CHAPTER VII

LAUGHTER

A MAN is known by the enemies he makes. In this respect Jesus was particularly fortunate. We have seen him as the friend of the toiling masses, identifying his own fortunes with theirs. The shadows in the picture serve by their contrast to bring out still more strongly this alignment. The opposers of The Carpenter were of the class who have opposed and oppressed the toiling masses since history began. These opposers centered at Jerusalem.

Even before the Romans came, Jerusalem had been growing rich at the expense of her outlying provinces. The supplanting of an agricultural mode of life by one increasingly commercial had played into the hands of the trader class. These gravitated to the capital city, and there had coalesced into a close-knit aristocracy of wealth and privilege. Isaiah complains of the swallowing up of the old yeoman families of the country by rich men. The coming of foreign rule was helping this process, because the fiscal burdens, which were now doubled on the backs of the people, told with special fatality on the lower classes. Poll taxes, land taxes, export taxes, property taxes, trade taxes, Temple taxes, were reducing the once sturdy agrarian class to mortgage their lands. The rich men in

Jerusalem had become nobles: that is, they had allied themselves with the governmental and ecclesiastical machinery, in order to add to their revenues the halo of sanctity and power. This official position gave them opportunities for acquiring the estates which were compelled to be mortgaged in order to pay the taxes. A moneyed aristocracy had thus grown up in Jerusalem, and intrenched itself. This set members of the Sadducee party, for the most part were "satisfied with the leaven of Herod." That is, they were content with any form of government which left their revenues intact. When the Romans came, therefore, these readily acquiesced in the presence of the invader. Their political principle was "peace and quietness." To preserve the status quo was their creed: "The powers that be are ordained of God." As their revenues were derived in large part from the country districts, it was to their interest that those districts be undisturbed. When therefore word came up to them in their Jerusalem palaces that a Carpenter was moving to and fro among the Galilean villages, stirring up the people, they were touched in their pocket nerve. As is ever the case when that particular nerve is struck, a quick reaction was obtained. They straightway "held a council against him."

Another source of opposition to Jesus was, as has been hinted, the Herodian dynasty. They had formerly been in possession of the governmental machinery of Palestine. But, because of the incurable restlessness of the people, they had been getting grayheaded in maintaining their hold. When therefore the Romans came and offered to extend their protectorate here also, the Herods accepted

"The System"; they became a willing member of the empire. The compact was that the Herods were to keep Palestine in subjection to the Romans, and the Romans in turn would bring to the Herods in time of revolt the military might of the empire. The bargain had been closed by Mark Antony acting for the Romans, and by Herod the Great. Until then, under a local despotism, there had been some show of constitutional government in Palestine the consciousness that though Herod was on the throne, the ultimate source of his authority was the people, the whole congregation and assembly of the faithful. But with Herod's appointment by Mark Antony to be Rome's vassal king, the source of governmental authority shifted from the people to the Roman power. Even the pretence of constitutional forms was now abandoned. Herod ruled by force. His soldiers in the castle commanded the courts and colonnades of the Temple. He erected grim fortresses throughout the land, to keep the populace overawed. He forbade public meetings. He ramified through Palestine a system of spies and informers. Sometimes he himself skulked in disguise among the people. He used his soldiery to torture suspects. Life was forfeited even for talking together in the street.

Herod's abjection before his overlords on the Tiber was complete. Mark Antony, in the lap of Cleopatra and needing money for those dalliances, sent to Judea a demand for gold. Herod complied, resorting to proscription in order to raise the revenue demanded. Putting people to death without ruth, he even searched their coffins for jewels or money. Thus he raised a large sum

from a land already impoverished by tribute, and sent it to his Roman liege lords. He changed the name of Samaria to "Sebaste," the Greek translation of Augustus. In building Cæsarea at great expense upon the sea-coast, he halted not in his cringing slavishness until he had erected a temple there, dedicated to the worship of "Cæsar and Rome." He sent his sons to be educated in the imperial palace in Rome. His aping of Roman ways went to the extent of erecting an amphitheatre in Jerusalem, and the exhibition there every five years of gladiatorial combats in honour of Augustus. With characteristic effrontery he erected over the gate of the Temple itself a golden eagle, in token that even the souls of the people were now in bondage to the Roman state. At which unendurable stigma, the patriot heart rebelled. A seething mob gathered, and tore the eagle from its perch. In revenge Herod burned forty people alive, and executed others. This policy of fawning submission to Rome was kept up by him to the end, and by his sons after him.

The Romanizing of the land went on apace. Antony, on his marriage to Cleopatra, gave her as a wedding present the valuable plantation of palm trees at Jericho. The Lake of Galilee was becoming a fashionable wateringplace for wealthy Romans. Their villas bordered its shores. The fishermen disciples were reduced to peddle their fish at the rear gates of these villas, where haughty Roman matrons lorded it over the subjugated and once independent Galilean natives. The herd of swine along. side the Lake, and against which Jesus incited the lunatic so that a panic was caused which drove them down the steep bank and into the water, were being fattened

for this colony of foreigners. Roman gourmands werepartial to smoked pig's head and fricassee of sow's udder.

The attitude of The Carpenter toward the Herod family, this crafty ally of Rome, was one of uniform hostility. His clash with the Romans appears thus only indirectly, for the Herods were Rome's deputies in Palestine, and took care of such small matters as a penniless carpenter travelling through the rural districts and contenting himself with a teaching function. Rome did not set her ponderous crusher machinery at work for details as small as that. She held her legions in reserve for the great insurrections, trusting to the native oligarchy in each country to take care of minor disturbances: "If we let him thus alone all men will believe on him, and the Romans shall come and take away both our place and nation." The direct collision, therefore, was in large part between Jesus and the local tyranny. There is not a touch of his life with the Herodian dynasty which is not one of open antagonism and loathing. The contempt with which his "Go tell that fox" was bitten out from between his teeth, is heightened by the meaning in the original, "jackal," the jackals being the natural scavengers of oriental cities. The contrast at this point with Paul is illuminating. Paul, preaching as he did subjection to the powers that be, was on good terms with Rome, and therefore was on good terms also with the Herods. Jesus, a stirrer-up instead of a quieter-down of the people, was on bad terms with Rome, and therefore was uniformly on bad terms with the Herods.

And the Herods repaid his hostility in kind. They