xxiv. (Vulg. lxxxiii.) 11.]

[Footnote 2: Matt. xxvi. 73; Mark xiv. 70; _Acts_ ii. 7; Talm. of
Bab., _Erubin_, 53 _a_, and following; Bereschith Rabba, 26 _c_.]

[Footnote 3: Passage from the treatise _Erubin_, _loc. cit._]

[Footnote 4: _Erubin_, _loc. cit._, 53 _b_.]

[Footnote 5: John vii. 52.]

[Footnote 6: Isa. ix. 1, 2; Matt. iv. 13, and following.]

[Footnote 7: John i. 46.]

The parched appearance of Nature in the neighborhood of Jerusalem must
have added to the dislike Jesus had for the place. The valleys are
without water; the soil arid and stony. Looking into the valley of the
Dead Sea, the view is somewhat striking; elsewhere it is monotonous.
The hill of Mizpeh, around which cluster the most ancient historical
remembrances of Israel, alone relieves the eye. The city presented, at
the time of Jesus, nearly the same form that it does now. It had
scarcely any ancient monuments, for, until the time of the Asmoneans,
the Jews had remained strangers to all the arts. John Hyrcanus had
begun to embellish it, and Herod the Great had made it one of the most
magnificent cities of the East. The Herodian constructions, by their
grand character, perfection of execution, and beauty of material, may
dispute superiority with the most finished works of antiquity.[1] A
great number of superb tombs, of original taste, were raised at the
same time in the neighborhood of Jerusalem.[2] The style of these
monuments was Grecian, but appropriate to the customs of the Jews, and
considerably modified in accordance with their principles. The
ornamental sculptures of the human figure which the Herods had
sanctioned, to the great discontent of the purists, were banished, and
replaced by floral decorations. The taste of the ancient inhabitants
of Phoenicia and Palestine for monoliths in solid stone seemed to be
revived in these singular tombs cut in the rock, and in which Grecian
orders are so strangely applied to an architecture of troglodytes.
Jesus, who regarded works of art as a pompous display of vanity,
viewed these monuments with displeasure.[3] His absolute spiritualism,
and his settled conviction that the form of the old world was about to
pass away, left him no taste except for things of the heart.

[Footnote 1: Jos., _Ant._, XV. viii.-xi.; _B.J._, V. v. 6; Mark xiii.
1, 2.]

[Footnote 2: Tombs, namely, of the Judges, Kings, Absalom, Zechariah,
Jehoshaphat, and of St. James. Compare the description of the tomb of
the