Samayasara

Author(s): A Chakravarti
Publisher: Bharatiya Gyanpith

Page 21

INTRODUCTION
politically subjugated by more dominant races such as the Egyptians, the Babylonians, and finally the Romans.
CHRISTIAN THOUGHT
When Palestine was a province of the Roman Empire ruled by a Roman Governor there appeared among the Jews a religious reformer in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. As a boy he exhibited strange tendencies towards the established religion and ethics which sometimes mystified the Jewish elders congregated in their temples and places of worship. After his twelfth year we know nothing about his whereabouts till he reappears at the age of thirty in the midst of the Jews with an ardent desire to communicate his message. When he began his mission, the Jewish society was marked by an extreme type of formalism both in religion and ethics. The scholars among them who were the custodians of the religious scriptures--Pharisees and Scribes--were so much addicted to the literal interpretation of their dogmas and institutions that they pushed into the background the underlying significance and spirit of the Hebrew thought and religion. In such a society of hardened conservatives, Jesus of Nazareth first appeard as a social curiosity evoking in them an intellectual shock which ended in hatred. Here was a person whose way of life was a challenge to the established traditions of the Hebrew religion. He freely moved with all classes of people, disregarding the social etiquette. The elders of the Hebrew society therefore were shocked when they found the so-called reformer moving freely wiih the publicans and sinners. When challenged he merely replied that only the sick required the healing powers of a doctor. He was once again questioned why he openly violated the established rules of conduct according to the Hebrew religion. He answered by saying, “Sabbath is intended for man and not man for Sabbath', thereby proclaiming to the world in unmistakable terms that the various institutions, social and religious, are intended for helping man in his spiritual development and have no right to smother his growth and impede his progress. He enthroned human personality as the most valuable thing, to serve which, is the function of religious and ethical institutions. He told the Pharisees and Scribes frankly that the kingdom of God is within. Though in this conflict between the new reformer and the old order of Pharisaism the latter succeeded in putting an end to the life of the new leader, they were not able to completely crush the movement. His disciples recruited from the unsophisticated Jewish society firmly held fast to the new ideas of the Master and went about all corners of the country publicising this new message. From the Roman province of Palestine they made bold to enter into Rome, the very capital city of the empire, and ardently preached what they learnt from their Master. They were suspected to be a sub-versive organisation and persecuted by the Roman authorities. Undaunted and uncrushed by persecution the movement was carried on in the catacombs till the new idea permeated to a large section of the Roman population. The Romans