The Jews were familiar with the institution of Sheluchim, the plenipotentiaries of some higher authority. This was the title by which Christ seems to have marked out the position of His Apostles. It was a wise and merciful provision that He sent them out two and two;1 it enabled them to hold sweet converse together, and mutually to correct each other's faults. Doubtless the friends and the brothers went in pairs; the fiery Peter with the more contemplative Andrew; the Sons of Thunder-one influential and commanding, the other emotional and eloquent; the kindred faith and guilelessness of Philip and Bartholomew; the slow but faithful Thomas with the thoughtful and devoted Matthew; the ascetic James with his brother the impassioned Jude; the zealot Simon to fire with his theocratic zeal the dark, flagging, despairing spirit of the traitor Judas.

During their absence Jesus continued His work alone, perhaps as He slowly made His way towards Jerusalem; for if we can speak of probability at all amid the deep uncertainties of the chronology of His ministry, it seems extremely probable that it is to this point that the verse belongs-" After this there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem." In order not to break the continuity of the narrative, I shall omit the discussion here, but I shall in the Appendix give ample reasons, as far as the text is concerned, and as far as the time required by the narrative

1 The Rabbis held it a fault to journey without a friend with whom to converse about the sacred Law (Soh. Chad., f. 61, 1; Schöttgen, p. 89). 2 Matt. xi. 1.

3 John v. 1. Omitted by the Synoptists, who, until the close, narrate only the ministry in Galilee.

See Excursus VIII., "The Unnamed Feast of John

V.

1."

THE PURIM FESTIVAL.

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is concerned, for believing that this nameless feast was in all probability the Feast of Purim.

But how came Jesus to go up to Jerusalem for such a feast as this-a feast which was the saturnalia of Judaism; a feast which was without divine authority,1 and had its roots in the most intensely exclusive, not to say vindictive, feelings of the nation; a feast of merriment and masquerade, which was purely social and often discreditably convivial; a feast which was unconnected with religious services, and was observed, not in the Temple, not even necessarily in the synagogues, but mainly in the private houses of the Jews ?2

The answer seems to be that, although Jesus was in Jerusalem at this feast, and went up about the time that it was held, the words of St. John do not necessarily imply that He went up for the express purpose of being present at this particular festival. The Passover took place only a month afterwards, and He may well have gone up mainly with the intention of being present at the Passover, although He gladly availed himself of an opportunity for being in Judæa and Jerusalem a month before it, both that He might once more preach in those neighbourhoods, and that He might avoid the publicity and dangerous excitement involved in His joining the caravan of the Passover pilgrims from Galilee. Such an

1 To such an extent was this the case, that no less than eighty-five elders are said to have protested against its original institution, regarding it as an innovation against the Law (Lightfoot, Hor. Hebr. on John x. 22). It seems to have originated among the Jews of the dispersion.

2 Perhaps more nearly resembling in its origin and character our Guy Fawkes' Day than anything else. Caspari calls it "ein Rache-, Fluch- und Sauffest" (Chronol. Geogr. Einl., p. 113); but there is no proof that it was so at that time. In this particular year, the Feast of Purim seems to have coincided with a Sabbath (John v. 10), an arrangement carefully avoided in the later Jewish calendar. (See Wieseler, Synopsis, p. 199, E. Tr.)

Y*

opportunity may naturally have arisen from the absence of the Apostles on their missionary tour. The Synop

tists give clear indications that Jesus had friends and well-wishers at Jerusalem and in its vicinity. He must therefore have paid visits to those regions which they do not record. Perhaps it was among those friends that He awaited the return of His immediate followers. We know the deep affection which he entertained for the members of one household in Bethany, and it is not unnatural to suppose that He was now living in the peaceful seclusion of that pious household as a solitary and honoured guest.

But even if St. John intends us to believe that the occurrence of this feast was the immediate cause of this visit to Jerusalem, we must bear in mind that there is no proof whatever of its having been in our Lord's time the fantastic and disorderly commemoration which it subsequently became. The nobler-minded Jews doubtless observed it in a calm and grateful manner; and as one part of the festival consisted in showing acts of kindness to the poor, it may have offered an attraction to Jesus both on this ground, and because it enabled Him to show that there was nothing unnational or unpatriotic in the universal character of His message, or the allembracing infinitude of the charity which He both practised and enjoined.

There remains then but a single question. The Passover was rapidly drawing near, and His presence at that great feast would on every ground be expected. Why then did He absent Himself from it? Why did He return to Galilee instead of remaining at Jerusalem ? The events which we are about to narrate will furnish a sufficient answer to this question.

CHAPTER XXVII.

THE MIRACLE AT BETHESDA.

Εἰς ἀπεραντολογίαν οἱ τῶν Ἰουδαίων διδάσκαλοι ἐληλύθασι φάσκοντες βάσταγμα μὲν εἶναι τὸ τοίονδε ὑπόδημα οὐ μὴν τὸ τοίονδε, κ. τ. λ.-ORIG. Opp. i. 179.

THERE was in Jerusalem, near the Sheep-gate, a pool, which was believed to possess remarkable healing properties. For this reason, in addition to its usual name, it had been called in Hebrew "Bethesda," or the House of Mercy, and under the porticoes which adorned the pentagonal masonry in which it was enclosed lay a multitude of sufferers from blindness, lameness, and atrophy, waiting to take advantage of the bubbling and gushing of the water, which showed that its medicinal properties were at their highest. There is no indication in the narrative that any one who thus used the water

1 John v. 2, èwideyoμévn. There are great varieties of reading; Tischendorf, with, reads Bhogaoa. Perhaps this is sufficient to account for the silence of Josephus, who may mention it under another name. The pool now pointed out to the traveller as Bethesda is Birket Israel, which seems, however, to have formed part of the deep fosse round the Tower of Antonia. The pool may have been the one now known as the Fountain of the Virgin, not far from Siloam, and connected with it (as Dr. Robinson discovered, Bibl. Researches, i. 509) by a subterranean passage. He himself had an opportunity of observing the intermittent character of this fountain, which, he was told, bubbles up "at irregular intervals, sometimes two and three times a day, and sometimes in summer once in two or three days" (Bibl. Researches, i. 341).

was at once, or miraculously, healed; but the repeated use of an intermittent and gaseous spring-and more than one of the springs about Jerusalem continue to be of this character to the present day-was doubtless likely to produce most beneficial results.

A very early popular legend, which has crept by interpolation into the text of St. John, attributed the healing qualities of the water to the descent of an angel who troubled the pool at irregular intervals, leaving the first persons who could scramble into it to profit by the immersion. This solution of the phenomenon was in fact so entirely in accordance with the Semitic habit of mind, that, in the universal ignorance of all scientific phenomena, and the utter indifference to close investigation which characterise most Orientals, the populace would not be likely to trouble themselves about the possibility of any other explanation. But whatever may have been the general belief about the cause, the fact that the water was found at certain intervals to be impregnated with gases which gave it a strengthening

1 The weight of evidence both external and internal against the genuineness of John v. 3, 4 (from the word èkdexoμévwv) seems to me overwhelming. 1. It is omitted by not a few of the weightiest MSS. and versions (8, B, D, the Cureton Syriac). 2. In others in which it does occur it is obelised as dubious. 3. It abounds in various readings, showing that there is something suspicious about it. 4. It contains in the short compass of a few lines no less than seven words not found elsewhere in the New Testament, or only found with a different sense. 5. It relates a most startling fact, one wholly unlike anything else in Scripture, one not alluded to by a single other writer, Jewish or heathen, and one which, had there been the slightest ground for believing in its truth, would certainly not have been passed over in silence by Josephus. 6. Its insertion (to explain the word Tapaxoŵ in verse 7) is easily accounted for; its omission, had it been in the original text, is quite inconceivable. Accordingly, it is rejected from the text by the best editors as a spurious gloss, and indeed there is no earlier trace of its existence than an allusion to it in Tertullian (De Bapt. 5). (Ob. circ. A.D. 220.)