the stern exclusiveness of the original letter was extenuated, and the
law of the rude tribes of Palestine moulded to the varied taste and
temper of a cosmopolitan society, while the text itself was embalmed in
the _Masora_, an elaborate system of punctuation and notation, to every
particle of which, to insure its uncorrupted preservation, a mystical
significance was attached. By this curious contrivance the letter of the
Law, the charter of Judaism, was sanctified forever, while its spirit
was remodelled to the exigencies of the present or the future, till it
would have been no longer recognized by its authors, or even by very
recent disciples. To this new learning of traditions and glosses the
ardent youth of the nation devoted itself with a fanaticism not less
vehement than that which had fought and bled half a century before. The
name of the rabbi Akiba is preserved as a type of the hierophant of
restored Judaism.
The stories depicting him are best expounded as myths and figures. He
reached, it was said, the age of a hundred and twenty years, the period
assigned in the sacred records to his prototype, the law-giver Moses.
Like David, in his youth he kept sheep on the mountains; like Jacob, he
served a master, a rich citizen of Jerusalem, for Jerusalem in his youth
was still standing. His master's daughter cast the eyes of affection
upon him and offered him a secret marriage; but this damsel was no other
than Jerusalem itself, so often imaged to the mind of the Jewish people
by the figure of a maiden, a wife, or a widow.
This mystic bride required him to repair to the schools, acquire
knowledge and wisdom, surround himself with disciples; and such, as we
have seen, was the actual policy of the new defenders of Judaism.
The damsel was rebuked by her indignant father; but when, after the
lapse of twelve years, Akiba returned to claim his bride, with twelve
thousand scholars at his heels, he heard her replying that, long as he
had been absent, she only wished him to prolong his stay twice over, so
as to double his knowledge; whereupon he returned patiently to his
studies, and frequented the schools twelve years longer. Twice twelve
years thus passed, he returned once more with twice twelve thousand
disciples, and then his wife received him joyfully, and, covered as she
was with rags, an outcast and a beggar, he presented her to his
astonished followers as the being to whom he owed his wisdom, his fame,
and his fortune.
Such were the legends with which the new learning was consecrated to the
defence of Jewish nationality.
The concentration of the Roman forces on the soil of Palestine seems to
have repressed for a season all overt attempts at insurrection.
The Jewish leaders restrained their followers from action as long as it
was possible to feed their spirit with hopes only. It was not till about
the fourteenth year of Hadrian's reign that the final revolt broke out.
When the Jews of Palestine launched forth upon the war, the doctor
Akiba gave place to the warrior Barcochebas. This gallant warrior, the
last of the national heroes, received or assumed his title, "the Son of
the Star," given successively to several leaders of the Jewish people,
in token of the fanatic expectations of divine deliverance by which his
countrymen did not yet cease to be animated. Many were the legends which
declared this champion's claims to the leadership of the national cause.
His size and strength were vaunted as more than human. "It was the arm
of God, not of man," said Hadrian when he saw at last the corpse
encircled by a serpent, "that could alone strike down the giant." Flame
and smoke were seen to issue from his lips in speaking, a portent which
was rationalized centuries later into a mere conjurer's artifice. The
concourse of the Jewish nation at his summons was symbolized, with a
curious reference to the prevalent idea of Israel as a school and the
Law as a master, by the story that at Bethar, the appointed rendezvous
and last stronghold of the national defence, were four hundred
academies, each ruled by four hundred teachers, each teacher boasting a
class of four hundred pupils.
Akiba, now at the extreme point of his protracted existence, like Samuel
of old, nominated the new David to the chiefship of the people. He
girded Barcochebas with the sword of Jehovah, placed the staff of
command in his hand, and held himself the stirrup by which he vaulted
into the saddle.
The last revolt of the Jewish people was precipitated apparently by the
increased severity of the measures which the rebellion under Trajan had
drawn down. They complained that Hadrian had enrolled himself as a
proselyte of the Law, and were doubly incensed against him as a
persecutor and a renegade.
This assertion, indeed, may have no foundation. On the other hand, it is
not unlikely that this prince, a curious explorer of religions of
opinions, had sought initiation into some of the mysteries of the Jewish
faith and ritual.
But however this may be, he gave them mortal offence by perceiving the
clear distinction between Judaism and Christianity, and by forbidding
the Jews to sojourn in the town which he was again raising on the ruins
of Jerusalem, while he allowed free access to their rivals. He is said
to have even prohibited the rite of circumcision by which they jealously
maintained their separation from the nations of the West.
At last, when they rose in arms, he sent his best generals against them.
Tinnius Rufus was long baffled and often defeated; but Julius Severus,
following the tactics of Vespasian, constantly refused the battle they
offered him, and reduced their strongholds in succession by superior
discipline and resources. Barcochebas struggled with the obstinacy of
despair. Every excess of cruelty was committed on both sides, and it is
well, perhaps, that the details of this mortal spasm are almost wholly
lost to us.
The later Christian writers, while they allude with unseemly exultation
to the overthrow of one inveterate enemy by another who proved himself
in the end not less inveterate, affirmed that the barbarities of the
Jewish leader were mainly directed against themselves.
On such interested assertions we shall place little reliance. In the
counter-narration of the Jews even the name of Christian is
contemptuously disregarded. It relates, however, how at the storming of
Bethar, when Barcochebas perished in the field, ten of the most learned
of the rabbis were taken and put cruelly to death, while Akiba, reserved
to expire last, and torn in pieces with hot pincers, continued to attest
the great principle of the Jewish doctrine, still exclaiming in his
death throes, _Jehovah Erhad_! ("God is one").
The Jews who fell in these their latest combats are counted by hundreds
of thousands, and we may conclude that the suppression of the revolt was
followed by sanguinary proscriptions, by wholesale captivity and general
banishment. The dispersion of the unhappy race, particularly in the
West, was now complete and final. The sacred soil of Jerusalem was
occupied by a Roman colony, which received the name of Ælia Capitolina,
with reference to the Emperor who founded it, and to the supreme God of
the pagan mythology, installed on the desecrated summits of Zion and
Moriah.
The fane of Jupiter was erected on the site of the holy Temple, and a
shrine of Venus planted, we are assured, on the very spot hallowed to
Christians by our Lord's crucifixion. But Hadrian had no purpose of
insulting the disciples of Jesus, and this desecration, if the tradition
be true, was probably accidental. A Jewish legend affirms that the
figure of a swine was sculptured, in bitter mockery, over a gate of the
new city. The Jews have retorted with equal scorn that the effigy of the
unclean animal, which represented to their minds every low and bestial
appetite, was a fitting emblem of the colony and its founder, of the
lewd worship of its gods, and the vile propensities of its Emperor.
The fancy of later Christian writers that Hadrian regarded their
coreligionists with special consideration seems founded on
misconception. We hear, indeed, of the graciousness with which he
allowed them, among other sectarians, to defend their usages and expound
their doctrines in his presence; and doubtless his curiosity, if no
worthier feeling, was moved by the fact, which he fully appreciated, of
the interest they excited in certain quarters of the empire. But there
is no evidence that his favor extended further than to the recognition
of their independence of the Jews, from whom they now formally separated
themselves, and the discouragement of the local persecutions to which
they were occasionally subjected.
So far the bigoted hostility of their enemies was overruled at last in
their favor.
In another way they learned to profit by the example of their rivals.
From the recent policy of the Jews they might understand the advantage
to a scattered community, without a local centre or a political status,
of erecting in a volume of sacred records their acknowledged standard of
faith and practice.
The scriptures of the New Testament, like the _Nuschua_ of the Jewish
rabbis, took the place of the holy of holies as the tabernacle of their
God and the pledge of their union with him.
The canon of their sacred books, however casual its apparent formation,
was indeed a providential development. The habitual references of
bishops and doctors to the words of their Founder, and the writings of
the first disciples, guided them to the proper sources of their faith
and taught them justly to discriminate the genuine from the spurious.
Meagre as are the remains of Christian literature of the second century,
they tend to confirm our assurance that the scriptures of the new
dispensation were known and recognized as divine at that early period,
and that the Church of Christ, the future mistress of the world, was
already become a great social fact, an empire within the empire.
MARTYRDOM OF POLYCARP AND JUSTIN MARTYR
POLYCARP'S EPISTLE TO THE PHILIPPIANS
A.D. 155
H. COX POLYCARP
The Roman emperor Antoninus Pius, who died A.D. 161, had been
tolerant to the new Judaic sect known as Christians. Under his mild
_regime_, although he did not encourage them, the faithful had
greatly multiplied. The Christians had become a body great enough
to be reckoned with in a political sense. The populace were
generally hostile to them as "enemies of the gods." More than one
of the apostolic fathers had suffered martyrdom, among them
Ignatius, a disciple of St. John and bishop of Antioch, who is said
to have been thrown to the lions in the Circus about A.D. 107. But
the account of the martyrdom of Polycarp is probably the first
authentic description we have.
Polycarp was born about A.D. 60, probably of Christian parents. He
bridges the little-known period between the age of his master, the
apostle John, and that of his own disciple, Irenæus. During the
earlier half of the second century he was bishop of Smyrna. Ephesus
had become the new hope of the faith, and in that city Polycarp had
received his education and "lived in familiar intercourse with many
who had seen Christ." He was also intimate with Papias and
Ignatius. The only writing of Polycarp extant is the Epistle to the
Philippians, which follows. It is of great value for questions of
the canon, the origin of the Church, and the Ignatian epistles. Of
the authenticity of Polycarp's epistle Rev. Father W. O'B. Pardow,
S.J., says, "There are long and learned controversies about some of
these [apocryphal] books." Of that in question he says: "Probably
authentic; not inspired." Archbishop Wake was fully convinced of
its genuineness, and his translation has been here used.
Justin, surnamed "the Martyr," was born at Sichen, Samaria, about
A.D. 100. After his conversion to Christianity he wandered about
arguing for the truth of the new faith. He was of a bold,
aggressive nature, and scorned to temporize in things spiritual.
His language and mode of address were borrowed from the Stoics, but
were the "true utterance of his own manly soul. 'You can kill us;
you cannot harm us,'" was his answer when condemned for being a
Christian. The words proceeded from a believer ready and destined
to give his life for the faith.
Truly did the blood of the martyrs prove the seed of the Church.
Polycarp's Epistle to the Philippians, hereto annexed, is taken
from a rare work which contains the uncanonical books of the period
of Christ's infancy and the early days of the Church, entitled _The
Apocryphal Books of the New Testament_. The laity have little
knowledge of it, but it is well known by the clergy.
HOMERSHAM COX
Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, was undoubtedly a companion of the apostle
John, and received instruction from other apostles. "About this time,"
says Eusebius, referring to the commencement of the second century,
"flourished Polycarp in Asia, an intimate disciple of the apostles, who
received the episcopate of the Church of Smyrna at the hands of
eye-witnesses and servants of the Lord."
The lengthened life of the apostle John, who attained to an extreme old
age, connects the fathers of the second century with the immediate
followers of Christ. Polycarp must have been a contemporary of St. John
for about twenty years.
A letter of Irenæus, who was a pupil of Polycarp, has been preserved,
which gives a graphic and remarkably interesting account of the familiar
intercourse of Polycarp with the apostle. The letter is addressed by
Irenæus to a friend named Florinus, with whom he remonstrates for
holding erroneous doctrines:
"These doctrines, O Florinus, to say the least, are not of a sound
understanding. These doctrines are inconsistent with the Church, and
calculated to thrust those that follow them into the greatest impiety;
these doctrines not even the heretics out of the Church ever attempted
to assert; these doctrines were never delivered to thee by the
presbyters before us, those who also were the immediate disciples of the
apostles.
"For I saw thee when I was yet a boy in Lower Asia with Polycarp moving
in great splendor at court, and endeavoring by all means to gain his
esteem. I remember the events of those times much better than those of
more recent occurrence, as the studies of our youth growing with our
minds unite with them so firmly that I can tell also the very place
where the blessed Polycarp was accustomed to sit and discourse, and also
his entrances, his walks, his manner of life, the form of his body, his
conversations with the people and familiar intercourse with John, as he
was accustomed to tell, as also his familiarity with those that had
seen the Lord; also concerning his miracles, his doctrine; all these
were told by Polycarp in consistency with the Holy Scriptures, and he
had received them from the eye-witnesses of the doctrine of salvation.
"These things, by the mercy of God and the opportunity then afforded me,
I attentively heard, noting them down, not on paper, but in my heart;
and these same facts I am always in the habit, by the grace of God, of
recalling faithfully to mind; and I can bear witness in the sight of God
that, if that blessed and apostolic presbyter had heard any such thing
as this, he would have exclaimed and stopped his ears, and, according to
his custom, would have said: 'O good God! unto what things hast thou
reserved me, that I should tolerate these things?' He would have fled
from the place in which he had sat or stood hearing doctrines like
these.
"From his epistles also, which he wrote to the neighboring churches in
order to confirm them, or to some of the brethren in order to admonish
or exhort them, the same thing may be clearly shown."
In another place Irenæus states that Polycarp was appointed bishop of
Smyrna by the apostles themselves:
"Polycarp also was not only instructed by apostles, and conversed with
many who had seen Christ, but was also by apostles in Asia appointed
bishop of the Church in Smyrna, whom I also saw in my early youth, for
he lived a very long time; and when a very old man, gloriously and most
nobly suffering martyrdom, departed this life, having always taught
those things which he had learned from the apostles, and which the
Church has handed down, and which alone are true."
Of the numerous letters which Polycarp as bishop of Smyrna wrote to the
neighboring churches only one is extant. It is addressed by "Polycarp
and the presbyters with him to the Church of God sojourning at
Philippi," and probably was written about the middle of the second
century. In this epistle he praises the Philippians for their firm
Christian faith, and exhorts them to adhere to the doctrine which St.
Paul had taught them by word of mouth and by his epistle. After various
exhortations to presbyters, deacons, and other members of the Church,
Polycarp refers to the martyrdom of Ignatius, but apparently was
ignorant of the circumstances attending it, for the epistle concludes
with a request for information respecting him.
The martyrdom of Polycarp himself is described in an epistle addressed
by the Church of Smyrna, of which he was bishop, to the Church of
Philomelium, a city of the neighboring province of Phrygia. There are
probably some interpolations; but, excepting these, the document can
hardly be of much later date than the death of the martyr. There are
several reasons for this conclusion.
In the first place, the general tenor shows that it is intended to give
information of events which had recently happened; secondly, a
postscript states that a copy of it belonged to Irenæus, a disciple of
Polycarp; and thirdly, a large part of it is transcribed by Eusebius,
who treats it as an authentic document.
The date of the death of Polycarp is well ascertained to be A.D. 167, in
the reign of Marcus Aurelius. For some time previously there had been a
cruel persecution of the Christians at Smyrna, in which both the Gentile
and Jewish inhabitants took part. Against Polycarp especially, as the
chief minister of the Christian Church, their hostility was directed.
After several Christians had been tortured and thrown to the lions, the
multitude clamored for the death of the bishop.
Yielding to the urgent entreaties of those around him Polycarp quitted
the city; but he was pursued and brought back. The proconsul, who had
reluctantly allowed him to be arrested, was anxious to save him.
"When he was led forward, a great tumult arose among those that heard he
was taken. At length, as he advanced, the proconsul asked him whether he
was Polycarp, and, he answering that he was, he urged him to deny
Christ, saying, 'Have a regard for your age,' and adding similar
expressions such as are usual for them to employ.
"'Swear,' he said, 'by the genius of Cæsar. Repent. Say, "Away with
those that deny the gods."'
"But Polycarp, with a countenance grave and serious, and contemplating
the whole multitude that were collected in the stadium, beckoned with
his hand to them, and with a sigh looked up to heaven and said, 'Away
with the atheists.'
"The governor continued to urge him again, saying: 'Swear, and I will
dismiss you. Revile Christ.'
"'Revile Christ!' Polycarp replied. 'Eighty-and-six years have I served
him and he never did me wrong; and how can I now blaspheme my King who
has saved me?'"
The governor continued to urge him, and in vain threatened him with the
wild beasts. At length a herald was ordered to proclaim in the midst of
the stadium that "Polycarp confesses he is a Christian." Thereupon the
multitude cried out, "This is that teacher of Asia, the father of the
Christians, the destroyer of our gods," and demanded that he should be
burned alive; and the governor gave sentence accordingly.
According to the horrid custom of the times the executioners were about
to fasten his hands to the stake by spikes, when he begged that he might
be bound merely, saying that He who gave him strength to bear the flames
would also give him strength to remain unmoved on the pyre.
This last request was granted; and being bound to the stake, he uttered
this beautiful prayer:
"Father of thy well-beloved and blessed Son, Jesus Christ, through whom
we have received the knowledge of thee, the God of angels and powers and
all creation, and of all the family of the righteous that live before
thee, I bless thee that thou hast thought me worthy of the present day
and hour, to have a share in the number of the martyrs and in the cross
of Christ unto the resurrection of eternal life, both of the soul and
body, in the incorruptible felicity of the Holy Spirit, among whom may I
be received in thy sight this day as a rich and acceptable sacrifice, as
thou, the faithful and true God, hast prepared, hast revealed, and
fulfilled. Wherefore, on this account and for all things, I praise thee,
I bless thee, I glorify thee through the eternal High Priest, Jesus
Christ, thy well-beloved Son, through whom glory be to thee with him in
the Holy Ghost, both now and evermore. Amen."
The flames did not immediately seize upon his body; so one of the
executioners--in mercy perhaps--plunged a sword into his body, and so
ended his sufferings. The centurion then placed the body in the midst of
the fire and burned it, "according to the custom of the Gentiles."
"Thus at last, taking up his bones, valued more than precious stones,
more tried than gold, we deposited them where they should be. There
also, as far as we can, the Lord will grant us to celebrate the natal
day of his martyrdom in joy and gladness, both in commemoration of those
who finished their contest before, and to prepare those that shall be
hereafter."
There is something wonderfully touching in this reference to the "natal
day of his martyrdom." Those who wrote it thought that the day on which
Polycarp was pierced by the sword was not the day of his death, but the
birthday of a new and happier life.
* * * * *
Justin, who from the manner of his death is often called Justin Martyr,
was a native of Samaria. He was of Roman parentage, and was born early
in the second century, and therefore must have been contemporary with
many persons who had seen some of the apostles.
Justin, who was addicted to philosophical pursuits, has given in one of
his works a very curious account of his studies and search after
religious truth. First, he thought to find it in the Stoic philosophy:
"I surrendered myself to a certain Stoic, and, having spent a
considerable time with him, when I had not acquired any further
knowledge of God--for he did not know it himself, and said such
instruction was unnecessary--I left him and betook myself to another,
who was called a Peripatetic, and, as he fancied, shrewd. And this man,
after having entertained me for a few days, requested me to settle the
fee, in order that our intercourse might not be unprofitable. Him, too,
for this reason I abandoned, believing him to be no philosopher at all."
Disgusted with the mercenary spirit of the Peripatetic, the inquirer
next determined to make a trial of Pythagorean philosophy. But the
celebrated Pythagorean teacher whom he consulted wished him to learn
music, astronomy, and geometry. Those kinds of knowledge, however, were
not what Justin wanted, and besides he thought that they would take up
too much time. So he next resolved to make a trial of Platonism; and
this time he was more successful.
"In my helpless condition it occurred to me to have a meeting with the
Platonists, for their fame was great. I thereupon spent as much of my
time as possible with one who had lately settled in our city--a
sagacious man holding a high position among the Platonists--and I
progressed and made the greatest improvements daily. And the perception
of immaterial things quite overpowered me, and the contemplation of
ideas furnished my mind with wings, so that in a little while I supposed
that I had become wise; and such was my folly that I expected forthwith
to look upon God, for this is the end of Plato's philosophy."
Justin then proceeds to give a remarkably interesting and graphic
account of his conversion to Christianity: