[Footnote 7:  It is known that the calculation which serves as basis of the common era was made in the sixth century by Dionysius the Less.  This calculation implies certain purely hypothetical data.]

The name of Jesus, which was given him, is an alteration from Joshua.  It was a very common name; but afterward mysteries, and an allusion to his character of Saviour, were naturally sought for in it.[1] Perhaps he, like all mystics, exalted himself in this respect.  It is thus that more than one great vocation in history has been caused by a name given to a child without premeditation.  Ardent natures never bring themselves to see aught of chance in what concerns them.  God has regulated everything for them, and they see a sign of the supreme will in the most insignificant circumstances.

[Footnote 1:  Matt. i. 21; Luke i. 31.]

The population of Galilee was very mixed, as the very name of the country[1] indicated.  This province counted amongst its inhabitants, in the time of Jesus, many who were not Jews (Phoenicians, Syrians, Arabs, and even Greeks).[2] The conversions to Judaism were not rare in these mixed countries.  It is therefore impossible to raise here any question of race, and to seek to ascertain what blood flowed in the veins of him who has contributed most to efface the distinction of blood in humanity.

[Footnote 1:  Gelil haggoyim, “Circle of the Gentiles.”]

[Footnote 2:  Strabo, XVI. ii. 35; Jos., Vita, 12.]

He proceeded from the ranks of the people.[1] His father, Joseph, and his mother, Mary, were people in humble circumstances, artisans living by their labor,[2] in the state so common in the East, which is neither ease nor poverty.  The extreme simplicity of life in such countries, by dispensing with the need of comfort, renders the privileges of wealth almost useless, and makes every one voluntarily poor.  On the other hand, the total want of taste for art, and for that which contributes to the elegance of material life, gives a naked aspect to the house of him who otherwise wants for nothing.  Apart from something sordid and repulsive which Islamism bears everywhere with it, the town of Nazareth, in the time of Jesus, did not perhaps much differ from what it is to-day.[3] We see the streets where he played when a child, in the stony paths or little crossways which separate the dwellings.  The house of Joseph doubtless much resembled those poor shops, lighted by the door, serving at once for shop, kitchen, and bedroom, having for furniture a mat, some cushions on the ground, one or two clay pots, and a painted chest.

[Footnote 1:  We shall explain later (Chap.  XIV.) the origin of the genealogies intended to connect him with the race of David.  The Ebionites suppressed them (Epiph., Adv.  Haer., XXX. 14).]

[Footnote 2:  Matt. xiii. 55; Mark vi. 3; John vi. 42.]

[Footnote 3:  The rough aspect of the ruins which cover Palestine proves that the towns which were not constructed in the Roman manner were very badly built.  As to the form of the houses, it is, in Syria, so simple and so imperiously regulated by the climate, that it can scarcely ever have changed.]