Volume 2

230 Life of Jesus Christ
flux. They did not venture to approach Him, nor dared
they do so according to the Jewish laws. Such laws as
carried with them some mysterious signification He
followed, others He ignored. Jesus went afterward to a
school situated at an equal distance from Nazareth and
from Lesser Sephoris. Parmenas, the disciple from
Nazareth, went thither to meet Him. He had been one of
the companions of Jesus' boyhood, and he would have
joined the disciples at once, were it not for his aged
parents at Nazareth. He supported them by executing
commissions.
There were nlany Doctors and Pharisees in the school
of Lesser Sephoris and Greater Sephoris, also some people
who had assembled to argue with Jesus on that
passage relating to divorce which He had declared
unlawful, and for the insertion of which passage He had
reprehended the Doctor in the synagogue. That reprehension
of Jesus had been very badly received in Greater
Sephoris, for the addition made to the Law on that point
was in keeping with the teaching of the Pharisees. In this
city divorces were obtained on most insignificant pretexts,
and there was even an asylum for the reception of
repudiated wives. The Doctor who had been guilty of the
interpolation had transcribed a roll of the Law and inserted
little false interpretations here and there. They disputed
a long time with Jesus, affirming that they could
not understand how He could presume to expunge that
passage. He reduced them to silence, though not to the
acknowledgment of their error, as He had done the first.
He showed them the prohibition against any interpolation,
and consequently the obligation of expunging such a
passage. He demonstrated to them the falsity of their explanations,
and sharply rebuked them for the facility with
which the marriage bond was dissolved in their city. He
enumerated some cases in which it would be quite
unlawful for the the husband to put away his wife, but