Our gospels are therefore compilations. The events, the deeds and the sayings of Jesus which they contain are those which circulated among the Christians from the first. They survived, a few out of a great number, because they most clearly revealed and perpetuated the life, work and teaching of Jesus. The material has passed through a process of wise selection by the dis ciples, and of practical sifting by time, until we have the •choicest and most useful portion, the essence of the history. It must, however, be remembered that the incideqts and sayings have, by this process of transmission, lost for the most part their historical setting and their chronologi cal position. This material, when brought to gether in our gospels, is often• grouped topically or illustratively. The arrangement cannot be depended upon in detail. For example, in Mat thew the Sermon on the Mount, the Charge to the Twelve, the Parables by the Sea, the De nunciation of the Pharisees, the Eschatological Discourse, and in Luke the long section (chap ters x-xix) are all collections of material spoken on various occasions, whose detailed historical setting has been lost, and which are brought to gether in a topical or literary unity. .The same thing can often be seen in the grouping of the incidents as transmitted to us. This feature of the gospels is becoming increasingly clear to all thoughtful scholars, and the recognition of it is essential to a true use of the Gospel histories.
The chronology of Jesus' life is in general cer: tain, but in detail very uncertain. We know that Jesus' death fell in the reign of Tiberius and the procuratorship of Pilate. e., somewhere between A. D. 26. and 36. This can probably be narrowed down to A. 1). 28-33, but within this range we cannot tell what year. The year A. D. 3o is the date to which it is now cominonly as signed, but of this we cannot be at all sure. The beginning of Jesus' public ministry was, pre sumably, not until after the fifteenth year of Tiberius (Luke iii :1-3), e., late in A. D. 28 or 29. Jesus being then "about thirty years of age" (Luke iii:23), his birth goes back a few years into the B. C. period. About the year B. C. 6 is the date toward which we seem now to be trending. Even supposing these data given by Luke to be accurate, there remains an un certainty of years. We would seem to have a pub lic ministry of Jesus but one full year in length, if he began early in 29 and was crucified in the spring of A. D. 3o. Current chronological schemes of the public ministry give it something over three years, on the basis of John ii :13 ; v 1; vi :4; xiii :I. But v:t is not a passover, and vi:4 as a passover is somewhat doubtful (see Westcott and Hort, "New Testament in Greek," vol. ii:Appx'. 77-81; and Turner, art. Chronology of the New Testament in "New Bible Dictionary," vol. i, pp. 403-413, the best single article on the whole problem); while the passover in connection with the cleansing of the temple may be the last one, as the synoptic gospels indicate. John's supposed chronological framework is therefore quite questionable. The synoptists mention but one passover, that in connection with Jesus' death. It is sometimes held that they indicate, though they do not name, two others (Mark ii :23 suggests a time of year soon after a passover, and Mark vi :39 is supposed from its reference to "green grass" to indicate a time not long before a passover). But from what we know of the way in which the material of the gospels is put to gether, we cannot build chronology on such sug gestions. Professor Sanday ("Expositor," iv, v:
16) says: "The simple fact is that the synoptic gospels are only a series of incidents loosely strung together, with no chronology at all worthy of the name." The exact dates of Jesus' life can not at present be 1-nown, neither can we know the duration of his public ministry; it was prob ably either one or two full years, with some portion of a second or third. After all, this matters little; exact chronology is a modern pas sion, but it is comparatively unimportant. The ethical and religious teaching of Jesus' life is quite independent of precise years, months and days.
(2) Preparation of J'esus for His Work. The Hebrew nation had a genius for morals and relig ion, as Greece had a genius for science and litera ture, and Rome a genius for law and administra tion. Each nation made its essential contribution to the progress of mankind. Naturally, there fore, the greatest religious teacher of the world arose from the Hebrew race, and perfected his people's contribution .to human history. Jesus was born of Jewish parents in Palestine. But not at Jerusalem nor in Judea did the Jewish Messiah arise--that honor fell to Galilee. For in Judea, Pharisaism was at its worst. Emphasis upon the letter had crushed out the spirit of religion, righteousness had become a superficial and punc tilious observance of formal rules of conduct and empty ceremonies instead of the outworking of a pure heart and a right purpose. The rabbinical schools at Jerusalem were dreary storehouses of Jewish legal lore and factories of casuistical dis putations upon the minutix of legal obligation. Out of this no good thing could come, least of all the Messiah.
So, in God's provi.dence, Jesus' home was at Nazareth. Galilee breathed a freer, purer relig ious atmosphere. In fact, was there so favorable a place as Galilee elsewhere in all the earth for the development of the world's greatest teacher? For there he escaped the hollow and hypocritical Pharisaism, and at the same time the gross im morality and barren speculations of the Gentile nations. Jesus' parents were devoted adherents of Judaism in the best prophetic type, genuinely religious. They were siniple, quiet, hard-working people of one of the larger Galilean villages. The education which Jesus received was an excellent one for the times. It began in the home, where the greatest Care was taken by the best Jewish families to train their children religiously. Then came the assistance also of the synagogue school, where the fundamentals of education were taught. The Old Testament history was thoroughly taught, and then the Old Testament law with its later elaborations, until the child became familiar with the whole canon of Jewish Scriptures. How completely Jesus entered into the spirit of all this appears on his first visit to Jerusalein, at the age of his legal majority, when he eagerly seized the opportunity to ask the rabbis the many great questions of religion and life to which he had found no answers. Jesus probably learned to read the Old Testament Scriptures in Hebrew, and the Aramaic he was of course familiar with, for it was the Jewish vernacular of his day. In addition he knew more or less Greek, for this was the language of commerce with the Gentile world, which had entered largely into Galilee.