THE WOMEN OF THE COMMUNITY.

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Since this circle of more intimate disciples and constant attendants thus already formed with their Lord and Master a small independent society, or rather Community,' it is not surprising that the most necessary business and duties of the Community were soon more particularly divided amongst them and precisely determined. The chief quarters of the society, if one may so say, were fixed at Capernaum, where probably the house of Jesus, and that of Peter also, always stood open to its members. If the society rose in order to journey to another place and to stay there for a time, messengers were despatched from it to arrange beforehand for lodgings. The expenses of the sustenance of the Community were borne partly by the more wealthy members, and came partly from the voluntary gifts of such as took a deeper interest in its work. Judas Iscariot was charged with the care and constant expenditure of the society's funds. When feminine care and help was necessary, there were certain women who gladly served the society, some of them relatives of its members, others less closely connected with it, everything being done without restraint, and only as the higher love to a common word and work demanded.1

3

natural force of the name remains the most probable. The M'pharsho John xiv. 22 has Judas Thomas, as if this Judas were identical with Thomas: but John always calls the latter simply Thomas. It is true that it is in the East an ancient custom to call Thomas Judas (comp. Euseb. Ecc. Hist. i. 13, 11, Cureton on the M'pharsho, pp. L. sq., and in his Ancient Syriac Documents, pp. 33 sq.); and in reality Thomas was originally in signification only a surname; see ante, p. 303. However, the words John xiv. 22 cannot be explained with any reference to that

custom.

A Kov according to customary Greek usage; but how different from this of Christ were the subsequent cœnobia!

2 As Mark xiv. 13, Luke ix. 52. 3 According to John xii. 6, xiii. 29. In the first passage Báoτacev is undoubtedly meant to designate him as the customary bearer and guardian of the purse, particularly as it cannot be supposed that by this office he had very much

to carry.

4 According to Mark x. 35, xv. 40, 41, xvi. 9, the specially important statement Luke viii. 2, 3, and some other indications. To enumerate them here as far as we can recognise them, they were (1) Mary of Magdala (see ante, p. 223), who is most frequently mentioned, and was undoubtedly the most zealous of them all;

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(2) Salome, the mother of the sons of Zebedee, see p. 181; (3) Johanna, wife of Chuza, Herod's governor, Luke viii. 3, probably therefore the widow of a governor who had been appointed by Antipas over the smaller districts of his territory, and undoubtedly the same woman that is called Johanna simply Luke xxiv. 10; (4) Susanna, Luke viii. 3, otherwise unknown; (5) Mary the mother of James the Less, meaning the younger according to the Hebrew idiom, of whom we have already spoken, p. 304; (6) the mother of Jose: according to Mark xv. 40, comp. with ver. 47 (the best reading), Matt, xxvii. 56, she was without doubt quite another person than the Mary just mentioned, though it is true she might be the same as Johanna or Susanna; (7) Mary the mother of Clopas, John xix. 25, accordingly certainly the mother of that disciple of the wider circle who is called Cleopas Luke xxiv. 18, and whose name is shortened from Cleopater, but often in recent times wholly without reason and erroneously confounded with the genuine Hebrew name Alphæus. So many women of this kind are known to us by name; quite different from these, therefore, were Mary and Martha the sisters of Lazarus, as to whom see below; and nothing is more baseless and perverse than to confound this Mary with Mary Magdalena, as unfortunately often happened subsequently.

Amongst them were some who were evidently in good circumstances, who gladly offered their entire worldly wealth for the higher cause of Christ. But neither the brothers of Jesus nor his mother stood as yet in any even distant connection with the Community, although they did not remain wholly indifferent as to his doings and fortunes.' The Twelve themselves, however, had already forsaken all worldly things for the sake of the one object which Jesus had explained to them as that of the kingdom of God itself. Of that they could boast; 2 and that Community, which came before the world in the first Apostolic age, keeping its celestial purpose alone in view and subordinating to it all earthly possessions, was already on the earth in fact as regards its outline and first formation.

III. UNTIL THE LAST JOURNEY TO JERUSALEM.

Yet these were only the external outlines of this Community, as it gradually took more definite shape. In it Christ was now about to lay a second more subtle and at the same time firmer foundation for the work of his life upon the broader and more general foundation which he had previously made. The labour for this purpose, though in point of area perhaps more limited, must become as regards the material itself all the more delicate and careful. His object was to produce a body in which his own spirit could continue its work on earth even if he himself should be taken from it. And this period of the most intense prosecution of his labour lasted, as we shall see below, only some year and a half. It is true the tooth of the world could gnaw even this first tender germ of a true Community of the perfected true religion as soon as it began to take somewhat firmer form. Everything that enters the world as a visible institution and external body, however necessary it may be, and at first kindled and formed by the purest spirit from on high, must immediately submit to the limitations of space, number, and other conditions of all kinds. Twelve-not more and not fewer-were to constitute this inner circle. Are they all, as they are chosen, already safe, in view of

Anything more definite than this cannot with certainty be said, particularly as regards his mother, at all events so far as the period before us is concerned, if we duly weigh such clear accounts as Mark iii. 21 sq. with the analogous ones, as well as other points to be considered below. It is when he is on the cross that

we first see her by his side, according to John xix. 25, 26, Nothing is more baseless, according to the New Testament documents, than Mariolatry.

2 According to Mark x. 28, Matt. xix. 27, Luke xviii. 28, from which we see plainly how much importance was then all along attached to that fact.

HIS REDOUBLED EXERTIONS.

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all the future developments and trials of the Community? And money, subordinate matter as it is in this case, cannot be wholly avoided: are they all constantly secure against its fresh attractions and many other new allurements? But we must now turn our attention to what is incomparably more important, and see particularly how Jesus himself actually laid this far more delicate higher foundation of his life-work, which was much more difficult to lay than the first.

It hardly requires to be expressly said lastly in this connection, that though Jesus had now to direct his chief attention to the training of the Twelve, he did not on that account cease to labour also for the people generally, or omit anything that he could do in the way of teaching and healing amongst a wider circle. Towards the masses of the people he remained what he had always been; only he was compelled now to redouble his own labours that he might pursue the same object, that had from the beginning been before him, by two different kinds of daily work at once. Indeed, even in order to properly teach the Twelve how they had to labour amongst the people, and thereby to train them to become fully his true disciples and continuators of his work, he could not during any part of this period relax his labours for the masses of the people, but must, where it was possible and appropriate, prosecute them before the eyes of the Twelve themselves; and he could not slacken his efforts still further to extend, and ever afresh strengthen, the first foundation, upon which he was now seeking to lay a second. Thus the one of the two objects to which he now devoted his life was interwoven with the other, and whatever was done for the one was not unproductive for the other. But not to attract the attention of the world, naturally seemed to him more necessary now than even in the previous period.

1. His higher instruction regarding the kingdom of God and his earthly Community.

If we now take a general view of everything that Christ did for his present main object in the course of this period of some year and a half, as far as the most reliable accounts now in our possession enable us to do this, we must be astonished not only at what he accomplished, but also at the method and the successive steps by which he accomplished it. It is quite true that we are now hardly in a position to distinguish particularly the numerous discourses, the attendant unslacking abundance

of deeds, and the other events in his career, so as to be able to describe them all in the precise order of their occurrence; although we shall see that we are really not left altogether without indications as to the general chronological course of this period of the highest efforts of Christ's whole life. And the nature of the case itself shows that the conduct of Jesus towards the Twelve, as well as what he otherwise did or experienced during this period, was unfolded in its great general outlines as Mark first sought to describe it connectedly.

As soon as Jesus saw himself surrounded by the Twelve, it must have been his first business to impart to them that more definite and higher instruction concerning both the inward and the outward aspect of the kingdom of God, which was alone able to accustom them gradually to the proper mode of labouring for that kingdom. There must have been a time when this higher instruction to such an intimate circle became his most important daily work; and when he, though in the midst of his other labours, still by preference and necessity seized every opportunity for prosecuting this; and that time was this occasion of his closer intimacy with the Twelve, before he could venture to permit them to take a more independent part in his own life-work.

The first and most necessary thing was, therefore, once more to give fuller instruction regarding the nature and the duties of the Community of the perfect religion; it was his fixed purpose to found this Community as soon as he chose the Twelve, and it was already visibly and plainly actually present the moment they followed him as their lord and king who would lead them to God. It was in this Community that the most abundant seed for the kingdom of God itself could first grow up and promise fruit. The two chief subjects of this instruction must therefore be--the nature and the requirements of the perfected true religion itself, and particularly in its relation to the religion which was then taught in Israel and based upon single portions of the sacred Scriptures, and then the nature of the proper means of grace or virtue, in order to be able to maintain the elevation of life demanded by that religion; and the instruction on these two chief matters must be suited for such disciples as had already passed beyond the lower stage of knowledge, and had already resolved to labour in a more special way with the Messiah at the great work of the kingdom of God itself. If Jesus, therefore, as we have seen,' took the Twelve when he had chosen them with him up Ante, p. 297.

THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT.'

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309

to the mountain" to which he was till then accustomed to retire alone rather, it is nothing but probable that he then devoted himself at once also to their instruction in such fundamental truths of the new Community, and lingered for some time in this occupation. In so far, therefore, the Sermon on the Mount,' which appears in the Gospel literature as of such special importance, has a sound historical meaning; and undoubtedly, although revived and afresh arranged after a more artistic manner, contains a multitude of such truths as were then first heard, and could never subsequently be forgotten by mankind. This 'sermon' really presents only those two chief matters, but it is introduced in the form of a genuine speech of salutation, and closes with a brief significant glance into the future as regards its temptations and safeguards. According to all indications Mark himself gave the discourse in this place, although abbreviated after his manner, only that just at this point of his Gospel that considerable omission was made by his last editor which we cannot now restore.' And if originally it stood quite at the beginning of Matthew's Collected Sayings, we can the more readily understand how the last author of the present first Gospel could place it so early that it appears to be the first lengthy discourse which Christ ever spoke: a supposition, however, which was possibly only because it became by degrees customary to regard this entire period, in which certainly Christ's activity with the choice of the Twelve reached its climax, almost as the sole period of his active public life. As the memory of the first of the three periods of his whole public labours, which, as we have seen, was first once more plainly distinguished from the others by John, is almost wholly obscured in the Gospel of Mark, so likewise the second of them began to be obscured and confounded with the third as the great chief period. This is shown very plainly by the present first Gospel, while Luke, again, keeps much freer from this confusion. On that account this discourse also, which at all events, from some of its chief utterances, can have been intended only for the more intimate circle of disciples, or (to speak more definitely) only for those who were already regarded as members of the new Community, appears in the present Gospel of Matthew, and likewise in Luke, as having been de

2

That is, notwithstanding the evident brevity with which he describes these earlier times as he follows his various

sources.

According to Matt. vii. 28, 29; yet at the beginning, v. 2, 3, at all events the disciples only are named as the