[Footnote 2:  Two pilgrimages are clearly indicated (John ii. 13, and v. 1), without speaking of his last journey (vii. 10), after which Jesus returned no more to Galilee.  The first took place while John was still baptizing.  It would belong consequently to the Easter of the year 29.  But the circumstances given as belonging to this journey are of a more advanced period. (Comp. especially John ii. 14, and following, and Matt. xxi. 12, 13; Mark xi. 15-17; Luke xix. 45, 46.) There are evidently transpositions of dates in these chapters of John, or rather he has mixed the circumstances of different journeys.]

The little Galilean community were here far from being at home.  Jerusalem was then nearly what it is to-day, a city of pedantry, acrimony, disputes, hatreds, and littleness of mind.  Its fanaticism was extreme, and religious seditions very frequent.  The Pharisees were dominant; the study of the Law, pushed to the most insignificant minutiae, and reduced to questions of casuistry, was the only study.  This exclusively theological and canonical culture contributed in no respect to refine the intellect.  It was something analogous to the barren doctrine of the Mussulman fakir, to that empty science discussed round about the mosques, and which is a great expenditure of time and useless argumentation, by no means calculated to advance the right discipline of the mind.  The theological education of the modern clergy, although very dry, gives us no idea of this, for the Renaissance has introduced into all our teachings, even the most irregular, a share of belles lettres and of method, which has infused more or less of the humanities into scholasticism.  The science of the Jewish doctor, of the sofer or scribe, was purely barbarous, unmitigatedly absurd, and denuded of all moral element.[1] To crown the evil, it filled with ridiculous pride those who had wearied themselves in acquiring it.  The Jewish scribe, proud of the pretended knowledge which had cost him so much trouble, had the same contempt for Greek culture which the learned Mussulman of our time has for European civilization, and which the old catholic theologian had for the knowledge of men of the world.  The tendency of this scholastic culture was to close the mind to all that was refined, to create esteem only for those difficult triflings on which they had wasted their lives, and which were regarded as the natural occupation of persons professing a degree of seriousness.[2]

[Footnote 1:  We may judge of it by the Talmud, the echo of the Jewish scholasticism of that time.]

[Footnote 2:  Jos., Ant., XX. xi. 2.]