account of their political degradation. Born in sorrow, the anticipation
grew keen in bitter hours. That Jehovah would abandon them, could not
be believed. The thought would be atheism. The hope kept the eastern
Jews in a perpetual state of insurrection. The cry, "lo here, lo there!"
was incessant. The last great insurrection, that of Bar-Cochab, revealed
an astonishing frenzy of zeal. It was purely a Messianic uprising.
Judaism had excited the fears of the Emperor Hadrian,[4] and induced him
to inflict unusual severities on the people. He had forbidden
circumcision, the rite of initiation into their church; he had
prohibited the observance of the Sabbath and the public reading of the
law, thus drying up the sources of the national faith. He had even
threatened to abolish the historical rallying point of the religion by
planting a Roman colony on the site of Jerusalem and building a shrine
to Jupiter on the place where the temple had stood. Measures so violent
and radical could hardly have been prompted by anything less alarming
than the upspringing of that indomitable conviction which worked at the
heart of the people. The effect of the violence was to stimulate that
conviction to fury. The night of their despair was once more illumined
by the star of the east. The banner of the Messiah was raised. Portents
as of old were seen in the sky; the clouds were watched for the glory
that should appear. Bar-Cochab, the "son of the star," seemed to fill
out the popular idea of the deliverer. Miracles were ascribed to him;
flames issued from his mouth. The vulgar imagination made haste to
transform the audacious fanatic into a child of David. Multitudes
flocked to his standard. "The whole Jewish race throughout the world,"
says Milman, "was in commotion; those who dared not betray their
interest in the common cause openly, did so in secret, and perhaps some
of the wealthy Jews in the remote provinces privately contributed from
their resources." "Native Jews and strangers swelled his ranks. It is
probable that many of the fugitives from the insurgents in Egypt and
Cyrene had found their way to Palestine and lay hid in caves and
fastnesses. No doubt some from the Mesopotamian provinces came to the
aid of their brethren." "Those who had denied or disguised their
circumcision, hastened to renew that distinguishing mark of their
Israelitish descent, to entitle themselves to a share in the great
redemption." The insurrection gained head. The heights about Jerusalem
were seized and occupied; fortifications were erected; caves were dug,
and subterranean passages cut between the garrisoned positions; arms
were collected; nothing but the "host of angels" was needed to insure
victory. The angels did not appear; the Roman legions did. The carnage,
during the three or four years of the war--for so long and possibly
longer, the war lasted--was frightful. The Messiah, not proving himself
a conqueror, was held to have proved himself an impostor, the "son of a
lie." The holy city was once more destroyed, this time completely. A new
city, peopled by foreigners, arose on its site. The effect of the
outbreak, which was felt far and wide, in time and space, was disastrous
to Jewish influence in the empire. From this time Judaism lost its good
name, and at the same time its hold on the cultivated mind of Europe.
Fanaticism so wild and destructive was entitled to no respect.
[Footnote 4: See Huidekoper's "Judaism in Rome," p. 325-329.]
The Christians, of course, took no part in the great rising, and had no
interest in it. It was their faith that the Messiah had already come;
and however confident their expectation of his reappearance to judge the
nations and redeem his elect, time had so far sobered the hopes of even
the rudest among them, that they no longer looked for a man of war, no
longer were attracted by banners in the hands of ruffians or trumpet
blasts blown by human lips. The feeling was gaining ground, if it was
not quite confirmed, that instead of waiting for the Christ to come to
them, they were to go to him in his heaven. Hence, Jews, though they
might be in the essentials of their religious faith, they were wholly
alienated from those of their race who looked for a cosmical or
political demonstration. That this want of sympathy and failure to
participate, widened the breach between them and the Jews who still
expected a temporal deliverer, there can be little question; that in
times of great excitement, the Christian Jews were exposed to scoffing
and persecution is equally undeniable. Bar-Cochab treated them with
extreme cruelty. It is even probable that in Rome and the provinces of
the empire a settled hatred of the Christians animated Jews of the
average stamp, and found expression in the usual forms of popular
malignity. It is easy to believe that Jews in Rome, possessing influence
in high quarters, thrust Christians between themselves and persecution.
This, indeed, is extremely probable.[5] But that, in ordinary times, an
active animosity prevailed on the part of the Jews of the old school
against Jews of the new school, is not clearly proved. The latter were
orthodox, conservative Jews, loyal to the national faith in every
respect save one, namely, their persuasion that the Christ was no longer
to be looked for, having already appeared. To those Jews, who had
abandoned the belief that he would appear, or who had allowed that
belief to sink into the background of their minds, the belief of the
Christians would occasion no bitterness. It is still a common impression
that the persecution recorded in the book of "The Acts of the Apostles,"
to which Stephanos, the Greek convert, fell a victim, was directed by
Jews against Christians. But it has been made to appear more than
probable,--admitting the historical truth of the narrative--that the
assault was made by the Judaizing upon the anti-Judaizing Christians;
the Jews who were not Christians at all, taking no part in it. The
reasoning upon which this conclusion is based, will be found in Zeller's
book on the "Acts," an exhaustive treatise which must be studied by
anybody who would understand that curious composition. The main
positions may be apprehended by the intelligent reader on carefully
perusing the story as written, and noting the conspicuous fact, that the
quarrel is between radicals and conservatives; between the advocates of
a broad policy, comprehending Greeks and Romans on the same terms with
Jews, and the champions of a restricted policy, confining the benefits
of the Messiah's advent to the true Israelites.
[Footnote 5: See "Judaism in Rome," p. 245.]
The destruction of Jerusalem was one of the causes that may have
operated to close this gulf. By breaking up the head-quarters of the
Christian conservatism, and dispersing the lingerers there among the
inhabitants of Gentile cities, it weakened their ties, widened their
experience, softened their prejudices, and prepared them to accept the
larger interpretation of their faith. The writings of the New Testament,
all of them produced after the destruction of Jerusalem, some of them
fifty or sixty years after, none of them less than ten or fifteen years,
bear traces of this enlargement. The Jewish christians living in Greek
and Roman Cities could hardly avoid the temptations to adopt that view
of their faith which commended it to the communities whereof they were a
part, and this was the view presented by Paul and his school, the
intellectual, or, as some prefer to call it, the "spiritual" view.
According to this view, also, the new religion was grafted on the old,
Judaism was the foundation; the root from which sprung the branches,
however widely spreading. Paul, as has been remarked, addressed himself
invariably to Jews, in the first instance, and turned to the Gentiles
only when the Jews rejected him. The essential beliefs of the religious
Jew he retained, never exchanging them for the beliefs of Paganism, or
qualifying them with the speculations of heathen philosophy. He labored
in the interest of the faith of Israel, broadly interpreted, nor, in
respect of his fundamental conceptions, did he ever wander far from the
religion of his fathers. The spiritual distance between the school he
founded, and the school that in his life time he opposed, was not so
wide that it might not in course of time, be diminished, until at length
it disappeared entirely. Parties holding the same cardinal belief, will
not forever be separated by incidental barriers, especially when, as was
the case with the destruction of Jerusalem, providence moves the chief
barriers away.
Other inducements to a good understanding between the two parties of
Christian Jews were at work. Heresies of all sorts were springing up
within the churches, which could be suppressed only by the moral power
of a common persuasion in the minds of the chief bodies. Questions were
raised which neither branch of the christian community could
satisfactorily answer; controversies arose, demanding something like an
ecclesiastical authority to adjust. Unless the new religion was to split
into petty sections and be pulverized to nothingness, the restoration of
old breaches was an absolute necessity. The danger was of too sudden and
artificial a compromise between the main divisions, resulting in a
compact organization that might arrest the movements of the spirit of
liberty. The church did eventually obtain supremacy in dogma and rite,
through the imperative demand for unity that was urgently pressed early
in the second century.
Judaism contained in its bosom two elements, one stationary, the other
progressive; one close, the other expansive; one centralizing in Judaea
and waiting till it should attract the outer world to it, the other
forth reaching beyond Palestine, and seeking to commend the faith of
Israel to those who knew it not. These two elements coexisted from early
times, and caused perpetual ferment by their struggles to overmaster
each other. The priest stood for the one principle, the narrower, the
fixed, the instituted; the prophet stood for the other, the
intellectual, the expansive, the progressive. The priest stayed at home
to administer the ordinances; the prophet journeyed about, to spread the
salvation. The priest was a fixture, the prophet was a missionary.
The two divisions of the earliest Christian community represented these
counter tendencies. The school of Peter, James, and John, the
hierarchal, conservative school, maintained the attitude of expectation.
They waited and prayed, exacted rigid compliance with ordinances; clung
to their associations with places and seasons; were tenacious of holy
usages; required punctuality and accuracy of posturing, were strict in
conformity with legal prescriptions, made a point of circumcision, or
other rites of initiation into the true church. The school of Paul and
Apollos took up the principle of universality, dispensed with whatever
hampered their movements and impeded their action, and, taking essential
ideas only, making themselves "all things to all men, if peradventure,
they might win some," preached the message freely, to as many as would
hear. The two principles, however discordant in operation, demanded each
other. They could not long exist apart; the unity and the universality
were mutually complementary. Unity alone, would bring isolation,
solitariness, and ultimate death from diminution. Universality alone
would lead to dissipation, attenuation, and disappearance. It was
therefore not long before the extremes drew together and met.
Lecky, the historian of European morals, assigns as a reason why the
Jews in Rome were less vehemently persecuted than the Christians, that
"the Jewish religion was essentially conservative and unexpansive. The
Christians, on the other hand, were ardent missionaries." Would it not
be more exact to say that the Jews of one school were essentially
conservative and unexpansive; that the Jews of another school were
ardent missionaries? That the one school should be persecuted, while the
other was left in peace, was perfectly natural, especially in
communities where their essential identity was not understood. There is
no necessity for supposing that the two faiths were actually
distinguished because one attracted attention and provoked attack, while
the other did nothing of the kind. Not history only, but common
observation furnishes abundant examples of faiths fundamentally the
same, meeting very different fortunes, according to the attitude which
circumstances compelled them to assume. The Christians might have
presented the aggressive front of Judaism, as Paul did, and still not
have forfeited their claim to be true children of Israel.
There is, in fact, no doubt that discerning persons perceived the
substantial identity of the two religions. It is conceded on all sides,
by Jewish and by Christian writers,--Milman and Salvador, Jost and
Merivale, corroborating one another,--that Jews were taken for
Christians and Christians for Jews. They were subjected to the same
criticism; they were exposed to the same contumely. Indeed it may be
questioned whether the early persecutions that were inflicted on the
Christians were not really directed against the Jews, whose reputation
for restlessness and fanaticism, for stiffness and intolerance, was
established in the minds of all classes of society. The Jews were a mark
for persecution before there was a Christian in Rome, before the
Christian era began. They were persecuted on precisely the same pretexts
that were used in the case of the Christians. They had a recognized
locality, standing and character. They were many in number and
considerable in influence. The lower orders disliked their austerity;
the higher orders dreaded their organization; philosophers despised them
as superstitious; politicians hated them as intractable; emperors used
them when they wished to divert angry comment from their own acts. They
were "fair game" for imperial pursuit. A raid on the Jews was popular.
It is possible, to say the least, that the Christians would have passed
unmolested but for their association with the Israelites. This is no
novel insinuation; Milman hinted at it more than a quarter of a century
ago, in his "History of Christianity." "When the public peace was
disturbed by the dissensions among the Jewish population of Rome, the
summary sentence of Claudius visited both Jews and Christians with the
same indifferent severity. So the Neronian persecution was an accident
arising out of the fire at Rome; no part of a systematic plan for the
suppression of foreign religions. It might have fallen on any other sect
or body of men who might have been designated as victims to appease the
popular resentment. Accustomed to the separate worship of the Jews, to
the many, Christianity appeared at first only as a modification of that
belief."[6] The same conjecture is more boldly ventured in the History
of Latin Christianity. "What caprice of cruelty directed the attention
of Nero to the Christians, and made him suppose them victims important
enough to glut the popular indignation at the burning of Rome, it is
impossible to determine. The cause and extent of the Domitian
persecution is equally obscure. The son of Vespasian was not likely to
be merciful to any connected with the fanatic Jews." "At the
commencement of the second century, under Trajan, persecution against
the Christians is raging in the East. That, however, (I feel increased
confidence in the opinion), was a local, or rather Asiatic persecution,
arising out of the vigilant and not groundless apprehension of the
sullen and brooding preparation for insurrection among the whole Jewish
race (with whom Roman terror and hatred still confounded the
Christians), which broke out in the bloody massacres of Cyrene and
Cyprus, and in the final rebellion, during the reign of Hadrian, under
Bar-Cochab."[7] If the Christians made themselves particularly
obnoxious, they did so by their zeal for beliefs which they shared with
the Jews and derived from them; beliefs in the personality of God, the
immediateness of Providence, the law of moral retribution, and the
immortal destinies of the human soul. Their belief in the ascended and
reigning Christ gave point to their zeal; but the Jews, too, clung to
their hope of the Christ, and through the vitality of their hope were
known.
[Footnote 6: History of Christianity, II; p. 8.]
[Footnote 7: Vol. I.; p. 528.]
The importance ascribed to Christianity as a special moral force working
in the constitution of the heathen world, is, by recent admission,
acknowledged to have been much exaggerated. The chapter on "The state of
the world toward the middle of the first century" in Renan's "Apostles,"
sums up with singular calmness, clearness and easy strength, the
influences that were slowly transforming the social condition of the
empire; the nobler ideas, the purer morals, the amenities and humanities
that were stealing in to temper the violence, mitigate the ferocity,
soften the hardness and uplift the grossness of the western world.
Samuel Johnson's little essay on "The Worship of Jesus" is a subtle
glance into the same facts, tracing the efficacy of powers that
co-operated in producing the atmospheric change which was as summer
succeeding winter over the civilized earth. Mr. Lecky, with broader
touch, but accurately and conscientiously, paints a noble picture on the
same subject. But other artists, of a different school, make the same
representation. Merivale, lecturing in 1864, on the Boyle foundation, in
the Chapel Royal, at Whitehall, on the "Conversion of the Roman Empire,"
in the interest of the christian Church, says, "the influence of Grecian
conquest was eminently soothing and civilizing; it diffused ideas of
humanity and moral culture, while the conquerors themselves imbibed on
their side the highest of moral lessons, lessons of liberality, of
toleration, of sympathy with all God's human creation." "Plutarch, in a
few rapid touches, enforced by a vivid illustration which we may pass
over, gives the picture of the new humane polity, the new idea of human
society flashed upon the imagination of mankind by the establishment of
the Macedonian Empire. Such, at least, it appeared to the mind of a
writer five centuries later; but there are traces preserved, even in
the wrecks of ancient civilization, of the moral effect which it
actually produced on the feelings of society, much more nearly
contemporaneous. The conqueror, indeed, perished early, but not
prematurely. The great empire was split into fragments, but each long
preserved a sense of the unity from which it was broken off. All were
leavened more or less with a common idea of civilization, and recognized
man as one being in various stages of development, to be trained under
one guidance and elevated to one spiritual level. In the two great
kingdoms of Egypt and Syria, which sprang out of the Macedonian,--in the
two great cities of Alexandria and Antioch, to which the true religion
owes so deep a debt,--the unity of the human race was practically
asserted and maintained." "After three centuries of national
amalgamation, the result of a widespread political revolution, after the
diffusion of Grecian ideas among every people, from the Ionian to the
Caspian or the Red Sea, and the reception in return, of manifold ideas,
and in religious matters of much higher ideas, from the Persian, the
Indian, the Egyptian and the Jew, the people even of Athens, the very
centre and eye of Greece, were prepared to admit the cardinal doctrine
of Paul's preaching."
The same writer cordially admits the moral grandeur and the moral power
of the philosophers whose teaching had, for several generations, been
leavening the thought and ennobling the humanity of the Roman world.
"The philosophy of the Stoics, the highest and holiest moral theory at
the time of our Lord's coming,--the theory which most worthily contended
against the merely political religion of the day, the theory which
opposed the purest ideas and the loftiest aims to the grovelling
principles of a narrow and selfish expediency on which the frame of the
heathen ritual rested--was the direct creation of the sense of unity and
equality disseminated among the choicer spirits of heathen society by
the results of the Macedonian conquest. But for that conquest it could
hardly have existed at all. It was the philosophy of Plato, sublimed and
harmonized by the political circumstances of the times. It was what
Plato would have imagined, had he been a subject of Alexander."
"It taught, nominally at least, the equality of all God's children--of
Greek and barbarian, of bond and free. It renounced the exclusive ideas
of the commonwealth on which Plato had made shipwreck of his
consistency. It declared that to the wise man all the world is his
country. It was thoroughly comprehensive and cosmopolitan. Instead of a
political union it preached the moral union of all good men,--a city of
true philosophers, a community of religious sentiment, a communion of
saints, to be developed partly here below, but more consummately in the
future state of a glorified hereafter. It aspired, at least, to the
doctrine of an immortal city of the soul, a providence under which that
immortality was to be gained, a reward for the good, possibly, but even
more dubiously, a punishment of the wicked."
Merivale, it will be understood, writing in the interest of
Christianity, makes note of the limitations of the Stoic Philosophy,
calls it vague, unsatisfactory and aristocratic, the "peculiarity of a
select class of minds;" and so it was, to a degree; but that it had a
mighty influence throughout the intellectual world, as much as any
system of belief could have, must be confessed. So far as ideas went, it
comprehended the wisest and best there were. As respected the authority
by which the ideas were recommended and guaranteed, it was the authority
of the intellectual lights of the world. To say that the truths were
limited, is to say what may be said of every intellectual system under
the sun, including the beliefs of christian apostles which the christian
Church has outgrown. To say that they were not final, is to say what
will be affirmed of every intellectual system till the end of time.
There the beliefs were, stated, urged, preached with earnestness by men
of live minds, fully awake to the needs of the society they adorned,
thinking and writing, not for their own entertainment, but for the
improvement of mankind. Their books were not read by the multitude, the
multitude could not read: scarcely can they read now. But the men
influenced the directors of opinion, the makers of laws, the builders of
institutions, the wealthy, the instructed, the high in place.