SKETCH OF JEWISH HISTORY BETWEEN NEBUCHADNEZZAR AND CONSTANTINE
We have briefly sketched in the foregoing chapters the concepts of race
and religion that Greek and Roman applied to the world about them. These
concepts were not starkly rigid. They changed considerably and often
rapidly in the six centuries our subject covers. They are further to be
qualified by the social environment within which they operated. But it
was not only the Greeks or Romans who in blood and thought passed
through many and profound changes. The Jews, too, developed in many
directions, and this development can no more be lost sight of than the
corresponding one among their neighbors.
In 586 B.C.E. the kingdom of Judah, which had for some years been a
Babylonian dependency, was ended as a political institution, and the
majority of its people, at any rate of the nobles and wealthy men of
them, were forcibly deported to Babylon. The deportation though
extensive was not complete. Some, principally peasants and artisans,
were left, but in districts so long wasted by war their condition can
only have been extremely wretched. Since the whole region was part of
the same huge empire, the old boundary lines were probably obliterated,
and those who lived there subjected to the control of imperial governors
residing in one or another of the walled cities of Syria or Philistia.
Within the next two generations momentous political changes occurred.
The Babylonian empire gave way to a Persian, which, however, can at
first have changed nothing except the personnel of the actual
administrators. According to a very probable tradition, one of the first
acts of Cyrus was to permit, at any rate not to oppose, the remigration
of some of the Judean families or clans to their former homes. Within
the next hundred years a larger and larger number of the families
deported by Nebuchadnezzar likewise returned, though never all of them
and perhaps not even a majority of them. Much of the old territory must
have been found unoccupied, since otherwise conflicts must have arisen
with interests vested within the fifty years and more that had elapsed,
and of these we do not hear. But we do hear of immediate conflicts
between the returned exiles and those who professed to be the
descendants of the Israelites (and Judaites) left by Assyrians (and
Babylonians) on the soil. These latter were beginning to gather about
Shechem, where they must already have been a dominant element, and where
they had created a cult center on Mount Gerizim. The conflict tended to
become compromised in time, until the activities of the reformer Ezra,
backed by the civil governor Nehemiah, again and permanently separated
them.
The returned exiles had from the beginning made the ancient capital
their center, and had succeeded in obtaining permission to rebuild their
ancient shrine. But they were at an obvious disadvantage compared with
their rivals at Shechem, until the city of David could receive the
characteristic of a city—the walls which alone distinguished village or
somewhat more densely populated section of the open country from the
polis or city proper. These, too, were obtained through Nehemiah, and
the prohibition of connubium between the so-called Samaritans of Shechem
and the Jews of Jerusalem was the first aggressive act of the now
self-reliant community.
The system of government of the Persian empire was not oppressive. The
distant king of kings was mainly insistent upon recognition of his
sovereignty and regularity of tribute, less as a means of support than
as an acknowledgment of submission. Within the provinces the satrap was
practically king, and might make his domination light or burdensome as
he chose. We have excellent contemporary evidence that he took his
responsibilities lightly for the most part. In the mountains of Asia
Minor many tribes seem scarcely to have known that they were born
vassals of the Persian king.[60] The local satrap rarely attempted to
control in detail the administrative affairs of the communities in his
charge, particularly when such an attempt would precipitate a rebellion.
In Judea the open plains and low hills rendered it easier for the
governor to emphasize the king’s authority than it was among the
mountains of Cappadocia or the fiords of Cilicia, whose native
_syennesis_, or king, retained both title and authority. We have,
however, a confused and particularly fragmentary record of what actually
happened in the two hundred years that elapsed between Zerubbabel and
Alexander. Changes of great moment in the political, social, and
religious life of the Jews were undoubtedly taking place, since we find
those changes completed a few years later, but we can only conjecture
the stages of the process. On the whole our sources, till considerably
later, are very imperfect. The Persian period forms the largest gap in
the history of the Jews.
A great many Biblical scholars, particularly in Germany, assign to this
period an influence nothing short of fundamental. A large part of the
texts now gathered in the Bible are placed in this time. The extreme
view practically refers the beginning of Jewish history to this date,
and assumes that only a very small part of the older literature and
institutions survived the Babylonian exile. The new community began its
life, it is asserted, with elements almost wholly dependent upon the
civilization of Babylon and Persia.
It is extremely unlikely that this theory is correct. Every individual
assertion of course must be judged in the light of the evidence
presented for it. And on this point it may be sufficient to mention that
the evidence for almost every position is of the feeblest. It consists
largely in apparent inconsistencies of statements or allusions, for
which the theory advanced suggests a hypothetical reconciliation. If
these hypotheses are to be considered scientifically, they at best
present a possible solution and always only one of many possible
solutions. But the general theory suffers from an inconsistency much
graver than those it attempts to remove.
The inconsistency lies in this: The soil of Palestine, never of high
fertility, had greatly deteriorated by the frequent wars of the seventh
century and the neglect and desolation of the following centuries.
Commerce, because of the absence of ports, was practically non-existent.
Those who returned can scarcely have found time for anything else than
the bare problem of living. In these circumstances it is obviously
improbable that a literary activity rich and powerful enough to have
created the masterpieces often assigned to this period can have existed.
The conditions of pioneers do not readily lend themselves to such
activities. City life, an essential prerequisite of high achievements in
art, was being reconstructed very slowly and was confined almost wholly
to Jerusalem. The difficulty is a serious one, and is quite disregarded
by many scholars to whom the bleakness of our records of this time
affords a constant temptation.
Jewish soldiers fought in the armies of their Persian master wherever
these armies went. Some must have been among the Syrian contingent at
Marathon and Plataea.[61] The garrisons of the frontiers contained many
of them. Recently a fortunate accident has disclosed, at the upper
cataract of the Nile, a garrison community of Jews, of which the
records, known as the Assuan and Elephantine papyri,[62] have opened up
quite new vistas in Jewish history. Perhaps the most important point
established is the beginning of the Diaspora. The existence of
communities of Jews outside of Palestine, developing their own
traditions and assimilating their appearance and social customs to those
of their neighbors, is a matter of capital importance for the history of
later Jewry. When such communities multiplied, Jerusalem came more and
more to have a merely religious presidency over them, and the
constitution of Judea itself became determined by that fact, while the
foundations were being laid for the career of religious propaganda later
so successfully undertaken.
The virtual autonomy of the Persian period allowed the development of a
well-organized ruling caste of priests, in which were perhaps included
the Soferim, or Scribes, men learned in the Law, who had no definite
priestly functions. The scope of the high priest’s jurisdiction, the
extent of his powers, may not have been sharply defined as yet. In
itself the presence of a high priest as head of the state was not at all
unusual in that region. As has been said, the interference of the
representative of the Persian sovereign was a variable quantity. In the
second half of the fifth century a Jew, Nehemiah, held the office of
tirshatha, or viceroy, an accident that was of inestimable value to the
growing community, and may have finally secured the threatened political
existence of Jerusalem.
One other political event, of which we have dim and confused accounts,
was a rebellion—whether in or of Judea—under Artaxerxes Ochus (359-338
B.C.E.). The account of Josephus speaks of feuds in the high-priestly
family, the murder of a claimant in the temple precincts, and the
intervention of the all-powerful eunuch Bagoas.[63] That some such thing
happened there can be no reasonable doubt, although we cannot recover
the details. It is, however, unwarranted to make the incident in any way
typical of the fortunes of Judea during Persian rule. There was no
tradition in later times of Persian oppression, nor can even this
rebellion, if rebellion it was, have involved serious repressive
measures, since the Greek invasion a few years later found the Jews
loyal to their overlord.
When the Macedonian Alexander changed the face of the East, the Jews
were swept along with the rest of the loose-jointed empire built by
Cyrus and Darius. Upon Alexander’s death, after uncertainties which the
whole Levant shared, Palestine fell to Egypt, of which it was a natural
geographical appanage as it had been for millennia before. Under the
suzerainty of the Ptolemies the Jewish communities in Egypt received
very considerable reinforcements, and the home-country became a real
national expression, and rapidly attained a relatively high degree of
material well-being, since the practical autonomy of Persian days was
continued. Seized by Antiochus of Asia in the decrepitude of Egypt,
Judea entered with full national consciousness into the heterogeneous
kingdom ruled by a singularly fantastic royal house. A blunder in policy
of the peculiarly fantastic Epiphanes provoked a revolt that was
immediately successful in causing the prompt abandonment of the policy,
and was helped by dynastic chaos to a still larger measure of success.
[Illustration: RUINS OF THE AMPHITHEATER AT GERASA (JERASH) GILEAD,
PALESTINE
(c. _Underwood and Underwood_)]
The leaders of that revolt, the Hasmonai family, produced a succession
of able soldiers. Besides the old Mattathiah and his heroic son Judah,
Jonathan, Simon, and John, by selling their service dearly to this one
or that one of the Syrian pretenders, by understandings with the
ubiquitous Roman emissaries, above all by military skill of the first
order, changed the virtual autonomy of Persian and Ptolemaic times into
a real one, in which Syrian suzerainty was a tradition, active enough
under the vigorous Sidetes, non-existent under the imbecile
Cyzicenus.[64]
During all this time Jews, from personal choice and royal policy, had
extended their dispersion throughout the new cities founded by their
Seleucid masters. Until the battle of Magnesia, 190 B.C.E., Asia Minor
was the real center of the Seleucid monarchy; and in the innumerable
cities established there, Jews in large numbers settled. When Judea
became independent there were probably as many Jews outside of it as
within it.
With the Hasmonean princes—“high priest” is the title which the Hebrew
legend on their coins gives them[65]—the country entered upon a career
of conquest. Galilee, Idumaea, the coast cities of Philistia, portions
of Gilead were seized by John, or Aristobulus, or Alexander, so that
Judea rapidly became one of the important kingdoms of the East, with
which no one could fail to reckon who became active in the affairs of
that region. Rome had backed the Hasmoneans against Syria so long as
Syria presented the possibility of becoming dangerous. But that soon
ceased. By a strange paradox of history the Hellenized East found its
last champion against the Romans in the Persian kings of Pontus, and
when Mithradates was crushed, it could only be a question of the order
in which every fragment of Alexander’s empire would slip into the maw of
the eagles. The Roman liquidator, Pompey, appeared in Asia, and Antioch
became a suburb of Rome.
The pretext for clearing their way to Egypt by taking Judea presented
itself in a disputed succession. The sons of Alexander Jannai were
compelled to accept the arbitrament of the Romans, with the usual
result. The loser in the award, Aristobulus, attempted to make good by
arms what he had lost in the decision. A Roman army promptly invested
Jerusalem, moved by the patent injustice of allowing a capable and
vigorous prince to usurp the place of a submissive weakling. The Roman
general walked into the inner court of the temple, and peered into the
Holy of Holies. He found nothing for his pains, but his act symbolized
the presence of the master, and left a fine harvest of hate and distrust
for the next generations to reap.
From that time on, the history of Judea is the not uncommon one of a
Roman dependency. The political changes are interesting and dramatic but
not of particular importance: vassal kings, docile tetrarchs, finally
superseded by the Roman procurator with all the machinery of his office.
Judea was different only in that her rebellions were more formidable and
obstinate. But Rome had developed a habit of crushing rebellions. Simeon
bar Kosiba, known chiefly as Bar-Kochba, was the last Jew to offer armed
resistance. With his death the political history of Judea comes to an
end.
The religious and social history of the Jews had for many centuries
ceased to be identical with that of their country. It was a minority of
Jews then living that participated in the rebellion of 68, and perhaps a
still smaller fraction that took part in the rising under Trajan and
Hadrian. The interest of all Jews in the fortunes of Judea must at all
times have been lively and deep, but the feeling was different in the
case of non-Palestinian Jews from that of men toward their fatherland.
Meeting for the study of their ancient lore in their “guild-house,” the
_proseucha_, or _schola_, the Jewish citizens of the various cities of
the Roman empire or the Parthian kingdom did not present to their
neighbors a spectacle so unique as to arrest the latter’s attention at
once. They were simply a group of allied cult-communities, sometimes
possessing annoying exemptions or privileges, but not otherwise
exceptional. An exceptional position begins for them when their
privileges are abolished, and their civil rights curtailed, by the
legislation of the early Christian emperors.
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