declare that the Messiah is to come from Galilee;1 and they settle at Tiberias, because they believe that He will rise from the waters of the Lake; and at Safed, "the city set on a hill," because they believe that He will there first fix His throne. But there is no ignorance so deep as the ignorance that will not know; no blindness so incurable as the blindness which will not see. And the dogmatism of a narrow and stolid prejudice which believes itself to be theological learning is, of all others, the most ignorant and the most blind. Such was the spirit in which, ignoring the mild justice of Nicodemus, and the marvellous impression made by Jesus even on their own hostile apparitors, the majority of the Sanhedrin broke up, and went each to his own. home. 1 See Isa. ix. 1, 2, and this is asserted in the Zohar. See supra, Vel. I., p. 65. * So I was assured on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. CHAPTER XL. THE WOMAN TAKEN IN ADULTERY. "Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all."-SHAKESPEARE. IN the difficulties which beset the celebrated incident which follows, it is impossible for us to arrive at any certainty as to its true position in the narrative.1 As there must, however, be some à priori probability that its place was assigned with due reference to the order of events, and as there appear to be some obvious though indirect references to it in the discourses which immediately follow, I shall proceed to speak of it here, feeling no shadow of a doubt that the incident really happened, even if the form in which it is preserved to us is by no means indisputably genuine.3 1 John viii. 1—11. In some MSS. it is placed at the end of St. John's Gospel; in some, after Luke xxi., mainly, no doubt, because it fits on well to the verses 37, 38 in that chapter. Hitzig (Ueber Joh. Marc. 205) conjectured, very plausibly, that the fact which it records really belongs to Mark xii., falling in naturally between the conspiracy of the Pharisees and Herodians, and that of the Sadducees to tempt Christ-i.e., between the 17th and 18th verses. In that case its order of sequence would be on the Tuesday in Passion week. On the other hand, if it has no connection with the Feast of Tabernacles, and no tinge of Johannean authorship, why should so many MSS. (including even such important ones as D, F, G) place it here? 2 Ex. gr., John viii. 15, 17, 24, 46. The whole mass of critical evidence may be seen fully treated in At the close of the day recorded in the last chapter, Jesus withdrew to the Mount of Olives. Whether He went to the garden of Gethsemane, and to the house of Lücke's Commentary (third edition), ii. 243–256. We may briefly summarise the grounds of its dubious genuineness by observing that (1) it is not found in some of the best and oldest MSS. (e.g., ~, A, B, C, L); (2) nor in most of the Fathers (e.g., Origen, Cyril, Chrysostom, Theophylact, Tertullian, Cyprian); (3) nor in many ancient versions (e.g., Sahidic, Coptic, and Gothic); (4) in other MSS. it is marked with obeli and asterisks, or a space is left for it, or it is inserted elsewhere; (5) it contains an extraordinary number of various readings (“variant singula fere verba in codicibus plerisque"-Tischendorf); (6) it contains several expressions not elsewhere found in St. John; and (7) it differs widely in some respects-particularly in the constant use of the connecting de-from the style of St. John throughout the rest of the Gospel. Several of these arguments are weakened(i.) by the fact that the diversities of readings may be reduced to three main recensions; (ii.) that the rejection of the passage may have been due to a false dogmatical bias; (iii.) that the silence of some of the Fathers may be accidental, and of others prudential. The arguments in its favour are— 1. It is found in some old and important uncials (D, F, G, H, K, U) and in more than 300 cursive MSS., in some of the Itala, and in the Vulgate. 2. The tendencies which led to its deliberate rejection would have rendered all but impossible its invention or interpolation. 3. It is quoted by Augustine, Ambrose, and Jerome, and treated as genuine in the Apostolic constitutions. St. Jerome's testimony (Adv. Pelag. ii. 6) is particularly important, because he says that in his time it was found "in multis et Graecis et Latinis codicibus"—and it must be remembered that nearly all of these must have been considerably older than any which we now possess. The main facts to be observed are, that though the dogmatic bias against the passage might be sufficient to account for its rejection, it gives us no help in explaining its want of resemblance to the style of St. John. A very simple hypothesis will account for all difficulties. If we suppose that the story of the woman accused before our Lord of many sins-to which Eusebius alludes (H. E. iii. 39) as existing in the Gospel of the Hebrews —is identical with this, we may suppose, without any improbability, either (i.) that St. John (as Alford hesitatingly suggests) may here have adopted a portion of current synoptic tradition, or (ii.) that the story may have been derived originally from Papias, the pupil of St. John, and having found its way into the Gospel of the Hebrews, may have been adopted gradually into some MSS. of St. John's Gospel (see Euseb. ubi supr.). Many recent writers adopt the suggestion of Holtzmann, that it belongs to the "Ur-marcus," or ground document of the Synoptists. Whoever embodied into the Gospels this traditionally-remembered story deserved well of the world. LOVE OF THE COUNTRY. 63 its unknown but friendly owner, or whether-not having where to lay His head-He simply slept, Eastern fashion, on the green turf under those ancient olive-trees, we cannot tell; but it is interesting to trace in Him once more that dislike of crowded cities, that love for the pure, sweet, fresh air, and for the quiet of the lonely hill, which we see in all parts of His career on earth. There was, indeed, in Him nothing of that supercilious sentimentality and morbid egotism which makes men shrink from all contact with their brother-men; nor can they who would be His true servants belong to those merely fantastic philanthropists "Who sigh for wretchedness, yet shun the wretched, Their dainty loves and slothful sympathies." COLERIDGE, Religious Musings. On the contrary, day after day, while His day-time of work continued, we find Him sacrificing all that was dearest and most elevating to His soul, and in spite of heat, and pressure, and conflict, and weariness, calmly pursuing His labours of love amid "the madding crowd's ignoble strife." But in the night-time, when men cannot work, no call of duty required His presence within the walls of Jerusalem; and those who are familiar with the oppressive foulness of ancient cities can best imagine the relief which His spirit must have felt when he could escape from the close streets and thronged bazaars, to cross the ravine, and climb the green slope beyond it, and be alone with His Heavenly Father under the starry night. But when the day dawned His duties lay once more within the city walls, and in that part of the city where, almost alone, we hear of His presence-in the courts of His Father's house. And with the very dawn His enemies contrived a fresh plot against Him, the circumstances of which made their malice even more actually painful than it was intentionally perilous. It is probable that the hilarity and abandonment of the Feast of Tabernacles, which had grown to be a kind of vintage festival, would often degenerate into acts of licence and immorality, and these would find more numerous opportunities in the general disturbance of ordinary life caused by the dwelling of the whole people in their little leafy booths. One such act had been detected during the previous night, and the guilty woman had been handed over to the Scribes1 and Pharisees. Even had the morals of the nation at that time been as clean as in the days when Moses ordained the fearful ordeal of the "water of jealousy "2-even had these rulers and teachers of the nation been elevated as far above their contemporaries in the real, as in the professed, sanctity of their lives-the discovery, and the threatened punishment, of this miserable adulteress could hardly have failed to move every pure and noble mind to a compassion which would have mingled largely with the horror which her sin inspired. They might, indeed, even on those suppositions, have inflicted the established penalty with a sternness as inflexible as that of the Pilgrim Fathers in the early days of Salem or Providence; but the sternness of a severe and pure-hearted judge is not a sternness which precludes all pity; it is a sternness which would not willingly inflict one 1 It is observable that in no other passage of St. John's Gospel (though frequently in the Synoptists) are the Scribes mentioned among the enemies of Christ; but here a few MSS. read of dpxieptis, "the chief priests." 2 See Numb. v. 14-29. |