2).] Paradise would, in fact, have been brought to earth if the ideas of the young Master had not far transcended the level of ordinary goodness beyond which it has not been found possible to raise the human race.

The brotherhood of men, as sons of God, and the moral consequences which result therefrom, were deduced with exquisite feeling.

Like all the rabbis of the time, Jesus was little inclined toward consecutive reasonings, and clothed his doctrine in concise aphorisms, and in an expressive form, at times enigmatical and strange.[1] Some of these maxims come from the books of the Old Testament.

Others were the thoughts of more modern sages, especially those of Antigonus of Soco, Jesus, son of Sirach, and Hillel, which had reached him, not from learned study, but as oft-repeated proverbs.
The synagogue was rich in very happily expressed sentences, which formed a kind of current proverbial literature.[2] Jesus adopted almost all this oral teaching, but imbued it with a superior spirit.[3] Exceeding the duties laid down by the Law and the elders, he demanded perfection.

All the virtues of humility--forgiveness, charity, abnegation, and self-denial--virtues which with good reason have been called Christian, if we mean by that that they have been truly preached by Christ, were in this first teaching, though undeveloped.