[Footnote 1: Ps. lxxxiv. (Vulg. lxxxiii.) 11.]
[Footnote 2: Matt. xxvi. 73; Mark xiv. 70; Acts ii. 7; Talm. of
Bab., Erubin, 53 a, and following; Bereschith Rabba, 26 c.]
[Footnote 3: Passage from the treatise Erubin, loc. cit.]
[Footnote 4: Erubin, loc. cit., 53 b.]
[Footnote 5: John vii. 52.]
[Footnote 6: Isa. ix. 1, 2; Matt. iv. 13, and following.]
[Footnote 7: John i. 46.]
The parched appearance of Nature in the neighborhood of Jerusalem must have added to the dislike Jesus had for the place. The valleys are without water; the soil arid and stony. Looking into the valley of the Dead Sea, the view is somewhat striking; elsewhere it is monotonous. The hill of Mizpeh, around which cluster the most ancient historical remembrances of Israel, alone relieves the eye. The city presented, at the time of Jesus, nearly the same form that it does now. It had scarcely any ancient monuments, for, until the time of the Asmoneans, the Jews had remained strangers to all the arts. John Hyrcanus had begun to embellish it, and Herod the Great had made it one of the most magnificent cities of the East. The Herodian constructions, by their grand character, perfection of execution, and beauty of material, may dispute superiority with the most finished works of antiquity.[1] A great number of superb tombs, of original taste, were raised at the same time in the neighborhood of Jerusalem.[2] The style of these monuments was Grecian, but appropriate to the customs of the Jews, and considerably modified in accordance with their principles. The ornamental sculptures of the human figure which the Herods had sanctioned, to the great discontent of the purists, were banished, and replaced by floral decorations. The taste of the ancient inhabitants of Phoenicia and Palestine for monoliths in solid stone seemed to be revived in these singular tombs cut in the rock, and in which Grecian orders are so strangely applied to an architecture of troglodytes. Jesus, who regarded works of art as a pompous display of vanity, viewed these monuments with displeasure.[3] His absolute spiritualism, and his settled conviction that the form of the old world was about to pass away, left him no taste except for things of the heart.
[Footnote 1: Jos., Ant., XV. viii.-xi.; B.J., V. v. 6; Mark xiii. 1, 2.]
[Footnote 2: Tombs, namely, of the Judges, Kings, Absalom, Zechariah, Jehoshaphat, and of St. James. Compare the description of the tomb of the Maccabees at Modin (1 Macc. xiii. 27, and following).]