THE DISPERSAL OF THE JEWS
It is rather puzzling to find, now and again, in this greatest of all
stories, that several different people are called by the same name,
and also that the same person is called by different names. Now,
besides this Herod of whom we have been talking, there were several
others. There was Herod Antipas, his son, before whom Christ was
sent by Pontius Pilate, and also there was Herod Agrippa, his
grandson, who was king of Judæa for a while, reigning, with such
limited power as the Romans allowed him, from A.D. 37 to his death in
44. But for the most part, during all the early years of the
Christian Era, Judæa was governed by one or other Roman procurator
and was not even in name a kingdom.
Octavius, of whom I have been telling you how he became master of the
world, lived till the year 14 A.D. (Anno Domini, or year of our
Lord), that is, fourteen years from the date sometimes assigned to
our Lord's birth. And now you may be puzzled, because you may
remember that it is said in the Bible that a decree went out from
Cæsar Augustus, about the time of Christ's birth, that all the world
should be taxed. Cæsar Augustus, you see, as Master of the World!
The explanation is that Cæsar Augustus and Octavius were one and the
same person. He had been adopted as a {214} son by his great-uncle
Julius Cæsar, and then had taken the name of Cæsar. Augustus was not
a name, but a title, given by the Romans, just as one of the Pompeys,
and also one of the Herods, was called Magnus, or the Great.
Augustus means the August one--the Magnificent.
I have said that Octavius was a prudent man. He showed his prudence
in the way that he allowed Antony, who was imprudent, to do all kinds
of foolish things before he set to work to crush his power. He was
equally prudent in his dealing with Lepidus, his other rival. And
after he had made an end of the power of these two, and was the
greatest man in the world, he showed his prudence in refusing to
claim any great title which might give any enemies at Rome a chance
of saying that he was grasping at power and trying to rule like a
despot, as Antony had done. No doubt he remembered what had happened
to his great-uncle.
So he maintained many of the forms of the republican government and
many of the old titles of the officials of the government, but it was
quite evident all the time that he had the real power, and it was not
any less real because he did not make a big show of claiming it. No
doubt the Romans were all the more ready to leave the real power in
his hands on that account. When his old rival Lepidus died he took
to himself the high office of Pontifex Maximus which he had allowed
Lepidus to hold during his life.
Before his death, having no son of his own at that time alive, he
adopted, as the Roman law permitted, his step-son Tiberius as his
colleague during his life and as his successor after his death; and
the Romans fully approved of his doing so. Thus, when he died in
A.D. 14, Tiberius succeeded him as ruler of Rome and of {215} the
world. He had not extended the limits of the Roman power, but he had
made that power far more secure both in the West and in the East.
The _Pax Romana_ had become a far more real peace under him than it
had been before.
But there never was any real peace in Judæa for long together. The
national sentiment, as we should call it, of the old Jewish party,
the Conservatives, who are called Pharisees in the Bible, was too
strong for them to be at peace for any length of time under foreign
rule. King Agrippa, of whom we were speaking, was a personal friend
of both Caius Caligula and of Claudius, the two Roman Emperors who
succeeded Tiberius. We may speak of them as Emperors (imperators) by
this time, for it was a title which they took without dispute.
Agrippa made himself very well liked by the Jews, and it seems to
have been to please them that he had St. James beheaded and St. Peter
cast into prison, as is told in the Bible. The Bible, too, in the
Acts of the Apostles, tells us of his death in the year A.D. 44. He
was the last king of the Jews, and at his death Judæa fell again
under the government of the procurators.
[Sidenote: The procurators of Judæa]
The procurators all seem to have been oppressive in their government.
Probably their task was a very difficult one. They had to govern a
people who all through the story had shown themselves stronger in the
independence of their spirit and in following their own ways of life
than any other. The force of Roman soldiers of the legions and of
allied troops that they had at hand to uphold their authority must
have been very small in comparison with the force that the Jews and
their friends could muster at short notice. They must have depended
a great deal on the fame of the {216} Roman power, and on the
knowledge which the Jews must have had that if Rome really cared to
take serious measures against them they could have no hope of
success. Rome's power, if she cared to exert it, would be
overwhelming.
But Rome was far away. Perhaps she would not take the trouble to
exert that power.
That is how the Jewish party probably thought about it all; and the
procurators and even the kings of Judæa had to try to uphold the
Roman power as best they could, and yet to do what they could not to
drive the Jews into the rebellion that they were always on the point
of making, and now and again actually did make.
Pontius Pilate was procurator at the time of Christ's trial. You
know how he gained the execration of all the Christian world ever
since by sacrificing Christ to the hate of the Jews. He had sent
Christ to Herod Antipas, because Herod was ruler of Galilee, not of
Judæa, at the time, and Christ was considered, from his birthplace,
to be a Galilæan. Pilate no doubt would have been well pleased if
Herod had taken the responsibility on himself of judging the case,
but Herod sent Christ back to Pilate. The Christians were already
many enough to be a formidable body, and the rulers of Judæa had now
to deal with three parties bitterly opposed to each other, the Jews
who held to their old traditions, the Jews who had become Christians,
and the small governing class of Romans and their friends.
[Illustration: FROM THE ARCH OF TITUS (SHOWING THE SPOILS OF
JERUSALEM CARRIED IN TRIUMPH).]
A good deal of what we know of the story comes from Josephus, the
great Jewish historian, and an enemy of the Romans. He would be
likely to say hard things of the procurators. But, even allowing
{217} for that, it does seem as if the later procurators, after the
death of King Herod Agrippa, were very oppressive.
It was in the time of Florus, who was procurator from A.D. 64 to 66,
that the trouble which had been growing came to a head. The state of
things in Jerusalem and Judæa generally was terrible. Bands of
assassins called Sicarii, or daggermen (from _sica_, a dagger), went
about almost unmolested by authority. They were supposed to be very
zealous for the old faith, and no doubt it was to escape them that
St. Paul was taken, as we are told in the Bible, secretly and by
night, from Jerusalem to Cæsarea. He lay in prison there, awaiting
trial, for two years, while the procurator Felix, who had been a very
oppressive governor, was succeeded by Festus--"most noble Festus," as
Paul calls him--a more just and lenient ruler. Albinus followed
Festus as procurator, from A.D. 62 to 64, and then came Florus, the
most exacting of them all.
What finally caused the Jews to rise up in fury against the Roman
power was that Florus stripped the Temple, which was just completed
in its building, of some of its sacred treasures. At first the
rebellion met with a surprising success. Florus had called in the
aid of the governor of Syria, with a force of 20,000 regular troops
and 13,000 auxiliaries, but this was defeated and broken up by the
Jews in a battle at Beth-horon. Probably the fate of Jerusalem was
hastened by this victory, for its effect was that Rome took so
serious a view of the revolt that she sent her ablest general,
Vespasian, with ample forces to subdue it. The result was certain;
yet again the Jews showed their extraordinary toughness in resisting
so long as they did. The other cities soon fell to the Roman arms,
but Jerusalem itself held out for three {218} years after the
beginning of Vespasian's campaign. It fell in the year A.D. 70, and
the fate that had befallen Carthage was now suffered by Jerusalem.
The newly built Temple was destroyed--"not one stone left upon
another," as had been foretold; the walls of the city were thrown
down; the houses were burnt to the ground; most of the inhabitants
were killed, and the rest taken away into slavery or otherwise
dispersed over the earth. Jerusalem ceased to exist. The Jewish
nation no longer had a capital city or a home.
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