[Footnote 5: Considerable traces of this tower are still seen in the northern part of the haram.]
[Footnote 6: Mishnah, Berakoth, ix. 5; Talm. of Babyl., Jebamoth, 6 b; Mark xi. 16.]
It was in the temple that Jesus passed his days, whilst he remained at Jerusalem. The period of the feasts brought an extraordinary concourse of people into the city. Associated in parties of ten to twenty persons, the pilgrims invaded everywhere, and lived in that disordered state in which Orientals delight.[1] Jesus was lost in the crowd, and his poor Galileans grouped around him were of small account. He probably felt that he was in a hostile world which would receive him only with disdain. Everything he saw set him against it. The temple, like much-frequented places of devotion in general, offered a not very edifying spectacle. The accessories of worship entailed a number of repulsive details, especially of mercantile operations, in consequence of which real shops were established within the sacred enclosure. There were sold beasts for the sacrifices; there were tables for the exchange of money; at times it seemed like a bazaar. The inferior officers of the temple fulfilled their functions doubtless with the irreligious vulgarity of the sacristans of all ages. This profane and heedless air in the handling of holy things wounded the religious sentiment of Jesus, which was at times carried even to a scrupulous excess.[2] He said that they had made the house of prayer into a den of thieves. One day, it is even said, that, carried away by his anger, he scourged the vendors with a "scourge of small cords," and overturned their tables.[3] In general, he had little love for the temple. The worship which he had conceived for his Father had nothing in common with scenes of butchery. All these old Jewish institutions displeased him, and he suffered in being obliged to conform to them. Except among the Judaizing Christians, neither the temple nor its site inspired pious sentiments. The true disciples of the new faith held this ancient sanctuary in aversion. Constantine and the first Christian emperors left the pagan construction of Adrian existing there,[4] and only the enemies of Christianity, such as Julian, remembered the temple.[5] When Omar entered into Jerusalem, he found the site designedly polluted in hatred of the Jews.[6] It was Islamism, that is to say, a sort of resurrection of Judaism in its exclusively Semitic form, which restored its glory. The place has always been anti-Christian.
[Footnote 1: Jos., B.J., II. xiv. 3, VI. ix. 3. Comp. Ps. cxxxiii.
(Vulg. cxxxii.)]
[Footnote 2: Mark xi. 16.]
[Footnote 3: Matt. xxi. 12, and following; Mark xi. 15, and following;
Luke xix. 45, and following; John ii. 14, and following.]
[Footnote 4: Itin. a Burdig. Hierus., p. 152 (edit. Schott); S.
Jerome, in Is. i. 8, and in Matt. xxiv. 15.]
[Footnote 5: Ammianus Marcellinus, xxiii. 1.]
[Footnote 6: Eutychius, Ann., II. 286, and following (Oxford 1659).]
The pride of the Jews completed the discontent of Jesus, and rendered his stay in Jerusalem painful. In the degree that the great ideas of Israel ripened, the priesthood lost its power. The institution of synagogues had given to the interpreter of the Law, to the doctor, a great superiority over the priest. There were no priests except at Jerusalem, and even there, reduced to functions entirely ritual, almost, like our parish priests, excluded from preaching, they were surpassed by the orator of the synagogue, the casuist, and the sofer or scribe, although the latter was only a layman. The celebrated men of the Talmud were not priests; they were learned men according to the ideas of the time. The high priesthood of Jerusalem held, it is true, a very elevated rank in the nation; but it was by no means at the head of the religious movement. The sovereign pontiff, whose dignity had already been degraded by Herod,[1] became more and more a Roman functionary,[2] who was frequently removed in order to divide the profits of the office. Opposed to the Pharisees, who were very warm lay zealots, the priests were almost all Sadducees, that is to say, members of that unbelieving aristocracy which had been formed around the temple, and which lived by the altar, while they saw the vanity of it.[3] The sacerdotal caste was separated to such a degree from the national sentiment and from the great religious movement which dragged the people along, that the name of "Sadducee" (sadoki), which at first simply designated a member of the sacerdotal family of Sadok, had become synonymous with "Materialist" and with "Epicurean."