THE JEWISH PROPAGANDA
The preaching of a gospel seems to us as natural as the existence of a
religion. That is because the religions we know best are universal ones,
of which the God is a transcendent being, in whose sight human
distinctions are negligible. But for the Mediterranean world that was
not the case. The religions were not universal; many of the gods were
concretely believed to be the ancestors of certain groups of men, and
not always remote ones. Local associations played a determining part. If
we find an active propaganda here, it cannot be because the spread of a
ritual or faith is an inherent characteristic. On the contrary, in
normal circumstances there seems to be no reason why one community
should change its gods or forms of worship for those of another.
But, as a matter of fact, they did change them. And the change was often
effected consciously by the planned efforts of a group of worshipers,
and in all the ways that have been used since—preaching, emotional
revivals, and forcible conquest. One such carefully planned effort was
that of the Jews, but only one of them. The circumstances in which this
propaganda was carried out need close investigation.
In discussing Greek religion (above, p. 34) it has been suggested that
there was in every community a large number of men who found no real
satisfaction in the state cult, and that it was chiefly among them that
the proselytes of new and foreign religions were to be found. But that
does not make us understand why these foreign religions should have
sought proselytes, why they should have felt themselves under
obligations to assume a mission. The stranger within the gates might
reasonably be expected to do honor to the divine lord of the city: if he
remained permanently, his inclusion in the civic family in some way is
natural. But what was it that impelled Isis to seek worshipers so far
from the Nile, where alone she could be properly adored, or the
mysterious Cabiri to go so far from the caves where their power was
greatest and most direct?[143]
The movement of which these special missions are phases was old and
extensive. It covered the entire Eastern Mediterranean, and went perhaps
further west and east than we can at present demonstrate. Its beginnings
probably antedated the Hellenes. The religious unrest of which Christian
missionaries made such excellent use was a phenomenon that goes back
very far in the history of Mediterranean civilization. At certain
periods of that history and in different places it reached culminating
waves, but it is idle to attempt to discover a sufficient cause for it
in a limited series of events within a circumscribed area of Greece or
of Asia.
The briefest form in which the nature of this unrest can be phrased is
the following—the quest for personal salvation.
We shall do well to remember that the ancient state was a real
corporation, based not upon individuals but upon smaller family
corporations. The rights of these corporations were paramount. It was
only gradually that individuals were recognized at all in law.[144] The
desire for personal salvation is a part of the growing consciousness of
personality, and must have begun almost as soon as the state corporation
itself became fixed.
Within a state only those individuals can have relatively free play who
are to a certain extent the organs of the state; that is, those
individuals who by conquest, wealth, or chance have secured for
themselves political predominance in their respective communities. But
these could never be more than a small minority. For the great majority
everyday life was hemmed in by conventions that had the force of laws,
and was restricted by legal limits drastically enforced. And this narrow
and pitifully poor life was bounded by Sheol, or Hades, by a condition
eloquently described as worse at its best than the least desirable
existence under the face of the insufferable sun.[145]
The warrior caste, for whom and of whom the Homeric poems were written,
were firmly convinced that the bloodless and sinewless life in the House
of Hades was the goal to which existence tended. But they found their
compensation in that existence itself. What of those who lacked these
compensations, or had learned to despise them? In them the prospect of
becoming lost in the mass of flitting and indistinguishable shadows must
have produced a profound horror, and their minds must have dwelt upon it
with increasing intensity.
It is one of the most ancient beliefs of men in this region that all the
dead become disembodied spirits, sometimes with power for good or evil,
so that their displeasure is to be deprecated, sometimes without such
power, as the Homeric nobles believed, and the mass of the Jews in the
times of the monarchy. These spirits or ghosts had of themselves no
recognizable personality, and could receive it only exceptionally and in
ways that violated the ordinary laws of the universe. Such a belief is
not strictly a belief in immortality at all, since the essence of the
latter is that the actual person of flesh and blood continues his
identity when flesh and blood are dissolved and disappear, and that the
characteristics which, except for form and feature, separated him from
his fellows in life still do so after death. The only bodiless beings
who could be said to have a personality were the gods, and they were
directly styled “the Immortals.”
However, the line that separated gods and men was not sharp. The
adoration offered to the dead in the Spartan relief[146] is not really
different from the worship of the Olympians. From the other side, in
Homer, the progeny of Zeus by mortal women are very emphatically
men.[147] Whether the Homeric view is a special development, it is
demonstrably true that a general belief was current in Greece not long
after the Homeric epoch, which saw no impossibility in favored men
securing the gift of immortality; that is, continuing without
interruption the personal life which alone had significance. This was
done by the translations—the removal of mortal men in the flesh to
kinship with the gods.[148]
This privilege of personal immortality was not connected, in the myths
that told of it, with eminent services. It was at all times a matter of
grace. In the form of bodily translation it always remained a rare and
miraculous exception. But the mere existence of such a belief must have
strongly influenced the beliefs and practices that had long been
connected with the dead.
We cannot tell where and when it was first suggested to men that the
shadow-life of Hades might by the grace of the gods be turned into real
life, and a real immortality secured. It may be, as has been supposed,
that the incentive came from Egypt. More likely, however, it was an
independent growth, and perhaps arose in more than one place. The favor
and grace of the gods, which were indispensable, could obviously be
gained by intimate association, and in the eighth and perhaps even the
ninth pre-Christian century we begin to hear in Greece of means of
entering into that association. One of these means was the “mystery,” of
which the Eleusinian is the best-known. In these cult-societies, of the
origin of which we know nothing, a close and intimate association with
the god or gods was offered. The initiated saw with their own eyes the
godhead perform certain ceremonial acts; perhaps they sat cheek by jowl
with him. It is obvious that such familiarity involved the especial
favor of the gods, and it is easy to understand that the final and
crowning mark of that favor would not be always withheld. The communion
with the god begun in this life would be continued after it. To the
mystae of Eleusis, and no doubt elsewhere, and to them only, was
promised a personal immortality.[149]
It may not have been first at Eleusis. It may have been in the obscure
corners of Thrace where what later appeared as Orphic societies was
developed. But there were soon many mysteries, and there was no lack of
men and women to whom the promise was inexpressibly sweet. The spread of
Orphism in the sixth and fifth centuries B.C.E. bears witness to the
eagerness with which the evangel was received.
Outside of Greece, in Persia, India, and Egypt, perhaps also in
Babylonia, there were hereditary groups of men who claimed to possess an
arcanum, whereby the supreme favor of the gods, that of eternal
communion with them, was to be obtained. These hereditary castes desired
no extension, but jealously guarded their privileges. But among them
there constantly arose earnest and warm-hearted men, whose humanity
impelled them to spread as widely as possible the boon which they had
themselves obtained by accident. Perhaps many attempts in all these
countries aborted. Not all Gotamas succeeded in becoming Buddhas.
The Jews seemed to the Greeks to possess just such an arcanum, and
whatever interest they originally excited was due to that fact. The
initiatory rite of circumcision, the exclusiveness of a ritual that did
not brook even the proximate presence of an uninitiate, all pointed in
that direction, even if we disregard the vigorously asserted claims of
the Jews to be in a very special sense the people of God.
The Jews too had as far as the masses were concerned developed the
belief in a personal immortality during the centuries that followed the
Babylonian exile (comp. p. 70), and as far as we can see it developed
among them at the same time and somewhat in the same way as elsewhere.
That is to say, among them as among others the future life, the _Olam
ha-bo_, was a privilege and was sought for with especial eagerness by
those to whom the _Olam ha-zeh_ was largely desolate. Not reward for
some and punishment for others, but complete exclusion from any life but
that of Sheol for those who failed to acquire the _Olam ha-bo_, was the
doctrine maintained, just as the Greek mystae knew that for those who
were not initiated there was waiting, not the wheel of Ixion or the
stone of Sisyphus, but the bleak non-existence of Hades.[150]
But there was a difference, and this difference became vital. Conduct
was not disregarded in the Greek mysteries, but the essential thing was
the fact of initiation. Those who first preached the doctrine of a
personal salvation to the Jews were conscious in so doing that they were
preaching to a society of initiates. They were all mystae; all had
entered into the covenant: all belonged to the congregation of the Lord,
קהל יהוה. To whom was this boon of immortality, the _Olam
ha-bo_, to be given? The first missionaries, whether they did or did not
constitute a sect, had a ready answer. To those to whom the covenant was
real, who accepted fully the yoke of the Law.
The sects of Pharisees and Sadducees, whose disputes fill later Jewish
history, joined issue on a number of points. No doubt there was an
economic and social cleavage between them as well. But perhaps the most
nearly fundamental difference of doctrine related to the _Olam ha-bo_.
The Pharisees asserted, and the Sadducees denied, the doctrine of
resurrection. It is stated by Josephus,[151] that the Sadducees called
in question the _Olam ha-bo_ itself. When and where these sects took
form is uncertain. The Pharisees at least are fully developed, and form
a powerful political party under John Hyrcanus.[152] It is very unlikely
that they are related to the Hasidim or are a continuation of them. The
latter were a national, anti-Hellenic organization, and contained men of
all shades of beliefs and interests. But the Pharisees, like the
Hasidim, began as a brotherhood or a group of brotherhoods, however
political their aims and actions were in later times. The fact is
indicated by the name _Haber_, “comrade,” which they gave themselves,
and the contemptuous _Am ha-aretz_, “clod,” οἱ πολλοί, with
which they designated those who were not members of their congregations.
Now the _Haberim_, who preached the World-to-Come, were not in a
primitive stage of culture, but in a very advanced one. Their God was
not master of a city, but Lord of the whole earth. And they had long
maintained the principle that merit in the eyes of God was determined by
conduct, both formal and moral, a distinction less profoundly separating
than seems at first to be the case. If that were so, anyone, Jew or
Gentile, might conceivably acquire that merit. How was the _Olam ha-bo_
to be refused to anyone who had taken upon himself the yoke of the Law,
who did all that the Lord required at his hands? Jewish tradition knew
of several eminently righteous gentiles, such as Job, in whom God was
well pleased. It was an untenable proposition to men whose cardinal
religious doctrine had for centuries been ethical and universal that all
but a few men were permanently excluded from the beatitude of life after
death.[153]
Since, however, the promises of the sacred literature were addressed
primarily to Israel, those who were not of Abraham’s seed could become
“comrades” only by first becoming Jews. That conception involved no
difficulty whatever. The people of the ancient world had empirically
learned some of the more elementary facts of biological heredity; but
membership in a community, though determined by heredity in the first
instance, was not essentially so determined. In earlier times, when the
communities were first instituted, not even the pretense of kinship was
maintained. The essential fact was the assumption of common _sacra_.
That a man might by appropriate ceremonies—or without ceremonies—enter
into another community, was held everywhere. If, as has been suggested
(above, p. 147), the Hasidim found some of their members among the
non-Jewish population of Syria,[154] it is not likely that the process
of becoming Jews was rendered either difficult or long. Abraham, a late
tradition stated, brought many gentiles under the wings of the Shekinah,
the Effulgence. If this tradition is an old one, it indicates that
proselytizing was in early times held to be distinctly meritorious.[155]
The first conquests of the Hasmonean rulers brought non-Jewish tribes
under immediate political control of the Jews. Most of them, notably the
Idumeans, were forcibly Judaized, and so successfully that we hear of
only one attempted revolt.[156] There can of course have been no
question here of elaborate ceremonies or lengthy novitiates. The
Idumeans were dealt with as shortly as Charlemagne’s Saxons, and gave
the most convincing demonstration of their loyalty in the time of the
insurrections.[157]
This drastic way of increasing the seed of Abraham must have been viewed
differently by different classes of Jews. To the Haberim the difference
between a heathen and a Jewish aspirant to their communion lay in the
fact that the heathen had undergone the fearful defilement of worshiping
the Abomination, while the Jew had not. For the former there was
accordingly necessary an elaborate series of purgations, of ceremonial
cleansing; and until this was done there was no hope that he could be
admitted into the congregation of the Lord. But it might be done, and it
began to be done in increasing numbers. It would have been strange if,
among the many gentile seekers for salvation, Greek, Syrian,
Cappadocian, and others, some would not be found to take the path that
led to the conventicles of the Jewish Haberim. This was especially the
case when, instead of an obscure Syrian tribe, the Hasmoneans had made
of Judea a powerful nation, one of the most considerable of its part of
the world.
All the mysteries welcomed neophytes, but none made the entrance into
their ranks an easy matter. In some of them there were degrees, as in
those of Cybele, and the highest degree was attained at so frightful a
cost as practically to be reserved for the very few.[158] In the case of
the Jews, one of the initiatory rites was peculiarly repellent to Greeks
and Romans, in that it involved a bodily mutilation, which was performed
not in the frenzy of an orgiastic revel, but in the course of a solemn
ritual of prayer. That fact might make many hesitate, but could not
permanently deter those who earnestly sought for the way of life.
The Jewish propaganda was not confined to receiving and imposing
conditions on those who came. Some at least sought converts, although it
is very doubtful that the Pharisaic societies as a class planned a real
mission among the heathen. The methods that were used were those already
in vogue—methods which had achieved success in many fields. Books and
pamphlets were published to further the purpose of the missionaries;
personal solicitation of those deemed receptive was undertaken. Actual
preaching, such as the _diatribe_ commenced by the Cynics, and before
them by Socrates, was probably confined to the synagogue, or meeting
within the proseucha, and reached only those who were there
assembled.[159]
The literary form of the propaganda was especially active in those
communities in which Jews and Greeks spoke a common language and partly
shared a common culture. Even books intended primarily for Jewish
circulation contain polemics against polytheism and attacks upon heathen
custom, which the avowed purpose of the book would not justify.
It is not to be supposed that the literary propaganda was the most
effective. It was limited by the very field for which it was intended.
Such a book as the Wisdom of Solomon was both too subtle and too
finished a product to appeal to other than highly cultivated tastes, and
men of this stamp are not readily reached by propagandizing religions.
The chief object of attack was the Greek polytheism. “Wisdom” ventures
even on an historical explanation of polytheism, which is strangely like
that of Herbert Spencer.[160] Now, just for the Greeks, who might read
and understand such a book, to refute polytheism was destroying a man of
straw. No one of them seriously believed in it. Those who were not
agnostics or atheists believed in the unity of the Divine essence, and
at most maintained the existence of certain subordinate ministerial
beings, who might or might not be identical with the names of the actors
in the myths. But many Jews would be ready to admit so much. Indeed that
there were subordinate _daemonia_, helpful and harmful, was a widespread
belief in Judea, even if without authoritative sanction. Very often the
heathen gods were conceived to be not absolute nullities, but demons
really existing and evil—a belief which the early Christian church
firmly held and preached.[161]
Accordingly the polished society of a Greek city did not need the
literary polemics against polytheism to be convinced that monotheism was
an intellectually more developed and morally preferable dogma. On the
other hand, it was a very difficult task to convince it that the
ceremonies of the official cult, granting even their philosophic
absurdity, were for that reason objectionable. To make them seem so,
there would have to be present the consciousness of sin, and that was
not a matter which argumentation could produce.
One other point against which Jewish writers of that time address
themselves is the assumed viciousness of Greek life. How much one people
has with which to reproach another in that respect in ancient or in
modern times need not be considered here. The fact remains that in many
extant books sexual excesses and perversions are made a constant
reproach to the heathen—which generally implies the Greek—and the extant
Greek and Latin literature gives a great deal of color to the
charge.[162] This is due not so much to the actual life depicted as to
the attitude with which even good men regarded these particular
incidents. It is true that we have contemporary evidence that many Jews
in Greek communities were no paragons of right living or self-restraint.
But it is at least significant that this accusation, continually
repeated by the Jews, is not met by a retort in kind. The anti-Jewish
writings are not especially moderate in their condemnations. But with
viciousness in their lives they do not charge the Jews, and they cannot
have been unaware of what the Jews wrote and said.
Polytheism and immorality, the two chief counts in the indictment which
Jewish writers bring against heathendom, were not things Greeks were
disposed to defend. But it is doubtful whether the books that inveighed
against them were valuable weapons of propaganda. We have practically no
details of how the movement grew. In the last century before the
Christian era it had reached the extraordinary proportions that are
evidenced by the satire of Horace as well as by the opposition which it
encountered. Jewish apocalyptic literature confidently expects that all
the heathen on the rapidly approaching Judgment Day will be brought
within the fold.[163] The writers may be forgiven if the success of
their proselytizing endeavors made them feel that such a result was well
within the range of possibility.
Within the same period the worships of Cybele, of Sabazios, and of Isis,
had perhaps even greater success in extending themselves over the Greek
and Roman world. The communities they invaded only rarely welcomed them.
Even at Rome the official introduction of Cybele was the last desperate
recourse of avowed superstition, and it was promptly restricted when
success and prosperity returned to the Roman arms. But in all the
communities great masses of men were thoroughly prepared in mind for the
doctrines the Asiatic religions preached. A public preaching, such as
the Cynics used, was rarely permitted. But if we recall how many slaves
and ex-slaves as well as merchants and artisans were of Asiatic stock,
the spread of these cults, including that of the Jews, by the effective
means of personal and individual conversion is nothing to be wondered
at. The state was perforce compelled to notice this spread. Individuals
had noticed it long before.
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