Latest / Jesus of History / 03 - Jesus of History by Terrot R. Glover

Transcript

03 - Jesus of History by Terrot R. Glover · Jesus of History

0:00
Speaker 1: Chapter two of the Jesus of History by T. R. Glover.
0:06
Speaker 1: This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, Chapter two,
0:13
Speaker 1: Childhood and Youth. It has been remarked as an odd
0:18
Speaker 1: thing by some readers that the Gospels tell us so
0:21
Speaker 1: little of the childhood of Jesus. It must be remembered, however,
0:26
Speaker 1: that they are not really biographies, even of the ancient order,
0:30
Speaker 1: still less that of modern kind, in which the main
0:32
Speaker 1: concern is a trace of the psychological development of the man. Plutarch,
0:38
Speaker 1: the prince of ancient biographers, put fact and eulogy together,
0:43
Speaker 1: cited characteristic sayings or doings of his hero, quoted contemporary judgments,
0:49
Speaker 1: and wove the whole into a charming narrative, good to read,
0:53
Speaker 1: pleasant to remember, perhaps not without use as a less
0:57
Speaker 1: inconventional morality, but with real history dotorcal criticism in it,
1:01
Speaker 1: and as little or less attempt at any effective reconstruction
1:05
Speaker 1: of a character. His biography of Pericles illustrates his method
1:11
Speaker 1: and his defects. The writers of the Gospels did not
1:15
Speaker 1: altogether propose biography as their object, either in the ancient
1:20
Speaker 1: or the modern style. They left out, perhaps because it
1:24
Speaker 1: did not survive much about the life of Jesus that
1:27
Speaker 1: we should like to know. The treatment of Mark by
1:30
Speaker 1: Matthew shows a certain matter of fact habit which explains
1:34
Speaker 1: the obvious want of interest in aspects of the life
1:38
Speaker 1: and mind of Jesus that would to a modern be fascinating.
1:43
Speaker 1: They are dealing with the earthly life of the Son
1:45
Speaker 1: of God, and they deal with it with a faithfulness
1:49
Speaker 1: to tradition and reminiscence, which is, when we really consider it,
1:54
Speaker 1: quite surprising. But it is the heavenward side of the
1:58
Speaker 1: Master that mattered to them most, and it is perhaps
2:02
Speaker 1: not a mere random guess that they were not, in
2:05
Speaker 1: any case so aware of the interest of childhood and
2:08
Speaker 1: of children as Jesus was. Matthew and Luke recalled the
2:13
Speaker 1: miraculous birth, and each had a story that has never
2:17
Speaker 1: failed to fascinate men of the magi or the shepherds
2:21
Speaker 1: who came to the manger cradle. Luke gives one episode
2:25
Speaker 1: of jesus childhood. That is all. The writers of the
2:31
Speaker 1: apocryphal gospels did their best to fill the gap by
2:34
Speaker 1: inventing or developing stories pretty silly or repellent, which only
2:41
Speaker 1: show how little they understood the original gospels or the
2:44
Speaker 1: character of Jesus. But when we turn to the parables
2:49
Speaker 1: of Jesus and ask ourselves how they came to be
2:52
Speaker 1: what they are, by what process of mind he framed them,
2:56
Speaker 1: and where he found the experience from which one and
2:59
Speaker 1: another of them spring, it is at once clear that
3:04
Speaker 1: a number of them are stories of domestic life. And
3:07
Speaker 1: the question suggests itself, why should he have got a
3:10
Speaker 1: field for what he found at home? If we know
3:14
Speaker 1: that he grew up in the ordinary circle of a home,
3:17
Speaker 1: and then find him drawing familiar illustrations from the common
3:21
Speaker 1: scenes of home, the inference is easy that he is
3:24
Speaker 1: going back to the remembered daily round of his own boyhood.
3:29
Speaker 1: In stray hints, the Gospels give us a little of
3:32
Speaker 1: the framework of that boyhood. In Nazareth, the elder Joseph
3:37
Speaker 1: early disappears from the story, and we find a reference
3:41
Speaker 1: to four brothers and several sisters. Is this not the
3:44
Speaker 1: carpenter people of Nazareth asked the son of Mary, the
3:48
Speaker 1: brother of James and Joseph, and of Judah and Simon,
3:52
Speaker 1: And are not his sisters here with us? Matthew adds
3:56
Speaker 1: a word that may or may not be significant. Are
4:00
Speaker 1: they not all with us in ancient times, a particular
4:05
Speaker 1: view of the incarnation, linked with other contemporary views of
4:09
Speaker 1: celibacy and the baseness of matter, that meant to discover
4:12
Speaker 1: or invent the possibility that these brothers and sisters were
4:16
Speaker 1: either the children of Joseph by a former wife, or
4:19
Speaker 1: the cousins of Jesus on his mother's side. That cousins
4:24
Speaker 1: in some parts of the world actually a confused in
4:27
Speaker 1: common speech with brothers may be admitted, but to the
4:30
Speaker 1: ordinary Greek reader, brothers meant brothers and cousins something different.
4:37
Speaker 1: No one not starting with the theories of sent Jerome
4:41
Speaker 1: let us say on marriage and matter and the decencies
4:45
Speaker 1: of the incarnation, would ever dream from the Greek narrative
4:49
Speaker 1: of the episode of the critical neighbours at Nazareth who
4:52
Speaker 1: will not accept Jesus as a prophet because they know
4:54
Speaker 1: his family, a delightfully natural and absurd reason. With history
4:58
Speaker 1: written plain on the fate that Jesus had no brothers,
5:02
Speaker 1: only cousins or half brothers at best. When history gives
5:07
Speaker 1: us brothers and dogma says they must be cousins. In
5:11
Speaker 1: any other case, the decision of the historian would be
5:14
Speaker 1: clear and so it is here we have then a household,
5:20
Speaker 1: a widow with five sons and at least two or
5:24
Speaker 1: very likely more daughters. Jesus is admittedly her eldest son,
5:30
Speaker 1: and is bred to be a carpenter, and a carpenter
5:33
Speaker 1: he undoubtedly was up to we are told about thirty
5:38
Speaker 1: years of age. The dates of his birth and death
5:42
Speaker 1: are not quite precisely determined, and people have fancied that
5:46
Speaker 1: he may have been rather older at the beginning of
5:48
Speaker 1: his ministry. For our purposes, it is not of much importance.
5:55
Speaker 1: The more relevant question for us is this, how came
5:59
Speaker 1: he to wait till he was at least about thirty
6:01
Speaker 1: years old before he began to teach in public? One
6:05
Speaker 1: suggested answer finds the impulse or starting point of his
6:08
Speaker 1: ministry in the appearance of John the Baptist. It is
6:12
Speaker 1: a simpler inference from such data as we have that
6:16
Speaker 1: the claims of a widow's mother with six or seven
6:18
Speaker 1: younger children, a poor woman with a carpenter's little brew
6:21
Speaker 1: to bring up, may have had something to do with
6:24
Speaker 1: his delay. In any case, the parables go as pictures
6:29
Speaker 1: of the undeniable activities of the household. A group of
6:33
Speaker 1: parables and other illusions illustrate the life of women as
6:36
Speaker 1: Jesus saw it in his mother's house. He pictures two
6:40
Speaker 1: women grinding together at the mill, and then the heating
6:43
Speaker 1: of the oven. The mud oven, not unlike the field
6:46
Speaker 1: ovens used for a while by the English army in
6:49
Speaker 1: France in nineteen fifteen, and heated by the burning of
6:52
Speaker 1: wood inside it kindled with the grass of the field. Meanwhile,
6:57
Speaker 1: the leaven is at work in a meal where the
6:59
Speaker 1: women hid it, and her son sits by and watches
7:03
Speaker 1: the heaving, panting mass, the bubbles rising and bursting, the
7:08
Speaker 1: fall of the level, and the rising of other bubbles
7:11
Speaker 1: to burst in their turn, all bubbles. Later on the
7:17
Speaker 1: picture came back to him. It was like the Kingdom
7:20
Speaker 1: of God, all bubbles, said the disappointed, But he saw
7:25
Speaker 1: more clearly the bubbles are broken by the force of
7:29
Speaker 1: the active life at work beneath. Life, not death, is
7:34
Speaker 1: the story. The Kingdom of God is life. The leaven
7:39
Speaker 1: is of more account than any number of bubbles. And
7:43
Speaker 1: we may link all these parables from bread making with
7:46
Speaker 1: what he says of the little boy asking for bread.
7:50
Speaker 1: The mother fired the oven and set the leaven in
7:52
Speaker 1: the meal. Long before the child was hungry, she looked ahead,
7:57
Speaker 1: and the bread was ready. Is not this written also
8:02
Speaker 1: in the teaching of Jesus, your heavenly father, knoweth that
8:05
Speaker 1: ye have need of all these things. God he holds,
8:10
Speaker 1: is as little taken aback by his children's needs, as
8:14
Speaker 1: Mary was by hers. And the little boys did not
8:18
Speaker 1: confine their demand to bread. They wanted eggs and fish
8:23
Speaker 1: as well. There was no end to their healthy appetites.
8:27
Speaker 1: It is significant that he mentions the price of the
8:30
Speaker 1: cheapest flesh food used by peasants. They also wanted clothes
8:36
Speaker 1: and wore them hard as boys do. The time would
8:40
Speaker 1: come when new clothes were needed, But why could not
8:43
Speaker 1: the old ones be patched and pass down yet another stage?
8:47
Speaker 1: And his mother would smile, and perhaps she asked him
8:50
Speaker 1: to try for himself to see why. And he learnt
8:54
Speaker 1: by experiment that old clothes cannot be patched beyond a
8:57
Speaker 1: certain point. And later on he remembered the fact and
9:03
Speaker 1: quoted it with telling effect. He pictures little houses and
9:08
Speaker 1: how they are swept, especially when a coin has rolled
9:11
Speaker 1: away into a dusty corner or under something, And candles
9:15
Speaker 1: and bushels and beds and moth and rust, and all
9:20
Speaker 1: sorts of things that make the common round of life
9:23
Speaker 1: come into his talk as naturally as they did into
9:26
Speaker 1: his life. The carpenter's shop, we may suppose, was close
9:31
Speaker 1: to the house, a shop where men may count on
9:34
Speaker 1: good work and honest work, and what memories must have
9:38
Speaker 1: gathered round it is it fanciful to suggest that what
9:42
Speaker 1: the churches have always been saying about coming to Jesus
9:46
Speaker 1: began to be said in a natural and spontaneous way
9:49
Speaker 1: in that shop. Those little brothers and sisters did not
9:52
Speaker 1: always agree, and tempers would now and then grow very
9:55
Speaker 1: warm among them. And then the big brother came and
9:59
Speaker 1: fetched them away from the little house to the shop,
10:02
Speaker 1: and set one of them to pick up nails and
10:04
Speaker 1: the other to sweep up shavings to help the carpenter.
10:08
Speaker 1: They helped him like small boys. When they help, they
10:12
Speaker 1: got in his road at every turn, But somehow they
10:15
Speaker 1: slipped back to a jolly frame of mind. The big
10:19
Speaker 1: brother told them stories, and they came back different people.
10:24
Speaker 1: I can picture a day when there was a woman
10:26
Speaker 1: in the little house, weary and heavy laden, and the
10:31
Speaker 1: door opened, and a cheery, pleasant face looked in and
10:35
Speaker 1: said won't you come in and talk to me? And
10:39
Speaker 1: she came and talked with him, and life became a
10:43
Speaker 1: different thing for her. Are these pictures fanciful? Mere imagination?
10:50
Speaker 1: Are we to think that all the tenderness of Jesus
10:53
Speaker 1: came to him by a miracle when he was thirty
10:55
Speaker 1: years of age? Must we not think it was all
10:59
Speaker 1: growing up in that house and in that shop? Or
11:03
Speaker 1: did he never tell a story, he who tells them
11:05
Speaker 1: so charmingly till he wanted parables? We have to note
11:11
Speaker 1: at the same time some elements of criticism of the
11:13
Speaker 1: elder brother in the family attitude, some defect of sympathy,
11:17
Speaker 1: and failure to understand him, even if kindness prompted their
11:21
Speaker 1: action in later days. Nazareth lies in a basin among hills,
11:27
Speaker 1: from the rim of which can be seen to the
11:29
Speaker 1: southward the historic plain of Estrelon, and eastward the Jordan
11:33
Speaker 1: Valley and the hills of Gilead, and westward the Mediterranean.
11:38
Speaker 1: On great roads north and south of the town's girdle
11:42
Speaker 1: of hills passed to and fro the many colored traffic
11:46
Speaker 1: between Egypt and Mesopotamia and the Orient, Traders, pilgrims, herods,
11:54
Speaker 1: the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them
11:58
Speaker 1: all within reach, and traveling no faster as a rule
12:02
Speaker 1: than the camel cared to go. They formed a panorama
12:06
Speaker 1: of life for a thoughtful and imaginative boy more than would.
12:10
Speaker 1: Allusion to king's clothes comes up in his recorded teaching,
12:15
Speaker 1: and it was here that he saw them, and noticed
12:17
Speaker 1: them and remembered. One is struck with the amount of
12:24
Speaker 1: that unconscious assimilation of experience which we find in his words,
12:28
Speaker 1: and which is in itself an index to his nature.
12:33
Speaker 1: We are not expressly told that he sought the sites
12:36
Speaker 1: that the road afforded, but it would be hard to
12:39
Speaker 1: believe that a bright, quick boy, with genius in him,
12:42
Speaker 1: with poetry in him, with feeling for the real and
12:45
Speaker 1: for life, never went down onto that road, never walked
12:49
Speaker 1: alongsides of the caravans, and took note of the strange
12:53
Speaker 1: people from the east and from the west, from the
12:57
Speaker 1: north and from the south, Nubians, Egyptians, Romans, Gauls, Britons,
13:04
Speaker 1: and Orientals. In the one anecdote that survives of his boyhood,
13:10
Speaker 1: we find men astonished at his understanding, his gift for
13:14
Speaker 1: putting questions, and his comments on the answers and all
13:18
Speaker 1: life through he had a genius for friendship. When we
13:23
Speaker 1: consider how Jesus handles nature and her wilder children in
13:26
Speaker 1: his parables, another point attracts attention. Men vary a great
13:32
Speaker 1: deal in this. To take two of the Old Testament prophets.
13:36
Speaker 1: We find a marked difference here between Ezekiel and Jeremiah.
13:40
Speaker 1: Ezekiel puts forth a riddle and speaks a parable about
13:44
Speaker 1: an eagle, a frankly heraldic eagle that plants a tree
13:48
Speaker 1: top in a city of merchants. Jeremiah is obviously country bred.
13:54
Speaker 1: He might have been surprised if he had been told
13:57
Speaker 1: how often he illustrates his thought from bird and beast
14:00
Speaker 1: and country life, and always with a certain lifelike precision
14:04
Speaker 1: and a perfectly clear sympathy. In the Gospels we find
14:09
Speaker 1: again the same faithfulness to living nature. Another country bred
14:14
Speaker 1: boy with the same love for bird and beast and
14:17
Speaker 1: the wild, open countryside, the earth and common face of
14:21
Speaker 1: nature spake to me rememberable things. Nature is enough for
14:27
Speaker 1: Jesus as for Jeremiah. She needs no remodeling, no heraldic paints,
14:33
Speaker 1: long pinions of diverse colors. She will do as she
14:37
Speaker 1: is She is just splendid and lovable and true as
14:41
Speaker 1: God made her, and she slides into his mind whenever
14:44
Speaker 1: he is deeply moved. Think of all the parables he
14:49
Speaker 1: draws from nature, the similes, metaphors and illustrations. Every one
14:56
Speaker 1: of them will bear examination and means more the nearer
15:00
Speaker 1: we look into it, and the better we know. The
15:02
Speaker 1: living thing behind the eagle, in Jesus's sentence, plants no trees,
15:09
Speaker 1: but it has the living birds instinct for carrying. The
15:14
Speaker 1: ancient Greek historian and Lord Roberts at Delhi in eighteen
15:17
Speaker 1: fifty eight remarked that wheresoever the body is thither will
15:22
Speaker 1: the eagles be gathered together? In India? That year it
15:27
Speaker 1: was said they gathered from all over to Delhi. What
15:31
Speaker 1: brought them? Instinct? We say, And we find Jesus in
15:37
Speaker 1: that rather dark sentence, suggesting somehow that there is an
15:40
Speaker 1: instinct which knows where. And sheep and cows, and asses,
15:46
Speaker 1: and hens, and sparrows and red sunsets fill men's reminiscences
15:51
Speaker 1: of his talk, and we may safely conclude that when
15:55
Speaker 1: allusions are so many in fragments of conversation preserved as
16:00
Speaker 1: these are, the man's speech and mind were attuned to
16:03
Speaker 1: the love of bird and beast. Is there another teacher
16:07
Speaker 1: of those times who is at all so sure that
16:10
Speaker 1: God loves bird and flower? The Greek poet Meliaga of Gadara,
16:16
Speaker 1: not so very far amom from Jesus in space of time,
16:20
Speaker 1: has a good deal to say about flowers, but not
16:23
Speaker 1: at all in the same sense as Jesus, nor with
16:26
Speaker 1: any feeling such as his for the immortal hand and
16:30
Speaker 1: eye that planned their symmetry and their colours and sweetness.
16:35
Speaker 1: Saint Paul is conspicuously a man of the town, a
16:38
Speaker 1: citizen of no mean city, and he dismisses the animals abruptly.
16:43
Speaker 1: He has hardly an allusion to the familiar and homely
16:46
Speaker 1: aspects of nature so frequent and so pleasant in the
16:49
Speaker 1: speech of Jesus. He finds nature, if not quite red
16:53
Speaker 1: in tooth and claw, yet groaning together, subject to vanity,
16:57
Speaker 1: in bonded to corruption, travelailing in pain, looking forward in
17:02
Speaker 1: a sort of desperate hope to a freedom not yet realized.
17:08
Speaker 1: Nature is far less tragic for Jesus, far happier, perhaps
17:13
Speaker 1: because he knew nature on closer terms of intimacy, nature
17:19
Speaker 1: as he portrays things, is in nearer touch with the
17:22
Speaker 1: heavenly Father than we should guess from Paul. And there
17:26
Speaker 1: is no hint in his recorded words that he held
17:29
Speaker 1: the ground to be under a curse. If for you
17:33
Speaker 1: to use abstract terms and philosophies his thought, little we
17:37
Speaker 1: may agree that the four facts Jesus notes in nature
17:40
Speaker 1: are its mystery, its regularity, its impartiality, and its peacefulness.
17:49
Speaker 1: What he finds in nature is not unlike what Wordsworth
17:53
Speaker 1: also finds. A power, that is the visible quality in
17:58
Speaker 1: shape and image of right reason that matures her processes
18:03
Speaker 1: by steadfast laws, gives birth to no impatient or fallacious hopes,
18:08
Speaker 1: no heat of passion or excessive zeal, no vain Conceit
18:13
Speaker 1: provokes to no quick turns of self applauding intellect, but
18:18
Speaker 1: trains to meekness and exalts by humble faith. Holds up
18:23
Speaker 1: before the mind intoxicate with present objects and the busy
18:28
Speaker 1: dance of things that pass away, a temperate show of
18:33
Speaker 1: objects that endure. This is not a passage that one
18:38
Speaker 1: could imagine the historical Jesus speaking, or still less writing,
18:42
Speaker 1: but the essential ideas chime in with his observation and
18:45
Speaker 1: his attitude for the earth bringeth forth fruit of itself,
18:50
Speaker 1: first the blade, then the ear, and after that the
18:53
Speaker 1: full corn in the ear. Man can count safely on
18:58
Speaker 1: Earth's co operation. From it all, and in it all,
19:03
Speaker 1: Jesus read deep into God's mind and methods. It has
19:07
Speaker 1: often been remarked how apt Jesus was to go away
19:12
Speaker 1: to pray alone in the desert or on the hill
19:14
Speaker 1: side in the night or the early dawn. Probably no
19:18
Speaker 1: new habit induced by the crowded days of his ministry,
19:21
Speaker 1: but an old way of his from youth the full house,
19:25
Speaker 1: perhaps would prompt it, apart from what he found in
19:28
Speaker 1: the open sent Augustine, in a very appealing confession, tells
19:34
Speaker 1: us how his prayers may be disturbed if he catch
19:37
Speaker 1: sight of a lizard snapping up flies on the wall
19:39
Speaker 1: of his room, the bird flying to her nest, the
19:43
Speaker 1: fox creeping to his hole? Did these break into the
19:47
Speaker 1: prayers of Jesus? And with what effect was it in
19:52
Speaker 1: such hours that he learnt his deepest lessons from the
19:55
Speaker 1: birds and the lilies of the field. Why not, as
20:00
Speaker 1: he sat out in the wild under the open sky,
20:03
Speaker 1: did the stars never speak to him? As to the
20:05
Speaker 1: Hebrew Psalmist and Roman Virgil. When I consider thy heavens,
20:11
Speaker 1: the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars
20:14
Speaker 1: which thou hast ordained, What is man that thou art
20:18
Speaker 1: mindful of him? And the son of man that thou
20:22
Speaker 1: visitest him? It is a question men have to meet
20:27
Speaker 1: and face. And if we can trust Matthew's statement, an
20:31
Speaker 1: utterance of his in later years, called out by the
20:34
Speaker 1: sneer of a pharisee, shows how he had made the
20:37
Speaker 1: old poet's answer his own. Out of the mouths of
20:41
Speaker 1: babes and sucklings, thou hast perfected praise. If this were
20:47
Speaker 1: a solitary utterance of his thought upon nature, it might
20:51
Speaker 1: be ranked with one or two pointed citations he made
20:54
Speaker 1: of the letter of the Old Testament. But it is safe,
20:57
Speaker 1: perhaps to take it as one of many indications his
21:00
Speaker 1: communion with God in nature, the wind blowing in the
21:03
Speaker 1: night where it listed. Must we authenticate every verse of
21:07
Speaker 1: the Fourth Gospel before we believe that he listened to
21:10
Speaker 1: it also and caught something at any rate. In later years,
21:15
Speaker 1: when his friends are overdriven and weary, quiet and open
21:19
Speaker 1: air in a desert place are what he prescribes for them,
21:22
Speaker 1: and wishes to share with them, surely a hintervold experience.
21:29
Speaker 1: But now let us turn back to Nazareth, for as
21:33
Speaker 1: the Gospel reminds us, there he grew up. The city
21:38
Speaker 1: teaches the man said the old Greek poets ouranides, And
21:42
Speaker 1: it does as we see, and more than we sometimes realize.
21:48
Speaker 1: Jesus grew up in an Oriental town in the middle
21:51
Speaker 1: of its life, a town with poor houses, bad smells,
21:56
Speaker 1: and worse stories, tragedies of widower and prodigal son, of
22:02
Speaker 1: unjust judge, and grasping publican Yes, and comedies too. We
22:06
Speaker 1: know at once, from general knowledge of Jewish life and custom,
22:10
Speaker 1: and from the recorded fact that he read the scriptures,
22:13
Speaker 1: that he went to school, and we could guess fairly
22:16
Speaker 1: safely that he played with his school fellows, even if
22:19
Speaker 1: he had not told us what the games were at
22:22
Speaker 1: which they played, at weddings and at funerals, as if
22:25
Speaker 1: his life's vocation were endless imitation. Sometimes the children were
22:31
Speaker 1: sulky and would not play. How strange and how delightful
22:36
Speaker 1: that the great Gospel, full of God's word for mankind
22:40
Speaker 1: should have a little corner in it, for such reminiscences
22:43
Speaker 1: of children's games. We cannot suppose that he had access
22:48
Speaker 1: to many books, but he knew the Old Testament well
22:51
Speaker 1: and familiarly, better and more aptly than some people expected.
22:57
Speaker 1: Traces of other books have been found in his teaching,
23:00
Speaker 1: not many, and some of them doubtful. Generally, one would
23:04
Speaker 1: conclude that, apart from the Old Testament, his education was
23:08
Speaker 1: not very bookish. He found it in home and shop,
23:12
Speaker 1: in the desert, on the road, and in the market place.
23:18
Speaker 1: It is interesting to gather from the Gospel what Jesus
23:21
Speaker 1: says of the talk of men, and it is surprising
23:24
Speaker 1: to find how much it is till we realize how
23:27
Speaker 1: very much. In ancient times the city was the education,
23:31
Speaker 1: and the market place the school where some of the
23:33
Speaker 1: most abiding lessons were learned. Is it not so? Still?
23:38
Speaker 1: In the east Here was a boy, however, who watched
23:42
Speaker 1: men and their words more closely than they guessed on
23:46
Speaker 1: whose ears words fell not as old coinages, but as
23:50
Speaker 1: new minting, with the marks of thought still rough and
23:53
Speaker 1: bright on them. Indexes to the speaker proverbs of the market.
23:59
Speaker 1: Every people has of its own. It is naught. It
24:02
Speaker 1: is naught, saith the buyer. But after he has gone
24:05
Speaker 1: his way. Then he boasteth, and the seller has all
24:08
Speaker 1: the variants of caveat enter ready to retort. In antiquity
24:14
Speaker 1: and in the east to day, apart from machine made things,
24:18
Speaker 1: we find the same uncertainty in most transactions as to
24:21
Speaker 1: the value of the article, the same eagerness of both
24:24
Speaker 1: seller and buyer to get at the supposed special knowledge
24:28
Speaker 1: of the other, and the same preliminary skirmish of proposal, protest, offer, refusal,
24:34
Speaker 1: and oath. Jesus stands by the stall, watching some small
24:40
Speaker 1: sail with the bright, earnest eyes which we find so
24:43
Speaker 1: often in the Gospels. The buyer swears on his head
24:48
Speaker 1: that he will not give more than so much. Then
24:51
Speaker 1: by the altar he won't get the thing. By the
24:54
Speaker 1: earth it isn't worth it. By the heaven, the seller
24:58
Speaker 1: gave that for it. So the battle rages, and at
25:03
Speaker 1: last the bargain is struck. The buyer raises his price,
25:07
Speaker 1: the celler takes less than he gave for the thing.
25:10
Speaker 1: Neither has believed the other, but each, as the keen
25:13
Speaker 1: eyes of the onlooker see, feels he has overreached the other.
25:17
Speaker 1: Heaven has been invoked, And what is heaven? As the
25:21
Speaker 1: words fell on the listener's ears. He saw the throne
25:24
Speaker 1: of God, and on it one before whose face Heaven
25:27
Speaker 1: itself and earth will flee away and be brought back
25:30
Speaker 1: again for judgment and by Heaven and by him who
25:35
Speaker 1: sits on the throne. Men will swear falsely for an
25:38
Speaker 1: anna or two. How can they? It is because nothings
25:42
Speaker 1: grow something. The words make a mist about the thing.
25:46
Speaker 1: In later days, Jesus told his followers not to swear
25:49
Speaker 1: at all, to stick to yes and no. Then a
25:54
Speaker 1: leader in the religious world passes, and the loiterers have
25:57
Speaker 1: a new interest for the moment. Rabbi, Rabbi, they say,
26:02
Speaker 1: And the great Man moves onward, obviously pleased with the
26:05
Speaker 1: greeting in the market place. Soon as he is out
26:09
Speaker 1: of hearing it is no longer Rabbi. He is called.
26:13
Speaker 1: Talk turns to another tune. How little the fine word meant,
26:18
Speaker 1: how lightly the title was given. Worse still, the title
26:22
Speaker 1: will stand between a man and the facts of life.
26:27
Speaker 1: Some will use it to deceive him. Others impressed by it,
26:31
Speaker 1: are silent in his presence. One way and another. The
26:35
Speaker 1: facts are kept from him, seeing he sees not, and
26:40
Speaker 1: he comes to live in an unreal world. How many
26:45
Speaker 1: men to day will say what they really think before
26:48
Speaker 1: a man in clerical dress or a dignitary, however trivial
26:53
Speaker 1: be not. He called rabbi was the council Jesus gave
26:57
Speaker 1: to his followers, And he would accept neither rabbi, nor
27:00
Speaker 1: good Master, nor any other title till he saw how
27:05
Speaker 1: much it meant master. They said, we know that thou
27:10
Speaker 1: art true and teachest the way of God in truth.
27:14
Speaker 1: Neither carest thou for any man, for thou regardest not
27:17
Speaker 1: the person of men. But as the evangelist continues, Jesus
27:22
Speaker 1: perceived their wickedness. He had heard such things before, and
27:26
Speaker 1: was not trapped Hosanna in the highest Strange to think
27:32
Speaker 1: of the quiet figure riding in the midst of the
27:34
Speaker 1: excited crowd, open eyed and undeceived in his hour of triumph,
27:40
Speaker 1: as little perturbed too, when his name is cast out
27:43
Speaker 1: as evil. How little men's praise and their blame matter
27:48
Speaker 1: when your eyes are fixed on God, when you have
27:51
Speaker 1: him and his facts to be your inspiration. On the
27:56
Speaker 1: other hand, when you have not contact with God, How
27:59
Speaker 1: much men's done talk clounts, and how easy it is
28:02
Speaker 1: to lose all sense of fact. By and by the
28:06
Speaker 1: talk veers round to what Pilot had done to the Galileans.
28:11
Speaker 1: If the dates fit, or if for the moment we
28:14
Speaker 1: can make them fit or anticipate once for all, and
28:18
Speaker 1: be done with the bizarre talk, which never stopped. Pilot
28:21
Speaker 1: had killed the Galileans when they went up to Jerusalem. Yes,
28:25
Speaker 1: mingled their own blood, you might say, with the blood
28:28
Speaker 1: of their sacrifices. What would he do next? There was
28:33
Speaker 1: no telling what was needed. Some time it was bound
28:38
Speaker 1: to come, and then the voice sank a Thudus or
28:42
Speaker 1: a Judas again. It would not be surprising. There were
28:47
Speaker 1: no newspapers, no proud and reliable sources of news, such
28:51
Speaker 1: as we boast to have from our governments and millionaires.
28:54
Speaker 1: All was rumor, bizarre talk, Lo there and lo there.
29:01
Speaker 1: Prohibitis sirmones idio que pleuris, said Tacitus of Rome. Rumors
29:07
Speaker 1: were forbidden, so there were more of them. The Messiah
29:11
Speaker 1: must come some time, said one man, who might be
29:14
Speaker 1: a friend of the Zealots. In any case, reflected another,
29:18
Speaker 1: those Galileads had probably angered heaven and got their deserts ill.
29:24
Speaker 1: Luck like that could hardly come by accident. Think of
29:26
Speaker 1: the tower that Feltziloham. Anybody could see that there was
29:30
Speaker 1: a judgment in it. Might it not be said that
29:33
Speaker 1: God had discredited John the Baptist. Now his head was
29:36
Speaker 1: taken off, So men speculated. Jesus saw through all this
29:42
Speaker 1: and was radiantly clear about it. So they chatted, and
29:48
Speaker 1: he heard. Then the talk took another turn, and tales
29:53
Speaker 1: were told. Bad eyes flashed and lips smacked as one
29:58
Speaker 1: story teller eclipsed the other in the familiar vain. The
30:02
Speaker 1: Arabian Knights are tales of the crowd, it is said,
30:05
Speaker 1: rather than literature in their origin, and will give clues
30:09
Speaker 1: enough to what might be told. Jesus heard, and he
30:14
Speaker 1: saw what it meant, And afterwards he told his friends.
30:19
Speaker 1: From within, out of the heart of men, precede evil thoughts, adulteries, faunications, murders, foolishness.
30:28
Speaker 1: All these evil things come from within and defile the man.
30:35
Speaker 1: The evil thought takes shape to find utterance, and gains
30:39
Speaker 1: thereby a new vitality, a new power for evil, and
30:43
Speaker 1: may haunt both speaker and listener forever with its defiling memory.
30:50
Speaker 1: By and by he intervened and spoke himself. Everyone was
30:54
Speaker 1: shocked and said blasphemy. They were not used to think
30:59
Speaker 1: of God as he did, and it seemed improper. Then
31:04
Speaker 1: the whole question of human speech rises for him. What
31:07
Speaker 1: did they mean by their words? What could their minds
31:11
Speaker 1: be like God dragged in and flung about like a
31:15
Speaker 1: counter at a game of barter. But if you speak
31:19
Speaker 1: real meaning about God, it is blasphemy. Rabbi, Rabbi to
31:23
Speaker 1: the great man's face. He turned his back, and his
31:27
Speaker 1: name is smirched for ever by a witty improvisation. Why
31:32
Speaker 1: why should men do such things? The magic in the
31:35
Speaker 1: idle tale ten minutes, and the memory is stained forever
31:40
Speaker 1: with what not one of them would forget, however you
31:43
Speaker 1: might wish to try to forget. The words are loose
31:47
Speaker 1: and idle, careless, flung out, without purpose but to pass
31:51
Speaker 1: the moment, And they live forever and work mischief. How
31:57
Speaker 1: can they be so light and yet have such power?
32:03
Speaker 1: Later on he told his friends what he had seen
32:06
Speaker 1: in this matter of words. They come from within, and
32:09
Speaker 1: the speaker's whole personality, false or true, is behind what
32:14
Speaker 1: he says, the good or bad treasure of his heart.
32:18
Speaker 1: There are no grapes growing on the bramble bush. No
32:22
Speaker 1: wonder that of every idle word men shall give account
32:26
Speaker 1: of on the day of judgment. The idle word, the
32:30
Speaker 1: word unstudied, comes straight from the inmost man, the spontaneous
32:35
Speaker 1: overflow from the spirit within, natural and inevitable proof of
32:39
Speaker 1: his quality. And they react with the life that brought
32:44
Speaker 1: them forth. So he grows up in a real world
32:52
Speaker 1: and among real people. He goes to school with the
32:55
Speaker 1: boys of his own age, and lives at home with
32:59
Speaker 1: his mother and others and sisters. He reads the Old
33:03
Speaker 1: Testament and forms a habit of going to the synagogue.
33:08
Speaker 1: All points to a home where religion was real. The
33:13
Speaker 1: first word he learned to say was probably abba, and
33:17
Speaker 1: it struck the key note of his thoughts. But he
33:21
Speaker 1: knew the world without as well, turned on to it early,
33:26
Speaker 1: the keen eyes that saw all, and he recognized what
33:30
Speaker 1: he saw, knowledge of men, but without cynicism, a loving heart. Still,
33:37
Speaker 1: in spite of his freedom from allusions, these were among
33:41
Speaker 1: the gifts that his environment gave him or failed to
33:45
Speaker 1: take away from him. End of Chapter two