The History of the Origins of Christianity. Book I. Life of Jesus.
Ernest Renan
CHAPTER VIII. JESUS AT CAPERNAUM.
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HAUNTED by a more and more imperious idea, Jesus, with a quiet determination, henceforth follows the path his extraordinary genius and the circumstances in which he lived have traced out for him. Till now, he had only communicated his thoughts to a few persons who had been secretly drawn towards him; henceforward his teaching was public and sought after. He was now about thirty years of age. The small group of hearers who went with him to John was undoubtedly increased, and perhaps he had been joined by some of the disciples of John. It was with this first nucleus of a church, on his return into Galilee, that he boldly proclaimed the “glad tidings of the kingdom of God.” This kingdom was at hand; and it was he, Jesus, who was that “Son of Man,” whom Daniel in his vision had beheld as the divine herald of the final and supreme revelation. We must remember that in the Jewish ideas, which were averse to art and mythology, the simple form of man had a superiority over that of Cherubim, and of the fantastic animals which the imagination of the people, since it had been subjected to the influence of Assyria, had ranged around the Divine Majesty. Already in Ezekiel, the Being seated on the supreme throne, far above the monsters of the mysterious chariot, the great revealer of prophetic visions, had the figure of a man. In the book of Daniel, in the midst of the vision of the empires, represented by animals, at the moment when the great judgment commences, and when the books are opened, a Being, “like unto a Son of Man,” advances towards the Ancient of days, who confers on him the power to judge the world, and to govern it for eternity. Son of Man, in the Semitic languages, especially in the Aramean dialects, is a simple synonym of man. But this chief passage of Daniel struck the mind; the words, Son of Man, became, at least in certain schools, one of the titles of the Messiah, regarded as judge of the world, and as king of the new era about to be inaugurated. The application which Jesus made of it to himself was therefore the proclamation of his Messiahship, and the affirmation of the coming catastrophe in which he was to figure as judge, clothed with the full powers which had been delegated to him by the Ancient of days. The success of the teaching of the new prophet was this time decisive. A group of men and women, all characterised by the same spirit of juvenile frankness and of simple innocence, adhered to him and said: “Thou art the Messiah!” As the Messiah was to be the Son of David, he was naturally conceded this appellation, which was synonymous with the former. Jesus accepted it with pleasure, although it might cause him some embarrassment, his origin being so well known. For himself, he preferred the title of “Son of Man,” an apparently humble title, but it was connected directly with the Messianic hopes. That was the appellation by which he designated himself, although, in his mouth, the “Son of Man” was a synonym of the pronoun I, which he avoided using. But no one ever thus addressed him, doubtless because the name in question did not quite suit him, until the day of his coming advent. Jesus’ centre of action, at this period of his life, was the little town of Capernaum—situated on the shore of the lake of Gennesareth. The name of Capernaum, into which enters the word caphar,
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