In any case, the basis of the intellectual development of Jesus was furnished by the sacred writings of his people, of which the discourses preserved to us in the Gospels attest his zealous and profound study. His Messianic ideas seem to have been formed chiefly on Isaiah and Daniel: spiritual religiousness and elevation above the prejudices of Jewish nationality were impressively shadowed forth in the prophetic writings generally, together with the Psalms.
Next among the influences affecting mental cultivation in the native country of Jesus, must be reckoned the three sects under which the spiritual life of his fellow-countrymen may be classified. Among these, the Pharisees, whom Jesus at a later period so strenuously combated, can apparently have had only a negative influence over him; yet along with their fondness for tradition and legal pedantry, their sanctimoniousness and hypocrisy, by which Jesus was repelled from them, we must remember their belief in angels and in immortality, and their constant admission of a progressive development of the Jewish religion after Moses, which were so many points of union between them and [[204]]Jesus. Still as these tenets were only peculiar to the Pharisees in contradistinction to the Sadducees, and, for the rest, were common to all orthodox Jews, we abide by the opinion that the influence of the Pharisaic sect on the development of Jesus was essentially negative.
In the discourses of Jesus Sadduceeism is less controverted, nay, he agrees with it in rejecting the Pharisaic traditions and hypocrisy; hence a few of the learned have wished to find him a school in this sect.[61] But the merely negative agreement against the errors of the Pharisees,—an agreement which, moreover, proceeded from quite another principle in Jesus than in the Sadducees,—is more than counterbalanced by the contrast which their religious indifference, their unbelief in immortality and in spiritual existences, formed with the disposition of Jesus, and his manner of viewing the world. That the controversy with the Sadducees is not prominent in the Gospels, may be very simply explained by the fact that their sect had very slight influence on the circle with which Jesus was immediately connected, the adherents of Sadduceeism belonging to the higher ranks alone.[62]
Concerning one only of the then existing Jewish sects can the question seriously arise, whether we ought not to ascribe to it a positive influence on the development and appearance of Jesus—the sect, namely, of the Essenes.[63] In the last century the derivation of Christianity from Essenism was very much in vogue; not only English deists, and among the Germans, Bahrdt and Venturini, but even theologians, such as Stäudlin, embraced the idea.[64] In the days of freemasonry and secret orders, there was a disposition to transfer their character to primitive Christianity. The concealment of an Essene lodge appeared especially adapted to explain the sudden disappearance of Jesus after the brilliant scenes of his infancy and boyhood, and again after his restoration to life. Besides the forerunner John, the two men on the Mount of Transfiguration, and the angels clothed in white at the grave, and on the Mount of Ascension, were regarded as members of the Essene brotherhood, and many cures of Jesus and the Apostles were referred to the medical traditions of the Essenes. Apart, however, from these fancies of a bygone age, there are really some essential characteristics which seem to speak in favour of an intimate relation between Essenism and Christianity. The most conspicuous as such are the prohibition of oaths, and the community of goods: with the former was connected fidelity, peaceableness, obedience to every constituted authority; with the latter, contempt of riches, and the custom of travelling without provisions. These and other features, such as the sacred meal partaken in common, the rejection of sanguinary sacrifices and of slavery, constitute so strong a resemblance between Essenism and Christianity, that even so early a writer as Eusebius mistook the Therapeutæ, a sect allied to the Essenes, for Christians.[65] But there are very essential dissimilarities which must not be overlooked. Leaving out of consideration the contempt of marriage, ὑπεροψία γάμου, since Josephus ascribes it to a part only of the Essenes; the asceticism, the punctilious observance of the Sabbath, the purifications, and other superstitious usages of this sect, their retention of the names of the angels, the mystery which they affected, and their contracted, exclusive devotion [[205]]to their order, are so foreign, nay so directly opposed to the spirit of Jesus, that, especially as the Essenes are nowhere mentioned in the New Testament, the aid which this sect also contributed to the development of Jesus, must be limited to the uncertain influence which might be exercised over him by occasional intercourse with Essenes.[66]
Did other elements than such as were merely Jewish, or at least confined to Palestine, operate upon Jesus? Of the heathens settled in Galilee of the Gentiles, Γαλιλαία τῶν ἐθνῶν, there was hardly much to be learned beyond patience under frequent intercourse with them. On the other hand, at the feasts in Jerusalem, not only foreign Jews, some of whom, as for example the Alexandrian and Cyrenian Jews, had synagogues there ([Acts vi. 9]), but also devout heathens were to be met with ([John xii. 20]); and that intercourse with these had some influence in extending the intellectual horizon of Jesus, and spiritualizing his opinions, has, as we have already intimated, all historical probability.[67]
But why do we, in the absence of certain information, laboriously seek after uncertain traces of an influence which cotemporary means of development may have exercised on Jesus? and yet more, why, on the other side, are these labours so anxiously repudiated? Whatever amount of intellectual material may be collected, the spark by which genius kindles it, and fuses its various elements into a consistent whole, is neither easier to explain nor reduced in value. Thus it is with Jesus. Allow him to have exhausted the means of development which his age afforded: a comprehensive faculty of reception is with great men ever the reverse side of their powerful originality; allow him to have owed far more to Essenism and Alexandrianism, and whatever other schools and tendencies existed, than we, in our uncertainty, are in a condition to prove:—still, for the reformation of a world these elements were all too little; the leaven necessary for this he must obtain from the depth of his own mind.[68]
But we have not yet spoken of an appearance to which our Gospels assign a most important influence in developing the activity of Jesus—that of John the Baptist. As his ministry is first noticed in the Gospels in connexion with the baptism and public appearance of Jesus, our inquiry concerning him, and his relation to Jesus, must open the second part. [[207]]