SOON IT BECAME KNOWN ALL OVER THE LAND THAT HERE WAS A PROPHET WHO TAUGHT THE STRANGE DOCTRINE THAT ALL THE PEOPLE OF THIS EARTH (AND NOT ONLY THE JEWS)WERE THE CHILDREN OF ONE LOVING GOD,AND THEREFORE BROTHERS AND SISTERS TO EACH OTHER AND TO ALL MANKIND
From Cana,Jesus,accompanied by his friends,walked to Capernaum,a little village built only a short while before on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee.
There lived the families of Peter and Andrew,two fishermen who had left their work that they might follow Jesus when he began his great voyage of discovery for the soul of God and the soul of Man.
They remained in Capernaum for a few weeks and then decided to go to Jerusalem.
This was done for two reasons.
In the first place,the feast of Passover was near at hand,when it was the duty of all good Jews to pass the holy season near the Temple.
And in the second place,it would give Jesus a chance to find out what the people of the capital thought of him.
The Galileans,although openly despised by the true Jerusalemites (because they were not supposed to be as careful in their devotions as those who worshipped in the Temple—a survival of the ancient rivalry between Judah and Israel),were really a kindly people,willing to listen to new ideas.
Perhaps they were not always over-enthusiastic,but they could be counted upon to be polite.Jerusalem,on the other hand,dominated by the Pharisees,was the mighty fortress of the old faith,where intolerance had been elevated to a national virtue,and where no mercy was shown to the dissenter.
Jesus safely reached the town,but before he had an opportunity to explain his ideas,something happened which obliged him to leave in greater haste than he had come.
In the beginning of time,people had slaughtered their captive fellow-men whenever they wished to gain the favour of their gods.
Later on,with the coming of a primitive form of civilisation,oxen and sheep had been substituted for human beings.
When Jesus was born,the Jews still sacrificed animals to Jehovah.
Rich people killed a cow and burned the meat and fat upon the altar in the Temple,with the exception of the edible parts which went to the kitchens of the priests.
Poor people,who could not afford to spend so much money,bought a lamb,or if they were very,very poor,a couple of pigeons,and cut their throats in the strange belief that such an act of useless slaughter would be pleasant to that selfsame God who with such infinite care had created the pretty beasts only a short time before.
Now that most of the Jews lived abroad (for they had never been willing to give up the comforts of Alexandria and Damascus for the crooked and dark streets of Jerusalem,and more than half a million of them were to be found in Egypt alone)it became necessary to keep a large supply of live stock on hand for the benefit of those who came from afar and could not drive their own beasts before them all the way from the Nile to the brook of Kedron.
Years ago,when the Temple was built,the doomed oxen and sheep had been offered for sale in the street,just outside the entrance gate of the Temple.Later,for greater convenience of the customers,the cattle-dealers had taken their herds inside the Temple courts.They had been followed by the money-changers,who,seated behind their wooden banks,offered to change Babylonian gold into Jewish shekels and Corinthian silver into Judaean minas.
These good tradesmen meant no disrespect.They hardly realised what they were doing.It was just a very bad custom which had developed so gradually that no one had noticed it.
To Jesus,fresh from the quiet valleys of Galilee,his mind upon problems far removed from trade and barter,the presence of the bellowing oxen and the barking money-changers seemed a blasphemy and an outrage.God's house had become a noisy market-place—surely such a thing was unpardonable!
He took a whip (there were any number of them lying around)and he drove that whole mob out of the Temple and he sent the poor beasts scurrying after their masters and the house of Jehovah stood cleansed of its shame.
The mob,eagerly hoping for something to happen,came rushing to this scene of violence as fast as the uneven cobblestones would let them.
There were many who thought that Jesus was right.It was scandalous that the Temple should be used as a cow-shed.
Others,however,were very angry.No doubt it was perhaps not entirely desirable that there should be quite so much noise so near the Holy of Holies,but then again,it was hardly the part for an unknown young man from the provinces—Galilee,was it?or Nazareth,or some such place—to create a disturbance and upset all the tables,covered with money,and make the poor bankers go down upon all fours to find their lost pennies.
Still others did not know what to make of it.Among these was a member of the Supreme Council,a staunch old Pharisee by the name of Nicodemus.
He could not well afford to be seen in public with one who had just behaved with such unseemly lack of dignity in a very holy place,but he wanted to know what sort of man it was who had dared to do such a rash thing.
He sent for Jesus and bade him come to his house as soon as it should be dark.
Jesus accepted the invitation and he and Nicodemus had their talk.The Pharisee was convinced that Jesus had been entirely sincere if somewhat over-eager in his efforts.What he heard of his activities in Galilee strengthened him in his conviction,and in his liking for the young Nazarene he advised him to leave the city as soon as possible.
The palace of the King had sensitive ears for anything that sounded like a breach of the common peace and the cattledealers and money-changers would undoubtedly get the people against so energetic a prophet,who preferred action to mere talk.
And so Jesus left and together with his friends he travelled back to Galilee by way of the land of Samaria.
