CHAPTER XXXIX.

TWO CENTURIES AND A QUARTER IN ENGLAND (1660‒1885).

1. The First Fifty Years

2. Influx of Germans and Poles: how received

3. Converts

4. Progress of Anglo-Jewish Legislation

5. Communal Progress

6. The Nineteenth Century

7. A Slander revived and slain

8. The Man of the Nineteenth Century

9. Conclusion

INDEX

_MAPS._

1. Palestine

2. The Roman Empire at the close of the Republic

3. Europe in the Middle Ages

_Erratum._

_Page 169, line 22, for 66 read 72._

OUTLINES OF JEWISH HISTORY.

BOOK I.

500 B.C. TO 70 A.C.

IN THE SHADOW OF THE SWORD.

אֲסִירֵי עֳנִי וּבַרְזֶל

PSALM cvii. 10.

‘_Life fulfils itself in many ways._’

CHAPTER I.

THE JEWS IN BABYLON.

=1. Babylonian Exiles.=――Nearly two thousand five hundred years ago

Jerusalem fell under the siege of Nebuchadnezzar, and a great many Jews

were led away captives into Babylon. Daniel was one of these captives,

and Ezekiel was another; and most, even of the rank and file, were men

of some character and some learning. Gradually, the exiles took up the

position rather of colonists than of captives. Lands were allotted to

them, they grew to love and own the soil they cultivated, and their

prophets kept alive in them the sense that, though Babylonians now

instead of Palestinians, they were still Jews. The name of Jews instead

of Israelites came into use from this period, as the greater number of

the Babylonian exiles belonged to the kingdom of Judah. No records, in

which much trust can be put, have come down to us of the fate of the

ten tribes which made up the kingdom of Israel. Thousands of them, it

is certain, were carried off into foreign captivity when Palestine was

invaded by Shalmaneser about 130 years before the fall of Jerusalem.

The ten tribes have thenceforward no separate history.

=2. Persian Conquest of Babylon.=――Forty-eight years after the

destruction of Jerusalem the whole of the Babylonian kingdom passed

into the power of Cyrus the Persian. Two years after his conquest he

told the Jewish exiles in Babylon that any or all of them, if they

liked, might return to the land of their fathers, and become his Syrian

instead of his Babylonian subjects. He gave them permission also to

rebuild their temple, and he restored to them the holy vessels which

had been taken away by Nebuchadnezzar’s troops when they sacked

Jerusalem.

=3. The Influences of the Exile.=――Fifty years, we must remember, had

come and gone since the fall of Jerusalem. Sorrows, that seem quite

unbearable at first, grow with time to be lightly borne. ‘By the waters

of Babylon,’ the first exiles had sat down and wept, but on its banks

by-and-by their children ran and laughed. They ‘hung their harps on

the willow trees,’ and refused to sing the songs of Zion for a year or

two, or may be ten. But by degrees the ‘strange land’ grew homelike,

and the harps, we may be sure, were taken down, and strung, and tuned.

After a while every one has to live in the present, however dear or

sad the past may be. The Jews in Babylon learned to face their life in

captivity, and to make the best of it. In many respects they were the

better for it. They grew, indeed, to be truer patriots in exile than

for generations they had been in possession. The loss of their country

seemed to rouse them and to steady them. They became more patient and

united, and less childish and discontented. The counsels of Ezekiel and

Jeremiah, and of the other unnamed prophets of the exile, were listened

to in Babylon as they never had been in Palestine. The law of Moses

was read, and the Psalms of David were probably sung in mean little

meeting-houses, but these poor places were crowded, and included more

devout worshippers than had ever assembled in the marble courts of the

temple. Many people think that it is to these earnest exiles in Babylon

that we owe the small beginnings of our present synagogues. The word

‘synagogue’ comes from the Greek, and means an assembling together;

and though the word itself does not come into use till long after the

return from the captivity, yet places of assembly for prayer and praise

were quite common all throughout Judea long before historians talk of

them by the name of synagogue.

=4. How Cyrus’s Permission was received.=――To many of the Jewish

settlers in Babylon, and especially to those who had been born

there, Palestine must have come to sound like England does to her

colonists――as a name, whenever and wherever heard, brimful of the

tenderest loves and longings, but still more or less a name. To old

folks the old land is a memory, to young people a hope, but to old and

young alike the land where they live and work is home. And Jews are

particularly homelike in their natures, soon fitting into, and growing

fond of, and looking native to, any spot whereon they settle. For some

time they had been fairly and even generously treated by the people

who had led them captive; and thus when the Persian proclamation was

published, there was no eager ungrateful rush to leave Babylon, and

to return to their own land under the protection of the conquerors

of their captors. Love for the old scenes was strong, but a sort

of loyalty to the new weakened the love a little, and made duty a

difficult choice.

=5. The End of the Exile.=――The liberty of return which Cyrus gave

closes the Babylonian captivity. Those Jews who remained in Babylon

remained as voluntary exiles. With some, and they were not few, the

sense that Babylon was the land of their children proved more potent

than the remembrance that Palestine was the land of their fathers.

Neither country was theirs. And in Babylon they were comfortable; and

that condition, in making up one’s mind, counts for much. The fair land

of promise was certainly to all the land of their dreams, but it is not

quite as certain that it was to all equally the land of their desires.

Some 42,000, however, brave and faithful men and women, decided to

make use of Cyrus’s permission, and under the leadership of Zerubbabel

crossed the Euphrates, and set out for the Holy Land; those who

remained behind gave plenty of good wishes, and willingly forwarded

supplies.

Illustration: PALESTINE

_E. Weller Lithog^r._

_Drawn & Engraved by E. Weller. Red Lion Square_

_London Longman & C^o._

CHAPTER II.

THE RETURN TO PALESTINE.

=1. The Rebuilding of the Temple.=――The first task of the exiles

when they arrived at Jerusalem was to set about the rebuilding of the

temple. The ruins were cleared away, and early in the second year of

their return, amid great rejoicings, the foundation-stone of the second

temple was laid. There were some very old people in the crowd, who had

worshipped in the first beautiful temple, and to them the scene could

not have been one of unmixed joy. The Bible says, ‘The old men wept.’

But men old enough to remember and to weep over their memories could

not have been many, and hope and rejoicing were the chief feelings on

the occasion.

=2. The Samaritans.=――Very soon the work, so gladly begun, was

interrupted, and by home foes instead of foreign ones. Shalmaneser,

king of Assyria, nearly two hundred years before, had conquered Hoshea,

the last king of Israel, and had carried off many of Hoshea’s subjects

into captivity. Samaria had fallen after a three years’ siege, and in

place of those Israelites who had been killed, and of those who had

been made prisoners of war, the king of Assyria brought some of his own

subjects from Babylon and Cuthea, into the desolated land of Israel.

These new settlers were, of course, heathens, but they adopted, after

a time, some of the rites of the Israelites among whom they lived. The

old inhabitants who had been left in Samaria, and the new who had been

brought thither, all came to be called Samaritans. Their religious

belief was naturally a little mixed. There was much that was heathen

and idolatrous, but a great deal, too, of what was distinctly Jewish in

their thoughts and practice. When Jerusalem was again in the hands of

Jews, and the temple about to be rebuilt, the Samaritans, at any rate,

thought themselves quite Jewish enough to offer to help in the work.

The exiles did not agree with them. The fifty years’ captivity had made

a great change in their way of looking at things. Their Judaism was

of a stronger and a sterner sort than it used to be. They meant the

service in their new temple to be purely Jewish, and it seemed to them

that if they let the Samaritans help in the building of the temple,

it would lead to the introduction of idolatrous rites into Divine

worship. Perhaps they felt, in an illogical sort of way, that the

building itself would be profaned if any part of the work was done

by such half-and-half Jews as were the Samaritans. No one likes to be

pronounced not good enough for any work he himself proposes to do, and

the Samaritans were extremely indignant at the rejection of their offer.

They were mean enough to take revenge by speaking against the Jews at

the Persian court. They were so far successful, that the work in which

they were not allowed to share was presently put a stop to by order of

Cyrus. But some fifteen years later his successor Darius, the Darius

who was defeated at Marathon, gave permission and help too, and, in

spite of the Samaritans, the temple was finished and dedicated, twenty

years after the foundation-stone had been laid. The Samaritans, partly

in imitation, partly in anger, and partly, it may be hoped, from

religious feeling, later on built a little temple for themselves on

Mount Gerizim.

=3. The Feast of Purim.=――The next great event comes with an interval

of nearly fifty years. The meek Jewish maiden who, to serve her

people, became a queen, and who, in her palace, ‘did the commandment

of Mordecai, like as when she was brought up with him,’ is believed to

have married king Xerxes, the Xerxes who, at Thermopylæ, desired the

Spartans to give up their arms, and to whom Leonidas sent back the

famous retort to ‘come and take them,’ All the romantic facts, which

are told in the Book of Esther, and which led to the institution of

Purim, history seems to show, took place during that monarch’s reign.

=4. Ezra the Scribe.=――The influence of good Jews remained strong

at the Persian court and among the Persian people. The next king,

Artaxerxes, had a Jew for his cup-bearer, and showed himself,

throughout his reign, most kindly disposed towards his Jewish subjects.

He let them appoint their own judges, and readily gave permission

to Ezra to lead another colony from Babylon to join the settlement

in Judea; and he made Nehemiah, who was his cup-bearer, governor of

Palestine. Ezra――the Scribe, as he is called――was a fine character,

strong-handed and strong-hearted too, a many-sided man. He seems to

have got his name of scribe (סוֹפֵר) from his literary powers, which he

chiefly used in transcribing the Pentateuch from old Hebrew characters

to those in use at the present day. The name became by degrees applied

to a whole class. The Sopherim, or scribes, were in turn skilful

writers and careful expounders and patient students of the law. They

were the ‘men of the Book,’[1] the lawyers of the Pentateuch. Malachi,

the last of the prophets, lived at this period, and the scribes to

some extent grew, in time, to take the place of the prophets in the

religious life of the Jewish nation. The נָבִיא, the servant of the Most

High, had spoken His message――the סוֹפֵר, with patient enthusiasm, was at

hand to transcribe it. Their love for the Law and their knowledge of

the Law gave the scribes spiritual power, and by-and-by political power

also. For as the Law became by degrees the only national possession

left to the Jews, those most learned in it naturally came to the front.

The wisest and most skilled in interpreting the Law were called on to

administer it, and to take part in the government of the dispossessed

people. Ezra the Scribe was the first, chief and representative of the

great body of students and teachers who, successively under the names

of Sopherim, Tanaim, and Amoraim, became a power in Palestine.

=5. The Work of Ezra and Nehemiah.=――Both Ezra and Nehemiah were men

of the best type of Jewish character. They loved the Lord ‘with all

their heart and soul and might,’ which may be taken to mean using brain

and heart and hands in the service. They willingly left the ease and

comfort of court life for rough work of all kinds in Palestine. They

desired to help their brethren in every possible way. They found plenty

of preaching to be needed, and plenty, too, of work of a more practical

sort. With equal energy they set about both. The walls of Jerusalem

were in ruins. These, they wisely thought, ought to be repaired and

rebuilt, for a people whose defences are weak are at the mercy of all.

It was no light task; for the Samaritans, led by Sanballat, harassed

and hindered the workers by every means in their power. They spoke

against them and insulted them, and when they found evil words fail,

they tried fighting. The Jewish leaders were equal to the occasion;

they gave their men weapons as well as tools, and in the end courage

and patience won. The walls were rebuilt and the governor’s house was

fortified, and Nehemiah was able to go back for a while to his court

duties. Meanwhile Ezra had been busy in another way. The defences of

the religion as well as of the city had breaches and gaps in it. Many

had married among the heathen, and were bringing up their children to

a weak and most hurtful mixed belief. With a three days’ notice Ezra

called the congregation together. Then, without any roundabout talk, he

said to them, ‘You have sinned; put away your strange wives; do God’s

pleasure.’ It was a hard bidding. God’s pleasure and man’s pleasure are

often one and the same, but not always. To be good and to be happy is

not uncommon, but occasionally if one wants to be good one has to be

unhappy. There comes a conscious choosing between the doing of God’s

pleasure and of our own pleasure, as to these Jews of old. They made

the higher and the harder choice. From love of God, and in obedience

to His law, they gave up their ‘strange,’ sweet, unlawful loves. With

people in such a mood the rest of Ezra’s and Nehemiah’s reforms were

comparatively easy. It was grand material to work upon. There was some

resistance on the part of the more well-off families, who liked to be

left alone, but the efforts of Ezra and Nehemiah for the good of the

nation were not relaxed nor weakened thereby. They insisted on the

proper observance of the Sabbath, they resettled the rights of property,

and they restored the law of Moses to its place as an inspired code for

constant reading and reference. Ezra has been called the second Moses,

and the work he did was certainly of the same sort. Moses the lawgiver,

with direct Divine help, made a tribe into a nation. Ezra the Scribe,

with indirect Divine help, made of a dispossessed nation an undying

people. The means employed was the same in both cases――God’s Law.

CHAPTER III.

LIFE IN PALESTINE.

=1. Condition of the People.=――After the stress and strain of the

religious revival under Ezra and Nehemiah, things settled down for a

long while into a quiet, uneventful course. It was the seed-time of

national character, the season when growth is active though it does not

show. The Persian conquerors, busy with their Greek wars, did not much

trouble their Jewish subjects in Syria. Every now and again another

little band of exiles would join their friends in Judea, or would

journey on to Egypt to form a new little Jewish community there. Even

the conquest of the Persian Empire by Alexander the Great made little

difference to the Jews. Their personal government was in their own

hands, and changes in political government made little outward sign

in their lives. They were always law-abiding, and neither from Persian

nor Greek did there come any startling or embarrassing demands on their

loyalty. There is a story told of a dramatic meeting at the gates of

Jerusalem between Alexander of Macedon and Jaddua the high priest, when

the armed king, who came in anger, suddenly fell on his knees before

the white-robed priest. But the anger, and the armour, and the robes,

and the kiss of peace, and the meeting altogether, seem, with many

another charming and somewhat shaky relic, to have been swept away by

stiff new brooms into the lumber-room of history.

=2. Literary Labours.=――The quiet time was good for scholars. In

the hundred years between the death of Nehemiah and the death of

Alexander there was a good deal of literary activity in Palestine. To

the Pentateuch which Ezra taught in schools, and read and expounded in

synagogues, a second portion of Holy Scriptures[2]――the Prophets――was

added; and a third portion, Holy Writings――followed. What is called the

canon of the Hebrew Scriptures,[2] in the form and order of our Hebrew

Bible, was definitely arranged yet a little later on. This work was

almost all done in Hebrew, which was still the language of the people.

Then a great store of wisdom, which had been the growth of ages,

began at this period to be collected and sifted, and put into shape.

There were proverbs and parables and wise sayings of all sorts, and

quantities of long arguments and discussions, and some supplementary,

and perhaps not always very accurate, history. It all began to be

looked into. Partly in Aramaic, and partly in Greek, a good deal of it

got gradually written down. Some of the wisdom and a great part of the

history grew, in this and the next century, into what are called the

apocryphal books. These, though they have not the value of inspired

writings, have considerable merit of their own. The best, too, of the

talks and the texts and the legendary lore was gathered together, and

made a foundation for the Midrash, which had for its chief object the

exposition of the Bible, and especially of the Pentateuch. And besides

all these tasks, the energy and earnestness of the people found yet

another channel. They set about formulating a ritual, that is a regular

arrangement of prayer and service.

=3. Alexandrian Jews.=――In the time of Alexander of Macedon,

Alexander the Great, as he is called, the city of Alexandria, in Egypt,

was founded in his honour. A great many Jews joined the Greek and

Egyptian colonists, and were among the early settlers in the city.

By degrees these Alexandrian Jews grew to be a little less Jewish than

the Judean Jews. They had exactly the same rights and privileges as the

Macedonians. Greek culture, Greek habits of thought, were in the very

air they breathed, and they breathed it in more lustily, perhaps, than

those to whom it was native. They spoke Greek, and after a while they

neglected their national tongue, and were unable even to understand

the Scriptures when read in synagogue. But though they let the language

of their fathers grow strange to them, and were somewhat lax and

unobservant, yet they never ceased to be Jews. Whether they were

regular worshippers we do not know, but they certainly had a large and

magnificent synagogue of their own; and in Heliopolis, another city of

Egypt, there was a temple somewhat similar to the temple in Jerusalem.

And it is further related in the Apocrypha that some 300 of these

Egyptian Jews were once staunch enough to their faith to choose to be

trampled to death by wild elephants rather than become converts. The

sequel sounds a little legendary, as the elephants, it is added on the

same authority, could not be induced to make martyrs of the Jews. They

wisely turned aside, and trampled on the spectators instead of on the

intended victims.

=4. The Septuagint.=――The Jews in Egypt grew numerous, and many of

them began to take important positions of trust in the State and in

the army. The study of Hebrew became more and more neglected. These

Egyptian Jews must have grown denationalised, since they grudged the

labour of becoming familiar with their national tongue. But, however

willing to give up the language, they had no mind to give up the

literature. They desired still to read the law and the prophets, if

only it could be managed without too much trouble. They determined to

get a translation made. About 250 B.C. an embassy was sent to Jerusalem

by the Egyptian king, Ptolemy Philadelphus, begging the high priest

for the loan and labour of seventy-two learned scribes. It is said that

each of the seventy-two made a separate translation, and that every

one of the seventy-two translations turned out to be exactly alike.

It is rather a doubtful story. But whether the seventy-two translators

agreed――which, as they worked separately, seems not impossible――or

whether it was their translations which were unanimous, which seems

less likely, certain it is that a Greek version of the Scriptures

was made, which was called the Septuagint. Some of those writers, who

always will differ from the others, say that the scribes had nothing to

do with it at all, but that the Septuagint owes its origin to different

authors, countries, and ages.

=5. Under Egyptian Rule.=――When Alexander died (323 years B.C.), all

his great conquests were divided among his generals. Syria and Egypt

became the rival powers in the East. Palestine, for over a century, was

like a battledore between two shuttlecocks. For a while the Egyptians

had the best of the game, and under the first three Ptolemies the Jews

were very mildly tossed. They had to pay tribute to Egypt, but their

home government was left to their own high priests, and their religion

was not interfered with.

=6. Under Syrian Rule.=――203 years B.C., Antiochus III. of Syria,

called the Great, wrested Palestine from the fourth Ptolemy of Egypt.

This change of masters in itself made no change in the position of the

Jews. They continued to be mildly ruled, and their government was still

left in their own hands. Seleucus, the son and successor of Antiochus,

proved as peaceably inclined as his father. But trouble was brewing.

The civilisation of the Syrians was Greek in its nature, and their

habits of thought and their modes of worship were sure to jar terribly

with the strict notions of Judean Jews. So long as the priests stood

between the court and the people, and all actual contact was avoided,

no collision occurred. When the priests were found wanting the crisis

came.

=7. Home Rule.=――In the course of time the government of the people

had come into the hands of the high priest. The high priesthood was an

hereditary office. From father to son, or to nearest of kin, the office

was handed down, and for the most part worthily exercised as a trust

as well as a dignity. It was not altogether an easy office. The Jews

needed ruling, and their masters――Persian, Egyptian, Syrian, or Greek,

as it might be――needed conciliating. The priests had to be firm in

their faith and pleasant in their manners; a fault in either meant

failure; disunion was to be dreaded, and weakness was altogether fatal.

For a long while the difficulties were overcome. Jaddua and Onias,

and Simon the Just, who was one of the last surviving members of

the Great Synagogue which Ezra founded, were all towers of strength

to the priesthood and to the people. But a certain incapable high

priest, called Onias II. (230 B.C.) very nearly brought his nation

into trouble with Egypt over the tribute-money, which he had let fall

into arrears; and Onias III. (210 B.C.), though a good man, made the

terrible mistake of calling in the Syrians to settle a family dispute.

Antiochus took this opportunity to usurp the right of nominating to

the high priesthood. A brother of Onias had long desired the office

for himself. He offered a bribe to the Syrian treasury, and in further

deference to the ruling state changed his Jewish name of Joshua to

the Greek-sounding one of Jason. He gained his point, and he earned

besides, it may be hoped, both the contempt of those he flattered

and of those he forsook. Presently another candidate, named Menelaus,

arose, and, to get means for the necessary bribery, he robbed the

temple treasury. So far as the Syrians were concerned, the immediate

moral to the Jews was the old one of the bundle of sticks. As long

as the Jews were self-respecting and self-governing, they and their

government and their religion had been respected and left alone. As

soon as their leaders began to riot and quarrel among themselves the

fate of the bundle of sticks fell upon the people.

CHAPTER IV.

THE MACCABEAN WAR OF INDEPENDENCE.

=1. Antiochus Epiphanes.=――Seleucus was succeeded on the Syrian

throne by his brother Antiochus, surnamed by his flatterers Epiphanes

the Illustrious, and by his more candid friends, Epimanes the Madman.

By the date of his accession ancient Greece had lost her supremacy,

and Rome was getting to be the great power in the world. All the little

kings made their little wars, or planned their big projects, with a

thought of Rome in the background. Antiochus was no exception. He had

led an expedition against Egypt, and had been defeated by Rome. He knew

the Roman policy was to break up empires, and to attract the pieces, as

it were, to itself. The geographical position of Judea would make her

a valuable Roman ally. He determined to get rid of this possibility by

getting rid of the Jews. And besides this, the disputes and riots in

Jerusalem over the priesthood were making the Jews and their religion

personally unpleasant to Antiochus. He entered the capital 169 B.C.,

plundered the Temple, offered swine’s flesh on the altar, and put to

death a great many of the inhabitants.

=2. Antiochus’s Tyranny.=――That was only the beginning. He set up

heathen idols in the Samaritan temple as well as in the Jerusalem one.

The Jewish Scriptures were burned, and the reading of the law and the

observance of the law forbidden on pain of death. Great rewards were

offered to those who would renounce Judaism. A mother and her seven

sons were separately and in succession tempted. ‘I can better bear to

see them all die than for one of them to live as a coward,’ said the

brave woman; and they took her at her word, and one after another the

boys were led out to death. An old man, Eleazar by name, did his part,

too, to prove that the calmness of age can be as steadfast as the

impulse of youth. They tried bribes and they tried tortures on him; all

to no avail. ‘Hear, O Israel; the Lord our God is One,’ was the last

utterance of his dying lips.

=3. Resistance of Mattathias.=――Things had come to a bad pass. The

martyrs who were steadfast in the covenant were more numerous by far

than the weak-minded folks who yielded, but the persecutors outnumbered

both. There was a passion of resentment felt by weak and strong alike,

and the feeling needed only directing to find forcible expression.

In the little town of Modin, near Jerusalem, there lived an Asmonean

family, of whom an old priest, named Mattathias, was the head. An

officer of Antiochus made a visit to this place, calling on the Jews

to perform heathen sacrifice. Some waverer in the crowd tremblingly

obeyed. Mattathias struck him down, and, aiming another blow at the

altar, called on all those who were ‘zealous for the law’ to follow

him. There was an immediate rally to his side. The enemy was worsted

for the day, and Mattathias and his party left the town at once, and

raised the standard of revolt throughout the country. That was the

beginning of the terrible unequal struggle, which lasted twenty-seven

years, and ended in well-deserved victory for the Jews.

=4. Chasidim and Zaddikim.=――In appealing to those who were ‘zealous

for the law’ to gather round him, Mattathias secured at once a strong

and enthusiastic following. For a large party had grown up among the

Jews who were ‘zealous for the law’ in a very complete sense. They

loved it devotedly, if sometimes, perhaps, just a little ostentatiously.

These men were called Chasidim, Saints; and occasionally, it may

be, they took on themselves the pretensions as well as the qualities

attaching to the name. Side by side with these, there were many who

contented themselves with just conforming to the law and doing their

duty, as it were, in outline. Such were called, in Biblical language,

Zaddikim, or ‘righteous.’ These righteous ones, it is possible, found

the saints a little difficult to live up to. In reaction, they, at any

rate, became occasionally a little less than ‘righteous,’ even somewhat

lax and Grecianised Jews, and were called Hellenists.

=5. The Success of Judas Maccabeus.=――Helped greatly by the Chasidim,

Mattathias soon made head against the enemy. He had five strong, brave

sons to work with him. To the second, Judas, he left the command when,

soon after the campaign opened, he died. The little ragged following by

that time had grown into a disciplined army. ‘Who is like to Thee among

the gods, O Lord?’ (מִי־כָמֹכָה בָאֵלִם יְיָ) was the motto on their flag, and the

answer seemed to come in the beaten ranks of the Syrians. The initial

letters of these courageous, humble words (מכבי) were taken to form a

surname for this family of heroes, of whom Judas is the central figure.

Victory did not come at once nor suddenly. It had to be worked for, and

to be waited for at the sacrifice of much that was dear. The Chasidim

were called on to give up for the cause some very strong religious

scruples, and they showed themselves true patriots, as ready to yield

their opinions as their lives in the service of their country. It

was the mean custom of Apollonius, the chief general of Antiochus,

to attack the Jews on the Sabbath, believing that on that day the

rigid observance of ‘the law’ would prevent the Jews from defending

themselves. The exceptional circumstances, however, were recognised

by the leaders of the people, permission was given, and the Jews, the

Chasidim among the rest, when attacked on the Sabbath, fought for their

land and their faith as bravely as on week days.

=6. Institution of Hanucah.=――Slowly and surely, step by step, this

William Tell of Judaism wrested his country from the tight grip of

the oppressor. The decisive battle of the campaign was fought out and

won on the plains of Emmaus, some seventeen miles to the west of the

capital. Judas Maccabeus marched unopposed with his triumphant troops

into Jerusalem, and on the twenty-fifth of Kislev 3592 (B.C. 169)

the נֵר חָמִיד was gladly and solemnly relighted in the now cleansed and

reconsecrated temple. A joyful dedication service was held, and its

anniversary was instituted as a religious and historical observance

among the Jews.

=7. Treaty with Rome.=――Judea was won back for the Jews. But could

the Jews hold it? That was the question which, after a very short

experience, presented itself to their brave commander. The little

‘kingdom of priests’ had transformed itself into a camp of soldiers;

the nation of ‘witnesses’ had given evidence; but could the possession

they had gained for themselves be kept by themselves? Judas Maccabeus

knew enough of his countrymen to doubt it. He believed that without

allies it would be impossible for the Jews to retain Judea. Syria had

been a dangerous enemy, and seemed likely to prove a yet more dangerous

friend. Not long after the re-dedication of the temple Antiochus

Epiphanes had died, and after the taking of Jerusalem by the Jews

a sort of truce had been arranged. For a short while the Syrian

succession was disturbed by a usurper. When the rightful heir came to

his own, he wished to include Judea in that category. But he proved a

little too paternal in his ideas. He took it upon himself to nominate a

high priest, perhaps reckoning that the party feeling between Chasidim

and Zaddikim would induce a strong difference of opinion on the subject

of the succession, and that the section of the people whom he pleased

by his nomination would become his adherents. He was a little too

clever. The Zaddikim, who were already the Hellenist party in the

State, did seem a trifle flattered at this foreign interest displayed

in their affairs, but Judas and the great body of the Jews rightly

resented it. The Syrian overtures were gravely declined by Judas,

and Alkimos, the Syrian nominee, backed up though he was by a Syrian

general, was deprived of his dignity. Syria fought for her candidate,

and was defeated. His success, however, only made Judas the more

certain of his difficulties. He took the bold step of proclaiming

Judea an independent state, and sent an embassy to Rome to ask for an

alliance. The embassy was kindly received, and the alliance accepted.

CHAPTER V.

PALESTINE UNDER NATIVE RULE.

=1. Death of Judas Maccabeus.=――In the early part of the campaign,

Eleazar, one of the five brave Maccabean brothers, had been slain, and

now, four years after the taking of Jerusalem, Judas fell fighting in

its defence. ‘The greatest gift a hero leaves his race is to have been

a hero.’ The fortune of war may lose, as the fortune of war may win,

the substantial gifts which a hero brings his race; but his life, if it

be truly heroic, will remain a valuable possession to them ‘throughout

all generations.’ Though he brought no offering to his country but

Khartoum, Gordon belongs to Englishmen as a great gift for ever. And so

it is with Judas Maccabeus, though no inch of the land which he won for

them remains to his race. ‘My Jewish soldiers are veritable Maccabees,’

said the Czar Nicholas to Sir Moses Montefiore, when, in 1846, the

English philanthropist went to plead for his poor downtrodden Russian

brothers, who, except in the army, had so little chance of a fair field.

The name of Maccabee was used by the Russian Emperor as a testimonial

to character. Here was a legacy left to his race by a hero, and

presented 2,000 years after date.

=2. Jonathan the Maccabee.=――Directly after Judas’s death, Jonathan,

another of the devoted Maccabean brothers, took the command of affairs.

He did the work of priest and soldier and statesman too. But a third

brother was lost on the battle-field, and for a while courage and skill

seemed to make no way against the superior force of the Syrians. Time,

however, was on Jonathan’s side. He kept on ‘pegging away,’ and some

ten years after the death of Judas, the enemy found out what stuff

he was made of, and tried to come to terms. At that date a rival was

opposing the reigning king of Syria. This new claimant, Alexander

Balas, and the old opponent, Demetrius, both made overtures to Jonathan

for his alliance. Probably each thought how very useful so clever and

warlike a general would be on his side, and how much pleasanter as an

ally than as an enemy. So the king who was, and the king who wanted

to be, bid against each other for the Jewish general’s friendship.

Jonathan declared on the same side as did Rome, for Alexander Balas.

Then for eight years there was peace and quiet, and Jonathan put aside

his sword, and wore the white robes of the priest, and things were well

for the Jews. At the end of that time another revolution disturbed the

Syrian succession. A usurper called Tryphon claimed the throne, got

Jonathan by treachery into his power, and used it to have him put to

death.

=3. Simon, the First of the Priest-king Dynasty.=――There was only one

left now of the five brave sons of Mattathias. With all the brothers,

patriotism was the strongest of the affections, and Simon gave himself

no time to indulge in grief. He at once put himself at the head of

affairs, and so successfully that the Syrian garrison had very soon

to retire from Jerusalem. Simon renewed the alliance with Rome, and

strengthening his position thereby, found the necessary leisure to

look after peaceable duties, which for some time past had been rather

neglected for the more urgent military ones. He made Joppa a harbour,

which was good for commerce on the coasts, and he saw to agricultural

interests, which encouraged labour in the interior of the country.

Simon was a practical man as well as a pious one. He so far impressed

his people that they recognised his worth in his lifetime. In solemn

assembly, held in the month of Elul 140 B.C., Simon was proclaimed

hereditary high priest and prince.

=4. The Sons of Simon.=――Simon, no more than the other Maccabean

brothers, was destined to die in his bed. Some four years after his

assumption of the priest-king dignity Syria again changed rulers.

The new monarch, Antiochus Sidetes, reverted to the old bad policy of

endeavouring to make Judea a vassal province, instead of recognising

her as an independent and allied state. Bribery, as usual, was in the

first place employed, and a son-in-law of Simon’s was found base enough

to serve the Syrian purpose. With help of this treacherous Ptolemy,

Simon and his elder son Joannan were betrayed and murdered. John

Hyrcanus, the younger son of Simon, escaped, and presently buckled on

his priestly armour.

=5. Reign of John Hyrcanus.=――He wore it for nine-and-twenty years

(135‒106) bravely and uncompromisingly. In the double and divided

duties which devolved upon him, John Hyrcanus was perhaps more king

than priest, more just than merciful. He made short work with his foes,

whether native or foreign ones; and when he had fought and routed the

Syrians, he began to deal with the Samaritans. He would tolerate no

mongrel Judaism. He explained to the Samaritans that in religious

matters they must make up their minds to be one thing or the other,

and to help them to come to a decision he destroyed the temple which

they had built on Mount Gerizim. It was a high-handed measure. His

own subjects greatly approved it, and after their capital was besieged

and reduced to ashes the Samaritans had to acquiesce. The Samaritans

henceforward cease to have any noteworthy history as a separate

religious nationality.

=6. His Last Years.=――There is nothing so successful as success. The

Romans supported John Hyrcanus, and his kingdom grew in extent almost

to the limits of David’s and Solomon’s sovereignty. But a cloud was

rising on the clear sky in the shape of political troubles, and towards

the end of his reign the popular king found himself in opposition.

CHAPTER VI.

JUDEA DURING THE REMAINDER OF THE RULE OF THE ASMONEANS.

=1. Rival Factions. Pharisees and Sadducees.=――Two parties had grown

up in the State. They were rival political factions rather than rival

religious sects, although their differences had been in the first

place, and were still mainly, of a religious sort. Misfortune does not

affect all natures alike. In cases of shipwreck there are always some

people who make a rush at the boats, and some who turn at once to the

pumps. The simile may serve for the Jews at this period. The Babylonian

conquest had threatened national shipwreck, and after the anchorage of

the Exile, a long-sustained struggle for national existence had begun.

More than once it looked as if the waves must close over the people.

There were Syrian storms and Roman winds to make way against, and Greek

sunshine to resist; and the sunshine perhaps was the most paralysing of

all. The different effects of trouble on different natures soon became

manifest. Two distinct parties came to the front. One who at all costs

stuck to the ship. Hot and grimy, and terribly in earnest, these worked

away at the pumps. They kept to that one task, and, in dread of leaks,

patched and cobbled, and by degrees laid down a new keel. The other

set, in all good faith, took to the boats. They carried with them what

they considered essentials for national existence, but what they had

not room for, and thought superfluous, they threw overboard.

=2. How they got their Names.=――The people who stood by the ship,

and who in effect saved it, came to be called Pharisees. There are two

possible meanings to the root פרש from which the name is derived. It

means to enlarge or to explain, and it also signifies to separate or

divide. From either or from both these meanings the Pharisees probably

gained their name. Their first object was to separate from everything

that might pollute them externally or internally. The fear of injury

to their beloved ship, the Law, made them put on it, as it were, an

extra coat of defensive armour-plating. They added line upon line

and precept upon precept to the original proportions. Pride in their

patriotic patchwork induced them also, as we have seen, to accept

the name Chasidim, or Saints, which was given them by outsiders,

and to gradually, and somewhat ostentatiously, separate themselves

collectively as well as individually from the more easy-going part of

the nation. The people who took to the boats, the Zaddikim, who relied

on their own righteousness, grew to be known as Sadducees. Tradition

tells of a certain Sadok, a famous scholar, from whom the Sadducees

derived some of their ideas, and possibly their name.

=3. Their Tenets and Position, Religions and Political.=――The

Pharisees were rigid upholders of the law. They believed it to be the

guiding rule of life, not only for the individual, but for the State.

They tightened and narrowed whilst they strengthened the obligations

of the law. They insisted not only on a high standard of duty, but on

the most minute observance of every precept, Mosaic and traditional.

Many persons believed that the Pharisees overdid it a little,

over-armour-plated the ship, and were in a degree responsible for

some ugly barnacles that came in time to cling about and clog the keel.

Those who thought thus formed the body of the Sadducees. The Sadducees

took it all much more lightly. They were content to conform to the main

rites of Judaism without troubling much about every detail. They looked

on the things of this world and the things of the other world as quite

distinct matters, and on the whole, perhaps, considered this world to

be the more interesting. The Sadducees did not much believe in the

other world at all. They said that right should be done for right’s

sake, and without hope of reward. A pure and lofty doctrine in itself,

yet hardly worth the cost, since it made them go a step further, and

reject altogether the thought of future rewards and a future life.

But the Sadducees were mostly well off, and heaven to them would have

been only a luxury the more. The Pharisees were of the people, the

less wealthy and cultivated classes. They were not all, however, of

the same high type of character. There were as many as seven sorts of

Pharisees, we are told, and these seven sorts varied from real saints

to real shams in their ‘zeal’ for the law. As a power in the State the

Pharisees had numbers and learning on their side, whilst the Sadducees

on theirs had money, and what goes now by the name of culture. To

use political words, the Sadducees called themselves liberal, and the

Pharisees, in their aims, were certainly conservative. The Sadducee,

in fact, rather prided himself on his liberal principles. He would

have told you that he cordially admitted every man’s right to his own

opinions, and that he never meddled with other people’s observance. And

this was perhaps true. But then he stopped there. He never sought to

see things from other people’s point of view, he showed no sympathy in

their researches, no respect for their acquirements. This unprogressive

sort of mind in professed friends of progress was a fatal bar to

liberalism in any just sense of the word. And, in effect, the Pharisees

were the true liberals; and the Sadducees, despite their wide views and

their easy-going way, were the obstructionists. With all their rigid

adherence to the law, the purpose and the practice of the Pharisees

was to extend and to expound it, to make it elastic enough to fit

everybody’s needs. In their passionate desire to keep the ship afloat

they armour-plated it, but equally they never hesitated, on occasion,

to cut away for a while a mast or a spar. The Sadducees, when they took

to the boats, took all they meant to keep with them. They would have

no ‘forms,’ no ‘traditional’ burdens of any kind; they would obey the

law, they declared, in its entirety and in its purity, nothing more

and nothing less. It sounded promising. But a little effort of thinking

will show that a policy of absolute standing still, of contentment with

the present, ignoring of the past, and denial of the future, is not

progress. Nor can the mood which lightly tosses tradition overboard,

refusing to see that it is as likely to prove compass as cargo, be

rightly called liberal. In intention probably the best of the Pharisees

and the best of the Sadducees were both right. The Pharisee wanted to

keep his religion intact, and wrapped it up in observance; the Sadducee,

with perhaps the same object, would have stripped it bare of forms and

ceremonies, and relied only on conduct (צְדָקָה). The Sadducees, it must

be owned, considered the ceremonial law binding, but only as prescribed

in the law, and as applied according to their own interpretation. And,

oddly enough, they who were so easy-going in their habits were much

harder in their judgments than the strict Pharisees. Rejecting the

notion of future rewards or punishments, the Sadducees considered it

a man’s duty to be as severe as possible in judging his neighbour’s

conduct. They aimed at being just (צְדָקָה), whilst the Pharisees were

content to be merciful. Each had the defects of his qualities, but the

defects of the Pharisee were, to superficial sight, of a more patent

and troublesome sort than those of his rival. To be always dreadfully

in earnest makes a man a distinctly uncomfortable companion. The ‘zeal’

of the Pharisees might make them pious and devout, might render them

first-rate martyrs, and even very tolerable bigots, but hardly, under

any circumstances, good courtiers. The Sadducees must always have

been pleasanter people to live with. In the early fighting days,

the ‘zealous’ Chasidim had been a very satisfactory court circle of

soldiers for the warlike Maccabees, and the first two priest-kings

were well content to find their mainstay in the Pharisaic faction. But

as things grew more settled and peaceful the Pharisees grew exacting

and somewhat irksome companions. The numerous restrictions which

traditional law enforces on the will and desires of man made princes

and courtiers look on the Pharisees as uncomfortable people, as

obstacles. At court they grew to be more and more disliked, and towards

the end of the reign of John Hyrcanus there came about a decided

estrangement.

=4. State Quarrel with the Pharisees.=――By the time of John Hyrcanus,

the relation between the court and the people had become so strained

that a very slight cause was in the end sufficient to bring about the

actual rupture. At a big banquet which Hyrcanus gave one day, a person

who happened to be a Pharisee, and to whom, possibly, the seat he liked

had not been given, took occasion to speak loud scandal against the

priest-king’s mother, and to question the consequent right of Hyrcanus

to the priesthood. He seems to have been more strict in his notions,

this Pharisee, than correct in his facts. His impolite conduct would

seem to have had not even the excuse of truth. Hyrcanus was excessively

indignant at the ill-timed and ill-tempered attack; he mistook this

meddlesome Pharisee for a type of his class, and, in his irritation,

during the rest of his reign the king chose his friends and his

officials from among the Sadducees.

=5. The Essenes.=――One other party among the people claims a little

notice. Hardly numerous enough to be called a sect, nor of political

importance sufficient to take rank as a faction, the Essenes yet form

a feature in the period. The Essenes have been called the monks of

Judaism, and they are the nearest approach to anything in the way of

monks that Judaism has to show. They were men who in a sort of holy

selfishness, and in utter weariness of the world, gave it up, so far

as they could, altogether. Their own souls were their chief objects

of interest. They passed their days in praying and preaching, and such

few possessions as they had were common to all alike. They lived in

the very simplest and most uncomfortable fashion, dwelling in caves

and huts and deserted places, more like birds and beasts than men. They

led this sort of life from duty, but it was an odd conception of duty,

and one so entirely opposed to Jewish notions that the Essenes never

gained much sympathy among Jews, and were never regarded as more than

an eccentric offshoot of Judaism. The little body was never numerous,

and gradually died out.

=6. Reign of Alexander Jannæus (105‒79 B.C.).=――The eldest son of

Hyrcanus succeeded him as priest-king, but he only lived to wear the

robes and the crown for a year. His brother, Alexander Jannæus, who

then came to the throne, was very brave and warlike, and, during the

twenty-seven years he ruled, found plenty of use for his energies both

abroad and at home. He was constantly fighting to extend or to defend

his frontier, and in one of his many little wars he found allies and

helpers in Jewish-Egyptian generals. In his own capital a good deal of

desultory rioting went on between the rival factions, rising at times

almost to the proportions of civil war. Once, when he was officiating

as high priest on the feast of tabernacles, some of the neglected

Pharisees, angry at the attitude of the priest-king, pelted him and the

smart Sadducees who stood around him with the citrons which had been

supplied for so very different a purpose. Alexander Jannæus responded

to the attack rather as king than as priest. He charged the people,

and some six thousand of them were killed. He certainly could not have

liked the Pharisees, but he must have thought well of them, for when he

found himself dying he desired his wife to form a government with them

rather than with the Sadducees.

=7. After the Death of Alexander Jannæus.=――Salome Alexandra took her

husband’s advice. She was an earnest, strong-hearted woman herself, and

keen enough to appreciate these qualities in the Pharisees. She turned

to them at once in her trouble, and the Pharisees rose to the occasion.

They forgot themselves, and remembered only the needs of the kingdom.

They proved wise counsellors and staunch friends to the widowed queen,

and for the nine years in which Salome Alexandra lived to rule over

Judea, the country was prosperous and at peace. She had two sons. The

elder, Hyrcanus II., who was rather a sleepy, indolent sort of person,

was made high priest. The younger, Aristobulus, who was of a much more

energetic nature, busied himself in State affairs, and took an active

interest in the army; and differing from his mother and brother, he

looked for his friends and his supporters among the Sadducees.

CHAPTER VII.

A NEW DYNASTY.

=1. Antipater the Idumean.=――When the wise queen Salome Alexandra died

(B.C. 70) the differences between the characters and the interests of

her two sons resulted in open discord. A certain Antipater, the son

of a governor of Idumea, found opportunity for his ambition in fanning

the flame. He was a bold, crafty, unscrupulous man, this Antipater, and

wanted the sovereignty for himself. He grasped the position at once. He

saw that it would be important not to make enemies of both brothers. To

gain his object he must seem to espouse the cause of one or the other.

He did not covet the position of priest-king, only of king. Hyrcanus,

the weak elder son of Alexander Jannæus, was already installed in

the priesthood. Antipater determined, for the present, to support him

in the double dignity. He shrewdly thought that it would be easier

to hoodwink, and, when the time came, to supplant such a puppet as

Hyrcanus, than to make a tool of the younger brother.

=2. Rome arbitrates.=――So after the death of their mother the two

brothers began fighting for the crown. The Pharisees were mostly on

the conservative side of Hyrcanus, and the Sadducees with the more

attractive Aristobulus. In an evil hour Aristobulus asked Pompey, the

great Roman consul, to arbitrate on the matter. Pompey was busy himself

at the time with his conquests in Asia, but presently he received

envoys at Damascus from the rival brothers. For a while Pompey’s

decision was held doubtful, and the impatient Aristobulus one day

withdrew without waiting for it any longer. This disrespectful action

helped Pompey to come to a decision. The victorious Roman general

determined to settle the dispute in his own fashion. He marched against

Jerusalem, reduced it after a three months’ siege (B.C. 63), declared

the possessions of Alexander Jannæus to be forfeit to Rome, proclaimed

Aristobulus a rebel, and confirmed Hyrcanus in the priesthood, but with

the lower title of ethnarch instead of king. It was a strong measure on

the part of Pompey. Still it was strictly political and not religious

warfare, and in that sense to be honourably distinguished from the

tactics of Antiochus Epiphanes. Pompey made war on the Jews, and not

on Judaism. Though the Temple was in his power, he left its altars

undesecrated and its treasures untouched.

=3. Antipater’s Plans.=――It turned out a fortunate arbitration for

Antipater. He was very clever and quite unscrupulous. He recognised

the power of Rome, and having no feeling for Judea except as regarded

himself, determined at all costs to keep friends with the Roman

government. Great as Rome was at this time, she did not despise small

partisans; and, like the mouse in the fable, Antipater more than once

made himself really useful to the lion. Little by little he gained his

object, and saw his own house rise and the house of the Asmoneans fall.

He got his two sons, Herod and Phasael, appointed to the governorships

of Jerusalem and Galilee. Later on, he arranged a marriage between his

son Herod and a beautiful girl called Mariamne, the great-granddaughter

of Alexander Jannæus. This alliance, he thought, made another firm

rivet in the family chain he was forging. If he had only known, that

seemingly strong link was fated to be the first to snap. But if he

had known, it would probably have made no difference in his selfish,

headlong course. Hyrcanus was such a puppet that he was left in

possession of such shadowy dignity as the priesthood conferred.

Antipater transacted state business in Hyrcanus’s name, and minor

and local matters in the provinces were settled on the spot by

representative councils, which were set up in five different places.

Supreme authority on all subjects was exercised by the Sanhedrin, which

had its seat in Jerusalem.

=4. The Sanhedrin.=――The Sanhedrin was a council consisting of

seventy-one learned men, chosen entirely for their goodness and their

wisdom. Character was the great point; no proselyte, no money-lender

was admissible. The members of the Sanhedrin were taken from all ranks

of the nation, but the high priest himself could not _claim_ to be

a member, and the king was excluded, lest his opinion, backed by his

lofty position, might carry too much weight. Young men, too, who might

be hasty in their judgments, and unmarried men, who might be harsh,

were alike ineligible. Grave cases, of the sort which come before our

English judges in the criminal courts, were brought to the Sanhedrin

to decide upon, and it was finely thought that men, who had not the

sympathy and experience which years and children bring, could not

rightly weigh the temptations which lead less happy folks to sin.

The Sanhedrin could settle small disputes arising out of civil or

ceremonial law, and in serious cases it had the power of punishment,

under some limitations, even to the extreme penalty of death. But this

right was taken away by the Romans about the year 30. From that date

the procurator had to confirm the order to any capital sentence which

the Sanhedrin might pronounce. Some people think that the beginning

of this national court of justice may be traced, like so many other

good things, to Ezra. They think that the men of the Great Synagogue,

which Ezra founded on the return to Palestine, gradually developed into

the councillors of the Sanhedrin. Other historians say that the Great

Synagogue and the Sanhedrin were quite distinct institutions, though

both names come from Greek roots, and mean the same, an ‘assembling

together.’

=5. The Fall of the Asmonean House.=――Aristobulus and his two sons

were taken prisoners to Rome by Pompey (61 B.C.). They escaped, and

were recaptured, and revolted again; and a few years later Aristobulus

died, and the elder son, Alexander, was beheaded by command of Pompey.

Yet a few years more, and the younger son, Antigonus, after a desperate

struggle, was executed by command of Mark Antony (37 B.C.). The

interval was a stormy one. Under the successive changes in the Roman

Government Judea remained tributary to Rome, and the Asmoneans were

treated as rebels. Hyrcanus continued to reign, but did not govern,

as the Roman nominee. Pompey, Cæsar, Cassius, and finally Mark Antony,

all favoured Antipater, who was the virtual ruler. So much power had

he, even over the Sanhedrin, that when his son Herod, the governor of

Galilee, was once summoned before that assembly to answer for a lawless

act of bloodshed of which he had been guilty, the very judge lost

courage to accuse the son of the dreaded usurper. Herod, on his own

responsibility, had had some captives executed. Sentence of death was

the distinct, and solemn, and seldom exercised right of the Sanhedrin

alone. It was, nevertheless, only with great difficulty that the

poor weak Hyrcanus had been induced to summon the council. Herod

came forward, bold and defiant, and at the sight of him and his

armed followers, all the members of the Sanhedrin, save the old judge

Shemaiah, lost their courage and dignity, and, with much greater haste

than he had summoned it, Hyrcanus dissolved his council. There were

endless insurrections. Under the triumvirate (Cassius, Cæsar, and

Pompey) there was a serious revolt, and Jerusalem was occupied and the

Temple robbed (52 B.C.). When Julius Cæsar came to be first consul of

Rome and first power in the world there was a little breathing-time.

He showed himself friendly to the Jews, and his murder (44 B.C.),

which was so great a blunder that one a little forgets the crime of it,

was nowhere more deplored than in Judea. The grief of the Jews lasted,

perhaps, the longer because Julius Cæsar’s successor, Cassius, imposed

a very heavy tribute on them. Herod was collector-in-chief, and showed

himself more Roman than the Romans in his activity of extortion. The

Roman government, so supported by the Idumean usurpers, continued

consistent in its support of them. Antipater was poisoned during the

consulship of Cassius, and his murderer was executed by Roman soldiers.

At last Antigonus thought he had a chance. It was after the battle of

Philippi, when Mark Antony came to Palestine (40 B.C.). Antigonus got

the Parthians to help him, and for three years this brave descendant

of the Maccabees held Jerusalem against the enemy. He got Phasael and

Hyrcanus into his power, and Herod barely escaped. Phasael seems to

have lacked the Idumean audacity; he killed himself in his prison.

Poor old Hyrcanus had his ears cut off――a hard fate for the gentle,

inoffensive old man. But the hope of Antigonus was not only an Asmonean

restoration, but to unite and renew in his own person the offices of

priest and king. No mutilated priest might stand at God’s altar, so

Hyrcanus, by having his ears cut off, was as effectually put out of his

nephew’s way as if he had been put to death. Possibly Hyrcanus, if he

had been consulted, might have preferred the latter fate as the more

merciful. He had it in the end. The triumph of Antigonus, great as it

was while it lasted, lasted only a very little while. The Roman and

his legions were more than a match for the Asmonean prince. Mark Antony

took Jerusalem at last (37 B.C.), exactly twenty-six years, to the day,

after Pompey’s capture of the city. Antigonus was put to death, and

Herod the Idumean was proclaimed King of Judea.

CHAPTER VIII.

REIGN OF HEROD.

=1. Antipater’s ‘Desire’ fulfilled.=――In the seventy-eighth Psalm there

is a sort of dramatic summary given of some of the early experiences

of the Israelites. We are told the story of the sins and sorrows in

the wilderness, of ‘the fire that was kindled against Jacob,’ and ‘the

anger that came up against Israel.’ Presently we come upon the verse,

‘And He gave them their own desire.’ If we did not know the sequel, how

gladly we should stop at this happy-sounding little verse, thinking,

‘Now surely their troubles are over; here is peace at last for those

grumbling wayfarers, since God has granted them their own desires.’

But we do know. The whole story is before us, not spelled out bit by

bit, as it was with them. And we know that the gift of their own desire

was just the worst of all their troubles. The moral is easy to see,

if a little difficult to apply. All of us, now and then, have greedy

longings for ‘flesh in the wilderness.’ We cry for it, and pray for it,

with eager angry passion. And sometimes we are given our ‘desire,’ and

allowed to eat to the full of the unwholesome food we crave. It was so

with Antipater. He had longed to found a royal house, and had schemed

and sinned to that end. He was ‘granted his desire.’ His son Herod was

now King of Judea, and of all the rightful family none were left but

the old, deaf Hyrcanus and a young lad named Aristobulus, the brother

of Herod’s wife Mariamne.

=2. How Herod strengthened his Position.=――This Aristobulus, the

great-grandson of Alexander Jannæus, was of course the real heir to

both crown and priesthood. The crown was out of the question, but Herod

thought he might indulge his wife and please his mother-in-law, and

perhaps conciliate the people, by letting this young Asmonean wear the

high priest’s robes. So Aristobulus was installed in the office. He was

handsome and brave, like all that race of heroes; and the people, who

never quite forgot that Herod was an Idumean and a usurper, were more

pleased at Aristobulus’s installation than the king had reckoned on or

thought safe. Presently Aristobulus was drowned, accidentally it was

said, but those who knew held the king accountable for the ‘accident,’

and called it murder. The widowed mother of Aristobulus, and his

beautiful sister Mariamne, were miserably angry at his death――the

sister, who was also a wife, perhaps too miserable to show her anger.

But the mother’s suspicions of Herod were so strong, and her desire

for revenge so great, that she sent secret appeals to Cleopatra to urge

Mark Antony to interfere. The Roman woman felt for the Jewish woman

through all the difference of their circumstances. Herod was forthwith

summoned to Rome, and commanded to explain his conduct. He explained

so well that Mark Antony not only did not doubt, but was delighted with

him, and Herod came back to his capital, triumphant. Later on, when

Antony was defeated at the battle of Actium (B.C. 31), and fled away

with Cleopatra, Herod, in doubt as to what might turn out to be the

policy of the conqueror, Octavius, thought it safest to let poor old

mutilated Hyrcanus quietly disappear. It was given out that he died.

Perhaps he did. If so, his death was singularly opportune, for it

removed the last faint chance of Roman interference, or of a popular

rally on behalf of the Asmoneans. Then Herod went to Rome, and had an

interview with Octavius. His manners must have been better than his

morals, for the great Roman was charmed with him. His friendship with

the defeated Antony was forgiven him, and Octavius readily renewed and

confirmed the valuable Judean alliance with Rome. Herod returned to

Jerusalem, his position assured, and proud and pleased at the result

of his diplomacy.

=3. Herod as Husband.=――Delighted with his success, Herod reached

his palace, hoping to receive from his wife the sympathy which would

be most welcome of all. He was disappointed. To further his ‘desire,’

Antipater had, as we know, married his son to the young Asmonean

princess. It was a diplomatic marriage, which did not turn out a

success. Mariamne, if she had any feeling for her race, could scarcely

be expected to feel any love for the man who had planned and profited

by its downfall. Herod, to do him justice, did love her in his way.

But it was not a nice way. He was jealous and mistrustful. Both times,

before he set out for Rome, he left secret orders that, if accident

befell him, she was not to survive. The secret leaked out. Mariamne was

no patient Hindoo wife to submit to involuntary suttee. She was a proud

and passionate princess, and she did not care for her husband. She

never wanted his love, and she was bitterly indignant at these crooked

proofs of it. There were thus no bright congratulations to greet Herod

on his return, but the coldest, angriest reproaches. And there was a

mischief-maker at court, a certain Salome, a sister of Herod’s, to make

matters worse between the royal couple. Salome hinted that the informer,

who had told Mariamne of the secret compact, was a great admirer of the

beautiful queen. It was altogether a most miserable home-coming, and

Herod, between his love, and his suspicion, and his ambition, and his

disappointment, was half mad. Perhaps wholly so, for the time, for in

his fury he ordered the execution, first of the informer, and then of

Mariamne herself. At this point in his career one pities Herod. His

remorse was deep, and more lasting than his rage.

=4. Herod as Father.=――In this relation, too, he failed. ‘On the

whole, I had sooner be Herod’s swine than Herod’s son,’ said the Roman

Emperor Augustus, and Augustus was Herod’s friend! Poor Mariamne had

quite a little regiment of successors, none of them loved so deeply,

and none treated quite so brutally as she had been; but these eight,

some say ten, successors gave rise between them to endless quarrels

and conspiracies in the palace. Herod feared, or was led to fear by

one or other of the later wives, that two boys of his, who had called

Mariamne mother, would one day avenge her death. So these two sons were

executed. Another son, Antipater, was more than once in danger from

this extraordinary father’s suspicions, and in the end, and only five

days before his own death, Herod had him also killed.

=5. Herod as King.=――Disappointed in gaining the affections of his

family, Herod was equally unsuccessful in attaching his subjects to

him. He made great efforts. He restored the temple at immense cost; he

built a great palace for himself to give work to the unemployed; and

when a time of pestilence and famine afforded him his chance, he was

really helpful and generous to the sufferers. But it was all in vain.

He gained at best but a sullen submission. For one thing, he never

understood the people. Even when well-intentioned, he made mistakes

and jarred on them. He introduced into Jerusalem the Roman fashion of

public games and fights with wild beasts. He did it to amuse and please

his subjects, but it was a dire offence to Jewish feelings. And his

home life was a standing scandal to all the good Jewish husbands and

wives who lived happily and respectably with their children. Altogether

his kindnesses were distrusted and his motives suspected, and his

pleasant relations with Rome were regarded as so many concessions to

heathenism. Herod boasted, and not untruly, that Jews in all parts of

the great Roman Empire were protected because of him and through his

influence. The favour in which the Roman Emperor held him was, in truth,

useful to the Jews. But nevertheless, in all his thirty-three years of

kinghood, Herod never won one bit of loyal love from any one Jew who

was near enough to him to know him.

=6. The End of Herod’s Reign.=――He died at last, four years B.C.

The long unlovely reign of the Idumean usurper was over. ‘He was not

estranged from his desire; and while the meat was yet in his mouth the

wrath of God overtook him.’ So miserably conscious was the bad, unhappy

king of the rejoicing which his death would cause, that he actually

left orders for wholesale executions to take place on the day of his

funeral. He longed, with an intensity that is somehow pathetic, in

spite of the grotesque wicked form it took, that some sound of mourning

should be heard in the city. But his unrighteous will, which in life

had been fulfilled from fear, in death was disregarded. He lived, and

men and women wept; he died, and they smiled on one another.

=7. Hillel: a Contrast.=――There is never a cloud without a silver

lining. Whilst Herod the Idumean raged in the palace, Hillel, ‘the

greatest of the Rabbis,’ taught in the schools. Hillel was president

of the Sanhedrin from 31 B.C. till the year 9 of the common era. He

was one of the first, and certainly the most famous, of the presidents

to whom the title of Nasi[3] came to be given. Hillel was born in

Babylon, but when quite young he went to Jerusalem, which was a sort

of university for students. He was very poor, and had some difficulty

once in getting admittance to a certain school. It is said that, one

winter’s morning, he climbed up on the window-sill of the class-room,

and there listened as well as he could till the cold and the cramp

made him drowsy. The lesson went on, and the master fancied that the

room was darker than even the thick-falling snow would account for.

He went to the window, and there was poor Hillel curled up fast asleep

and more than half frozen. When Hillel grew up and became teacher

instead of student, pupils in his school met with no such adventures.

He was always ready to listen and to help, and as painstaking and

sweet-tempered as he was wise. ‘As patient as Hillel,’ and ‘as modest

as Hillel,’ came to be used as proverbial standards. One day there

came a knock at his school door. A heathen lad stood there, laughing

and defiant. ‘Teach me the law,’ he cried, ‘in the time in which I can

stand on one leg.’ He meant to mock at the Rabbis and at the Law they

taught, and he had already been driven away from the door of Shammai,

another famous Rabbi. Shammai took impertinence as a personal affront.

Hillel looked on it rather as a sign of disease or deficiency. ‘A

sensible and well-bred man will not offend me, and no other can.’ That

was the spirit in which Hillel received the rude jester. ‘Certainly,’

we may imagine him saying to the lad in his dignified way, ‘it is

rather a short time for a lesson, and, possibly, standing before me in

the usual attitude would be more comfortable for you. But I can teach

you what you want to know whilst you stand on one leg. “Do not unto

another what you would not that another should do unto you. That is

the whole of the law; the rest is commentary.”’ Often Hillel would robe

his wisdom in wit, as is somewhat a Jewish trait. ‘I must hurry home

to a guest I have been rather neglecting of late,’ he said one day as

he finished his lecture at the school, ‘a guest who is here to-day and

gone to-morrow.’ Some of his disciples wondered, but some were quick

enough to divine their master’s meaning. Hillel meant his soul, the

guest who has his ‘lordly dwelling-place’ in the body, but often has

very little given beyond the lodging.

A great many of Hillel’s sayings have been preserved. Here are two

helps against conceit and hasty judgment. ‘Do not believe in thyself

till the day of thy death.’ ‘Do not judge thy neighbour until thou hast

stood in his place.’ And Hillel had another charm which, perhaps, is

not quite so universal as wit and wisdom amongst scholars. He was very

particular as to personal appearance. ‘They wash the statues,’ he used

to say, ‘and cleanse and beautify the temple. How much more attention

ought we to give to the temple of the soul!’ His work, too, was as good

as his talk. He plodded away at the traditional store-heap, and made

some order and system out of the chaos. He set to work on the numerous

injunctions, and made a beginning at their collection. He laid down

certain rules――seven in number――for the interpretation of the Law. His

labours were of great use to other workers in the same field, later on.

His own life, however, was the very best of all his lessons.

CHAPTER IX.

JUDEA BEFORE THE WAR.

=1. Herod’s Will.=――So ill brought-up a family as Herod’s naturally

took to quarrelling about his property after his death. His will

was characteristic. It left much of his wealth to Rome, and divided

his dominions. The crown, with Jerusalem and the greater part of the

kingdom, was bequeathed to a son named Archelaus; another son, Herod

Antipas, was to have Galilee and Petræa; and to a third son, Philip,

was given the northern provinces. But as Herod himself was only a

tributary king, the whole will had to receive the approval of Rome

before it could be carried into effect. The Emperor Augustus did not

decide quickly, and meanwhile the rivals indulged in endless rioting.

The country endured all the miseries of civil war, with no motive to

lend it dignity. Beside the regular rivals named in the will, impostors

and pretenders to the crown arose, and each claimant had his own little

set of adherents, and each behaved as if might were right. The only

point on which there was any approach to agreement was the very general

desire to share all round in Herod’s treasures. Of all the deputations

which waited on him, the Emperor Augustus must have inclined to receive

most favourably the one which brought to him a humble petition to

abolish altogether kingly rule in Judea. At last the Roman Emperor gave

his decision, and in all important points Herod’s will was confirmed.

=2. Judea sinks into a Roman Province.=――Under the title of ethnarch

instead of king, Archelaus ruled Judea and Samaria for nine years. He

imitated in a weak sort of way the vices of his father, and in the year

6 of the new era he was deposed and banished by Roman decree to Gaul.

His dominions were declared forfeit to Rome, and Roman governors of

Judea were appointed and given their head-quarters in Cæsarea. These

procurators, as the Roman governors were called, were subject to the

Syrian proconsuls, and these, in their turn, to the supreme power of

Rome. Each procurator, during his term of office, was given the right

of nominating all Jewish officials, including even the high priest.

The responsibility of signing death-warrants was vested solely in the

Roman governor for the time being, and the authority of the Sanhedrin

was reduced to the limits of an active synagogue council. In view of a

subsequent charge brought against the Jews of this period, it is well

to bear in mind this fact concerning the strictly defined judicial

power of the Sanhedrin. The Roman court alone could pronounce, or carry

out, the sentence of death. The procurators followed each other in

rapid succession. Their oppressions had a terrible sameness, and the

many revolts and riots caused by their extortions differed but little

in character.

=3. Jesus of Nazareth.=――In every direction Rome was tightening that

iron grasp of hers, and each new tax and each fresh restriction was an

occasion for revolt. The miserable, impatient people were longing for

a leader, for another Judas Maccabeus to raise the standard and ‘break

their bonds asunder.’ And if such a hero had arisen, and had dealt

with the Romans as Judas Maccabeus had dealt with the Syrians, he would

assuredly have been hailed by the Jews as Messiah, the anointed of the

Lord. The restlessness and rioting, which had their centre in Jerusalem,

prevailed throughout the whole of Palestine, and nowhere more strongly

than in Galilee, the northern province, in which Jesus, the son of

Joseph a carpenter, first attracted attention. When Jesus was a tiny

child a certain Judas of Galilee, a very ordinary hero indeed, only

just escaped the perilous distinction of being altogether believed in

by his countrymen. Judas the Galilean had headed a frantic outburst

of passionate patriotism. It had been locally successful. Led by him,

the Galileans had revolted and the Romans had retreated, and, like his

great namesake, this Judas conquered for a while. But it was for a very

little while; and his followers had not time to turn this leader of

theirs into Messiah before he was crucified by the Romans as a rebel.

The enthusiastic reception which was given to this poor straw of a hero

shows the tendency of the time and the temper of the people. The very

stones seemed crying out for a Redeemer and Deliverer to come unto Zion.

Under the circumstances a Messiah was almost bound to appear. And just

in proportion to his pretensions and to their own wild hopes would be

the rage of the populace if their Messiah disappointed them, which, if

quite true and honest, he could scarcely fail to do. In all their dire

need Jesus of Nazareth was never recognised as Messiah by the Jews. His

title came to him in the Greek form. Christ means Messiah, or anointed;

but it means it in Greek, and not in Hebrew. Jesus of Nazareth never

got any real hold upon his own people. His followers in his lifetime

were few, and of an unimportant and illiterate sort. The Jews of the

time took little notice of his existence and his doings. He lived and

worked just as many other Jewish teachers then lived and worked. He

went about from place to place, healing, helping, and exhorting, and

rousing in the hearts of those who heeded a sense of better things.

But many of the Essenes preached and tended the sick, and the virtues

of humility and charity, and contempt of worldliness, were virtues

common to all honest Pharisees. It was chiefly in Galilee, among the

heathen and among such Jews as had wilfully or heedlessly gone astray,

that Jesus attracted attention. The bulk of the nation were not so

much hostile as indifferent. Yet, though the sympathies of Jesus were

avowedly with the ‘lost sheep of the house of Israel,’ the wholesale

and indiscriminate denunciations reported in the New Testament as

made by him against the Pharisees are the inventions of a later time,

when Christians had begun to take up a hostile attitude towards their

mother religion. There were, doubtless, shams and hypocrites among

the Pharisees, who well deserved to be denounced; but also we know

there was a whole class of them――they must have been pretty numerous

to be classified――who ‘did the will of their Father which is in heaven,

_because they loved Him_’ (Jerusalem Talmud, Berachoth, ix. 5). Jesus

himself probably never denounced Pharisees nor Judaism. But of Jesus

himself very little that is trustworthy is known. It was not till

long after his death, perhaps fifty years, that even the first of

his biographies, which are contained in the various books of the New

Testament, came to be written.

The Jews readily admit that Jesus of Nazareth, an enthusiastic

preacher of their own race, was good and virtuous. They regard

the morality he preached as identical with the morality which

forms the basis of Judaism. They look on it as pure to the point of

unpracticality, on which point it differs from the Jewish ethics which

were its inspiration. They consider ‘Love thy neighbour as thyself’

(Old Testament) a sufficient injunction. The command, ‘If he ask thy

coat, give him thy cloak also’ (New Testament), they venture to think

excessive. They trace the text of the Law, which Jesus declared he

‘came not to destroy,’ in all the discourses of Jesus; they find the

influence of the prophets in his parables, and they read Hillel between

the lines of the famous sermon on the mount. But at the same time

Jews reject altogether the divine pretensions of Jesus; they deny the

possibility of the Law, revealed by the Almighty, being abolished,

and they abhor every deviation from the pure doctrine of the absolute

Unity of God. As to the death of Jesus, the Jews disown all religious

responsibility for it. They look on it as a Roman execution, and one

due to political, rather than to religious, causes. Jesus was brought

before the Roman procurator Pontius Pilate in the year 29, and was, by

him, condemned to die, on the charge of provoking revolts against Roman

authority. On the cross was inscribed ‘King of the Jews,’ which goes

far to show that it was as a pretender against Rome, and not against

Heaven, that Jesus was crucified.

=4. Jews in Egypt and Syria.=――Alexandria, the capital of Egypt, and

Antioch, the capital of Syria, at this period took rank with Rome in

all the arts of civilisation; and in science, and in philosophy, and in

commerce, the Jews were in no wise behind their neighbours. Egypt had

at this time a great number of Jewish inhabitants, perhaps a million

altogether. They were artisans and merchants for the most part, but

there was a goodly sprinkling too of soldiers and of scholars. And to

the capital came, as it were, the cream of all the cultivation of the

country. The Alexandrian philosopher Philo, who has so wide a classical

reputation, was a Jew, not only by race, but by conviction and sympathy.

He was born about the year 1 C.E. Both in Egypt and in Syria the

civilisation was wholly Greek, and the Greeks were what is called

pagans or heathens. Now there are pagans and pagans. The cannibals who

murdered poor Captain Cook were one sort; these were not at all of that

kind. The Greeks were cultivated, delightful, attractive heathens, and

the science and philosophy, and the charm and polish, that the Jews

of Egypt and of Syria gained from their intercourse with the Greeks

was of distinct benefit to them. The drawback of it all, the weak

point, was of course the paganism, which proved almost as catching

as the polish. Greek Jews grew to be different from Palestinian Jews.

To the Palestinian Jews, the Law, in sober truth, was ‘a light,’

and the commandment ‘a lamp.’ They hungered after no other ‘wisdom;’

and although its paths were no longer ‘the paths of peace,’ its

‘ways’ to them were ‘ways of pleasantness,’ and often the only ways of

pleasantness they knew or cared to know. Greek Jews would have said,

perhaps, that they took broader views of Judaism. They certainly took

views broad enough to overlook a good deal, and their wide way of

regarding things made them a trifle inexact about ancient landmarks.

To Grecianised Jews the rigid practices of Judaism had become a little

irksome, and the mystical rites of paganism a little attractive.

=5. Birth of Christianity.=――Christianity, as a new religion in

opposition to Judaism, was founded by Paul of Tarsus, who proclaimed

the abolition of the Mosaic code of laws. Paul had not known Jesus. He

had been at first an opponent of his doctrines, but he was converted

about the year 37, and soon went much further than his master. What

Jesus preached was scarcely a religion, and Christianity is something

perhaps a little different even from the so-called religion of Christ

which Paul formulated. Paul became the apostle to the Gentiles, who, in

a sense, were ready for him. The cultivated heathens were wanting, by

this time, a more spiritual religion than their own, and they were used

to worshipping so many gods, that to require belief only in three was

a great simplifying of their faith. To strict Jews the Trinity would

have been unthinkable. What Paul taught was in effect a new faith――new

in dogma, and new, to some extent, in doctrine. Jesus had distinctly

said ‘not one jot nor one tittle of the Law should pass away.’ Paul

disregarded this, and definitely and deliberately cast aside the

obligations of ‘the Law.’ Strict Mosaic observance was a burden which

the pagan would not have taken upon him, and was one from which the lax

Jew was glad to be relieved. Antioch and Alexandria were the cradles

of the new faith, and, stripped of its Jewish swaddling clothes, the

infant Christianity was soon strong enough to run alone, and pagan

images, like Dagon, fell before it.

=6. Reign of Herod Agrippa.=――In the year 36 the procurator Pontius

Pilate was recalled to Rome, and in the person of a grandson of Herod’s

there came about a restoration of the Herodian dynasty, which lasted

for seven years. When, some five-and-forty years before, Mariamne’s

sons had been put to death by order of their half-mad father, there

had been a mother and a tiny baby left desolate by the execution. The

wife of the murdered Aristobulus had fled with her little orphan boy to

Rome, and the Emperor Tiberius’s sister-in-law, who was also a widow,

had formed a strong friendship for the poor Jewish lady. The Emperor

had a young son called Drusus, of about the same age as Herod Agrippa,

and the two boys were constantly together at court. When Drusus died

the Emperor found it at first too painful to see Herod Agrippa, as

it reminded him so much of the loss of his son; and later on, when

an intimacy sprang up between the pleasant young Jewish prince and

Caligula, the Emperor’s grand-nephew and probable heir, Tiberius seemed

to find this new affection as trying to his feelings as the memory

of the old. Perhaps he was jealous of his heir, and grudged him his

friends. At any rate, Herod Agrippa, who had been a court favourite,

became a court prisoner, and iron chains took the place of golden ones.

In the year 37 Caligula became Emperor, and one of his first acts was

to take his friend Agrippa out of prison and to find a throne for him.

Herod’s son Philip, who had been ruling the northern provinces of Judea

as tetrarch since the year 4, when the Emperor Augustus had confirmed

Herod’s will, just at this juncture opportunely died. His uncle

Philip’s possessions were given to Herod Agrippa, and presently the

dominions of Herod Antipas were added, and the title of king conceded.

The Roman governors were withdrawn, and a Herod once more reigned over

Judea. Herod Agrippa was a very different man from the original Herod,

his grandfather. Prosperity and adversity are each, in their different

ways, sharp teachers, and Agrippa was an apt pupil. He hung up in his

palace his iron and his gold chains side by side; and the iron that had

entered his soul, and the gold that had gilded his circumstances, put

rivets and framings to a very complete life. Herod Agrippa was a good

Jew and a good king. He ‘strengthened the foundations’ in a double

sense. He built a third wall round Jerusalem, and he began to build up

in his people a sense of comradeship and of self-restraint which would

have been to them as a triple line of defence against their enemies.

But he had so little time. He died in 44, in his fifty-third year, and

only seven years after his accession.

=7. Caligula and the Jews.=――Such influence as his friendship gave

him, Herod Agrippa exercised over Caligula for the good of his Jewish

subjects. But it is impossible to put into a quart vessel gallons

of water. Caligula could only appreciate Herod to the extent of his

capabilities, and these were not great. He was his own hero, so,

necessarily, his power of hero-worship was low and limited. He believed

in himself, this Caligula, and it was such a poor self to waste belief

upon. His vanity drove him mad. He had his statue cast in gold and

put up in his own heathen shrines, and then he gave orders to have the

like erected and worshipped in the Jewish temples of Jerusalem and of

Alexandria. To a man the Jews resisted. From Alexandria they sent a

deputation to Rome, and the philosopher Philo left his Greek studies

to head this deputation and to plead for his fellow-Jews. In Jerusalem

Agrippa made a grand banquet, and introduced the appeal to the

Emperor after dinner. Both temples gained a reprieve from this impious

insult. How long it would have lasted we cannot tell; but Caligula was

assassinated in 41, and under his successor, Claudius, the religious

liberty of the Jews was not interfered with.

CHAPTER X.

THE WAR WITH ROME.

=1. Agrippa II. Roman Governors.=――Herod Agrippa’s son, who was named

after him, was only seventeen years old at the time of his father’s

death. Judea was once more, to all intents, a Roman province; for

although the Emperor Claudius left the young Herod Agrippa in nominal

possession of his dominions and his title, and was personally on

pleasant terms with him, yet Roman governors of Judea were again put

in commission. This Roman governorship was like an open wound to the

Jews. It was not only that the procurators were often plunderers and

oppressors; the people might have borne that more or less patiently;

but the very presence of foreign rulers, alien in faith and race, kept

up a constant irritation. And for another thing, they were unwisely

selected. Once an apostate, a nephew of Philo, was put in command, and

the people were expected to obey a man whom they very properly despised.

Another time a brother of a favourite slave of the Emperor Nero was

appointed governor, and this relationship was the sole qualification

for the appointment that any one ever discovered in him. Jews are

always, at the best of times, a little impatient of authority. They

were not too easy to manage even under Moses. Under these unsympathetic

Romans, and that Rome-patronised king of theirs, they grew turbulent

and desperate. Herod Agrippa, in truth, was not of much use to them.

He had a beautiful sister, Berenice, and on occasion she would kneel

in picturesque attitudes, and he would plead in eloquent periods, to

one or other of the Roman oppressors; but, on the whole, Herod and

Berenice both kept on excellent terms with Rome, and prudence rather

than patriotism was their ideal. They came of a self-seeking race,

this royal brother and sister. Herod Agrippa preached peace when there

was no peace to his subjects; and when he found his smooth counsels

were unheeded he retired with his sister to Rome, and there found

other things to talk about with Titus. Meanwhile in Judea riots grew

into rebellion, and rebellion into organised revolt. In 66 the Roman

garrison at Jerusalem was overpowered and put to death by the Jews,

and the Roman governor, Cestius Gallus, had to appeal to the prefect

of Syria for assistance.

=2. Vespasian sent to Judea.=――The war had begun in earnest. The

Emperor Nero could not understand a repulse to the Roman arms from

this small corner of the world; yet judging, from the accounts which

reached him, that the desperation of the Jews was making the Judean

revolt a somewhat serious affair, he sent the famous general Vespasian

and his son Titus with orders to quell it at once. From a distance

it did not seem a difficult order――the skilled cohorts of Rome, with

obedient Syria for their base of operations, against that handful of

undisciplined desperadoes. But it took four years to do――four long,

dreadful years of terribly unequal struggle. Rome found these Jews no

ordinary rebels, and the invasion of Judea was no ‘walk over’ to the

conquerors of the world. The Romans encountered a people with a history

and a faith, fighting valiantly for both, and found them very hard to

conquer.

=3. Preparations for Defence.=――The Jews saw at once that, with such

a foe as Rome, pitched battles in the open would be a mistake. Their

best chance lay in defending the fortified cities, and in endeavouring

to wear out by resistance the patience of the invader. There was no

trouble to find commanders, the difficulty lay rather in the selection.

There were volunteers in plenty for the post of officers, more in

proportion perhaps than for that of privates. But supplies and troops

were both forthcoming, and north, south, east, and west the country

roused itself for the effort at freedom.

=4. Josephus.=――The province of Galilee was put in command of a man

named Josephus, a descendant of the Asmoneans, who lived to earn for

himself a better reputation as a chronicler of his country than as a

soldier in its service. At this time (66) Josephus was about thirty

years old, extremely clever and capable, and well inclined to play

the part of his famous ancestor, and lead his followers to victory,

if victory was to be won. It all lay in the ‘if,’ for Josephus was

a very different sort of man from Judas Maccabeus. If Judas had been

defeated by the Syrians he would have died fighting; he would never

have surrendered. Judas Maccabeus fought in the uncompromising spirit

that Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed-nego have made historical. ‘We are

not careful, O king, to answer thee in this matter,’ said those model

Jews: ‘if our God whom we serve will deliver us from the fiery furnace,

He will deliver us; _but if not, be it known to thee, O king, we

will not serve thy gods_.’ Josephus had no thought of cutting off all

possibility of retreat in that fashion. His service was more after the

sort of the half-hearted heathen, Naaman. He would fight for Judea, but

Rome was his Rimmon in the background, and, in his most enthusiastic

moments, Josephus was never unmindful of his own interests. He

organised his troops, and defended in person a fine fortress built on

a rock at Jotapata. This citadel he held for forty-seven days against

Titus, and his soldiers supported him gallantly. The Romans were more

than once repulsed, and presently Titus set up a strict blockade,

intending to starve the garrison into surrender. The Jews liked

fighting better than starving, and surrender was out of the question.

They had no food, and hardly any water left, but they soaked their

clothes in those last few precious bucketfuls, and hung the dripping

garments in the sun. The Romans could not believe in such wilful

defiant waste, and believing the garrison must be better supplied

than they had imagined, they raised the blockade and began the attack

again. The famine-stricken garrison fought like heroes――again and again

the Romans were driven back. At last ‘the battle was to the strong,’

and Jotapata fell. The Romans entered the fortress, and found none to

receive them save the dead and the dying. Josephus, and just a few like

him, had made good their escape to a neighbouring cavern, and to this

safe little retreat a Roman envoy from head-quarters was presently

despatched. Vespasian was most anxious to transform Josephus from

an enemy into an ally, and Josephus was equally anxious to give his

strength to the stronger side. But it had to be managed. His followers

were not so ready as he, to act like the rats in the proverb. The envoy

was desired to wait. ‘We must submit to the will of God,’ Josephus

piously began, and, pressed by his companions for clearer counsel, he

proceeded to urge that the death of martyrs during the siege having

been denied to them, it were vain to seek that distinction now. The

faces around looked but half convinced, and then, more boldly, the

tempter hinted, ‘We may live to serve God and our country in other

ways.’ The eager listeners frowned; they had faltered enough to flee,

but not to altogether fall. Such counsels sounded to them like pious,

unpatriotic platitudes. The crafty commander was quick to note the dark

looks of his companions, and changed his tactics. He professed to agree

with them. ‘You are right,’ he exclaimed; ‘it is better to die than to

surrender. Let our own swords be the preservers of our honour.’ This

was more welcome advice to men in an exalted mood, and they all agreed

to die by each other’s hands, and the last left, it was arranged,

should kill himself. They cast lots to settle in what order they

should die, and in the end, whether by good luck or by good management,

Josephus was one of the only two remaining. Josephus at once politely

offered to be executioner, but the other man hesitated, and offered

his services in that capacity to Josephus. Neither really wanted to

be victim, and so both made up their minds to live, and left the cave

together. Josephus accompanied the waiting envoys to Rome, and was

received by Vespasian with every mark of respect. The fact of the

surrender was slurred over; Josephus called himself a prophet instead

of a renegade, and claimed to be fulfilling events which he had all

along foreseen. Vespasian smiled quietly at these pretensions. He had

gained what he wanted, the co-operation of Josephus, and the qualms of

the man’s crooked conscience were no concern of his.

CHAPTER XI.

THE END OF THE WAR.

=1. The Defence of the Provinces.=――The story of the siege of Jotapata

repeated itself throughout the country. One fortified place, and then

another, fell after heroic resistance. Tarichea and Gamala and Gischala

are names as honourable to the Jews of the first century as are Lucknow

and Sebastopol to Englishmen of the nineteenth. To students of history

the ancient and the modern names alike recall memories of patience

and pluck undaunted by overpowering numbers. But with the Jews the

heroism was all in vain. Gamala, like Jotapata, fell, and Gischala was

abandoned, and Tarichea was betrayed, and the end was always the same

though the means varied. Vespasian and his son Titus, accompanied too

by the time-serving Agrippa, pushed northwards through the country in

a miserable sort of triumphal progress. The beautiful Lake of Tiberias

flushed red as they passed, not in the sunset, but in blood; and gates

were opened, not in welcome, but in response to battering-rams. There

was a brief lull whilst Vespasian was taking possession of his imperial

dignities in Rome, but in 69, when crowned emperor, he thought it quite

time, for his own credit’s sake, that the furious little dependency

should be completely crushed. Titus was ordered to advance against

Jerusalem, the Emperor judging that when the capital should be in the

hands of the enemy, the sullen, dogged resistance of the provinces

would cease.

=2. Affairs in Jerusalem.=――The capital was not ready for the foe. It

was showing itself stronger in defiance than in defence, and wasting

time and energy and supplies in miserable internal strife. There was

a war party and a peace party in Jerusalem, and each split up into

various factions, and each finding some separate form of expression.

The war party were the most numerous and the most noisy. Every one

was eager to fight, but every one had his own opinions as to the best

manner of fighting; and if each one did not exactly expect to have a

post of command himself, he at least held strong views as to the merits

and claims of his immediate neighbours. The zealots who had fought

under Judas the Galilean in the year 4 had grown fiercer since his time,

and worse men had joined, and lowered, the standard of revolt which he

had raised. Those who had cried that they would obey only the Law of

God, protested now that they would not obey the law of Rome, which was

a different position to take up. In effect, it pretty nearly came to

mean being a law unto themselves and rejecting all recognised authority.

In many cases these men had put themselves into the power of the

law, and so had personal reasons for hating and defying it. The other

extreme section of the people, the most timid, would have had peace

at any price. They cowered at the very name of Rome, and losing their

trust in the ‘strong Hand and outstretched Arm,’ grew fearful and

superstitious. Strange stories were tremblingly repeated from mouth to

mouth of ‘a light that never was on earth or sea,’ which came and went

in the starry heavens, and disclosed by fitful gleams an awful conflict

raging between awful combatants. Bands of the most lawless of the

zealots, under the well-earned name of Sicarii, or assassins, patrolled

the streets, whilst the poor souls who saw visions slunk in the shadows.

The ‘terror by night’ had come upon the doomed city, the ‘arrow that

flieth by day’ was nearing its walls.

=3. The War Party and the Peace Party: their Leaders.=――In the

beginning of his career Josephus had had a rival in a certain John, who

was subsequently appointed to the command of Gischala. John conducted

the defence of that place ably enough, but was at last compelled to

capitulate. He accepted the Roman terms, and then, by flight, evaded

them. A delay in admitting the enemy into Gischala had been asked and

granted, and John had taken advantage of this delay to make off with

all his armed followers. When the Romans marched into the city, there

were only women and children there to be led away captive. John reached

Jerusalem safely, and, a fugitive in reality, was received as a warrior

and a patriot, come to lay his arms at the service of the distracted

city. Circumstances, rather than his merits, ensured him a welcome. The

true story of the fall of Jotapata had only just reached the capital.

News travelled slowly in those days, and the people had supposed

Josephus to have died fighting at Jotapata at the head of his men, and

had mourned him sincerely as a hero and a martyr. When the secret of

the dark cavern became known to them, and they found that the commander

whom they had trusted had betrayed his trust, and was a comfortable

traitor in the Roman camp, their indignation knew no bounds, and in

their rage John of Gischala found his chance. He joined in the outcry

against the unpatriotic Josephus, who had once been preferred to him.

‘These be thy gods, O Israel!’ he cried, and the impulsive populace,

remembering only that the man had been a rival of the hated Josephus,

and had been passed over for him, were eager now to make amends. They

took John of Gischala for a leader on his own evidence, and they were

not calm enough to hear the false ring under his brave words, and

were too blind with rage to see how ambitious and useless were his

fair-seeming designs. It was a terrible time. The Zealots had called

on the Idumeans to help in the defence, and their presence in the

city added another element of discord. Party was pitted against party,

house was divided against house; even members of the same family took

different sides, and hands and weapons that were sorely needed against

Rome were turned with fierce anger and suspicion against fellow-Jews.

The more moderate of the people had come by this time to sadly see that

no possible heroism could avert the Roman conquest, that the defence

of Jerusalem was at best the most desperate of chances, and that under

such men as led the war party the struggle must be hopeless. This

minority believed that a timely yielding might soften the severity of

the foe, and preserve to them their religion even at the cost of their

country. The truer patriots counselled conciliation, and at the head of

these was the good old high priest Ananias. But his gentle advice was

shouted down, and his supporters were accused of sympathy with Rome and

hooted at as traitors, and the poor old man himself, before the end of

the war, met with a violent death at the hands of the Zealots.

=4. The Siege of Jerusalem.=――It was a strong and beautiful city on

which Titus looked as he slowly rode round the walls to reconnoitre.

Jerusalem was built in a bowl of mountains. Even in its ruins, and

eighteen centuries later, it is written of the city which its poets

called the ‘joy of the whole earth,’ ‘I never saw anything more

essentially striking, no city except Athens whose site is so

pre-eminently impressive.’[4] In those days it was fortified by three

enormous walls, and the Temple, in all its glory, stood within the

innermost. To the Jews it seemed impossible that even the first and

outermost of these protecting walls should be taken. Begun by Herod

Agrippa, and formed of great blocks of unhewn stone, the wall stood now

45 feet high and 17 broad, and 150 battlemented towers were built up

in it at intervals. But battering-rams thundered night and day, and the

first wall fell after a desperate defence, and then the second, and at

last only the third and innermost was left to guard the Temple.

=5. A Mediator sent: Terms proposed.=――Titus, throughout the war, was

consistently disinclined for unnecessary slaughter. When the first wall

was taken he had hinted at capitulation, and had offered to distinguish

between the people and the garrison in his punishments. He had reviewed

his splendid troops in full view of the famine-threatened city, in

the hope of inducing them to surrender, and he had sent back mutilated

prisoners of war to arouse a wholesome dread of his severity. It was

all in vain; all idea of compromise was scouted, and when a breach was

made in the second wall the defenders lined it with their living bodies,

and for three dreadful days actually barred the conqueror’s progress.

But this wall, too, was taken, and then Titus, at his wits’ end, sent

Josephus as an envoy to see if it were possible to come to any terms,

short of slaughter, with his countrymen. The case was desperate; Romans

were without the city, and rioters within. ‘In hunger, in thirst,

in nakedness, in want of all things,’ they were enduring ‘the siege

and straitness of their enemy.’ And now came a messenger to them with

proposals of peace. Josephus――he is the historian of it all――gives us

an account of this interview with curious frankness. He retails his

own eloquence at full length, and expresses his astonishment at the

indignant refusal of any party of the people to even listen to it.

Perhaps there was some mutual astonishment on the occasion. If Titus

was sincere in wanting to come to terms, Josephus was certainly an

oddly chosen ambassador. The sight of that fluent traitor, who had

fallen so comfortably on his feet, must have been enough, in truth, to

make the most peaceable citizen clutch at his sword. His mission, of

course, failed. Josephus went back to his Roman patron, and his people

went back to their impossible defence. A forlorn hope is sometimes

better than an accomplished desire. Not one of that heroic garrison,

for all their misery, would have changed places with Josephus.

=6. The Destruction of the Temple.=――As befitted a kingdom of priests,

their Temple had become to the Jews, in literal truth, their stronghold

and their tower of defence. If only they had worshipped within those

‘borders of precious stones’ with half the fervour that they fought

there, the end might have been very different. On the 7th of Ab, 3830

of the Jewish era (corresponding to the year 70 C.E.), fire was set to

the cloisters of the Temple. All that day and all the next the flames

smouldered, and the people, faint with hunger and sick with misery,

looked on with dull eyes, unregarding. Then again their mood changed,

and on the morning of the 9th, with desperate, despairing effort,

they rushed forth on the Roman swords. They were driven back, and

Titus, seeing the crisis had come, summoned a hasty council of war to

decide upon the fate of the Temple. His generals, smarting under their

repulses, voted for its complete destruction. Titus had some touch of

human feeling, some sympathy with that passion of defence. He would

have spared the Jews their Temple, and have been content to plant the

Roman eagle on its walls. It was saved that last degradation. On that

same evening a detachment of Roman soldiers was told off to put out

the smouldering cinders of the blackened cloisters. The pent-up people,

faint with famine and restless with misery, burst out once more in

ineffectual fury. Once more they were driven back to the very door of

the Temple, and a Roman soldier, in careless wrath, took up a burning

brand and tossed it after the retreating crowd. It fell on some

inflammable stuff in a porchway, and quickly the Temple itself was on

fire. Titus rushed to the spot, and tried with hand and voice to stay

the work of destruction. It was too late. The shadow of the sword was

lifted in the light of the flames. Then that too faded and died out,

and darkness closed in upon the Jews, a thick darkness that could be

felt.

BOOK II.

70 TO 1600.

DARKNESS.

וַיְהִי חשֶׁךְ־אֲפֵלָה

EXOD x. 22.

‘A fifteen hundred years’ tragedy.’

CHAPTER XII.

AFTER THE WAR.

=1. Titus completes his Conquest.=――With the taking of the capital

the war was practically at an end. Jerusalem, ‘grander in her fall

than even in her days of magnificence,’ was in the hands of the Romans,

and Titus did not loiter nor grow lenient over the rest of his work.

What fire and sword had left standing was ordered to be deliberately

destroyed, and the ruins of the city and its Temple and its walls were

all made level with the ground. The chief leaders of the defence were

taken to Rome, and John of Gischala made a strong point of interest in

Titus’s triumphal entry. There was presently a ceremony in which the

ambitious Jewish soldier once more played the first part; he was led

out to public execution.

=2. Masada.=――There were three fortresses which held out even after the

fall of Jerusalem, and one of them, Masada by name, in a certain sense

was never taken by the Romans. The garrison of this place was commanded

by a descendant of Judas of Galilee, named Eleazar. Eleazar was quite

hopeless of victory and quite fearless of death. When he found that

the entry of the enemy was only a question of hours, he called all his

little world together and made them a speech. He told them of the Roman

way of dealing with prisoners of war, and bade them make their choice

between surrender and self-inflicted death. Like the voice of one

man came the answer of the nine hundred men who listened to him. ‘We

will die by our own hands, we and our wives and our children; rather

death than dishonour.’ Then they deliberately set fire to their poor

dwellings and exchanged death-wounds. Thus, guided by fires lit by dead

hands, and stumbling over unresisting corpses, the Romans entered the

silent city, and came into possession of the last Jewish stronghold.

=3. What became of the Chief Actors.=――By the events of the war Herod

Agrippa had lost his kingdom and his reputation, but he had contrived

to save his fortune, and that kept for him the friends he cared about.

In Rome he was very much appreciated. He and his money and his charming

sister Berenice were all made very welcome at the court of the Emperor

Titus. Josephus was very often one of the party. He, in his retirement,

took to literature, and almost managed to make that disreputable. He

wrote the ‘Wars of the Jews’ and the ‘Antiquities of the Jews,’ and his

own most instructive autobiography. All these works are very valuable

contributions to history――are, in fact, the chief, and almost only,

records extant of these events; but each one of his books shows proofs

of the authorship plainly enough to make it a trifle untrustworthy. In

compliment to his Roman patrons Josephus took the surname of Flavius.

He lived in the full sunshine of imperial favour, and managed to find

three women in succession to marry him. We may conclude that they were

not Jewesses.

=4. What became of the Country and the People.=――Palestine was

parcelled out into lots; parts of the land were given as loot to the

Roman soldiers, and parts were sold to the highest bidders. Many of

the people were slaughtered outright; many were reserved to be killed

more artistically in gladiatorial shows, or in combat with wild beasts.

Some of them were carried off into slavery, and some remained as slaves

on the soil. The slave markets of the world were glutted, and Jewish

captives became a drug in the marts. As citizens of a separate state

the Jews ceased to exist. They had no longer a national centre. Long

before the destruction of Jerusalem the dispersion of the nation had

begun, but now it was complete, and, so to speak, official. There

had been Jews in Alexandria from the time of the Ptolemies, and in

Rome from the days of Pompey; they were to be found at this date in

every place important enough to be remembered, throughout the wide

Roman dominions. There were numbers of Jews in Antioch, in Greece, in

Italy, on the north coasts of Africa, and in the sunny islands of the

Mediterranean. But each and all of these dispersed and separated Jews

had hitherto turned in loyal thought to Jerusalem, and a self-imposed

tax from ‘him that was near and from him that was far off’ had been

regularly forwarded to Jerusalem every year towards the support of the

Temple. This very tax was now used as a means to crush the nationality

out of the people. Titus decreed that a like sum should henceforward be

contributed by every adult Jew in his dominions towards the support of

the temple of Jupiter.

=5. Salvage.=――To put up tamely with preventable evils is only less

weak than to fret unceasingly over unpreventable ones. The Jews, at

this crisis in their history, fell into neither error. They realised

the wreck, and looked bravely round to see what could be rescued. Their

country was gone, their nationality was threatened, their religion was

in danger. Their ‘Law’ remained to them. They made a raft of that, and

saved Judaism.

=6. Jochanan ben Saccai: the Schools.=――After the fall of Jerusalem,

some members of the now houseless Sanhedrin asked, and gained,

permission of Titus to establish themselves with their scrolls at

Jamnia, a village on the sea-coast, not far from the port of Jaffa.

Jochanan ben Saccai was president of the Sanhedrin at the time, and he

at once called his disciples together and set up a school. Soon such

schools became general, but the one in Jamnia was the first and the

most famous, and was known as the Vineyard. A good name, and prophetic,

as it turned out; for a store of life-giving wine that vineyard came

to yield. Their Law, in very little time, took the place of the Temple

in the hearts of the people. It became the new Jewish stronghold,

and by-and-by the Rabbis garrisoned it. It was a wise movement, and

Jochanan was just the character to head it. He had sense as well as

sentiment, and he was as practical as he was patriotic. ‘Fear God even

as ye fear man,’ was the very last bit of counsel which Jochanan gave

to his disciples. He was old then, and ill unto death, and some of

those who listened criticised the words. They did not seem enough for

the occasion. So much is expected of a last utterance. ‘What!’ said

the disciples doubtingly, ‘fear God only as we fear His creatures?’

‘Even so,’ came the answer, in weak, thrilling tones. ‘You fear to do

wrong in the presence of man; you are always in the presence of God:

therefore fear Him as you fear your neighbours.’

=7. An Unforeseen Result of the War: Jewish Christians.=――There was one

wretched and long-lasting consequence of the war with Rome, which grew

naturally out of the circumstances, but which cannot be laid directly

to the charge of Rome. Thirty years had passed since the death of Jesus

and the conversion of the zealous apostle Paul. The little following

had become a sect, not very large, not very important, nor as yet very

pronounced in their opinions. The members of the sect were known as

Jewish Christians, and were perhaps at this time quite as much of the

one as of the other. The war with Rome made the division between Jews

and Christians sharp and final. The struggle on the side of the Jews

had been a fight for life, for national existence. So impassioned were

they, and so much in earnest, that even the help of the Samaritans and

of the Idumeans, for the first time in their history, had been accepted

by the Jews. In the great and pressing need for united action all

differences seemed small, and to be overlooked in face of the fact

that their country was in mortal danger. The one unforgivable sin in

the eyes of the Judeans was that any Jew, for any reason whatever,

should coldly stand aloof. There was a peace party among the Jews;

a small minority who, as we have seen, honestly and sadly believed in

the impossibility of victory, and who counselled conciliation on the

principle of saving what could be saved. This party would have let

the country go――provided their religion was left to them intact. They,

even, were not too popular. But the Jewish Christians were different

from these. They hoped for the success of the Roman arms, and it was

in the name of religion that they refused to help their countrymen.

They professed to see the fulfilment of prophecy in the destruction

of Jerusalem. They declined to be on the other side to the prophets.

They believed the Temple was decreed to fall, and they would not

fight to avert its fate. All this they urged quite earnestly and quite

religiously in the light of their new and latest interpretation of the

Scriptures. At any other time their opinions would have provoked only

a discussion in the schools; at this crisis of national history it

provoked national resentment. From the point of view of patriotic

Jews, these others, Jews by race and by kinship, Jews who refused on

religious grounds to strike a blow for Judea, were not only apostates,

but traitors. The precepts of Jesus, and the practice of these his

earliest followers, came by degrees to be regarded as cause and effect.

The whole movement grew hateful to the Jews, socially and religiously

and politically hateful. Hate begets hate, and deepens division. The

small sect of Jewish Christians grew gradually less and less Jewish,

and more and more Christian. The distinct position they had taken up

in the war gave them a certain standing, and was another cause of their

growth in numbers and in importance. The rift which had been so tiny

at first between the old teaching and the new widened and deepened, and

new causes for enmity forbade it to close as the years rolled into the

centuries.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE REVOLT UNDER HADRIAN.

=1. Conquered Jews in the West.=――The first few years after the fall of

Jerusalem, by contrast with what had gone before, were not, strange as

it may seem, an altogether unhappy time for the Jews in Palestine. The

worst had come, and the worst proved hardly so terrible as the waiting

for it. The Romans were stern masters, but not vindictive ones. So

long as the Jews accepted the new conditions, these were not cruelly

enforced, nor were any of the private religious arrangements of the

dispossessed people interfered with. The slaves, in many cases, bought

their liberty. Their schools supplied an interest to the conquered

Jews, and a link between them; and dispersed as they were, and despised

to some extent as they were, the Jews did not become degraded. The

existence of their Sanhedrin with its dignified literary labourers,

chosen from their own ranks, kept up their sense of self-respect. Deep

was the loyalty felt towards the president of the Sanhedrin. He became

in some sort an uncrowned king of this fallen people. They called him

their נָשִׂיא ‘prince’; and, without one inch of territory, a very wide

and a very real dominion this spiritual potentate grew to have over

the hearts and minds of his brethren. The internal government of the

different Jewish communities in the Roman Empire varied. In Alexandria

a head and chief, whom the Greeks called ethnarch, presided over a

council of seventy elders. In Rome, each of the many synagogues had

its own separate administration and its own separate name. Almost every

place where Jews congregated had its own little council, a sort of

miniature Sanhedrin, which looked after local Jewish matters. But all

the various communities of the Western world, widely separated as they

were, had one thing in common: they all acknowledged as supreme the

authority of the נָשִׂיא or president for the time being of the Sanhedrin

in Palestine. He came to be called the patriarch, and his head-quarters

were first at Jamnia, then at Sepphoris, and afterwards at Tiberias.

=2. Contemporary Jews in the East.=――The exiles and captives in

Babylonia and Mesopotamia had led a quiet life for centuries. They,

like their brethren, were a captive race, but the Parthian kings, like

the Persian kings, were milder masters than the Romans, and perhaps the

Babylonian Jews themselves were more patient than the Palestinian Jews.

It was, at any rate, an easier thing to be subject in exile than to

be subject on native soil. The scattered communities settled between

the Tigris and Euphrates had gradually established schools and seats of

learning in the Babylonian country. Besides the heads of these schools

(רֵישֵׁי כַלֵי), there was a political head or chief whom the Eastern Jews

invested with a good deal of general authority, and whom they called

רֵישׁ נְּלוּתָא, Head or Prince of the Captivity.

=3. Under Trajan.=――The quiet time for the Jews ended in the reign of

Trajan, who was Emperor of Rome from 98 to 117. He made a campaign

against Parthia, and this roused all the Jewish subjects of Parthia to

revolt, partly in help of their Parthian masters, and partly, perhaps,

in dread of Rome and of the fate of their Western brethren. Trajan

conquered Parthia in 114, but his death ended the Jewish fear of Roman

rule in the East, for Trajan’s successor, Hadrian, gave up this latest

conquest.

=4. The Policy of Hadrian.=――Hadrian, when he became Emperor in 117,

restored Parthia to the Parthians. He found he had enough to do to

keep what he had got. But the Jewish readiness to revolt against Roman

supremacy was not lost upon him. He did not forget how quick the Jews

had been to fight. East or west, it seemed to him that if but a breath

of freedom were in the air, it was fanned among this Jewish race into

a perfect whirlwind. Why should they not submit to Rome, and sink their

own nationality? Greater nations than they had passed more or less

peacefully under the Roman yoke, whilst to subdue this tiny troublesome

dependency had tasked a Titus! To conquer Jews was not enough; they

wanted crushing. That was this new Emperor’s view of the case, and

he proceeded to set about it. He was keen enough to see that there

was religion at the root of this dogged Jewish resistance; that the

Jews had fought for their convictions as much as for their country;

that they were the people of the Book as well as the people of the

Land. And reasoning thus, the Emperor Hadrian determined that he would

pluck up this Jewish religion by the roots, and not be content to lop

away at the branches as his predecessors had done. He would pass the

ploughshare over Jerusalem, he would build a new city with a new name

on its site, and where the Temple had stood he would erect a shrine to

Jupiter. And he did all this, and yet he failed. The heathen Emperor

did not know that Judaism was quite beyond the power of his legions. He

had never heard ‘No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper.

This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord.’ If he had heard,

he probably would not have heeded. But he certainly did his best,

according to his lights, to effect his object.

=5. The Jews in Revolt: their Leader.=――No Josephus has left a minute

record of the last struggle between the Jews and Rome, and a great

many details are altogether absent. We know generally that the Jewish

resistance to Hadrian lasted three years, from 132 till 135; and that

Julius Severus had to be summoned from Britain before the Roman success

could be assured. The Jews fought against Hadrian as, fifty years

before, they had fought against Titus, with the obstinate courage of

men who valued their own lives less than the life of the nation. They

were led by a man who, at the beginning of the revolt, they called, in

their enthusiasm, Barcochba, son of a star; and at the end, in their

despair, Barcosba, son of a lie. His real name we do not know. He

fought and he died fighting, and in defence of the truth as he believed

it; and so far, and although he failed, he takes his place among the

heroes of history, and earns a right to the title first bestowed upon

him. His claim to the second is, happily, less clear. Tradition tells

of tricks he played to incline the people to believe that his powers

were supernatural; and there are tales, too, told to his discredit,

which, if true, might make ‘impostor’ a free translation of Barcosba.

But the only facts of which we are sure are that he led the Palestinian

Jews in their second revolt against Rome, from the year 132 till 135;

that for a little while the forlorn hope of the people seemed possible

of realisation, and that Barcochba took possession of the ruins of

Jerusalem; that he and his followers were dislodged from thence, and

that the last stand against the Roman enemy was made at a fortified

place called Bither, which fell on the same sad anniversary, the 9th

of Ab, which was already so full of fatal memories to the Jews.

=6. Akiba: the Romance of his Youth.=――There was one good and famous

man who believed in Barcochba, and who stood by him to the end. This

was Akiba, one of the greatest of the Rabbis, who left his books

and his home to share the dangers of the campaign, and to carry

the standard by the side of the Jewish leader. And books, and home,

meant more to Akiba than to most men, for he had not inherited these

happinesses, but had had to work and to wait for them. His was a

romantic story. He, like Moses, had been a shepherd. By craggy torrents

and by grassy plains he had wandered with his flocks, until one day

he had met a fair maiden, and they had walked and talked together, and

then the long sweet summer day had seemed unaccountably to shorten. He

and the maiden had straightway fallen in love with each other. But she

was a rich man’s daughter, and her father, when he heard about it, was

extremely angry. He declared she should not marry ‘that beggar,’ which

was calling names, and not quite true ones, for Akiba was no beggar.

Then the father threatened. He said she should have no fortune if she

persisted in her ‘folly.’ The girl was much too much in love to care

about money, and Akiba, who might have hesitated, and not thought it

honourable to marry a rich girl, gladly took her now that she was to

be poor and friendless. So they married, and for a while they were most

unreasonably happy. But of course it was not a prudent marriage. They

were very poor, they had to sleep upon straw, and to go out into the

fields to gather that. Akiba’s wife was a sensible woman as well as

a loving one; the sort of woman who would do her husband good and not

evil all the days of his life. She saw this could not go on. She knew

her husband had talent; she advised him to go away and get admitted to

one of the schools, where his talents would be recognised, and he would

have the opportunity to study. She would not go with him, she said,

to be a drag on him: he must labour, and she would wait. So he went,

and the years went on, slowly and sadly for her, for her father was

unforgiving; slowly and successfully for him, for strangers were kind.

He had not only talent, but perseverance, and when at last he was

chosen head of the college which he had entered as a poor student,

he travelled back to his native place for his reward. He was a famous

Rabbi by this time, and crowds flocked round him in eager welcome. One

shabby, large-eyed woman hung back a little, but Akiba saw her and knew

her at once, though all the girlishness and half the beauty were gone.

He drew her to the front and held her close, and proudly told the story

of her patience and of her trust in him to the sympathising onlookers.

And as they listened a message came from the rich man, who had not

joined in the common crowd of welcome. He desired to consult the famous

Rabbi, whose visit was an event and an honour to the place. This rich

man must have been one of those Jews who call themselves Jews in their

heart; he evidently was not a Jew in his actions or his interests,

or he would have surely heard that Akiba was something more than a

distinguished stranger. However, Akiba went to him, and found that his

advice was wanted. The rich man told the Rabbi of the vow which he had

made never to see or help his daughter; he was getting old now――was

there any way the Rabbi could suggest in which the vow could be

conscientiously broken? ‘Would you have minded your daughter marrying

a distinguished scholar, even had he been poor?’ asked the Rabbi. ‘No,’

said the father, puzzled; ‘but she married a stupid beggar.’ ‘Well,’

said Akiba, smiling, ‘I know not if I be the distinguished scholar that

men call me, but I do know I am that Akiba who married your daughter.’

So it all ended happily, and the good, patient wife regained her

husband and her father at the same time.