Amerikai Magyar Szó, 1984. július-december (38. évfolyam, 27-48. szám)

1984-12-20 / 48. szám

14.

AMERIKAI MAGYAR SZÓ

Thursday, Dec. 20. 1984.

NAZARETH was a small town, situated in a hollow opening broadly at the summit of the group of mountains which shuts in the plain of Esdraelon on the north. The population is now from three to four thousand, and can never have varied much. The cold is sharp in winter, and the climate .very healthy. The town, like all the small Jewish towns at that period, was a group of huts shabbily built, and must have presented that forbidding and poverty-stricken aspect which is still characteristic of villages in the East. The houses, it would seem, did not differ much from those cubes of stone, elegant neither without nor within, which at the present day cover the richest parts of Lebanon, and which, buried as they are amid vines and fig-trees, are in some respects very pleasing. The surroundings moreover are charming; and no place in the world could be so well adapted for dreams of perfect happiness. Even in our time Nazareth is still a delightful abode, perhaps the only place in Palestine in which the mind feels relieved of the burden which oppresses it in that land of unparalleled desolation. The people are pleasant and cheerful; the gardens fresh and green. Anthony the Martyr, writing at the end of the sixth century, draws an enchanting picture of the fertility of the neighbourhood, which he compares to Paradise. Some valleys on the western side amply justify his description. The fountain, formerly the centre of the life and gaiety of the little town, is destroyed; its broken channels now contain only a muddy stream. But the beauty of the women who assemble there in the evening-that beauty which was remarked even in the sixth century, and was regarded as a gift of the Virgin Mary-is still preserved in a striking manner. It is the Syrian type in all its languid grace. No doubt Mary was there almost every day, and, with her jar on her shoulder, took her place with the rest of her neighbours who had remained in oblivion. Anthony the Martyr observes that the Jewish women, elsewhere disdainful to Christians, were here full of good feeling. Even now religious hatred is weaker at Nazareth' than in the rest of the country.

The view from the town is limited; but if we ascend a little to the plateau, swept by a perpetual breeze, which stands above the highest houses, the landscape is magnificent. On the west stretch the fine outlines of Carmel, terminating in an abrupt spur which seems to run down sheer to the sea. Next, one sees the double summit which towers above Megiddo; the mountains of the country of Shechem, with their holy places of the patriarchal period; the hills of Gilboa, the small picturesque group to wich is attached the graceful or terrible recollections of Shunem and of Endor; and Tabor, with its beautiful rounded form, which antiquity compared to a bosom. Through a gap between the mountains of

Shunem and Tabor are visible the valley of the Jordan and the high plains of Peraea which form . a continuous line from the eastern side. On the north, the mountains of Safed, stretching towards the sea, conceal St. Jean d’Acre but leave the Gulf of Kháifa in sight. Such was the horizon of Jesus. This enchanted circle, cradle of the kingdom of God, was for years his world. Indeed, during his whole life he went but little beyond the familiar bounds of his childhood. For yonder, northwards, one can almost see, on the flank of Hermon,. Ceasarea-Philippi his farthest point of advance into the Gentile world; and to the south the less smiling aspect of these Samaritan hills foreshadows the dreariness of Judaea beyond, parched as by a burning wind of desolation and death.

If the world, remaining Christian but attaining to a better idea of that which constitutes a fitting respect for the beginnings of its religion; should ever wish to replace by authentic holy places the mean and apocryphal sanctuaries to which the piety of less enlightened ages was attached, it is upon this mountain height of Nazareth that it would build its temple anew. There, at the birthplace of Christianity, and in the centre of the deeds of its Founder, ought the great church to be raised in which all Christians should worship. Here, too, on this spot where Joseph the carpenter sleeps with thousands of forgotten Nazarenes who never passed beyond the horizon of their valley, the philosopher would find a place, better than any in the world beside, to contemplate human affairs in their courses, to console himself for their incertitude, and to win fresh assurance of the divine end which the world pursues through innumerable falterings and despite the vanity of all things.

These natural surroundings, at once smiling and impressive, formed the whole education of Jesus. No doubt he learnt to read and write according to the Eastern method, which consist in putting in the child's hands a book which he repeats in cadence with his little comrades until he knows it by heart. It is doubtful, however, if he fully understood the Hebrew writings in their original tongue. His biographers make him cite them according to translations in the Aramean language; his exegetical principles, so far as we can judge of them from his disciples, much resembled those then in vogue, which represent the spirit of the Targummim and the Midrashim.

The schoolmaster in small Jewish towns was the hazzan, or reader in the sygnagogues. i Jesus frequented but little the higher schools of the Scribes or Soferim. There were perhaps I none in Nazareth, and he was not possessed of any of those titles which, in the eyes of the vulgar, confer the privileges of knowledge.

The reading of the books of the Old Testament made much impression upon

TO OUR READERS

Dear Friend.

With this issue of the Amerikai Magyar Szó, we resume publication of a monthly English language supplement, under the name of Hungarian Mercury. This name honors the memory of the first periodical ever published in Hungary - a Latin language publication called "Mercurius Veridicus Ex Hungária" (Messenger of Truth from Hungary) - which served the glorious struggle for Hungarian freedom and independence under the leadership of Prince Ferenc Rákóczi *in the early 18th century (1705). It is in the spirit of that early forerunner, enriched by the cultural and social advances of our own age, that we intend to edit the Hungarian Mercury.

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The Coming of Winter

Now fade all of earth's gallantries from autumn's branches. Softly blown the yellow leaves drift mutely down in eddies of the evening breeze.

Is not the falling of the leaf fit reason for the forest's grief?

No dew, no song, no heat of sun can hold it when its day is done....

(From a poem by the Hungarian poet, Mihály - Tompa, translated by our reader Anca Vrbovska.)

him. The canon of the holy books was composed of two chief parts-the Law, that js to say the Pentateuch, and the Prophets, such as we possess them. A vast aHegorical exegesis was applied to aU these books, with the purpose of drawing from them something that was not in them, but which answered to the aspirations of the age.