death." The crisis has come, and events hasten on towards the
catastrophe, which, as has been said, was no catastrophe, but a
consummation. Mary, instead of sitting at his feet as a disciple,
anoints them with spikenard and wipes them with the hair of her head;
the holy woman performing the act elsewhere ascribed to a sinner, the
act itself being a ceremony of consecration, instead of a mark of
penitence. The triumphal entry into Jerusalem, elsewhere described as
the Messiah's own project, is converted into a spontaneous demonstration
in his honor, rendered by "much people," who had heard that Jesus was
coming to Jerusalem. "Certain Greeks" present themselves and ask an
introduction, as to a royal personage. They are the first fruits of the
Gentile world; their coming is welcomed as a sign of final victory. "The
hour is come," says Jesus, on receiving them, "that the Son of Man
should be glorified." The heavens echo his exclamation; an audible voice,
interpreted as the voice of an angel, pronouncing the glorification
certain and eternal. The Son of God adds his own interpretation,
confirming that of his friends; prophesies the speedy judgment of the
world and his own elevation to glory by means of the cross, makes his
last statement, and the dialectical war is at an end.
The rest of the life is given to the disciples. The last supper, its
agony and distress of mind omitted, is an occasion for impressing on
"his own" the lesson of mutual love. The departure of Judas on his
errand is the signal for a burst of rapture. Words of consolation,
mingled with promises of the "Spirit of Truth," "The Comforter," words
of blessing too follow, intended to beget in his friends the feeling
that, though absent, he will still be present with them. They are bidden
to remember him as the source of their life; are admonished to keep
unbroken the spiritual bond that unites them to him in vital sympathy;
are assured that the mission he came to earth to discharge will be
fulfilled by the Holy Ghost; and finally are solemnly consecrated by
priestly supplication as the rescued children of God.
The story of the arrest is told in a strain equally suited to the idea
on which the book is constructed. In full consciousness of his position,
Jesus steps forth out of the shadow of mystery to meet Judas and his
troop, who have come, expecting to find him in his garden retreat. The
soldiers, over-awed by the apparition, start backward and fall to the
ground, prostrate before the Son of God. The trial goes on before Annas
and Caiaphas, priests, and Pilate, Roman viceroy. The powers of Church
and State pronounce on him; before the powers of Church and State he
announces himself and makes his royal claim. In the presence of the High
Priest, who is scarcely more than a name in this proceeding, introduced
in order that Judaism might have one more opportunity of rejecting the
majesty of heaven, Jesus suffers an indignity at the hands of one of the
prelate's officers; but Pilate, the pagan, shudders before the awful
personage who tells him that he could have no power at all except it
were given him from above; that he was but a tool of providence. The
guilt of the execution is thus transferred from his shoulders to
destiny; for the Jews, no less than the governor, are fated. The hour of
glorification has come, and the Son of Man moves with stately step
towards his ascension.
The process of withdrawal from the visible sphere has already been
described. It is not effected at once. As a lantern in the hand of one
walking in a wood flashes out and again hides itself, becoming dimmer
and dimmer until finally it quite disappears, so the Son of God is many
times visible and invisible before he vanishes altogether from sight. No
bodily ascension is necessary to bear away one whose coming and going
are not conditioned by space or time. His form has always been a
translucent veil, which could at pleasure be removed. His mission ended,
there is no more occasion for his self-revelation, and he is unseen. The
unreality of a representation like this must be too apparent to be
argued.
From this exposition it appears that the New Testament literature is, in
some sort, to the end, a continuation of the literature of the Old
Testament. As the earliest phase of Christianity was Judaism, with a
belief in the Messiah's advent superadded, so the first literature of
Christianity is the literature of Judaism, written on the supposition
that the Christ has come. Judaism is Christianity still expectant of a
Christ to come, or, as with the radical Jews, unexpectant of a personal
Messiah; Christianity is Judaism with the expectation fulfilled. The
Judaic element was not limited to the little knot of Jerusalemites who
hung about the holy city and waited there for the Christ's coming; it
was conspicuous in the system of Paul, and so far from being absent from
the later form, known by the name of John, determines the cardinal idea
of that, and shapes its bent. Whatever additions are made, grow out of
this cardinal idea, as branches from its stem. The strict monotheism of
the Hebrew faith is sacrificed to the Messianic conception. The Christ
in time becomes a twin Deity, a Holy Ghost being required to fill up the
gulf between godhead and humanity.
But for the fury of the discord that arose and deepened between the
Jews who accepted the Christ and the Jews who preferred still to wait
for him, the later, as well as the earlier form of Christianity, might
possibly have been merged in Judaism. The believers in the Messianic
advent were radical to the point of fanaticism. They were the restless
advocates of change, agitators, revolutionists. Their passionate zeal
could not brook indifference or coolness. Nothing short of a fervid
allegiance satisfied them. The recusants had to bear hard names, as the
gospels attest. The ill-fortune of the Messiah, the bitter opposition he
encountered, his untimely death, were charged upon the faithlessness of
the nation who would not confess him. These, and not the Roman
Government that actually put him to death, were held answerable for his
crucifixion; thus a discord was planted, which all the generations of
Christendom have failed to eradicate. There has, from that time to this,
been implacable hatred between Christian and Jew.
The separation, which might have been healed or obliterated, had this
been the sole cause of it, was widened by the subsequent breach between
the christians themselves, which drew attention off from the previous
issue. The position taken by Paul, that the mission of the Christ was
extended to the Gentiles and comprehended them on precisely the same
conditions with the Jews, was exceedingly disagreeable and even
shocking to the conservatives, who held that the Christ was sent to
Israel only, and especially to that portion of Israel that clung
tenaciously to the traditions of the law. The necessary criticism of the
Law which Paul's position required, the apparent disrespect shown to
Moses and the prophets, the disregard of the ancestral claim set up by
the "children of Abraham," the substitution of an interior
principle--faith--which any heathen might adopt, for the old fashioned
legal requirements to which none but orthodox Jews could conform, was
hardly less than blasphemous in their regard; and a feud was begun,
which in violence and rancor, excelled the quarrel between the orthodox
christians and the Jews. The traces of this controversy, plainly marked
in the writings of Paul, are visible on the literature of his own and of
the succeeding period, and disappear only in the events of greater
significance incident to the fall of Jerusalem, the complete dispersion
of the Jews, and the blending of parties in the Western Empire.
Ferdinand Christian Baur may have pushed too far in some directions, his
theory that the entire gospel literature of the New Testament was
determined as to its form by the exigencies of this controversy, the
canonical books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and the "Acts of the Apostles"
all being written in the interest of reconciliation; but his fundamental
position, as in the case of Strauss, has never been carried, or even
shaken, by assault. The extreme points in controversy are fixed with a
good deal of certainty. Paul's own statement in the second chapter of
Galatians is fairly explicable only on the supposition of a violent
collision, the nature of which is there defined, the bearings of which
are indicated in that and in other undoubted writings of the apostle.
Many passages therein are unintelligible on any other hypothesis. The
Apocalypse and the Epistle of James, as clearly set forth the opposite
view, in language and implication of the strongest kind, and in a spirit
of decided antagonism. The "Acts of the Apostles" is, as elsewhere
hinted, prepared with a view of making it appear that no controversy
existed; that Peter carried the gospel to the Gentiles, and that Paul
insisted on the validity of circumcision, the mark of initiation into
the Jewish church. The narrative is so forced, the incidents so
artificial, the aim so evident, the limitation of view so marked, that
the book betrays its own character. To admit the genuineness of the
"Acts" is to throw into confusion the little history that we certainly
know, and to unfix the continuity of events. How far the three first
gospels correspond in purpose with the "Acts," is a nice question, which
need not be answered here, which may be left unanswered without
detriment to the soundness of the general theory. Whether or no the
controversy was of such absorbing moment, whether or no it lasted as
long as Baur believes, or exerted as wide an influence on literature,
its effect in drawing the thoughts away from the earlier dispute between
the Messianic and the anti-Messianic Jews, and in detaching the
christians from their original associations is unimpaired. From the
breaking out of that dispute, which occurred within fifteen or twenty
years of the crucifixion, at the latest, Christianity followed its own
law of development.
But, though thus discarded, disowned, finally detested, the very name of
Jew, as early as the fourth gospel, being associated with a stiff-necked
bigotry impenetrable to conviction, the old religion maintained its sway
over the child that had taken its portion of goods and gone away to make
a home of its own. The Palestinian and Asiatic literature of the young
faith bears the stamp of its Hebrew lineage, as has been shown. The
Christ sprung from its bosom, was instructed in its schools, was
glorified through its imagination. The resurrection was its prophecy;
the heaven to which he ascended was of its building and coloring; the
throne whereon he seated himself was of its construction; the Father at
whose right hand he reigned was its own ancient deity. His very name,
the name he continues to bear to this day,--Messiah--is the name whereby
she loved to describe her own ideal man. In the depth of his
degradation, in the heat of his persecution, in the agony of his
despair, the Jew could reflect that his relentless oppressor owed to
him the very faith he was compelled to curse. The victim was the
conqueror. The reflection may still have been bitter; whatever sweetness
it brought was flavored with vengeance, except in the greatest souls who
loved their religion better than their fame.
VIII.
THE WESTERN CHURCH.
Our story is not yet told. As regards the New Testament books, though
the genius that produced them was Eastern, the judgment that brought
them together in a single collection was Western. No list of the New
Testament books pretending to carry weight was made until the year 360.
For two centuries and a half there was no Christian bible. The canon, as
it now stands, was fixed by Pope Innocent I., A. D. 405, by a special
decree. Why precisely these books were selected from the mass of
literature then in existence and use, is--except in two or three cases
where the prevailing sentiment of the actual Church threw out a book
like Enoch or kept in a book like the Apocalypse--still open to
conjecture. In such a dilemma Schwegler's conjecture, that the irenical
or reconciling books were retained, and the partisan writings dropped,
is as plausible as any, perhaps more so. The Church of Rome had two
patron saints--Peter and Paul; it claimed to be founded by both
Apostles, and, on this principle, adopted its canon of scripture. The
New Testament, by its arrangement, was, it is claimed, an expression in
literature of the Catholic claim.
As regards the Christ idea, though formed in the East, the West gave it
currency, made it the central feature of a vast religious system,
crowned it and placed it on a throne. Had the creative thought of
Judaism been confined to the East, our concern with it need have gone no
further. But the thought was not confined to the East, even in the
widest comprehension of that term. The Jews were everywhere. The
repeated disasters which befel their country gave fresh impulse to their
creed. Their ideas spread as their state diminished; and their ideas
were so vital that they captured and engaged the floating speculations
of the Gentile world whenever they were encountered. In Alexandria,
where Jews had been for two hundred and fifty or three hundred years,
and whither they flocked by thousands after each fresh national
disaster, the faith, instead of being extinguished by the flood of
speculation in that busy centre of the world's thought, revived, drew in
copious supplies of blood from the Greek spirit, and entered on a new
career. If it be true, as is declared in Smith's Dictionary of
Geography, that when the city of Alexandria was founded (B. C. 332) it
was laid out in three sections, one of which was assigned to the Jews,
their political and social influence must have corresponded to their
numbers. Prof. Huidekoper revives and reaergues the belief, that
travelled men of letters from Greece, preeminent among them, Plato, who
visited Egypt, borrowed from the Jews the ideas which ennobled and
beautified the Greek philosophy. The doctrines of the Stoics, Greek and
Roman, bear, in Mr. Huidekoper's opinion, evident marks of Jewish
origin. This is going, we think, beyond warrant of the facts. We may
claim much less and still place very high the intellectual sway of this
remarkable people. It may be confidently asserted, that in portions of
Asia Minor, Syria, and Northern Egypt, their faith had largely displaced
the ancient superstitions.
The splendid literature of the Apocrypha, Ecclesiasticus and Wisdom, the
rich fund of speculation in the Talmud, the intellectual wealth of
Philo, the Pauline and Johannean Gnosis, brilliantly attest their
intellectual vigor. The Rev. Brooke Foss Walcott, in Smith's "Dictionary
of the Bible," declares, that from the date of the destruction of
Jerusalem, in the year 70, the power of Judaism "as a present living
force, was stayed." But such a statement can be accepted only in a much
qualified sense. The destruction of Jerusalem put an end to the State
more completely than the overthrow of any modern city could do; for the
holy city was the home of the national life in a peculiar sense; it was
the seat of the national worship in which the national life centred.
With the temple fell the institutions that rested on the temple. When
the walls were thrown down and the grand buildings levelled, it was like
erasing the marks of history, tearing up the roots of tradition and
setting the seal of destiny on the nation's future. The territory was
small; the power of the great city was felt in every part of it, and the
quenching of its light left the land in darkness. But the catastrophe
which terminated the existence of the State, gave a new life to the
religious idea and opened a new arena for its conquests. It greatly
increased the number of Jews in the city of Rome, the imperial city of
the West, the conquering metropolis; raised the congregations already
existing there to a position of considerable importance; served to
unite, by the sympathy of a common sorrow, parties that had been
divided; had the effect in some measure to weaken antipathies, harmonize
opinions and inflame zeal; in a word, transferred to Italy the faith
that, in outward form, had been crushed in Palestine. Thenceforth
Judaism, which had been a blended worship and polity, ceased to be a
polity, and became more intensely than ever, because more exclusively, a
worship.
The history of the settlement of Jews in Rome, is naturally obscure.
Being mainly of the mercantile and trading class their presence there
might have been expected early. They were restless, enterprising,
industrious, eager and skilful in barter; and Rome attracted all such,
being the business centre of the western world. Political affairs at
home were never long favorable to peaceful pursuits, and were frequently
in such confusion that the transactions of ordinary existence were
precarious. The numbers that were carried away to Babylon comprised it
is probable the more eminent class. As many, if not more, found their
way to other cities, and of these Rome received its share. The earliest
mention brings them before us as already of consequence from their
wealth and intelligence. Sixty years before the christian era, Cicero
commended Lucius Valerius Flaccus, praetor of the district of Asia Minor,
because he did not encourage an exorbitant expenditure of money on the
construction of the temple, by Jews, the exportation of whose wealth
from Rome was felt as an evil. He states that under the directions of
Flaccus, one hundred pounds weight of gold ($25,000) had been seized at
Apamea, in Asia Minor; twenty pounds at Laodicea. The Jews were rich.
Their demonstrations of grief at the death of Julius Caesar, the
conqueror of their conqueror, Pompey, and the enlightened friend of the
people, argued by the number and loudness of the voices, the presence of
a multitude. One may read in any book of Jewish history that Josephus
reckoned at eight thousand the Jews who were present, when at the death
of king Herod, his son Archelaus appeared before Augustus; that the poor
among them were numerous enough to procure from Augustus a decree
authorizing them to receive their share of the bounty of corn on another
day, when the day of general distribution fell on their Sabbath; that
one emperor expelled them as a dangerous element in the city; that
another for the same reason laid special penalties and burdens on them;
that the aristocratic party was steadily hostile to them. Tacitus, their
enemy, speaks of the deportation of four thousand young Israelites to
Sardinia. Josephus makes the astounding, the fabulous statement that in
the year 66, the Jews in Rome required two hundred and fifty-six
thousand lambs for their paschal commemoration.[2] Such a provision
would imply a population of two million and a half at least. That the
Jews were of some importance is attested by the comments made on them by
Roman writers; by Martial, who alludes to their customs in his epigrams;
by Ovid, who criticises their observance of the Sabbath as having the
character of a debasing superstition and introduces a shirk who, having
exhausted all pretexts, makes a pretext of respecting the Sabbath in
order not to incur the ill will of the Jews; by Persius, who remarks
satirically on the Sabbath observances and the rite of circumcision; by
Plutarch, who minutely describes the Mosaic system of laws. Satire
betrays fear as well as dislike. The great writer disdains to caricature
people who are inconspicuous. Juvenal was a great writer, and his
envenomed raillery against the Jews has become familiar by quotation. It
would seem, from his invectives, that Jewish ideas and practices had
crept into public approval, and were exerting an influence on the
education of Roman youth. He complains bitterly of parents who bring up
their children to think more of the laws of Moses than of the laws of
their country.--"Some there are, assigned by fortune to Sabbath fearing
fathers, who adore nothing but the clouds and the genius of the sky; who
see no distinction between the swine's flesh as food and the flesh of
man. Habitually despising the laws of Rome, they study, keep and revere
the code of Judaea, a tradition given by Moses in a dark volume. The
blame is with the father, with whom every seventh day is devoted to
idleness, and withdrawn from the uses of life." Juvenal lived in the
latter part of the first and the early part of the second century, about
a generation after the destruction of Jerusalem. Admitting the
genuineness of the passage, and the ground of the criticism, neither of
which is disputed, the influence of the Jews was by no means
contemptible.
[Footnote 2: Bellum Judaicum, VII. 17.]
Milman conjectures that while the number of Jews in Rome was much
increased, their respectability as well as their popularity were much
diminished by the immense influx of the most destitute as well as of the
most unruly of the race, who were swept into captivity by thousands
after the fall of Jerusalem. This may be true. There is reason to
believe that the importation of so great a number of strangers was
attended by poverty, distress, and squalor, horrible to think of. It
could not have been otherwise. That they should infest and infect whole
districts of the city; that they should pitch their vagabond tents on
vacant plots of ground, and should change fair districts, gardens and
groves into disreputable and foul precincts; that they should resort to
mean trades for support, peddling, trafficking in old clothes, rags,
matches, broken glass, or should sink into mendicancy, is simply in the
nature of things, But it is fair to suppose that the exiles from
Jerusalem would bring with them the memory of their sufferings during
the unexampled horrors of that tremendous war; would bring with them
also a fiercer sense of loyalty to the faith for which such agonies had
been borne, such sacrifices had been made. That they held their religion
dear, is certain. Their Sabbaths were observed, their laws revered,
their synagogues frequented, their peculiarities of race cherished and
perpetuated by tradition from father to son. There is reason to think
that they anticipated the Christians in their practice of burying their
dead in the catacombs, which bore a strong resemblance to the rocky
caverns where in the fatherland, their ancestors were laid. The
catacombs in the neighborhood of the Transtevere, the district where the
Jews mostly lived, are plainly associated with them. The seven-branched
candlestick appears on the wall, and the inscriptions bear witness to
the pious constancy of the race.[3] They made proselytes among the
pagans weary of their decrepit and moribund faiths, and thus extended
the religious ideas which they so tenaciously held. Among themselves
there was close association, partly from tradition and partly from race.
Some semblance of their ancient institutions was kept up; their general
council; their tribunal of laws. Circumstances alone prevented them from
maintaining their ancestral religion in its grandeur. Seneca, about the
middle of the first century, represents Jewish usages as having pervaded
all nations; he is speaking of the Sabbath. Paul found thriving
synagogues, wherever he went, and wrote to some that he could not visit,
before the destruction of Jerusalem made the final dispersion.
[Footnote 3: See Milman's Jews, II. p. 461.]