"Where is the new-born King of the Jews? for we saw his star in the east, and have come to do homage to him."

Meanwhile Jesus was brought before the Roman Governor. "Are you the King of the Jews?" asked the Governor. "It is true," answered Jesus.

And having twisted some thorns into a crown, put it on his head, and a rod in his right hand, and then, going down on their knees before him, they mocked him. "Long life to you, King of the Jews!" they said.

Above his head they fixed the accusation against him written out--'THIS IS JESUS THE KING OF THE JEWS.'

So the soldiers took the money, and did as they were instructed. And this story has been current among the Jews from that day to this.

(For the Pharisees, and indeed all strict Jews, will not eat without first scrupulously washing their hands, holding in this to the traditions of their ancestors.

"Are you the King of the Jews?" asked Pilate. "It is true," replied Jesus.

He answered: "Do you want me to release the 'King of the Jews' for you?"

Pilate, however, spoke to them again: "What shall I do then with the man whom you call the 'King of the Jews'?"

And then began to salute him. "Long life to you, King of the Jews!" they said.

The words of the charge against him, written up over his head, ran thus--'THE KING OF THE JEWS.'

"Are you the King of the Jews?" Pilate asked him. "It is true," replied Jesus.

And saying as they did so: "If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself."

Above him were the words--'THIS IS THE KING OF THE JEWS.'

When the Jews sent some Priests and Levites to John from Jerusalem, to ask--"Who are you?", his statement was this:

Upon this the Jews asked Jesus: "What sign are you going to show us, since you act in this way?"

"This Temple," replied the Jews, "has been forty-six years in building, and are you going to 'raise it in three days'?"

Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, who was a leading man among the Jews.

"How is it," replied the Samaritan woman, "that you who are a Jew ask for water from a Samaritan woman like me?" (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans).

"It was on this mountain that our ancestors worshiped; and yet you Jews say that the proper place for worship is in Jerusalem."

You Samaritans do not know what you worship; we know what we worship, for Salvation comes from the Jews.

Now it was the Sabbath. So the Jews said to the man who had been cured: "This is the Sabbath; you must not carry your mat."

The man went away, and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had cured him.

And that was why the Jews began to persecute Jesus--because he did things of this kind on the Sabbath.

This made the Jews all the more eager to kill him, because not only was he doing away with the Sabbath, but he actually called God his own Father--putting himself on an equality with God.

Upon this the Jews began murmuring against Jesus for saying-- 'I am the Bread which came down from Heaven.'

Upon this the Jews began disputing with one another: "How is it possible for this man to give us his flesh to eat?"

After this, Jesus went about in Galilee, for he would not do so in Judea, because the Jews were eager to put him to death.

The Jews were looking for him at the Festival and asking 'Where is he?';

No one, however, spoke freely about him, for fear of the Jews.

The Jews were astonished. "How has this man got his learning," they asked, "when he has never studied?"

"Where is this man going," the Jews asked one another, "that we shall not find him? Will he go to our countrymen abroad, and teach foreigners?

"Is he going to kill himself," the Jews exclaimed, "that he says-- 'You cannot go where I am going'?"

So Jesus went on to say to those Jews who had believed him: "If you remain constant to my Message, you are truly my disciples;

"Are not we right, after all," replied the Jews, "in saying that you are a Samaritan, and are possessed by a demon?"

"Now we are sure that you are possessed by a demon," the Jews replied. "Abraham died, and so did the Prophets; and yet you say 'If any one lays my Message to heart, he will never know death.'

"You are not fifty years old yet," the Jews exclaimed, "and have you seen Abraham?"

The Jews, however, refused to believe that he had been blind and had gained his sight, until they had called his parents and questioned them.

His parents spoke in this way because they were afraid of the Jews; for the Jews had already agreed that, if any one should acknowledge Jesus as the Christ, he should be expelled from their synagogues.

So the Jews again called the man who had been blind, and said to him: "Give God the praise; we know that this is a bad man."

In consequence of these words a difference of opinion again arose among the Jews.

When the Jews gathered round him, and said: "How long are you going to keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us so frankly."

The Jews again brought stones to throw at him;

"It is not for any good action that we would stone you," answered the Jews, "but for blasphemy; and because you, who are only a man, make yourself out to be God."

Upon this the Jews again sought to arrest him; but he escaped their hands.

"Rabbi," they replied, "the Jews were but just now seeking to stone you; and are you going there again?"

A number of the Jews had come there to condole with Martha and Mary on their brother's death.

So the Jews, who were in the house with Mary, condoling with her, when they saw her get up quickly and go out, followed her, thinking that she was going to the tomb to weep there.

When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come with her weeping also, he groaned deeply, and was greatly distressed.

"How he must have loved him!" the Jews exclaimed;

In consequence of this, many of the Jews, who had come to visit Mary and had seen what Jesus did, learned to believe in him.

In consequence of this, Jesus did not go about publicly among the Jews any more, but left that neighborhood, and went into the country bordering on the Wilderness, to a town called Ephraim, where he stayed with his disciples.

Now great numbers of the Jews found out that Jesus was at Bethany; and they came there, not solely on his account, but also to see Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead.

Because it was owing to him that many of the Jews had left them, and were becoming believers in Jesus.

My children, I am to be with you but a little while longer. You will look for me; and what I said to the Jews--'You cannot come where I am going'--I now say to you.

It was Caiaphas who had counseled the Jews, that it was best that one man should die for the people.

"For my part," answered Jesus, "I have spoken to all the world openly. I always taught in some Synagogue, or in the Temple Courts, places where all the Jews assemble, and I never spoke of anything in secret.

"Take him yourselves," said Pilate, "and try him by your own Law." "We have no power to put any one to death," the Jews replied- -

After that, Pilate went into the Government House again, and calling Jesus up, asked him: "Are you the King of the Jews?"

"My kingly power," replied Jesus, "is not due to this world. If it had been so, my servants would be doing their utmost to prevent my being given up to the Jews; but my kingly power is not from the world."

"What is Truth?" exclaimed Pilate. After saying this, he went out to the Jews again, and said: "For my part, I find nothing with which he can be charged.

It is, however, the custom for me to grant you the release of one man at the Passover Festival. Do you wish for the release of the King of the Jews?"

They kept coming up to him and saying: "Long live the King of the Jews!" and they gave him blow after blow with their hands.

"But we," replied the Jews, "have a Law, under which he deserves death for making himself out to be the Son of God."

This made Pilate anxious to release him; but the Jews shouted: "If you release that man, you are no friend of the Emperor! Any one who makes himself out to be a King is setting himself against the Emperor!"

It was the Passover Preparation Day, and about noon. Then he said to the Jews: "Here is your King!"

Pilate also had these words written and put up over the cross--'JESUS OF NAZARETH, THE KING OF THE JEWS.'

These words were read by many of the Jews, because the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city; and they were written in Hebrew, Latin and Greek.

The Jewish Chief Priests said to Pilate: "Do not write 'The King of the Jews', but write what the man said--'I am the King of the Jews.'"

It was the Preparation Day, and so, to prevent the bodies from remaining on the crosses during the Sabbath (for that Sabbath was a great day), the Jews asked Pilate to have the legs broken and the bodies removed.

After this, Joseph of Ramah, a disciple of Jesus--but a secret one, owing to his fear of the Jews--begged Pilate's permission to remove the body of Jesus. Pilate gave him leave; so Joseph went and removed the body.

In the evening of the same day--the first day of the week-- after the doors of the room, in which the disciples were, had been shut for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said: "Peace be with you";

Now there were then staying in Jerusalem religious Jews from every country in the world;

Either Jews by birth or converts, and some are Cretans and Arabians--yet we all alike hear them speaking in our own tongues of the great things that God has done."

About this time, when the number of the disciples was constantly increasing, complaints were made by the Jews of foreign birth against the native Jews, that their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution.

Saul's influence, however, kept steadily increasing, and he confounded the Jews who lived in Damascus by the proofs that he gave that Jesus was the Christ.

After some time the Jews laid a plot to kill Saul,

Talking and arguing with the Jews of foreign birth, who, however, made attempts to kill him.

Now those who had been scattered in different directions, in consequence of the persecution that followed upon the death of Stephen, went as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch, telling the Message--but only to Jews.

Some of them, however, who were men of Cyprus and Cyrene, on coming to Antioch, addressed themselves also to the Jews of foreign birth, telling them the Good News about that Lord Jesus.

And, when he saw that the Jews were pleased with this, he proceeded to arrest Peter also. (This was during the Festival of the Unleavened Bread.)

After the congregation had dispersed, many of the Jews, and of the converts who joined in their worship, followed Paul and Barnabas, who talked with them and urged them to continue to rely upon the loving-kindness of God.

But the sight of the crowds of people filled the minds of the Jews with jealousy, and they kept contradicting Paul's statements in violent language.

But the Jews incited the women of position who worshiped with them, and the leading men of the town, and started a persecution against Paul and Barnabas, and drove them out of their neighborhood.

The same thing occurred in Iconium, where Paul and Barnabas went into the Jewish Synagogue, and spoke in such a way that a great number of both Jews and Greeks believed in Christ.

But the Jews who refused to believe stirred up the Gentiles, and poisoned their minds against the Brethren.

But the townspeople were divided, some siding with the Jews, some with the Apostles;

And, when there was an attempt on the part of both Gentiles and Jews, with their leading men, to resort to violence and to stone them,

Presently, however, there came some Jews from Antioch, and Iconium who, after they had won over the people, stoned Paul, and dragged him out of the town, thinking him to be dead.

Wishing to take this man with him on his journey, Paul caused him to be circumcised on account of the Jews in that neighborhood, for they all knew that his father had been a Greek.

"They are Jews, and they are teaching customs which it is not right for us, as Romans, to sanction or adopt."

After passing through Amphipolis and Apollonia, Paul and Silas came to Thessalonica. Here the Jews had a Synagogue;

But the Jews, becoming jealous, engaged some worthless fellows from the streets, and, getting a mob together, kept the city in an uproar. They attacked Jason's house, with the intention of bringing Paul and Silas before the Popular Assembly;

These Jews of Beroea were better disposed than those in Thessalonica, for they welcomed the Message with great readiness, and daily examined the Scriptures to see if what was said was true.

But, when the Jews of Thessalonica found out that God's Message had been delivered by Paul at Beroea, they came there too, exciting and disturbing the minds of the people.

So he argued in the Synagogue with the Jews and with those who joined in their worship, as well as daily in the public Square with those who happened to be there.

There he met a Jew of the name of Aquila, a native of Pontus, who, with his wife Priscilla, had lately come from Italy, in consequence of the order which had been issued by the Emperor Claudius for all Jews to leave Rome. Paul paid them a visit,

Every Sabbath Paul gave addresses in the Synagogue, trying to convince both Jews and Greeks.

But, when Silas and Timothy had come down from Macedonia, Paul devoted himself entirely to delivering the Message, earnestly maintaining before the Jews that Jesus was the Christ.

While Gallio was governor of Greece, the Jews made a combined attack on Paul, and brought him before the Governor's Bench,