi. 3. It may be possibly made a question, why the evangelists have given us no account of our Saviour's life, from the twelfth year of his age till he began his God and man," yet (considering his excellencies) he lived in a very obscure manner, and From the betill the time of his manifestation to Israel, shewed no miraculous marks to distinguish him from the rest of mankind. (a) In the eighteenth year of our Saviour's life died Augustus Cæsar at Nola in Campania, (after a reign of near forty-four years), to the inexpressible grief of all his subjects, and was succeeded by Tiberius, the son of his wife Livia by a former husband, but a prince of a quite contrary disposition to his predecessor. In the second year of his accession to the empire he recalled Rufus from the government of Judea, and sent Valerius Gratus (who was the fourth governor in these parts since the banishment of Archelaus) to succeed him. (b) Gratus, having continued in Judea about eleven years, was at length recalled, and Pontius Pilate (a person too like his master Tiberius, of a fierce and irreconcileable spirit, and of a * cruel and covetous disposition) was sent governor in his place. In the first year of his coming (which was the fif teenth year of Tiberius, from the time that he was admitted to reign in copartnership with Augustus, *2 John the Baptist began to open his commission for the preparation of ministry, which (according to the vulgar era) was Josephus has given us several instances of Pilate's great cruelty in the course of his government, VOL. II. viz. that he caused the Roman soldiers to fall upon ** How John passed the former part of his life the ginning of the Gospels to Mark ii. 23. Luke vi. 1. A. M. 4033, our Saviour's way before him, † by preaching "the baptism of repentance for the remis&c. or 5437. sion of sins." Ann. Dom. 30, &c. Vulg. Ær. 26. He had been †2 bred up in the wilderness, and lived an austere life. * Locusts and wild honey, such as nature produce in these desert places, was the chief diet he lived upon, and a +3 loose coat made of camel's hair, and fastened with a leathern girdle, upon the tenth day of the seventh month, (which answers to our nineteenth day of October) five days before the feast of tabernacles, upon the great day of expiation, when the high priest entered the holy of holies, and when so solemn a fast was enjoined, that whosoever did not afflict his soul at that time was to be cut off from the people. Howell's History, and Calmet's Dictionary, under the word John. The meaning of this phrase is, that John preached repentance, Matth. iii. 2. and baptized those that were penitent, in token of the remission of their sins, even as they on their parts received baptism in testimony of the sincerity of their repentance. Now baptism, we know, was no new or strange thing a mong the Jews. It was acknowledged and practised as an emblem of purification from past guilt, and a rite of entering solemnly into covenant with God. The expositors of their law agree, that this ceremony passed upon the whole congregation of Israel just before the law was given at Mount Sinai; that their custom, in all succeeding ages, has been to receive their heathen proselytes by baptism, as well as by sacrifice and circumcision. In conformity to this, therefore, John both administered and exhorted his followers to his ordinance of baptism, as an evidence of their penitence for past sins, and profession of better obe dience for the future: but then, as faith is a qualification for baptism as well as repentance, he propounded our Lord for the object of faith to all who received this ordinance at his hands; " for John veri. ly baptized with the baptism of repentance, saying unto the people, that they should believe in him, who should come after him," i. e. on Christ Jesus, Acts xix. 4. It is a great mistake therefore in some to suppose that the baptism of John was, in substance, the same with what Christ did afterwards institute: For John neither did nor could baptize his disciples in the name of the Holy Ghost, as the apostles did, because the Holy Ghost was not yet given," John vii. 39. He did not baptize them in the name of Christ; for had he done so there had been no occasion for the question, "Whether he himself were the Christ or not?" Luke iii. 15. Herein therefore lay the imperfection of John's baptism, that though it prepared men to be Christians, yet it did not make them so; and therefore we find St Paul baptizing again some disciples at Ephesus, (who had before received the baptism of John), in order to fit them for the reception of the Holy Ghost, Acts xix. 5, 6. Whitby's Annotations, and Stanhope on the Epistles and Gospels, vol. iv. + A wilderness among the Jews did not signify a place wholly void of inhabitants, but a place that was more mountainous, less fruitful, less peopled, and where the habitations were more dispersed than in other parts of the country. For as it is incongruous to suppose that the Baptist should preach the doctrine of repentance to stocks, and stones, and wild beasts, the wilderness here must be understood in a comparative sense; and consequently the wilderness of Judea, where he preached and baptised, must be that tract of land which lay on each side of the river Jordan, on the confines of Enon and Salim. Whitby's Annotations, Wells's Geography of the New Testament, and Spanheim's Dubia Evang. part ii. Dub. 97. * There is no reason for running into criticisms, what the common diet of the Baptist was, whether fowl, or fish, or herbs, or wild pease, (for the word axgides has been made to signify all these) since the thing is notorious, that locusts (in the most obvious sense of the word) were creatures which the Levitical law looked upon as clean, and allowed the Jews to eat, Lev. xi. 22. That they were a com. mon food, as the ancients affirm, (Pliny, lib. xvii. c. 3. and Strabo, lib. xvi.) in Afric, Persia, Syria, and even Palestine itself; that, according to the account of some modern authors, in some places they are brought in waggon-loads, and sold in the market for the common people to feed on; and that they are frequently seen upon the banks of the river Jordan, of the same form, but much larger, than ours; and being either fried in oil or dried in the sun, are accounted a good sort of food. As little reason is there for men to puzzle themselves about what this page, or wild honey means, since every one knows that Judea was so famed for plenty of honey, that in several places of Scripture it is said to flow with honey; and from the instances of Sampson, Judges xiv. 8. and Jonathan, 1 Sam. xiv. 25. it must be concluded that wild honey, such as either distilled from the boughs like dew, or was found in the cliffs of rocks or hollow trunks of trees, was no uncommon thing in that country. But though these locusts and wild honey may very properly be taken in their natural and most obvious sense, yet it must not therefore be thought that John never ate any thing else, but that for the generality he made use of such slender diet, and contented himself with what the desert place which he chose for his habitation could afford him. Spanheim's Dubia Evang. part ii. Dub. 99. [See likewise Burder's Oriental Customs, vol. i. nos. 371. 425.] +3 We are told by some authors, that the hair-of camels about the Caspian Sea was formerly the softest in the world, of which was made a very fine stuff; and that in the empire of the great Cham of Tartary, in the city of Calacia, the metropolis of the province of Tangouth, there is a kind of cloth which the inhabitants call zambelotte, (the same no doubt with what we call camelot), made of wool and camels hair, perfectly good, and as fine as any cloth whatever. But there is reason good to think that John's habit was far from being of this kind, because it would not so Gospels to the only garb he then wore; and therefore no person was so proper to inculcate the From the bedoctrines of repentance and reformation as he who, by his free and resolute preaching, ginning of the joined with this great severity of life, soon procured a vast auditory and numerous pro- Matth. ix. 8. selytes of all ranks and qualities from Jerusalem and all Judea, and all the region about Jordan, confessing their sins before God, and entering into this new institution by baptism. Among the great multitudes that came to his preaching and baptism, there were Pharisees t, and Sadducees not a few, whose confidence and immorality he sharply reproved; while, at the same time, he exhorted the common people to works of extensive charity; the publicans +2, to avoid oppression and injustice; the soldiers, to abstain from plunder and violence; and every one, in short, to beware of those crimes to which their employments and manner of life did most expose them. These solemn admonitions, pronounced with so much weight and authority, procured him a mighty veneration among the people, insomuch, that several began to look upon him as the promised and now expected Messiah ; but to remove all thoughts of this kind, he freely declared, "that he only baptized them with water to repentance and a new life; but that there was one coming, and ready to appear among them, who would baptize them with the effusion of the Holy Ghost, and who so far exceeded him in power and excellency, that he was not worthy to do for him the meanest or most servile office." These were the doctrines which John preached, and this the testimony which he gave of Jesus, even before he had the happiness to know him. After John had continued in his ministry for several months, our Lord thought fit to remove from his private retirement at Nazareth, and taking leave of his mother and well suit with the condition of a man living in a wil- Vestis erat curvi sætis conserta cameli, + We have already, in a separate Dissertation, given a particular account of the rise and principles of the several sects among the Jews, and need only take notice here, that the Pharisees are thought to take their name from the word parash, which signifies separation, because they were separated from all others in their extraordinary pretences to sanctity, and some particular observances; and that the Sadducees (who were directly opposite to the Pharisees both in temper and principles) derived their name, either from Sadock, who lived near 300 years before our Saviour's birth, and is supposed to be the founder of the sect, + The Publicans were persons of no particular sect, nor of any religious function among the Jews, but certain public officers whom the Romans employed to collect their tributes, tolls, and imposts. This office was once of great account among the Romans, and conferred upon none less than the equestrian order; but when it came to fall into the hands of the Jews, who farmed it of the Romans, it soon became base and infamous, and more especially odious to the Jews upon these two accounts: 1st, Because these tributes were looked upon as a standing instance of their slavery, which they, who made such boasts of their being a free-born people, and invested in that privilege by God himself, could least of all endure. And, 2dly, Because these publicans, having farmed the customs of the Romans at high rates, did generally make use of all methods of extortion and oppression, to enable them both to pay their rents and to raise some advantage to themselves. Upon these accounts the publicans, as conspiring with the Romans both to impoverish and enslave their countrymen, became so universally abhorred by the Jewish nation, that they held it unlawful to do them any act of common courtesy, nay, even to eat or to drink with them, for which we find them so frequently blaming our Saviour. Eachard's Ecclesiastical History in the Introduction. page 27. Mark ii. 23. A. M. 4034, &c. or 5438 Ann. Dom. 30, &c. Vulg. Er. 24 |