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THE
HISTORY OF THE JEWS

FROM THE WAR WITH ROME TO THE PRESENT TIME.

THE

HISTORY OF THE JEWS

FROM THE WAR WITH ROME TO THE
PRESENT TIME.

BY THE

Rev. H. C. ADAMS, M.A.

Vicar of Old Shoreham.
Author of ‘Wykehamica,’ ‘Schoolboy Honour,’ etc., etc.

London:

THE RELIGIOUS TRACT SOCIETY,

56, PATERNOSTER ROW.

1887.

Butler & Tanner,
The Selwood Printing Works,
Frome, and London.

CONTENTS.

PREFACE.

The reader will understand that this work does not profess to be anything more than a popular history, with just so much reference to Jewish learning and controversy as may be necessary to a due comprehension of the facts related, and the character of the people treated of. But such references will not, for various reasons, be frequent. Of the vast accumulations of Jewish literature, the most valuable portions are the Commentaries of their doctors on Scripture, and their contributions to grammar, mathematics, and physical science. With these, however, the writer of history has but little concern. The abstruse and intricate speculations of the Rabbins, the subtleties of the Cabbalists, the wild fancies—or what, at all events, the sober Western intellect accounts such—of the Talmuds, the Sepher-Yetzira, and the Zohar, might absorb whole years of study, but would yield the historian only a barren return for the labour. The poetry of the Hebrews is said to be plaintive and touching, but too exclusively national to have interest for any but Jews. Their ancient historians, again, overlay their narratives with exaggeration and fable to such an extent that their statements cannot be received without the greatest caution. It is mainly from writers belonging to other races that we must derive our record of the strange and varied fortunes of the people of Israel.

This must, of course, place them at some disadvantage. Yet there is no history so full of striking incident and mournful pathos as theirs, none which stirs such solemn questions, or imparts so profound a wisdom to those who rightly study it. As an illustration of the sad interest it awakens, the words of Leopold Zunz, one of the greatest of modern Jews, may suffice. ‘If there are gradations in suffering,’ he writes, ‘Israel has reached its highest acme. If the long duration of sufferings, and the patience with which they are borne, ennobles a people, then the Jews may defy the high-born of any lands.’ In truth, again and again, in every succeeding century of their annals, the evidences of a heroism which no persistence in severity could bend, and no pressure of persecution could break, engage the attention of the reader. Whatever may be his estimate of the worth or the demerits of the Jews, their tragic story at least commands his sympathy.

In these respects other nations, though they may not have rivalled, at least resemble, them. But there are peculiarities in their history which separate them from every other people on the earth. Foremost among these is the question—Are we still to regard them, as our fathers for so many generations regarded them, as lying under the special curse of God, a perpetual monument of His anger? Was the imprecation uttered before Pilate’s tribunal (St. Matt. xxvii. 25), ‘His blood be on us, and on our children!’ ratified, so to speak, by Almighty God? Is the Lord’s blood still upon them? Is that the true explanation of their past miseries and their present condition?

Let us consider what the guilt of the Jews, who slew the Lord, really amounted to. They do not, I believe, themselves deny that they are suffering under Divine displeasure, or that that displeasure has been occasioned by their sin. On the contrary, they hold that it is their sin that has delayed, and still delays, the coming of the Messiah. But, far from thinking that sin to have been the murder of Jesus Christ, they do not consider that their fathers were guilty in that matter at all. Their law, so they contend, requires them to put to death blasphemers and setters up of strange gods. The assertion of Jesus, ‘I and My Father are one,’ say they, was both blasphemy and the setting up of a strange god. They would only therefore have obeyed a Divine command if they had put Him to death. But, they add, it was not they, but the Romans, by whose sentence He died, for declaring Himself King of the Jews. This, they say, is sufficiently evident from the manner of His death by crucifixion, which was one never inflicted by Jews, and by the inscription on the cross, ‘This is the King of the Jews.’ It is extremely doubtful, they add, whether their fathers possessed the power of putting Him to death, but at all events they did not exercise it. The Jewish people, according to their view, had nothing to do with the matter. Some of the multitude may have imprecated the blood of Jesus on themselves and their children; but if so, the curse could only come on those few persons on whom it had been invoked. Jost and others even deny that the Sanhedrim was ever legally convened, the meeting that condemned Jesus and delated Him to Pilate being, as they hold, merely a tumultuary assembly of the enemies of Christ.

It will, of course, be answered that to charge our Lord with blasphemy and setting up of a strange god, is simply to beg the whole question at issue between Jew and Christian. Indeed, considering that the Hebrew Scriptures distinctly declare the Messiah to be God[1] (Psa. xlv. 6; Isa. vii. 14; ix. 6, etc.), according to this view of the matter, at whatever period He might come, it must be the duty of the Jews to put Him to death, as soon as He declared His true character. It might be asked—How were the Jews to know that Jesus was really what He proclaimed Himself? Our answer is, that in the fulfilment of prophecy in Him, in the exercise of His miraculous powers, and the superhuman holiness of His teaching, they had sufficient evidence that He was indeed the Christ. They had, in fact, the evidence of it which Divine wisdom accounted sufficient.

Again, it was doubtless by the order of a Roman magistrate that He was crucified; and it may perhaps be true that during the Roman Procuratorship the Sanhedrim had no power of pronouncing a capital sentence.[2] But it was the Jews who carried our Lord before Pilate and demanded His death. Far from being anxious to condemn Him, Pilate was most reluctant to order the execution. It was only when the dangerous insinuation of disloyalty to Cæsar was suggested that he consented to their wishes. Who can doubt that the guilt was theirs? Pilate might as well have put off the blame on the centurion who commanded the quaternion at Calvary, or he on the three soldiers who put in force the sentence. The statement again, that the Sanhedrim was not convened, is in direct contradiction to that of St. Mark (xv. 1). Nor does it appear that the Evangelist’s assertion was ever called in question by contemporary writers.

There can be no reasonable doubt in the mind of any man who accepts the Gospel narrative as a true—I do not here say an inspired—history, that the Jews of that day were guilty of the blood of our Lord, and that it was a deed of the most flagrant wickedness. But it remains to be proved that they slew Him, knowing Him to be their Incarnate God, and I think that would be found extremely difficult of proof. If we are to be guided by Scripture in the matter, we shall entertain a different opinion. St. Peter said to these very men, not many weeks afterwards, ‘I wot that ye did it in ignorance,’ and then called upon them ‘to repent, that their sin might be blotted out.’[3] Our Lord also pleaded their ignorance of the nature of the deed they were perpetrating, in their behalf.[4] Both these passages are inconsistent with the idea of an abiding and inexorable curse. Their guilt was like that of the Athenian people when they condemned Socrates to death, or of that of the Florentines, when they similarly murdered Savonarola, or again of the Romans, when they assassinated Count Rossi—like theirs, though doubtless more aggravated. The sin of rejecting the preachers of holiness, and silencing their voices in their blood, is one of the worst of which a people can be guilty, and must needs draw down the heavy wrath of the All Just; but surely not on their descendants for all after ages.

As regards the other argument advanced, no doubt the slayers of Socrates or Savonarola did not imprecate on themselves and their children the consequences of their deed, as the Jews did. But what then? The Jews at the crucifixion could have had no more power than other men to cut themselves off from repentance, much less to cut their children off from it. The blood of Christ can cleanse men from any sin. This, even if it were not the plain declaration of Scripture, would be proved by St. Peter’s address to them, already quoted. Even were this otherwise, what claim could these men have had to represent the Jewish people? There were, as is shown elsewhere,[5] probably some six or seven millions of Jews in the world. Of these not one half, in all likelihood, had heard of our Lord till after His death. Many never heard of Him for generations afterwards. Of the two or three millions present in the Holy Land when the crucifixion took place, not the thousandth part could have heard Pilate’s protest, or the rejoinder of the crowd. On what principle is this small section to be regarded as representing the whole Jewish people, for whose words and acts it is to be held accountable? When the Cordeliers, with their frantic blasphemies, in the name of the French people disavowed God, doubtless they drew down Divine anger on all concerned; but are we to believe that the guilt of their impiety will rest on the French nation for ever? Such an idea appears to me to be alien alike to the spirit of both natural and revealed religion.

But it will, no doubt, be asked—How, then, is the strange and exceptional condition of the Jews for so many centuries to be accounted for? No careful student of God’s Word will have any difficulty in answering this question. Great and enduring blessings had been promised to Abraham, ‘the friend of God,’ and to his posterity for his sake. These had been repeated to David, ‘the man after God’s own heart,’ with an assurance of still greater mercies. The faithfulness of God to His promises is a thing wholly independent of lapse of time. To us, a promise given nearly 4,000 years ago may seem a thing wholly obsolete; to Him it is as fresh and binding as if it had been made yesterday. Therefore, although any other nation but that which sprung from the loins of Abraham would have been destroyed and rooted out for such a series of rebellious deeds as that which culminated in the crucifixion of the Lord, the remembrance of Abraham and David has prevented its entire destruction. We are distinctly told that this was the case at other periods of their history. When Jeroboam relapsed into idolatry, he and his whole race were cut off root and branch. But when Solomon did the same, the kingdom, though with reduced strength and splendour, was continued to his posterity. When the kingdom of Israel offended beyond endurance, it was scattered into all lands, and its nationality perished. When that of Judah was equally guilty, its dispersion was only for awhile, and then it was allowed to return and resume its national existence. A remnant of the nation was preserved for Abraham’s sake, that particular remnant, for the sake of David. Such, it is most reasonable to conclude, is the true explanation of their marvellous history for the last eighteen hundred years. Their protracted existence in their present condition is indeed a miracle, but a miracle, not of wrath, but of mercy. This they are themselves quick to perceive.

But, as in the cases above alleged, the continuance of the sceptre to Solomon’s descendants, and the restoration of Judah after the Captivity, did not exempt them from the penalty of their subsequent disobedience, so now the preservation of Israel through so many centuries of danger and suffering, does not annul or modify the consequences of their unbelief. Like all nations which come into contact with Christianity, but do not accept Christ, they share the benefits of His sacrifice, in the amended moral tone of the world, which is the slow growth of His teaching; but they can only gain, or to speak more correctly, regain, His favour, by taking Him as their Lord and their God.[6] They cannot rightly be said to be living under a curse, but they assuredly fail to obtain a blessing. But to this they continue persistently blind.

This is the key to their history. This is the explanation of their persistent isolation, their resolute endurance, their unconquerable self-reliance. Descendants of the special favourites of Heaven, fully persuaded that its favour has not been forfeited, but only temporarily withdrawn, this high-spirited and gifted race has ever felt that, supported by this conviction, it could, like ‘the charity’ of St. Paul, hope and endure all things. Races that had not sprung into existence when theirs had reached the highest point of civilization and glory, might pretend to despise them: but, to use the language which Sir Walter Scott puts into the mouth of the bard, Cadwallon, they knew that the blood which flowed in the veins of their persecutors, when compared with their own, ‘was but as the puddle of the highway to the silver fountain.’[7]

Their history is sad and humiliating to read; and no less sad and humiliating to them, than to those whose ancestors trampled upon and persecuted them. It brings out into strong relief, not only the good, but also the bad points of their national character. The stubborn unbelief of generation after generation; the way in which business ability, under the pressure of injustice, developed into craft, into the power of heaping up wealth by usury, and relentless exaction of the uttermost farthing; the slow processes by which the most manifest characteristic of a Jew became that of the harsh and merciless creditor;—these are the dark shadows upon a great national character, and a national story of the deepest interest.

On the other hand, their history shows, as no other can, the folly and wickedness of that most deadly, though sometimes most fair-seeming, of all Satanic influences, religious persecution. Our fathers were wont in those evil times to enlarge with horror on the sin of the Jew in obstinately rejecting Christ. In the day when account will be required of all, may it not be found that the deadliest of their own sins was, that by their hideous travesty of the Christian faith they shut out from the Jew the knowledge of the reality?

For centuries the bitterest persecutions came from those who, while robbing and ill-treating the Jews, because they charged them with heaping ridicule upon Christianity and eagerly aiding its enemies, were themselves ignorant of the first principles of the Gospel, and devoted adherents of the Church of those times. As the Reformation of the Church developed, and as the power of evangelical principles has increased, the persecution of the Jew has ceased. More and more has the Church everywhere realized the truth, that Christ died for the Jew no less than for the Gentile, and that He can be better served in this respect by the proclamation of His own loving message of forgiveness, than by any attempts to usurp His function as Judge, or to compel an outward submission, in which the heart has no part.

Israel has, indeed, a heavy account against the Anglo-Saxon race, though, it may be, not so heavy as against the Goth, the Teuton, and the Slav. There is some comfort in reflecting that we in this century have done somewhat to reduce the balance that stands against us. May our children learn the lesson of mercy and toleration in all its fulness, and so make such reparation as is possible for the mistakes and sins of our fathers!

FOOTNOTES:

[1] A Jew would doubtless deny this. I do not pursue the question further, as this is not a work of controversial theology; and, besides, the point has been made so clear by Christian divines that there can be no need of any advocacy of mine. Let the reader who may have any doubt on the subject consider Isa. xl. 10; xlv. 24; xlviii. 17; Jer. xxiii. 6; Hosea i. 7; Zech. ii. 10, 11; Malachi iii. 1, where not the title Elohim only, but that of Jehovah, is given to the Messiah.

[2] No question has been more disputed than whether the Sanhedrim, during the rule of the Roman Procurators, possessed the power of putting to death persons convicted of capital crimes. The statement made, St. John xviii. 31, and the action of Albinus, who, A.D. 63, deposed the High Priest Ananus, because the Sanhedrim had put St. James to death without his sanction, seem conclusive that they could not capitally punish persons convicted of blasphemy, unless under the Procurator’s order. The case of St. Stephen, Acts viii., does not disprove this; for that was evidently a tumultuary procedure, no sentence having been pronounced. But the Sanhedrim certainly had the power of capitally punishing some offenders, as, for instance, any Gentile passing beyond the barrier between the Temple Courts (see Jos. B.J. vi. 2, 4), an offence closely resembling blasphemy. Possibly they could inflict death for certain specified crimes, but only for these. It would be quite consistent with the principle of Roman government to allow the High Priests to punish capitally persons convicted of grave moral offences, but not such as were only guilty in matters relating ‘to their own superstitions,’ as they would phrase it.

[3] Acts iii. 17.

[4] St. Luke xxiii. 34.

[5] See Appendix I.

[6] ‘Ye shall not see Me, until the time come when ye shall say, Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord’ (St. Luke xiii. 35)—that is, ‘ye shall not apprehend Me, and the blessings I come to bring you, until you acknowledge Me as the true Messiah and Saviour of the world.’ To ‘see’ the Lord is, in the New Testament phrase, spiritually to discern and understand Him.

[7] Betrothed, chap. 31.

PART I.

FROM THE DEPOSITION OF ARCHELAUS TO
THE END OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY.

CHAPTER I.
A.D. 7-70.
FROM THE REVOLT OF JUDAS TO THE SIEGE OF JERUSALEM.

It is not proposed in these pages to deal with the history of the Jews during the long period which intervened between the origin of the nation in the family of Abraham[8] and their final revolt from the Roman power. The records of those times are to be found in the inspired volume, or in the narrative of Josephus; and we have no further concern with them than to inquire how the various changes in their fortunes—from bondage to freedom, and from freedom to bondage, under lawgiver, judge and high priest, foreign tyrant and native sovereign, contributed to the formation of their national character—the most strongly marked, it may confidently be affirmed, that ever distinguished any people.

The childhood of the Jewish nation was a hard and harsh one. They grew up into national existence under alien rulers, who feared and hated them, imposed on them intolerable burdens, and would have destroyed them from off the face of the earth, but for the Divine protection extended over them. Delivered by the same visible display of Divine power from these tyrants, they were transported to a rich and genial land, powerful and warlike nations being ejected to make way for them. Their first national, and true, idea must needs have been their special privileges as the favoured people of Heaven; but to this they added the untrue persuasion that nothing could ever forfeit them; and this rooted itself so deeply in their belief, that all the experience of after generations was unable to destroy, or even modify it. Their own participation in the sins of neighbouring nations—those very sins which had drawn down Divine vengeance on them—did not shake this confidence in their secure possession of Almighty favour. Visited with sharp chastisement for disobedience, they were for the moment alarmed and humbled; but they resumed their old complacency the moment that deliverance from suffering was vouchsafed. The woes of foreign subjugation, exile and captivity, so far affected them, that they abandoned the idolatry which had been the main cause of their miseries. But it did not abate their sense of ascendency over all other races, and of their special and inalienable possession of the favour of the Most High.

It was impossible, they believed, that they could be under the dominion of any foreign people. They might seem to be so for a while, but they were not really so. The fact that they were for seventy years the vassals of the King of Babylon; for two hundred more the dependants, to use a mild term, of the sovereigns of Persia; for several generations afterwards at the mercy of one potentate or another, who dealt with them as his caprice might dictate; that their own Asmonæan kingdom was, in reality, but a dependency of Imperial Rome, existing only so long as she chose to permit it—all this went for nothing with them. Nay, even the reduction of Judæa to the status of a Roman province, and the residence of a Roman procurator in Judæa, did not prevent them from replying to our Lord that ‘they were Abraham’s children, and had never been in bondage to any man.’ So long as it was possible, on any pretext however transparent, to assert their independence, they persisted in doing so.

At the same time, they were too intelligent not to be aware that Imperial Rome would endure neither opposition to her arms nor evasion of her claims. It must needs have been long evident to them, that the time must come, sooner or later, when they would have to make their choice between genuine allegiance to, or open rebellion against, the empire of the Cæsars. They were purposed, however, to defer it as long as they could. Requirements might be made, which they would rather perish than comply with; but until these were advanced, there was no need to anticipate them; and the mildness which always marked the Roman sway, when unopposed, its strict observance of justice in all its dealings with a conquered people,[9] and its toleration of their customs and prejudices, long delayed the terrible struggle which ensued at last.

The deposition of Archelaus, and the conversion of Judæa into a Roman province, brought about the first overt act of rebellion. Judas, called the ‘Galilæan,’ raised an insurrection, which was with difficulty put down. He took for his watchword the significant sentence, ‘We have no other master but God.’ The reasons already alleged, in all likelihood, restrained the more influential classes of the Jews from lending him the support he expected. He was crushed and put to death. But the spirit he evoked lived long after him, and Josephus attributes to it all the outbreaks which ensued, which culminated at last in the destruction of Jerusalem and the dispersion of the Jews.[10]

Coponius, the first Roman governor, was allowed to take up his abode at Cæsarea without opposition. That city, rather than Jerusalem, was chosen as his seat of government probably out of consideration for the feelings of the Jews. He was succeeded after a short interval by Ambivius and Rufus. After him Valerius Gratus held the reins of power for nearly twelve years. Throughout their prefectures, and for some years afterwards, Judæa remained tranquil. But at Rome, the Jews, who under Augustus had been treated with great indulgence, were expelled from the city by his successor, Tiberius. This act is said to have been really due to the enmity of Sejanus, though the pretext alleged was their extortion of money from Fulvia, a noble matron. Four thousand Jews were forced to enter the army, the greater part of whom died of malaria, in the island of Sardinia. After Sejanus’s fall, the edict against the Jews was revoked.

To Gratus succeeded Pontius Pilatus, who held office for ten years. During the government of this procurator, another formidable insurrection occurred, or rather, series of insurrections, caused in the first instance by the removal of the Roman army, with its idolatrous standards, to Jerusalem. On this occasion there was a very general rising of the people; and if Pilatus had remained in power, hostilities with Rome might have broken out a generation previously to their actual occurrence. But after committing, with apparent impunity, several sanguinary massacres of Jews, whom his wanton disregard of their feelings had stirred up to insurrection, Pilatus was accused to Vitellius, the Prefect of Syria, by the Samaritans, of a similar outrage on them. Vitellius ordered him to Rome, to take his trial. There he was deposed, and sentenced to exile.

Some time afterwards Judæa was again converted, for a brief space, into a Jewish kingdom under Agrippa I., whose strange and terrible end is recorded in the Acts of the Apostles. Agrippa was the son of Aristobulus, and grandson of Herod the Great. He early attached himself to Caligula, and thereby aroused the suspicion of Tiberius, who threw him into prison. He would probably have been put to death, if the decease of the emperor had not rescued him from the danger. On his succession to the empire, Caligula gave him the tetrarchies formerly held by Lysanias and Philip, together with the title of King. But his reign was soon beset with trouble. The royal dignity bestowed on him roused the jealousy of Herod Antipas, Tetrarch of Galilee. Accompanied by his wife, Herodias, he sailed to Rome, in the hope of ousting Agrippa, by charges of disloyalty, from the Imperial favour. But Agrippa retorted on Antipas with a counter-charge of treasonable correspondence with the Parthians; and the result was the banishment of Antipas, and the addition of his dominions to those already ruled by Agrippa. The latter was a rigid observer of the Mosaic law; and his murder of St. James and persecution of St. Peter were probably due to this, rather than to tyranny or cruelty. During his reign of seven years he seems to have done his best for his kingdom and country. He built the third wall round Jerusalem, and endeavoured to reconcile the contending factions, which were destroying the life of the nation.

It was a short time before his accession that the event occurred which roused the anger of the Jews to a higher pitch than had ever before been manifested; and had the outrage been pushed further, a civil war would have undoubtedly been the result. This was the attempt of the Emperor Caligula to erect his statue as that of ‘The Younger Jupiter,’ as he styled himself, in the most sacred part of the Jewish Temple.

The design seems to have been the result of a mere whim, conceived by the half-crazy emperor, and pertinaciously persisted in, when he learned (as he did from both the Jews themselves, and Petronius, the Procurator of Syria) that its execution would occasion among the worshippers of the God of the Hebrews unspeakable horror and alarm.[11] There can be no doubt that the impiety was intended. The statue had been ordered, if not completed; but the wise and generous procrastination of Petronius, the earnest representations of Agrippa, who was a favourite of the emperor, together with the death of the emperor himself, which followed almost immediately afterwards, averted the accomplishment of the design. The narrative of the transaction is valuable, because it shows that at that time the Jews were disposed to wise and moderate counsels, which contrast forcibly with their reckless violence a generation later. When the fatal intentions of Caligula were made known, the whole population, we are told, of all ranks and ages, from a vast distance round Jerusalem, crowded round the chair of the Roman procurator, declaring their determination to die rather than witness so fearful a profanation.[12] Their demeanour so deeply affected Petronius, that he thenceforth strove by every means in his power to avert the dreaded catastrophe; and, aided by circumstances and the intercession of Agrippa, he succeeded in his attempt. Caligula, however, could not forgive his disobedience, and it is said that the emperor’s death alone saved Petronius from the consequences of his anger.

Through the favour of Claudius, who now mounted the Imperial throne (and whose reign, notwithstanding one act of severity,[13] was favourable to the Jews), Agrippa succeeded to the whole of the dominions of his grandfather, Herod the Great, and held them for four years, when he died, A.D. 44, in the manner already referred to; and Judæa again became a Roman province, Cuspius Fadus being sent as governor.[14] During his rule, and that of his successor Tiberius Alexander, the peace of Palestine continued undisturbed, except by the outbreaks of one or two of the turbulent incendiaries, of which the land contained great numbers. These were easily put down. But during the procuratorship of Ventidius Cumanus, the animosity between the people and the Roman soldiers, which had long been smouldering, burst out into a flame. During one of the Jewish festivals, a soldier offered a gross insult to the ceremonial in progress, which roused the fury of the Jews against, not only the offender, but Cumanus himself. The latter, hearing the furious cries with which he was assailed, marched his whole force into the Antonia, and commenced an indiscriminate massacre, in which 20,000 perished. For this outrage and his subsequent conduct in a hostile encounter between the Jews and Samaritans, Cumanus was tried at Rome, and condemned to banishment.

He was succeeded by the profligate Felix, whose government was worse than that of any of his predecessors. It was, in fact, one long scene of cruelty and treachery. He allied himself with some of the bands of robbers now infesting Judæa, and by their aid murdered, in the very precincts of the Temple, Jonathan, the high priest, who had rebuked his vices. After eleven years of misrule, he was accused by the Jews in Cæsarea of the barbarous slaughter of some of their countrymen. He was tried at Rome, but escaped through the interest of his brother, Pallas. He was, however, a vigorous ruler, and put down the notorious Egyptian Jew, who, with 30,000 followers, had raised a formidable insurrection (Acts xxi. 38).

After his prefecture, and that of his more humane and upright successor Porcius Festus, the inveterate evils which afflicted the whole of Judæa continued to grow in violence and intensity. Banditti overspread the country, and carried on their lawless depredations almost with impunity. Impostors and fanatics started up on every side, and drew after them great multitudes, to whom they preached rebellion against their Roman governors as a religious duty. Riot and bloodshed, and armed encounters with the Roman soldiery, became matters of continual occurrence, which the authority of the procurator was unable to restrain. The evil was aggravated by the succession of the corrupt Albinus to the office vacated by the death of Festus; but it was not until he, in his turn, was superseded by the infamous Gessius Florus that the discontent of the unhappy Jews culminated in the rebellious outbreak which brought on their ruin.

It can hardly be supposed that it was actually Florus’s object to drive the Jews into rebellion; yet the course he pursued persistently from the very commencement of his rule could have had no other result. It was not merely that he took bribes from all men who sought his favour or feared his anger. He leagued with robbers and assassins, sharing their gains and countenancing their crimes. He exacted large sums alike from public treasuries and private coffers, on the flimsiest pretexts, and often on no pretext at all. He inflamed the angry feelings, already dangerously excited, by every possible insult and outrage which lawless power could exercise; and, finally, having by pillage and butchery stirred up the infuriated Jews to refuse obedience to an authority which appeared to exist only for their destruction, he called in Cestius Gallus, the Prefect of Syria, to lead the Roman forces under his command to put down the sedition.

This officer, though a man of narrow views and mediocre ability, was a Roman functionary, and, as such, would not act on ex parte evidence. He sent a tribune named Neapolitanus to Jerusalem, to inquire into the truth of Florus’s charges; and Agrippa,[15] who was cognisant of what had passed, and was anxious to avert the ruin that threatened his country, accompanied him to the Jewish capital. Fully convinced of the truth of the charges against Florus, they nevertheless hesitated to uphold his accusers, and endeavoured to persuade the people to make submission to him. But they had been too deeply incensed by Florus’s barbarities: and the seditious spirits among them had gained too much ascendency to allow this advice to prevail; notwithstanding that the upper classes of the citizens, who were still desirous of avoiding war, declared in its favour. They drove Neapolitanus and Agrippa, with insult, from the city, and openly renounced allegiance to Rome.[16]

Shortly afterwards a new adventurer, Menahem, the son of Judas the Gaulonite, appeared, and was gladly welcomed by the people. But he soon provoked the jealousy of Eleazar, the leader of the Zealots, by whom he was deposed and slain. Eleazar having gained complete mastery in the city, proceeded to murder, with shameless treachery, the Roman garrison, which had surrendered on condition of being spared. Almost coincidently with this shocking deed, one of equal horror was perpetrated at Cæsarea, where 20,000 Jews were slaughtered by the Greek inhabitants. In this atmosphere of treachery and bloodshed the whole nation appears to have gone mad. They were resolved, apparently, that as every man’s hand was against them, so should their hand be against every man. They took up arms, plundered several of the Syrian cities, laying waste the whole country round them. The Syrians retaliated with equal barbarity, everywhere slaying without mercy their Jewish fellow-citizens. Neither Agrippa’s dominions nor Egypt escaped the contagion. In the former, a feud between Varus, the deputy, to whom Agrippa had committed the government of his kingdom during his absence at Antioch, and Philip, the general of his army, very nearly caused a civil war. At Antioch another quarrel between the Jews and Greeks, relative to the right of the former to attend public assemblies, led, first to a riot, and then to a general rising of the Hebrew population. The governor, Tiberius Alexander—who was by birth a Jew, and had some years previously been Procurator of Judæa, afterwards holding a command in Titus’s army at the siege of Jerusalem—sent for the principal men among the Jews, and exhorted them to use their influence in quieting the disturbance. Failing in this attempt, he ordered out the troops, and made an attack on the Jews’ quarter, in which 50,000 persons were slain. Throughout the whole of Palestine, Syria, and Egypt, strife and bloodshed prevailed. The advance of the Roman army was anxiously looked for by all who retained their reason, as the only hope of putting an end to the frantic anarchy wherewith the whole land was now overspread.

FOOTNOTES:

[8] It is an error, I think, to connect the name Hebrew with Heber, or Eber, the great-grandson of Shem. Abraham was called the Hebrew, or passer over, ὁ περάτης (Gen. xiv. 13, LXX.), because, in obedience to Divine command, he ‘passed over’ the Euphrates, leaving his home and people, to settle in a strange land. Heber was the progenitor, not of the Hebrews only, but many other nations. The notion that they were called after him, because at the dispersion of Babel he retained and transmitted the primitive language of the world to one only of his descendants, is a mere fancy. He may have been, and very probably was called the ‘passer’ or ‘carrier away,’ because he was the patriarch of the dispersion. But Abraham’s name was given to him for a different reason, and altogether independently of Heber.

[9] In proof of this may be alleged the fact, that in the brief space of sixty years no less than four Roman procurators were summoned before the Imperial Tribunal to answer complaints brought against them by the Jews; and two of them were punished by banishment for life.

[10] Judas was born at Gamala, a city of Gaulonitis. He was a brave, able, and eloquent man. Supported by Sadoc, an influential Pharisee, he founded the party of the Gaulonites, who were the predecessors of the Zealots and Assassins of later times. Though multitudes gathered round his standard, he was not supported by the nation generally, and the power of Rome was too great for him to contend with. He was overpowered and put to death. He is referred to in Acts v. 37.

[11] It was not in Judæa only that these feelings were aroused. In Alexandria, the proposal made by the Greeks, to place the emperor’s statue in the Jewish Proseuchæ, provoked riots, in which much property was wrecked, and terrible carnage took place. The Roman governor, Flaccus Aquilius, for many years a wise and able ruler, but who had grown reckless since the accession of Caligula, towards whom he bore no good will, made no attempt to repress, but rather encouraged, the outrages. He was so unwise as to openly insult the emperor’s friend, Agrippa. He was arrested by order of Caligula, and put to death with barbarous cruelty.

[12] The celebrated Philo came from Alexandria on this occasion to plead the cause of his countrymen.

[13] Banishing the Jews from Rome A.D. 54. Acts xviii. 2; Suet. Claud. 25.

[14] During his tenure of office, an impostor named Theudas, who claimed to be a prophet, raised a formidable insurrection. But Fadus, a man of action, arrested and executed him. He is mentioned in Acts v. 36.

[15] This was Agrippa II., son of Agrippa I. It was before him that St. Paul pleaded (Acts xxvi.). Suet. (Vesp. 4).

[16] According to Suetonius, Florus was slain by the Jews in a tumultuous outbreak. Josephus has been thought to contradict him. But his language may be interpreted so as to harmonize with Suetonius.

CHAPTER II.
A.D. 71, 72.
SIEGE OF JERUSALEM BY TITUS.

War was now openly declared, and Cestius marched on Jerusalem with 10,000 Roman soldiers, and a still larger force of allies, to put down the rebellion and avenge the murder of his countrymen. The result was the most terrible disaster to the Roman arms which they had sustained since the defeat of Varus. Unsuccessful in some preliminary skirmishing, Gallus assaulted the city, and after five days of indecisive fighting, forced his way on the sixth to the wall on the north side of the Temple. Every effort to scale this having failed, he ordered the legionaries to lock their shields together and form the testudo, their usual mode of obtaining a cover, under which they undermined fortifications which they could not surmount. The manœuvre was successful. The wall was all but pierced through, and the garrison on the point of flight, when Gallus suddenly, without any apparent reason, ordered a retreat,[17] withdrew in haste, first to his camp, and afterwards to Antipatris, losing in his retreat his whole battering train and 6,000 soldiers.

The Jews had now offended beyond hope of forgiveness, and both parties braced themselves for the fierce and deadly struggle which had become inevitable. The rebels recruited their comparatively scanty numbers by securing the support of the inhabitants of Idumæa (of whom 20,000 were enlisted), Peræa, and Galilee. On the other side, Rome summoned into the field a formidable force, which was placed under the command of T. Flavius Vespasian, the greatest soldier of his day. In the hope, apparently, that the Jews, when they learned the strength of the force sent against them, would submit without further resistance, Vespasian delayed the attack on Jerusalem for more than two years, choosing first to reduce the cities of Galilee—Gadara, Jotapata, Gischala, and others; which, indeed, no prudent general could leave unsubdued in his rear. The whole of this province, which had been placed under the government of the celebrated historian, Josephus,[18] remained throughout this period in a state of internal dissension, fomented in a great measure by the notorious John of Gischala, giving but little hope of a successful resistance to Rome when the actual struggle should begin. Yet some of these cities, notably Gamala Tarichæa, above all Jotapata, where Josephus commanded in person, offered a protracted and desperate resistance.[19]

When the road to Jerusalem had been laid fully open, the civil strife, by which the empire had been distracted, had come to an end. Galba, Otho, and Vitellius, one after another, had succeeded to the Imperial sceptre, only to have it snatched from their grasp; and, finally, Vespasian had been advanced to the throne of the Cæsars. Leaving to his son Titus the task of reducing to obedience the rebellious city, Vespasian set sail for Italy; and the Roman army, 60,000 strong,[20] advanced under its new leader to the final encounter in the spring of A.D. 70.

Jerusalem was at that time one of the strongest, as well as one of the most picturesque, cities in the world. It stands upon a rocky plateau about 2,600 feet above the level of the sea. On all sides except one it is surrounded by mountains; which do not, however, rise to a much greater altitude than the city itself. The plateau consists of two principal eminences, Zion and Acra, on the former of which stood the Upper City, or the City of David, and on the latter what was called the Lower City. A third—a smaller and somewhat lower hill, called Moriah—was anciently divided from Mount Acra by the Tyropœon, or Valley of the Cheesemongers, which was filled up by the Maccabees, who raised Moriah to the same level as the neighbouring hill. It was on the summit of Moriah that the Temple stood. In later times the suburb called Bezetha was added to the city, and the whole environed by walls.

Of these there were three—one inside another. The first began on the north side at the tower called Hippicus, terminating at the western cloister of the Temple. The second wall began at the gate called Gennath, enclosing the northern quarter of the city only, and ending at the Tower of Antonia. The third, which was designed to protect Bezetha, was incomplete at the time of the outbreak of the Jewish war, but was then completed, in anticipation of the approaching siege. These walls were strengthened by towers of solid masonry—some of the stones being of enormous size—and rose to a great height above the level of the walls. The Tower of Antonia stood on a rock ninety feet high, the fortress itself being fully seventy feet higher; and at the portions not defended by these walls, the platform of rock itself, sinking down, as it did almost with a sheer descent, into the ravines below, formed an impregnable defence. In times when the use of gunpowder was unknown, it could be captured only by blockade, or after the most frightful waste of human life.

Meanwhile the city was distracted by factions, which appeared to be more likely to destroy one another than to maintain a successful defence against an enemy. After the massacre of the Roman troops, Ananus the High Priest, a wise and good man, gained some authority in the city, and endeavoured to counteract the influence of the Zealots. He might have succeeded in averting the war. But Eleazar, the leader of the Zealots, and John of Gischala,[21] the chief of the Galilæans, conspired against him, and by night introduced the Idumæans, in overwhelming force, into the city. By them Ananus and his friends were murdered, and Jerusalem thenceforth was given up to hopeless anarchy.

Such authority as there was, rested with the chiefs of the three factions, Eleazar, John, and Simon;[22] but between these there was not only no accord, but the most bitter and persistent animosity. Of the Zealots there were about 2,500, of the Galilæans 6,000, and of the Assassins (as Simon’s followers were called) 10,000 Jews and 5000 Idumæans. Few of these, comparatively speaking, had undergone any military training. But their desperate and fanatical courage, stimulated by their total disregard of all laws, human and Divine, rendered them the most formidable enemies that Rome herself ever encountered. Not only between the three leaders, but their followers also, there subsisted the bitterest hate, which they gratified by continual quarrels and murders; and had it been in their power, they would gladly have exterminated one another. Yet in the field they combined against the common foe with the most perfect unanimity.

The great bulk of the inhabitants awaited the approach of the Romans with uneasiness and alarm. The city was densely crowded, multitudes having come in from the country to celebrate the Passover. Josephus’s numbers are doubtless an exaggeration.[23] But, on the other hand, there has been a tendency among modern writers to err in the opposite direction. It may safely be affirmed that the total of inhabitants, when the Roman standards came in sight, could not have been less than a million, and probably exceeded that amount. There was much, independently of the terror of the Roman name, to awaken their apprehensions. There had been signs in heaven and on earth of approaching disaster. A fiery sword is said to have hung over Jerusalem, day and night, for many months. The whole sky on one occasion was full of what seemed to be chariots and horses of fire, environing Jerusalem. It was whispered that the great gate of the Temple had opened of itself at midnight, and a voice had been heard to exclaim, ‘Let us depart hence.’ A simple herdsman, Jesus, the son of Hanani, was suddenly seized with the spirit of prophecy, and for several years went up and down the city exclaiming, ‘Woe, woe, to Jerusalem!’ He was carried before the Roman governor, and scourged till his bones were laid bare. But he never desisted from his mournful chaunt, until one day during the siege he was struck by a stone from a catapult, and slain.

But nothing daunted the determined spirits of the garrison. At the very outset of the siege, Titus had a signal proof of the character of the enemies with whom he had to deal. He had approached the city for the purpose of surveying it, accompanied by 600 horsemen, never dreaming that they would be rash enough to assail him, and rather anticipating that his presence would strike terror into them, and induce them to capitulate. But the moment he approached the walls the Jews sallied out, surrounding his troop, and cutting him off from his supports; and it was only by the most desperate exercise of personal valour that he escaped being slain. On the following day they twice attacked the tenth legion, while engaged in fortifying the camp, and threw it into confusion; and it was Titus’s promptitude alone which averted a great disaster. Soon afterwards they contrived to allure a body of Roman soldiers under the walls, by a pretended offer of surrender, and almost entirely cut it off. It became at once evident that if these men were to be conquered, or even kept in check, the utmost vigilance and promptitude would be required.

Two fortified camps were accordingly formed, too strong to be attacked even by desperate men; and then the siege proper commenced. After careful survey, Titus resolved to assault the triple wall on the north side of the city; which was, after all, less difficult to surmount than the mighty ramparts, reared by nature and aided by art, which the other parts of the defences presented. He accordingly constructed three great walls, cutting down for the purpose all the timber which was to be found near the city. On these he set up his military engines, which hurled huge stones and darts against the defenders of the wall, and then set the rams at work to batter it down. Towers were also erected, sheeted with iron, so as to be proof against fire, and overtopping the defences, thus rendering it impossible for the defenders to man the ramparts. After a desperate attempt to set the works of the besiegers on fire, the Jews were obliged to abandon the outer wall, and fall back on the second.

This was captured and thrown down in a much shorter space of time than had been spent on the reduction of the former. But the success was not obtained without more than one repulse, and heavy loss; and the defences still to be surmounted appeared so formidable, garrisoned as they were by men whom nothing could daunt or weary out, that Titus resolved to make a display under their eyes of his whole military array, in the hope that by showing the impossibility of ultimate resistance, he might induce them to surrender. He caused all his troops to pass in review before him, in sight of the city, all arrayed in their complete accoutrements and observing the strictest form of military discipline—a splendid but terrible sight to men who knew that it was impossible for them to offer effectual resistance. But Simon, and John, and their fierce followers knew also that they had offended too deeply for forgiveness; they looked sternly and gloomily on, but made no sign; nor would they reply to Josephus, when soon afterwards he offered his intercession. Titus saw that all efforts at conciliation were vain, and the last scene of the fearful tragedy began.

So unconquerable was the ferocity of the Jewish soldiery,[24] that it may be doubted whether even the stern discipline, the high military spirit, and the overwhelming numbers of the Romans would not have been compelled ultimately to give way before them, if it had not been that Rome now acquired two new allies, more terrible than any they had yet brought into the field. Jerusalem, at all times a populous city, was now crowded to excess by strangers, who had come over to keep the Jewish Passover, and had been unable to withdraw. The supplies of food soon began to fail, and the famine which ensued grew every hour more pressing. The soldiers had to supply their own wants by making the round of the houses, and tearing their daily meals from the mouths of their starving fellow-citizens. Numbers of these were driven by hunger to steal out of the city by night, to gather herbs and roots, which might afford temporary relief. Titus, hoping to terrify the besieged by a display of severity which would save in the end more lives than he sacrificed, ordered these unhappy wretches to be crucified in the sight of their countrymen; and the city in which the Lord of Life had undergone the same form of death was surrounded by a multitude of crosses, on which the agonized sufferers slowly yielded up their lives in torment. Others, who implored the protection of the Romans, were ruthlessly ripped open in vast numbers by the barbarous soldiery, who believed that the fugitives had swallowed gold, which they would find in their entrails. The fate of these, dreadful as it was, was less terrible than that of the wretches who remained to perish of famine. Scenes almost too shocking for belief have yet been recorded on authority which cannot be disputed. Husbands saw their wives perishing before their eyes, and were unable to save them; parents snatched the food from the mouths of their starving children; hungry wretches crawled to the walls, and entreated the soldiers to slay them, and failing to obtain this last mercy, lay down by hundreds in the streets, and died. Nay, the last horror of all but too surely was accomplished, and mothers slew and ate their own nursing children! The numbers of the dead lying unburied soon bred pestilence, and added to the horrors of the time. An attempt was made to bury the corpses at the public expense; but the accumulating numbers rendered this impossible, and they were thrown by thousands over the walls in the sight of the horror-stricken Romans.

Through all these frightful scenes the siege of the inner wall went on. The frantic followers of Simon and John continued to fight with unabated ferocity against their enemies without and their countrymen within the wall, undeterred by the sufferings of their fellow-citizens or the near approach of the avenging swords of the besiegers. It was at this time that the judicial murder of the High Priest, Matthias, took place. He was an inoffensive old man, who had introduced Simon into the city, hoping that he would restrain the violence of John. Simon now accused him of a treacherous correspondence with the enemy.[25] He was put to death along with his sons and several of the Sanhedrin.

Titus now built fresh walls on which to plant his engines; but they were undermined or destroyed by fire, and he was compelled to surround the whole city by a vast circumvallation, and then to erect fresh platforms and towers, from which the inner wall, with Antonia and the Temple, might be assailed. After several repulses and severe fighting, this was accomplished. The heights were scaled, Antonia levelled with the ground, and the Temple itself laid open to attack. Struck with horror at the profanation of a place dedicated to the service of God, which must ensue if the strife was continued, Titus offered to permit the Jews to come forth and meet him on any other battle ground, promising in that case himself to keep the Temple inviolate from the step of any enemy. He represented that the daily services had already ceased, and the holy ground had been polluted by human blood. He wished to have no share in such impieties, and would prevent them, if he could. His overtures were contemptuously rejected. The Jews themselves set fire to the western cloister, and so laid bare the space between the remains of the Antonia and the Temple.

Another assault was now ordered, and a close and murderous strife, which raged for eight hours, ensued without material gain to either party. It was the 10th of August—the anniversary, always dreaded by the Jews, of the destruction of Solomon’s Temple. Both parties seemed to have entertained the idea that the day would prove fatal to the second Temple, as it had to the first. But this apparently had proved fallacious. The Romans had retired, and the guard for the night had been set, when suddenly a cry was raised that the Temple was on fire. Some of the Jews had again provoked a skirmish. The Romans had not only driven them back, but had forced their way into the innermost court, and one of them had hurled a firebrand into the sanctuary itself, which had instantly caught fire. This was contrary to the express order of Titus; and he instantly hurried down, accompanied by his officers, to extinguish the flames. The courts were full of armed men engaged in desperate strife, and his commands were unheard or unheeded. The devouring fire wreathed round the stately pillars and surged within the cedar roofs. Before the resistance of the few survivors had ceased, the Temple was one vast pagoda of roaring flame; and when the morning dawned, the Holy House and the chosen nation had passed away forever.

FOOTNOTES:

[17] By this the Christians in Jerusalem were enabled to secure their retreat to Pella, where they remained uninjured by the fearful sufferings which ensued, so making good the Lord’s promise, St. Luke xxi. 20, 21.

[18] Flavius Josephus was born A.D. 37 at Jerusalem, and was connected on the mother’s side with the Asmonæan family. He received a liberal education, and at the age of 20 attached himself to the sect of the Pharisees. When the war with Rome broke out he was made Governor of Galilee, and defended Jotapata for nearly seven weeks against Vespasian. When it was taken, he fell into the hands of the enemy, by whom he was favourably received. He now attached himself to the Romans, and was present in Titus’s camp during the siege of Jerusalem. He accompanied the conquerors to Rome, where he wrote his historical works. He died about the end of the first century. His countrymen have generally regarded him as a traitor.

[19] The fall of Jotapata is one of those occurrences, often repeated in the history of the Jews, which strikingly illustrate their national character. After a desperate defence, when the place had been carried by assault, the remnant of the garrison took refuge in a cavern; and here, rejecting the offers of the Romans, they, by mutual consent, slew one another, until only Josephus and one of his men were left alive. These two then gave themselves up to the mercy of Vespasian.

[20] Titus had four Roman legions, and a large force of Greek and Syrian auxiliaries. The number, 60,000, has been objected to, as an exaggeration, but it is probably rather under than over the mark.

[21] John was the son of Levi, and a native of Gischala, who began his career as a robber, and raised a band, it is said, of 4,000 men. In craft, daring, and merciless cruelty he has never been exceeded. He defended Gischala, from which he fled when its capture was imminent. He repaired to Jerusalem, where he gained great ascendency, and with Eleazar and Simon defended it to the last. At its capture, he surrendered to the Romans, and was sentenced to imprisonment for life.

[22] Simon, the son of Gioras, was a man as fierce and lawless, though hardly as crafty, as his rival John. He was a native of Gerasa, and first appeared in history when he attacked the troops of Cestius Gallus in their retreat from Jerusalem. Driven out of Judæa by Ananus, he took possession with his banditti of Masada, and ravaged the neighbourhood. The Idumæans rose against him and, after several battles, drove him out of the country. Soon afterwards they captured his wife, whom they carried to Jerusalem. Simon repaired thither with his followers, and terrified the citizens, by his barbarities, to surrender her to him. In the spring of the following year, A.D. 69, a party in Jerusalem, headed by Matthias, invited Simon to enter the city. Then ensued an internecine struggle between the three factions, which lasted until the Romans environed the city, and indeed to the end of the siege. When the city was at length captured by the Romans, he surrendered himself prisoner, was conveyed to Rome, figured in the triumphal procession of Vespasian and Titus, and was then put to death.

[23] See Appendix I.

[24] An extraordinary instance of the desperate courage with which the Jews fought occurred about this time. Antiochus, King of Commagene, had arrived in Titus’s camp, with a chosen band of youths, armed in the Macedonian fashion. He expressed his surprise that Titus did not take the city by escalade. Titus suggested that he should himself make the attempt with his warriors. This he did; but though his men fought with the utmost valour, they were all killed or severely wounded.

[25] There may have been some grounds for this suspicion. A considerable number of the chief priests (including one of the sons of this same Matthias) effected their escape, and were kindly received by Titus.

CHAPTER III.
A.D. 72-131.
THE JEWS UNDER THE EMPERORS TRAJAN AND ADRIAN.

The destruction of the Temple, though it was the death-knell of the Jewish people, did not at once put an end to the siege. The Upper City, into which Simon and John had retreated, still held out, and was to all appearance stronger and more difficult to assault than what had been already captured. But the spirit of the Jewish leaders, fierce as it was, had been broken by the failure of their cherished hope—the direct interference of Heaven in behalf of the Temple. They demanded a parley, which was granted them, and Titus would have spared their lives, on condition of absolute surrender. But they required terms which he refused to grant, and hostilities were renewed. After incessant labour, occupying nearly three weeks, Titus raised his works to a sufficient height to enable him to attack the walls by which the Upper City was guarded, and an assault was made. It was almost instantly successful. The determined obstinacy of the defenders had sunk into sullen despair. They gave way on all sides; their leaders took refuge in the vaults beneath the city, soon afterwards surrendering to the mercy of Titus; and the whole city fell into the hands of the besiegers.

But even this did not put a period to the war. Three strong fortresses, Herodion, Machærus, and Masada, garrisoned by men as fierce and resolute as the defenders of Jerusalem itself, still remained unconquered. The first of these, indeed, surrendered as soon as summoned; and the second, after some fierce conflicts with the Romans, was induced to do the same. But the third, Masada, the favourite stronghold of Herod the Great, offered a long and desperate resistance. It stood on a lofty rock, on the south-west border of the Dead Sea, and was only accessible by two narrow paths on the east and west, winding up lofty precipices, where the slightest slip of the foot would be inevitable death. When these tracks, which were three or four miles in length, were surmounted, the fortress of Masada appeared, standing in the centre of a broad plateau, and surrounded by a wall twenty-two feet high, defended by massive towers. It was strongly garrisoned, and supplied with provisions sufficient for a siege of almost any duration. Silva, as the Roman general sent against it was called, blockaded the place, and then erected a mound of enormous height, on the top of which he planted his battering rams. A breach was made, to which the besieged opposed an inner wall of timber. But this the Romans set on fire and reduced to ashes; upon which the besieged, finding it impossible to offer further resistance, and resolved not to surrender, took the desperate resolution of perishing by their own deed. They first slew their wives and children. Then, appointing ten executioners for the work, they all submitted their own breasts to the sword: the ten then fell, each by his neighbour’s hand, and finally the surviving one drove the weapon into his own heart! This terrible catastrophe forms a fitting conclusion to the long catalogue of horrors which the Jewish wars record.

Judæa being now completely subdued, it remained for Titus to determine how the vanquished were to be dealt with. Further severities could hardly be required, even if they were possible. The numbers which had already perished are very variously stated. Those given by Josephus may certainly be regarded as an exaggeration, while the estimate of some later writers clearly fall short of the fact.[26] It is enough to say, that the whole of Galilee and Judæa had become one vast wreck—the fields and vineyards wasted, the woods cut down, the cities heaps of ruins, the land a graveyard. The very soldiers were weary of the work of carnage. Yet even of the miserable remnant of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, such as were old and weakly, and would not therefore realize a price in the auction mart, were put to death. Of those that remained, the tallest and best looking were reserved to grace the triumph of the conqueror at Rome. The rest were sent to labour in the Egyptian mines, or despatched in batches to distant provinces—to work as slaves, or be exhibited in the amphitheatres, as gladiators or combatants with wild beasts. A large proportion of the captives is said to have died of hunger.

As regards the leaders, the life of John was spared, though of all men who took part in the defence of Jerusalem he least deserved mercy. Simon was carried to Rome, and walked in the triumphal procession which Vespasian and Titus led up to the Capitol. This is said to have exceeded in splendour all previous pageants. Among the spoils displayed were the golden table, the silver trumpets, the seven-branched candlestick, and the book of the law; and these, the sole surviving monuments of the glories of the Latter House, still remain sculptured on the entablature of the Arch of Titus, to attest to posterity this terrible tale of crime and suffering.

With the fall of Jerusalem and the overthrow of the Temple, as has been already observed, the national existence of the Jews terminated. Thenceforth, though they were to be found in large numbers in almost every country in the world, they were strangers and sojourners among other nations, no longer themselves a people. It must not, however, be supposed, though the mistake is a common one, that their dispersion dates from the conquest of Judæa by Titus. They had spread into distant lands long before that time, and had formed large and powerful communities. It was only a portion of the Jews that returned from Babylon after the captivity. A large number had remained behind, occupying the homes which they had made for themselves, and enjoying prosperity and peace. In Egypt and Cyrene they were almost as numerous; in Rome, and in other great Italian cities, they constituted no small section of the inhabitants. How widely they were scattered may be gathered from the catalogue given by St. Luke, in his narrative of the doings of the Day of Pentecost.

The real change which now took place consisted in the destruction of their great centre of life and unity. It was like cutting off the main fountain in some system of artificial irrigation. The waters still remained in a hundred reservoirs, but the system itself existed no longer. With any other nation in the world, the result, in the course of a few generations, would have been the disappearance of all the peculiar and distinctive features of the people. They would have become fused with, and incorporated in, the nations among whom they were dwelling, as was the case with the Danes and Saxons among ourselves. But though they have resided among alien races for two thousand years, they have ever dwelt, and still dwell, apart from them. They obey the laws and comply with the customs of the land in which they reside; they converse in its language and respect its religious observances. But they cling to the Jewish laws and customs, so far as it is possible for them to do so. The Hebrew is still their national language; the ancient worship of Israel the only one they will render. Like the stream of the Rhone at Chalons, which mingles with that of the Saone, yet continues to retain the peculiarity of its colour, they are dwellers among many nations, but Jews after all, and Jews only.

It was this distinctive feature that enabled them, before the lapse of many years, to resume something of the organization which had been, to all appearance, destroyed by the heavy blow they had sustained. The Sanhedrin, which they had always acknowledged as the chief authority of Palestine, had escaped, it was said, the general wreck, and was presently re-established at Jamnia. How far this may have been the case is a moot point in history. But it is certain that a school of theology, commanding very wide and general respect, grew up in that city; and its presidents exercised considerable influence over their countrymen. The Eastern Jews were under the authority of a chief, known as ‘the Prince of Captivity,’ while those lying more to the west acknowledged a similar ruler, who assumed the title of ‘the Patriarch of the West.’ The synagogues also, which had in later generations been set up in every Jewish city, though they could not supply the void caused by the destruction of the Temple, afforded, nevertheless, something of a centre of religious unity. In this manner, before the lapse of two generations, the Jews, with the amazing vitality that has ever distinguished them, had recovered in a great measure their numbers, their wealth, and their unconquerable spirit.

Throughout the reigns of Titus, Domitian, and Nerva, little is heard of them. It is said indeed that Vespasian ordered search to be made for any blood-relations of Jesus, the Son of David, whom he purposed to put to death, as possible aspirants to the crown of Judæa; and Hegesippus affirms that two grandsons of St. Jude were cited before Domitian for the same reason. But we learn that they were at once dismissed as unworthy of notice. Nor, throughout Nerva’s reign, was any burden laid upon them, beyond the didrachma imposed by Vespasian. But during Trajan’s Parthian wars, which necessitated the absence of the Roman troops from the garrison towns of Africa, the Jews in Egypt and Cyrene broke out into insurrection, and terrible bloodshed ensued. It began with the massacre of the entire Jewish population at Alexandria by the Greeks, who had taken up arms to oppose them. Maddened by the tidings of this disaster, the Cyrenian Jews are said to have committed unheard-of atrocities; sawing in twain the bodies of their prisoners, or compelling them to fight in the amphitheatres—it was even alleged, feasting on their flesh. They are thought to have slaughtered more than 200,000, some say 600,000 men. The revolt had hardly attained its height, when it was followed by two others, one in Cyprus, and the other in Mesopotamia. They were put down after a little while, with frightful carnage, by the Romans and more particularly by Lucius Quietus, one of the ablest generals of the day. Trajan’s anger seems to have been greatly roused by the outbreak, for which he felt that his mild and equitable government had given no adequate cause. He required their total expulsion from Mesopotamia; and it is likely that his death in the ensuing year alone prevented the accomplishment of his purpose.

The Jews, however, fared little better under his successor, Adrian. This emperor had been a witness of the atrocities perpetrated by the Jews during the insurrection in Cyprus; and he had probably some reason for anticipating a similar demonstration in Palestine. Scarcely fifty years had elapsed since that land had been reduced to the condition of a desert.[27] But so irrepressible was the vigour of the Hebrew race, that the fields had been recultivated, the forests replanted, most of the cities rebuilt, and tenanted by large and thriving populations. It was obvious, if Jerusalem should rise from its ruins, and a new temple crown Mount Moriah, that a repetition of the war, which had cost Rome so much blood and treasure, would inevitably ensue. It is not known with any certainty what was the condition of Jerusalem at this time. When the city fell entirely into the hands of Titus, he ordered the whole of it to be destroyed, with the exception of the three stately towers of Hippicus, Phasaelus, and Psephinus, together with part of the western wall,—which was left as a shelter to the Roman camp, where about eight hundred legionaries were stationed, as a garrison, to preserve order in the neighbouring country. How long they remained there is uncertain. But no one seems to have interfered with such persons as chose to return to the deserted spot, and erect new homes out of the heaps of ruin that lay scattered round. What numbers may by this time have assembled on the site of the Holy City we are not told. But Adrian resolved to put a stop to the fancies which, not improbably, really were current among the Jews, by establishing a Roman colony on the spot, and building on Mount Moriah a temple of Jupiter.[28]

It is probable that the emperor did not understand—indeed, no heathen could understand—the horror and despair which the publication of the design caused among the unhappy Jews. It was in their eyes the most fearful impiety—the most horrible profanation. Their only hope lay in the advent of the long-promised Messiah; who now surely, if ever, might be expected to appear on earth, and redeem His people from the depth of degradation and misery to which they had sunk. In the midst of these alternations of despondency and reassurance, a rumour suddenly reached them, that the long-expected deliverer had at last made his appearance, and was even then, on his way, at the head of an armed force, to take possession of the ruins of Jerusalem, and prevent the perpetration of the intended impiety. His name, they were told, was Barchochebas, ‘the son,’ that is to say, ‘of the star,’—the star predicted by Balaam, ‘which was to come out of Jacob, and smite the corners of Moab, and destroy all the children of Sheth.’

It is likely that the faith of the Jewish people in the appearance of a promised Messiah was by this time a good deal shaken. So many impostors had appeared, and lured their thousands to destruction, that even the deeply seated belief in his speedy advent was not sufficient to induce them to admit the pretensions of any fresh aspirant without careful inquiry. But in the present instance there were two considerations, each of which had been enough by itself to remove all doubt or hesitation. The first is, what has been already mentioned, the flagrancy of the insult offered to Almighty God; which, in the judgment of the Jews, was certain to bring down signal and immediate judgment on its authors. The other was the fact that Barchochebas had been accepted as the veritable Messiah by Akiba, the greatest of their Rabbis, and chief of the schools at Bethor. Something should be said of both these men, who played so conspicuous a part at this crisis in Jewish history.

Note to Chapter III. on the Number Slain in the Jewish Wars.

The numbers of those slain in the Jewish wars, as reported by Josephus, are as under.

At other places there were smaller totals, amounting altogether to upwards of 100,000, and making the entire sum of slain something less than a million and a half. But, as is elsewhere intimated (Appendix I.), Josephus’s statements must be received with caution. The large population found in Palestine in Adrian’s reign is not easily reconcilable with it. Lightfoot’s opinion seems the more probable one. Notwithstanding the great carnage, he says, ‘Tantum abfuit gens a totali et consummatâ deletione, ut undique adhuc restaret innumera multitudo, quæ se pacate Romano nutui dedidisset, et pace sedibus suis quiete frueretur. Ita ut Templum et Metropolim quidem desiderares, verum terram habitatoribus repletam, compositum Synedrii, Synagogarum, Populi statum illico cerneres.’—Lightfoot, vol. xi. 468.

FOOTNOTES:

[26] According to Josephus’s account, 600,000 perished of hunger during the siege; and the total of those who died during the campaign amounted to little short of a million and half. But that he exaggerates is beyond dispute. See Appendix I.

[27] See note at end of chapter.

[28] He is said at the same time to have issued a decree forbidding the Jews to circumcise their children.

CHAPTER IV.
A.D. 131-135.
THE REVOLT OF BARCHOCHEBAS.

Rabbi Akiba was a proselyte of Canaanitish descent, a herdsman in the employ of a wealthy man named Kalba-Sabua. His master’s daughter fell in love with him, and they were married, though without the father’s knowledge. When he learned the fact, he drove them from his house; and Akiba, at the age of forty, began the study of the law. He obtained great reputation in it, being accounted one of the chief authorities of that Rabbinical school of interpretation which upholds the absolute integrity of the received text, and teaches that every word, nay every letter of it, has its special and mystical meaning. After twelve years of study, when he had risen to considerable eminence, he paid a visit to Kalba-Sabua, followed by 12,000 disciples, who attended on his teaching. The old man continuing inflexible, Akiba returned to his studies for twelve years more, when he again appeared at his father-in-law’s house, this time accompanied by 24,000 scholars. This evidence of the honour in which his son-in-law was held overcame Kalba-Sabua’s resentment, and he bestowed a large portion of his riches upon him. At the time of the revolt from Adrian, Akiba was nearly 120 years old.[29] He had been recently travelling in Northern Africa and Mesopotamia, where he had witnessed the zeal of his countrymen for the Hope of Israel; and he was resolved that he and his should not fall behind them in courage and devotion.

His feelings must have been very warmly awakened to allow of his accepting Barchochebas, as he called himself, as the true Messiah that was to come. Who Barchochebas really was, has always been a problem with historians. By some he is said to have been a captain of banditti, notorious for his robberies and murders. But this may, not impossibly, be a calumny. He may have been the leader of one of the bands of wild warriors, who in those lawless times lived, like the more modern Bedouins, after a predatory manner, but are hardly to be regarded as mere robbers. Though undoubtedly an impostor, and conscious of his own imposture,[30] he was nevertheless a man of courage and ability, who might, under more favourable circumstances, have succeeded in establishing the independence of his country.

His first step, as we have seen, was to march with such forces as he could raise to Jerusalem; where he put a stop to the sacrilegious work which had been already commenced by Adrian’s order. He then proceeded to the strong city of Bithor, or Bethor, which lay at no great distance from Jerusalem. Here he was publicly acknowledged by Akiba as the Messiah, and large numbers of Jews, not from Judæa only, but from other neighbouring countries, flocked in to his standard. The levies at his command are said to have amounted at one time to 200,000 men; a force with which the Roman troops in Judæa were wholly unable to cope. The whole country fell under his dominion, and the utmost zeal and loyalty were displayed in his service. The only persons throughout the whole of Palestine who stood aloof were the Christians; who, knowing that Jesus Christ was the true Deliverer of the Jewish people, could not acknowledge any other to be such. Barchochebas is said to have punished their defection, as he considered it, with the most savage cruelty, regarding them as rebels and traitors, more criminal than the Romans themselves.

Adrian, who could not for a long time be induced to believe that the Jews, after the terrible lesson which their fathers had learned of the consequences of rebellion against Rome, would again provoke a mortal quarrel, treated the outbreak as a matter of but small importance. But the tales that reached him, of large military stores being in the possession of the Jews, who had for a long time past been secretly collecting them; of their countrymen from Egypt and the East thronging to their standard; and even of multitudes of strangers to their faith and nation nevertheless joining them, in the hope of obtaining plunder, roused him at length to vigorous action. He sent a reinforcement of troops to Ticinius, or Tinnius, by some called Turnus Rufus,[31] who commanded in Judæa, and recalled from Britain Julius Severus, the ablest officer of his time, to put down, what—it was now impossible to disguise—had become a dangerous rebellion.

Severus, on his arrival, found the condition of things so unfavourable to the Roman arms that he did not venture to meet Barchochebas in the field. The latter was in possession of fifty fortified places, and nearly a thousand villages and towns. Rufus had done little but exercise the most merciless severities on all, even women and children, who had fallen into his power; thus, without really diminishing the strength of his enemies, increasing tenfold their exasperation. If he had continued in command, it is far from improbable that the yoke of Rome would, for a time at all events, have been cast off. But Severus had learned the art of war in his campaigns in Britain; and the consequences of the change of the general in command soon became evident. Avoiding, as has been already intimated, any decisive engagement, he harassed the Jews by an endless succession of petty conflicts, in nearly all of which they were worsted, driving them into their strongholds, which he then besieged and captured,[32] until nearly all that had revolted were reduced to submission.[33] By the end of the third year of the war, the rebels were driven into the strong city of Bithor, or Bethor, the situation of which is uncertain, but is generally believed to have been somewhere in the neighbourhood of Bethhoron. Here Barchochebas and Akiba sustained, we are told, a long and terrible siege, ‘the rebels being driven,’ says Eusebius, ‘to the last extremities by famine.’ But there is no historian of this war to record its particulars with the minuteness and accuracy of a Josephus. The Rabbins have indeed given many details; but it is impossible to rely on their statements. Thus, they relate, that when the prospects of the besieged became gloomy and threatening, one of the most zealous of their body, Rabbi Eliezer, the son of Hamadai, following the example of Moses at Rephidim, remained on his knees in prayer during the whole time that the fighting was going on; and the result of his prayers was, that the Jews fought with signal success, everywhere driving the besiegers back. To avert the disaster which seemed likely to result to the Roman arms, a treacherous Samaritan pretended to be discovered in carrying treasonable communications between the Rabbi and the Romans. Barchochebas, without inquiry, ordered the Rabbi to be slain; and from that moment, it is said, the courage of the besieged gave way. Bithor was at length taken by storm. Barchochebas, according to some, was killed in action, according to others, put to death with cruel tortures by the conquerors. The slaughter that ensued is described as exceeding anything on record. The streams of blood were so great as to carry heavy stones the whole way from the city to the sea, and the ground for eighteen miles round is said to have been covered with corpses! These flights of Rabbinical imagination may be dismissed as worthless; but the more sober historian, Dion Cassius, reports that more than half a million perished by the sword, independently of vast numbers who died by disease and famine. Judæa once more became a barren waste. The cities were reduced to heaps of ruin, and the wild beasts tenanted the streets. The inhabitants who escaped the sword were sold as slaves, and transported to foreign lands.

The fate of the stern old Rabbi Akiba should not be passed over. He was treated with the utmost barbarity by Rufus, who seems to have been in command at the capture of the city. While under examination before the Roman tribunal, the hour of prayer came round, and Akiba, wholly disregarding the presence of his judge, and his own mortal peril, fell on his knees and calmly went through his usual devotions. Only a scanty pittance of water was allowed him in his dungeon; but though he was consumed with thirst, he applied the water to the customary ceremonial ablutions. He was sentenced to death, and executed with the most barbarous cruelty, some writers affirming that he was flayed alive, and afterwards slain, others that he was torn to pieces with iron combs.[34]

Adrian now carried out his design, the commencement of which had been the immediate cause of the war, and built a heathen city on the site of ancient Jerusalem. This he called Ælia Capitolina—Ælia after his own name Ælius, and Capitolina, because it was dedicated to the Capitoline Jupiter. It was built in the style prevalent among the Romans of that day; and was enclosed by a wall, which included Mount Calvary and the Holy Sepulchre, but did not take in Mount Zion. In the execution of his plan he was careful to show all possible dishonour to the localities which the Jews and also the Christians regarded with veneration. The temple of Jupiter Capitolinus was erected on the site of the Temple itself; over the gate which looked towards Bethlehem, the city of David, a marble figure of a hog was set up; on Mount Calvary was placed a statue of Venus, the foulest of the heathen deities; and in the grotto at Bethlehem, where the Saviour was born, the worship of Adonis was established. Why Adrian should have been thus studious to profane these latter places, which, though they possessed special sanctity in the eyes of the Christians, had little or none in those of the Jews, does not appear. We can only suppose that the confusion between the Jews and the Christians, who for many generations were regarded as being merely a schismatical Jewish sect, misled the Roman emperor, even at this date and that he regarded Mount Calvary and the Holy Sepulchre as spots especially venerated by Jews. It is certain that no part of his anger was levelled against the Christians. He suffered them to settle within his newly erected city, and carry on their worship there without interruption. Ælia became, not long afterwards, the seat of a Christian bishopric.

But to the Jews he extended no such grace. He issued two edicts; one renewing the order which forbade the circumcision of their children; the other interdicting them, on pain of instant death, from entering the newly-built city, or even approaching so near to it as to be able to discern with their eyes the sacred precincts. It would seem that this prohibition was subsequently relaxed, so far as one day in the year was concerned, the anniversary, namely, of the capture of the city in the war with Titus, and again, in that with Barchochebas; for it is a singular fact that the two events occurred in the same month and on the same day.[35] On the recurrence of that day of misery and despair, they were allowed to pass the Roman sentinels, and gaze once more on the ruins of the past. Jerome has given a moving account of the scene, which, it would appear, he himself witnessed, two centuries afterwards—the crowd of dejected exiles, the sobs of the women, the agonized despair of the men, the jeers and scoffs of the bystanders, and the rude demands of the Roman soldiers for bribes of money, as the only condition on which they could be allowed to indulge their sorrow.[36]

FOOTNOTES:

[29] So, at least, say the Jewish biographers. But as they labour to assimilate him in all things to Moses, it is not unlikely that they have accommodated his age to their theories.

[30] He is said to have resorted to the expedient, already practised by pretenders before him, of filling his mouth with lighted tow, and so appearing to vomit flame.

[31] The Jews often confounded this man, who is the object of their special enmity, with the Terentius Rufus to whom Titus entrusted the final demolition of Jerusalem, and who is almost equally detested by them.

[32] It is a doubtful point whether Jerusalem was one of the places so taken. It appears most probable that it was; and that the work of demolition, which had been begun by Titus, was completed by Adrian, and every trace of old Jerusalem destroyed.

[33] There is evidence, however, that these successes were not obtained without severe reverses. The language of Adrian in his despatches to the Senate, in which he omits his usual assurance, that all is well with the army, is significant of this fact.

[34] The Talmud affirms that his cheerful demeanour, while subjected to the most agonizing tortures, amazed his executioners, and that he told them, that having the love of God in his heart, he could not but rejoice.

[35] August 9th. This was also the day of the taking of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar. One cannot but entertain suspicion of the accuracy of these statements.

[36] Their exclusion from Jerusalem is mentioned by many writers earlier than Jerome—Justin Martyr, Eusebius, and Tertullian, amongst others.

CHAPTER V.
A.D. 135-323.
THE JEWS UNDER THE ROMAN EMPERORS FROM ADRIAN TO CONSTANTINE.

Deplorable as had been the condition of the Jews after the war with Titus, that of their descendants appeared to be still worse, when their struggle for independence was closed by the fall of Bethor. The devastation of their lands, and the destruction of their cities, could not have been worse than it was on the former occasion. But they were not then forbidden by their conquerors to return to their ancient homes, or practise the initiatory rite of their religion. To all appearance, the total extinction of the nation, by the absorption of its scattered members among the various communities to which they had fled for shelter, must inevitably ensue. Nevertheless, this did not occur. On the contrary, a period of nearly two hundred years now elapsed, during which they continued, undisturbed by Imperial severity or intestine commotion, to recruit their numbers and increase their wealth and influence in almost every portion of the Roman Empire. This appears to have been due in the first instance to the favour of Antoninus, who succeeded to the Imperial purple on the death of Adrian. A story is told of a miraculous cure of the Emperor’s daughter by a Jew,[37] in requital of which the edict forbidding circumcision was repealed. But the story rests on no trustworthy authority. The prohibition was renewed by Aurelius, when the Eastern Jews offended him by joining the standard of the rebel Avidius Cassius. But it was soon repealed, if it was ever acted on.

It is evident, however, that, notwithstanding the toleration extended to the Jews, they were closely watched, and little trust was reposed in their good faith. At Jamnia (a town, according to Eusebius, between Diospolis and Azotus), where a great Rabbinical school had been established after the fall of Jerusalem, the jealousy of the Romans was roused by an imprudent speech made by the celebrated Simon (or Simeon) Jochaides, the reputed author of the Book of Zohar, and the person by whom (as the reader is informed in the note) the cure of Antoninus’s daughter is said to have been effected. On the occasion of some public debate, he denounced the rapacity and selfishness of the heathen rulers. For this expression of opinion he was condemned to death, which he only escaped by flight; and the school at Jamnia was suppressed. On another occasion the periodical sounding of the trumpet, in the month Tisri, was mistaken by the governor of the city for the signal of a general revolt.

In Rome itself—indeed, in all the great cities of the Empire—during the reigns of the emperors who succeeded Aurelius, up to the time of Constantine, the Jews were but little interfered with. This was owing partly to their long residence in the capital. The date of their first settlement there is unknown. It has been supposed to be coincident with Pompey’s victories, which probably did bring a large number of Jewish slaves to Rome. Philo’s testimony to this fact, and to their general emancipation by their purchasers, seems trustworthy enough. But it is certain that the Jews had spread far and wide among all nations before that date, and hence it is most unlikely that so great a commercial centre as Rome would be overlooked by them. Josephus says that 8,000 of them attended when Archelaus was received by Augustus; and though Claudius banished them, it was only temporarily. It is plain that there were great numbers there, when St. Paul was imprisoned at Rome. Juvenal, again, speaks of the mendicant hordes who profaned the grove of Egeria; and the testimony of Tacitus and Martial is to the same effect. The Jews were regarded with contemptuous dislike, but there was no inclination to persecute them. There was another reason, too, why they were treated with leniency. After Adrian’s time, attention was directed to the Christians, as the professors of a faith distinct from, and alien to, Judaism. Thenceforth the Jews were regarded in a different light. As Christianity grew and spread throughout the empire, its converts came to be accounted the deadly enemies of the State; and the Jews, who disliked them as much as the heathen did, were naturally welcomed as allies against the common enemy. In any persecution of the ‘New Superstition,’ the Jews were ever ready to take their part[38]; and their wealth, their numbers, and their zeal rendered their help valuable. The Pagan rulers felt but little inclination to inquire into the shortcomings and offences of such useful partisans.

It will be proper here to say a few words respecting the Sanhedrin, which, during this period, as well previously and subsequently, exercised a certain authority. The origin of this National Council is a matter of dispute. By some it is affirmed that it was first instituted by Moses (Num. xi. 16), and is identical with the ‘Elders’ of Joshua xxiv. 1 and Judges ii. 7. But even if that be so, there is no mention of it in subsequent Jewish history for some 1,200 years, and the absolute power exercised by the kings (as e.g. 1 Kings ii. 27-46) is altogether inconsistent with the existence of any such judicial body in their day. Others hold that the Great Synagogue, which Ezra established after the return from the Captivity, gradually developed into the Sanhedrin. But it is denied by writers whose opinion is of weight that there was any connection between the Great Synagogue and the Sanhedrin. Its true origin seems to have been in the time of Judas Maccabæus, or possibly his brother Jonathan. We read how the latter wrote a letter to the Lacedæmonians in the names of ‘Jonathan the High Priest, the Elders of the nation, the priests and other people of the Jews.’ It is likely that the High Priest and the Elders continued from that time forth to exercise supreme power in judicial matters, including that of life and death, until the time when Judæa became a Roman province, and disputes and jealousies with the Roman procurators on the subject ensued.

The statement has already, been noticed, that the Sanhedrin escaped destruction during the war with Titus. Some of its members were slain, but the greater part were allowed—so it is averred—to depart from Jerusalem, and settle at Jamnia. Thence they removed to Sepphoris, and afterwards to Tiberias, on the Sea of Galilee, whence the President of the Sanhedrin came to be styled ‘the Patriarch of Tiberias.’ His authority was acknowledged by all Jews residing within the limits of the Roman Empire.[39] How far obedience to him was voluntary, how far a matter of compulsion, it would not be very easy to determine. The Romans in all likelihood would be tolerant enough of the exercise of any such authority, which did not infringe their Imperial power—nay, would probably refer to it all matters relating to the peculiar usages of the Jews, in the same spirit in which Claudius Lysias wrote to Felix, and Gallio refused to listen to the Jewish disputants. The people on their part would readily submit themselves to the Patriarch of their own nation, if only in protest against the hated rule of the stranger. Hence, for many generations, Gamaliel and his successors wielded a wide and undisputed authority.[40]

The Sanhedrin consisted of seventy-one members, who were chosen entirely for the moral excellence of their characters. No young or unmarried man, no alien, and no one who followed a disreputable calling, was eligible. With these exceptions, membership was open to all ranks and conditions of men.

To this era belongs the Jerusalem Talmud; but of that, and also of the Babylonian Talmud, the reader will find a full account in Appendix II.

To resume our narrative. At the accession of Septimius Severus, who attained the Imperial purple at the close of the struggle which ensued after the murder of Commodus, the Jews are said to have received harsh treatment at his hands; which may well occasion the reader surprise, as they almost everywhere joined his standard, as the rival of their bitter enemy, Niger. Yet it is certain that he re-enacted the old laws against proselytism, or entering the precincts of Jerusalem; and, if Eusebius is to be credited, he actually made war on the Jews, and a triumph was decreed him for his successes in the campaign.[41] But even if this be true, his anger must soon have subsided; for during his reign they enjoyed a considerable share of his favour, for which writers hint that they had to pay heavily. It would appear again that they prospered under the rule of his depraved and barbarous son Caracalla.[42] This Emperor is said in early life to have been warmly attached to a Jewish playmate, the only person for whom he seems ever to have felt any affection. A few years afterwards they had a still more extraordinary and discreditable patron in Heliogabalus, the very vilest, it may safely be affirmed, of all the Roman emperors. Actuated by the strange caprice which commonly swayed his actions, he adopted the Jewish customs of circumcision and abstinence from swine’s flesh. It does not appear, however, that he bestowed any special marks of regard on the Jews, in consequence of the inclination he showed for their peculiar tenets. Their religion, in fact, was only one out of many from which he borrowed one observance or another; and if it is true that he was on the point of proclaiming himself to be the chief object of all religious worship, which all must render him on pain of death, his murder came only just in time to save them from a sharp persecution. Under his successor, Alexander Severus, they are thought to have experienced unusual kindness,[43] because that prince had imbibed from his mother Mammæa (the disciple, it is said, of Origen) a great prejudice in their favour. He did show some feeling of this kind, in that he set up the statue of Abraham in his private chapel, as one of those worthy of Divine honours.

But it should be borne in mind that this virtuous prince was after all a heathen, and had very vague and imperfect ideas about religion. He regarded all good men as equally worthy of honour, and his theology hardly extended further. In the shrine already referred to, he placed not only the statue of Abraham, but of Orpheus, Apollonius Tyaneus,[44] and Jesus Christ! It is needless to say that the man who did this could have been no proselyte to Judaism (let the Rabbins say what they will), or to Christianity either.

A similar protection was extended to the Jews during the reign of Philip the Arabian—another sovereign about whom similar fancies are entertained by Jewish writers, and with no more reason, apparently, than in the other instances. The Christians also experienced the same merciful sway. But with the accession of Decius, A.D. 249, the persecution of the Christians, which had slumbered, with only some slight and partial renewals, since the time of Aurelius, broke out with greater violence than ever, and continued to rage, with rare intermissions, through the reigns of successive emperors, until the accession of Constantine. There is little or nothing to record respecting the Jews during this period, so far as those of the West are concerned, unless the war waged by one of the most powerful of the later occupants of the Imperial throne, Aurelian, with Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra, may be thought to have some relation to Jewish affairs. This princess is said to have been a descendant of the Asmonæan family, or, at all events, of Jewish birth,[45] and to have been brought up in the Jewish faith. Some go so far as to say she was a zealous professor of it.[46] It is certain that she built splendid synagogues for the use of the Jews, and advanced them to the highest posts of dignity. The celebrated Paul of Samosata,[47] who enjoyed her special favour, has been thought to have attempted to effect a reconciliation between Christianity and Judaism, insisting on the necessity of the rite of circumcision, and teaching that Jesus was, although a man, one in whom the Divine Λόγος dwelt. This, it is thought, may have had her approval. If such was really his design, it proved, as might have been expected, a total failure, both parties alike rejecting his teaching. After the fall of Zenobia, he was deprived of his office, and vanished into obscurity.

But in any case her history belongs more properly to that of the Eastern Jews, that large section of the Hebrew race which had spread far to the eastward of the great river, and who dwelt under the rule of the Patriarch, known by the title of the ‘Prince of the Captivity.’ It will be proper now to turn to their affairs.

FOOTNOTES:

[37] According to others, it was the daughter of Aurelius who was healed. A deputation had been sent to protest against the severe edicts of Verus. The celebrated mystic, Simon ben Jochai, was the envoy, and he cast an evil spirit out of the Emperor’s daughter. The Rabbins assert also that Antoninus received circumcision. But their testimony on this, as on many similar matters, cannot be relied on.

[38] Thus it is mentioned that the Jews were more forward than the heathen in bringing faggots to burn the Christian martyr Polycarp—‘as is their habit,’ says the historian (Polyc. Martyr. xiii.).

[39] Origen affirms that the power of the patriarchs was little less than that of a king (Orig., Epist. ad Afric.).

[40] The Presidents of the Sanhedrin are said to have been—

[41] It may be that it was not against the Jews, but the Samaritans, that Severus waged war, and that he temporarily confounded them with the Jews. The Romans continually made such mistakes.

[42] Some of the Rabbins assert that Caracalla received circumcision, but with no more evidence in support of their statement than in the instance of Antoninus. There was, however, something unusual in the education of Caracalla. Tertullian says that he received a Christian education ‘lacte Christiano educatus’ (Tertull. ad Scop.). If so, he profited but little by it.

[43] This seems to have been notorious, as the nickname of the ‘Ruler of the Synagogue,’ given him by the wits of the day, seems to indicate.

[44] This extraordinary man was born at Tyana, in Cappadocia, a year or two before our Lord. Hierocles, A.D. 300, wrote a comparison between him and Jesus Christ, in which the main points of resemblance are his (supposed) miraculous birth and power of working miracles, his attempt to reform the religion of the world, and the voice from heaven, which is said to have summoned him from earth. His history, written by Philostratus is overlaid with exaggeration and fable; but he is to be regarded rather as an enthusiast and a mystic than as an impostor. His fame was at its zenith in the time of Alexander Severus.

[45] Theodoret, de Hær. Fab. Athanas, de solit. vit.

[46] Zenobia has been claimed as an upholder of, if not a convert to, Christianity. She was probably an eclectic with no settled faith. Hence her patronage of Paul.

[47] This notorious heresiarch was a native of Samosata, in Syria. He was made Bishop of Antioch A.D. 260; but his elevation seems to have turned his head. He thenceforth affected great state and splendour. Encouraged by the favour of Zenobia, he usurped great power in the Church. To gain her favour, it is said, he attempted the alleged compromise between Judaism and Christianity. A council was held A.D. 265, to consider his opinions, over which Firmilian presided, and by which he was condemned. He refused to obey the decree; but a second council was thereupon summoned, by which he was deposed, and its sentence was confirmed by Aurelian.

CHAPTER VI.
A.D. 323-363.
THE PRINCES OF THE CAPTIVITY.—MANES.—THE JEWS UNDER THE ROMAN EMPERORS FROM CONSTANTINE TO JULIAN.

It is probable that the authority exercised by the Patriarchs of the East[48] grew up after the abandonment by Adrian of his predecessor’s conquests beyond the Euphrates. The power of the Parthian kings had been broken by the victories of Trajan; and in the remoter parts of their dominions they exercised but a feeble authority. Hence little opposition would be offered to the rule of the Jewish Patriarch—the less, because the respect and obedience rendered to him did not in any way trench on the allegiance due to the civil ruler.

His power appeared to be everywhere firmly established; yet in the ensuing generation it was assailed, and in a great measure superseded, by the interference of his Western rival, the Patriarch of Tiberias. Simeon, son of Gamaliel II., called ‘the Just,’ was a man of ambitious and restless character. Believing that Jerusalem was the true centre of Jewish unity, and that his Patriarchate was, in reality, the Patriarchate of Jerusalem, he argued that he ought to exercise undivided sway over the whole of the Jewish community, and regarded his brother of Babylon as a usurper. He sent a delegate to him, accordingly, who was instructed to approach him with all possible deference; but as soon as he had made good his position, to throw off the mask, and demand his submission. His scheme took effect: the delegate was kindly received, and admitted to the confidence of his entertainers; when he suddenly changed his tone, and sharply censuring some of the prince’s acts, required, in the name of the Patriarch of Jerusalem, that they should be rescinded. A scene of angry resistance followed. But the name of Jerusalem had too strong a hold on the heart of every Jew to allow of any successful opposition. The Babylonian potentate was obliged to succumb, and until the Patriarchate of Tiberias ceased to exist continued to hold a place subordinate to his rival.

But in the succeeding century the Prince of the Captivity recovered all, and more than all, the power exercised by his predecessors. Tales are related of his grandeur and magnificence, which it is difficult to credit, and the more so, because they do not seem to have diminished after the accession of the Persian kings,[49] who might reasonably have been expected to be jealous of such subjects. The Patriarch was wont to be installed in his office with the greatest pomp. He was carried in a splendid procession, attended by the Rabbins, and preceded by trumpets, to the Synagogue, where he was formally admitted to his office, amid the prayers and blessings of the people. He then returned in like fashion to his palace, where he entertained his chief officers at a sumptuous banquet. He lived in the seclusion usual among Eastern potentates. But whenever he went abroad or entered a house he was received with every token of respect. He would sometimes, we are told, pay a visit to the king; when one of the royal chariots would be sent for his use—which, however, he would decline, remembering that, after all, he was an alien and a captive. But this studied humility was visible in nothing else. He was robed in the most splendid vestments, and preceded by a guard of fifty soldiers. The way was cleared before him, and all who met him saluted him with the profoundest respect. At the door of the palace he was met by the royal officers, who conducted him to the king’s presence; where, after the first reverence had been paid, he was placed on the left hand of the throne, to confer with the sovereign on the affairs of the State.

It seems that intercourse with the Persians, who were fire worshippers,[50] and at least as bigoted in their religious opinions as the Jews, did not bring about enmity and persecution. Yet many of the Jewish practices must have been highly offensive to them. Thus the Jews have always interred their dead, and that practice is an abomination in the eyes of the Ghebirs. Again, there were certain occasions when no lights were permitted to be kindled except in the Fire Temples;[51] and the Jews were, in consequence, obliged to extinguish their household fires. We should naturally have expected that some at least among the Jews would refuse compliance, and so bring themselves into collision with the law. But we do not hear of any disputes of this kind[52] until the time of Sapor, who, at the outset of his reign, had shown the Jews great favour. But having embarked one day in a controversy with the Rabbins on the subject of the burial of the dead, he required that they should produce some passage out of their Scriptures in which interment in the earth was ordered. The doctors, unable to do this, gave some evasive answer; which so incensed him that he began a fierce persecution. Sapor, however, died A.D. 272, and we do not hear that the persecution was continued.

This is also the era of the notorious Mani, or Manes, who founded the sect which caused such widespread strife and division in the Christian Church. He is said by some to have held many conferences with Jewish doctors during Sapor’s reign, and to have urged upon them that the acts attributed to their God in the Old Testament, such as the extirpation of the nations of Canaan, were inconsistent with the Divine attribute of mercy. He was, in fact, according to Mani’s teaching, the God of Darkness; from whom they ought to turn, to worship the God of Light. It is needless to say that the Jews utterly rejected his teaching. Through their influence, he lost the favour of Sapor, and was banished from his dominions.[53]

Turning again to the West, we now come to the era of Constantine, when the pagan idolatry was abolished by law, and the religion of Christ publicly recognised. It is obvious that this was a matter which gravely affected the Jews no less than the heathen. They were as much opposed to the newly authorized faith as any pagans could have been—far more so, in fact, because they had a profound belief in, and an earnest zeal for, their own creed, which was altogether wanting in the instance of the heathen. It would seem that the Roman Emperor contemplated making the religion of Christ the religion of the world; in which case he must insist on its adoption by the Jews, as well as by all the other subjects of the Roman empire. Whether the idea of compulsory conversion was ever entertained must remain doubtful. But it is tolerably clear that Constantine did hope for, if he did not anticipate, their adoption of his own faith. Conferences with Jewish doctors were held in his presence, at which the disputants on both sides not only upheld their cause by argument, but endeavoured to prove its truth by resort to miracles. If Constantine hoped anything from trials like these,[54] in which anything that appeared to be preternatural was claimed on the one side as having been effected by the finger of God, and denounced on the other as due to the agency of Satan—he was certainly disappointed; and to this failure perhaps may be imputed the severe laws against the Jews, some of which he certainly decreed. Thus he issued an edict that any Jew who imperilled the life of a Christian should be burned alive; he forbade proselytizing by the Jews on the severest penalties; he prohibited Jews from having Christian slaves. In one of his Acts he styles the Jews ‘the most hateful of all people.’ On the other hand, he has been unjustly charged with acts of positive cruelty towards them, which would have soiled the lustre of his name, if they had been really committed. It is said, for instance, that having heard that large numbers of them had assembled for the purpose of rebuilding Jerusalem, he ordered their ears to be cut off, and themselves banished,[55] and again that he required them to accept baptism, whether they would or not, and to eat swine’s flesh on Easter Day.[56] But these charges refute themselves. Jerusalem was a large and noble city in his day, and it is absurd to talk of the Jews having wished to rebuild it. Nor among all his edicts, preserved in the Theodosian Code, is there a word about cutting off ears or compulsory eating of pork.

During this reign the Jews in Persia are accused of having stirred up a sanguinary persecution against the Christians. The latter had, for a long time past, been making their way into Sapor’s dominions, to the great vexation of the Jews. But when at last they had succeeded in converting to their faith Ustazades, one of Sapor’s chief officers, the irritation of the Jews rose to so great a height that they persuaded Sapor to put down the growing evil by the severest measures. A long and bloody persecution ensued, in which Simeon, Bishop of Ctesiphon, suffered martyrdom, the newly built churches were destroyed, and every trace of Christianity obliterated.

Constans, the son of Constantine, who succeeded to the throne A.D. 353, far from relaxing any of the severities laid on the Jews by his father, proceeded to greater lengths against them. Provoked by an insurrection they had raised in Judæa, he re-enacted the laws of Adrian and his father—adding to them that any Jew who married a Christian, who circumcised, or even kept, any Christian slave, should be put to death. He also greatly increased the heavy taxes with which they were already loaded.

It is no wonder that the accession of Julian—who, immediately after his assumption of the purple, publicly declared his abnegation of Christianity—should have been hailed by the Jews, as well as the pagans, as the dawn of a new day of freedom and prosperity to them. They hastened to present him with an address, representing, among other grievances, the great wrong done them in their exclusion from Jerusalem, the scene of the ancient glories of their race, the never-forgotten home of their ancestors, though the heathen were permitted to dwell there without molestation. While the most sacred sites were hidden by Christian churches, and devoted to Christian worship, the spot where their own beloved Temple had once stood lay desolate, and they were not even permitted to approach and gaze upon its ruins. Julian replied even more favourably than they could have hoped. He addressed the Jewish patriarch as ‘his brother;’ he inveighed against the unmerited severity with which they had been treated; he remitted the imposts of which they complained; annulled the decree by which they had been forbidden to enter Jerusalem; and finally gave them permission to rebuild the Temple on Mount Moriah, promising them every help in the execution of the work, and appointing one of his own favourite officers, Alypius, to superintend it.

His motives for this extraordinary step are not difficult to conjecture. He had not the slightest inclination to Judaism, being a devoted follower of the ancient creed of Greece and Rome, as held by the sages, whom he had made his study. But he wished, in the first place, to repair the injustice of past years; in the second, to conciliate the Jews, whose help might be of the greatest service to him in his Persian expedition; and in the third, to confute and establish the falsehood of Christianity. It was well known that the universal belief among the Christians was, that the voice of prophecy had declared that the Jewish Temple should never be rebuilt;[57] at all events, never until the Jewish people had accepted Jesus Christ as their God. If then he could prove that their belief was untrue on one point, why might it not be untrue on all?

It is needless to say that this unexpected grace filled the whole Jewish world with wonder and delight. Funds for providing the required materials poured in, in abundance; thousands offered themselves as labourers; men of the highest position and wealth, even delicately nurtured ladies, were seen digging up the ground with pickaxes made of gold and silver, or carrying away the earth in silken handkerchiefs. The work advanced with great rapidity, till it was suddenly interrupted by flames bursting forth from the ground, accompanied by earthquakes, which repeatedly injured or destroyed the labourers engaged in the undertaking, and ultimately compelled them to desist from it.[58] Other strange circumstances are said to have accompanied this occurrence. Fiery crosses filled the air, and were seen on the dresses of the fugitives, as they escaped from the dangerous precincts. Some of the latter, who fled to the shelter of a neighbouring church, found the doors closed by some unseen power against them.

Doubtless much that has been related must be regarded as idle tales, the result of panic or exaggeration. But to suppose the whole occurrence to be simply attributable to natural causes appears impossible. This, however, is a matter requiring careful and minute inquiry. The reader will find a full examination of it in Appendix IV.

Not long afterwards (on the 26th of June, 363) the death of Julian, in battle with the Persians, put a period—not only to any renewal of this particular undertaking—but to the hopes in which the Jews had indulged, of Imperial favour especially bestowed on them. So ended the last recorded attempt to rebuild the Jewish Temple.

Note to Chapter VI. on the Religion of the Magi.

The origin of this religious belief is lost in the darkness of antiquity. The Magi existed, a body highly honoured, long before the time of Zerdusht or Zoroaster, who lived B.C. 589. He seems to have remodelled and formulated the ancient doctrine. According to his teaching, there are two independent ruling powers, Ormuzd and Ahriman, the principles of good and evil, symbolized by light and darkness.[59] Ormuzd created man good and happy. Ahriman marred his happiness by the introduction of evil. The strife between these two is to continue, until the victory is finally gained by Ormuzd.

Their religious rites are of a very simple character. They had originally neither temples, altars, nor statues, though later on, fire temples were built. They adored fire, light, and the sun, as the emblems of purity and beneficence. But, in the first instance at all events, they did not regard these as independent deities; though afterwards, following the rule of all false religions, they offered worship to the symbols themselves, instead of the principles symbolized. They exposed their dead to be devoured by vultures, considering it an abomination to bury them in the earth. They still exist, a numerous people, in India, under the name of Parsees, a name derived from Pars, said to be the ancient designation of Persia. By some it is affirmed that Zoroaster maintained the existence of a third deity, superior to the other two.

FOOTNOTES:

[48] Josephus, who wrote as late as Trajan’s reign, evidently knows nothing of them.

[49] The Parthian kingdom, after a long decline, may be said to have died out, A.D. 230.

[50] See note at the end of the chapter.

[51] Such is Jost’s statement (ii. 141). He adds that the Jews obeyed the edict, but very unwillingly.

[52] Nothing more, that is, than discontented murmurs. It is related that when Abba bar Huna lay sick at Pumbeditha, and Rabbi Jehuda was attending him, a Magian came into the room and carried off the light: whereupon the Rabbi prayed that the people might pass under the dominion of the Romans again, rather than endure such ignominy.

[53] The date of Mani’s birth seems uncertain. The time when he attracted notice was circ. 272. He returned to the Persian Court circ. 278, when Hormisdas, or some say Varanes, caused him to be flayed alive, for failing to cure the king’s son; but Beausobre discredits this story.

[54] To quote an example of these. A disputation was held between the Rabbins and the Christians, headed by Pope Sylvester. The Jews brought in an ox, and one of their miracle-mongers whispered the name of God in its ear, whereupon it instantly fell dead. But Sylvester, no-way discomposed, ordered the ox, in the name of Jesus Christ, to return to life. Upon which, we are told, it got up and began feeding!

[55] Chrysost. Or. in Jud. He seems to have confounded Constantine with Adrian.

[56] Eutych. vol. i. 466.

[57] Probably founded on Daniel ix. 26, 27. But that prophecy is obscure, and susceptible of a different interpretation. Even if the Temple had been rebuilt, every one of our Lord’s prophecies would still have been fulfilled. (See Appendix iv.)

[58] Cyril, it should be remarked, says nothing of these miracles, which are reported by Socrates, Sozomen, and Theodoret.

[59] Comp. Isa. xlv. 6, 7, where the idea is directly confuted.

CHAPTER VII.
A.D. 363-429.
JOVIAN TO HONORIUS.—MUTUAL JEALOUSIES AND OUTRAGES.—SUPPRESSION OF THE PATRIARCHATE OF TIBERIAS.

Jovian, a stern enemy of the Jews, succeeded to the throne vacated by Julian, but, fortunately for them, reigned for a few months only. Valens and Valentinian, who followed, reinstated the Jews in the possession of their ancient rights, but withdrew the exemption from serving public offices, which they had hitherto enjoyed. Under their rule, as under that of all succeeding emperors to the time of Justinian, the main things that attract the reader’s notice are the mutual jealousies of the Jews and Christians, for ever breaking out into acts of lawless violence, the blame of which does not lie wholly on one side. The idea seems to have possessed the minds of the Christians, even of their bishops (whose training and office should have taught them better), that the Jews as a race were the personal enemies of Christ,[60] and, as such, objects of aversion and horror. This was a fruitful source of the wrongs, oppressions, and cruelties with which the pages of their after history are so deeply stained. The emperors strove, to the best of their ability, to hold the balance of justice evenly between the contending parties, but often found it impossible to do so. Thus, a synagogue having been burnt by the Christians at Rome (A.D. 387), Maximus the Usurper, who was at that time in possession of the capital, ordered it to be rebuilt by those who had wrecked it. For this righteous act he was denounced by Ambrose,[61] Bishop of Milan, who attributed his subsequent fall and ruin to that act, and induced Theodosius to revoke the decree. A similar outrage having been committed at Osrhoene, a city of Mesopotamia (A.D. 395), the same order was issued by Theodosius himself. But Ambrose again interfered, and addressed a most indignant letter to the Emperor. Overlooking altogether the wrong committed by the Christians, he argued that it was most unjust to require them to take part in building up a Jewish synagogue; which was, he says, ‘the home of perfidy, the dwelling-place of impiety.’ It is said also, by Zonaras, that he preached publicly to the same effect at Milan; but of that there is no evidence. Theodosius, who entertained the profoundest respect for Ambrose, was overawed, and withdrew his edict.[62] But that his conviction as to the justice of the case was unaltered, we may see by the law which Theodosius promulgated in the last year of his life, which secured protection to the Jews in the exercise of their religion, and decreed the punishment of all who assailed them.[63]

On the other hand, the Jews were not behindhand in displaying a very turbulent and rancorous temper. On all occasions which offered themselves, and these were neither few nor trivial, they did their best to harass and mortify the Christians. The Arian controversy, which so grievously distracted the East, and for so long a period, could not have concerned them. Yet they were always ready to support the Arian leaders with their influence, and unite with Arian mobs in attacking the churches of the Orthodox. Nor were these the only outrages they committed. At some of their feasts, when, ‘flown with insolence and wine,’ they issued forth from the banqueting chamber, they were wont to insult and attack any Christians they might meet. At the feast of Purim in particular such displays were likely to occur. On that occasion it was their practice to erect a gibbet, to which a figure representing Haman was fastened, and whenever his name occurred in the service for the day they broke out into furious execrations against him. On the occasion of one of the celebrations of this feast at Inmestar, a city of Chalcis, near Antioch, their insolence was carried to a most shocking height. Rushing out into the street, some of the drunken Jews seized on a Christian boy whom they met, and dragging him into the house, fastened him to the gibbet, from which the figure of Haman had been removed, and which, in mockery doubtless of the crucifixion, had been fashioned in the shape of a cross.[64] They then proceeded to scourge the lad so severely that he is said to have died under their hands. The Christians were roused to fury by the murder, and a bloody fight ensued, in which many lives were lost. This occurred A.D. 412.

Several strange stories are told of occurrences during the early part of the fifth century, which illustrate the temper of the times. They are mostly concerned with conversions; to effect which great zeal was undoubtedly displayed; but it is not often of a kind that we can either admire or approve. Offers of worldly advantages of one kind or another were made by those who were anxious to secure converts; and no one will wonder at hearing that many, in consequence, professed themselves willing to submit to baptism. These converts, however, were not inclined to be content with profiting once only by so easy a mode of obtaining the good things of life. They presented themselves as candidates for baptism at the churches of every sect in Constantinople. The practice was detected. A tradition relates that when one of these pseudo-converts was brought to the font, the water receded from the sacred vessel, so that the ministrant could not perform his office. Startled at so strange an occurrence, he set on foot a strict inquiry, and elicited the fact that the man had already been baptized in the churches belonging to every sect in the city, except the one in which this incident was reported to have occurred. Unfortunately, the church belonged, not to the Orthodox, but to the Novatians. The extent to which the scandal had reached is proved by the enactment of a law, which forbade the baptism of any Jew, until strict inquiry had been made as to his character and motives, and a certain noviciate passed.

Not unfrequently the conversions were what may be termed wholesale, large bodies of men offering themselves at the same time for admission to the Church; and these were brought about after what most persons would consider a strange fashion. Thus, in the island of Minorca (A.D. 418), Severus, the bishop, had been greatly distressed by the presence of a Jewish synagogue under a Rabbi named Theodorus, and exerted himself to the utmost to effect their conversion. He had heard that Theodorus was a man of unusual learning and ability, as well as of the highest character, and well accustomed to controversy—a formidable antagonist, in fact, for whom, it was to be feared, the bishop himself was no match. Nevertheless, fortified by the possession of the relics of St. Stephen, which, it appears, had been left in the island, he challenged Theodorus to a disputation, which he proposed to hold in a church at Magona. The Jews declined the contest, on the ground that it was their Sabbath day, on which they could enter no unclean place. The bishop then proposed that the meeting should take place in the Jews’ synagogue; and when they came up in large numbers to his house, to decline that suggestion also, he solved the difficulty by marching with all his followers to the synagogue. A riot broke out in the street, and the Christians pursued their opponents into their place of worship, which they plundered and then burned. This procedure failing to convert the Jews, a disputation was at last held, at which Theodorus made an oration so learned and powerful that Bishop Severus was unable to answer him. Happily, however, there was no need for him to do so. When he had concluded, the whole of the Christians, anxious to gain so worthy a proselyte, broke out into a general cry, ‘Theodorus, believe in Christ.’ The Jews mistook the words for ‘Theodorus believes in Christ,’ and straightway, stricken to the heart by this terrible apostasy, fled into the woods, leaving Theodorus in the hands of the Christians. The bishop did not fail to point out to him that the hand of Heaven was plainly discernible in what had passed; and Theodorus, perplexed by the position in which he found himself placed, angered at his desertion by his countrymen, and possibly influenced by the hopes of worldly advancement, submitted to baptism; and his example was followed by his congregation. The bishop plumed himself on his victory, and besought his brethren everywhere to adopt the same method with the Jews. In burning down synagogues, as Milman remarks, they were ready enough to adopt his advice.

Another general conversion took place in Crete (A.D. 432) where the circumstances, though not exactly similar, were equally strange. An impostor, who had assumed the name of Moses, gained so much influence over the Jews in that island, who, we are told, were numerous and wealthy, as to persuade them that he could open a way for them to the Holy Land through the waters of the Mediterranean, as his namesake had done of old through those of the Red Sea. The delusion spread so far, that the Jews abandoned their houses and lands and all their personal possessions, except such as they could carry with them, and having been led by their conductor to the top of a high rock, threw themselves by his order into the sea. He himself then disappeared,[65] having probably reaped all that he could hope to gain by the transaction. Great numbers were drowned, and more would probably have shared their fate, if it had not chanced that there were some fishing boats lying off that part of the coast, which came to their assistance. The occupants of these boats were Christians; and this circumstance, added to the fact that the impostor had been a Jew, induced large numbers to adopt Christianity.

Turning to Egypt, always a place of importance in Jewish history, we learn that there were, about the middle of the reign of the Emperor Theodosius II., great disturbances, caused mainly by the continual feuds between the Christians and Jews. The latter had always been conspicuous, not more on account of their wealth and numbers, than of their turbulent spirit. This, however, was in a great measure stirred into action by the accession of Cyril to the bishopric of Alexandria, vacated by Theophilus, A.D. 412. Cyril was a man of great force of character, but vain, hasty, and imperious. He soon obtained a most commanding influence in the city, of which the Prefect Orestes was naturally jealous. Desiring to punish the insolence of Cyril’s followers, he ordered one of them, Hierax, a schoolmaster, who had committed some breach of the peace, to be publicly scourged. Cyril sent for the Jews who had delated Hierax to Orestes, and threatened them with his anger unless they adopted a different course in their dealings with the Christians. Anticipating that this threat would soon be followed by an open attack upon them, the Jews resolved to be beforehand with him. Having put on rings of bark, in order to be able to distinguish one another in the dark, they raised at midnight the cry that one of the principal churches was on fire. The Christians rushed out in great numbers to extinguish the flames, and the Jews falling upon them, made a great slaughter of them. In the morning Cyril armed his followers, and assailing the Jews in his turn, slew great numbers, plundered and burned their houses, and drove the survivors out of the city. Orestes interfered on their behalf, but was himself attacked, and wounded in the head by a stone. Both parties made their appeal to Theodosius, at that time a boy of fourteen. Whether it was that the Court of Constantinople was too much engaged with affairs of State to attend to troubles in Egypt, or that Cyril’s private influence gained the ascendency, we are not told; but it does not appear that any of the criminals, not even the murderers of Hypatia,[66] were ever punished, or the Jews, who had been expelled from Alexandria, reinstated in their homes.

Some years afterwards (A.D. 429), the Jews received a severe blow in the suppression of the Patriarchate of Tiberias; which had existed for about three hundred years, but now expired in the person of Gamaliel IV., the ninth patriarch who had held that office. The revenue by which the patriarchs had been supported, was derived from certain duties levied upon the Jews residing in all quarters of the empire, the patriarch’s collectors being sent everywhere for that purpose. It is probable that the tie which united the Jews to the ancient centre of their faith had for a long time been growing gradually weaker, as the severance itself widened; and the periodical visits to Jerusalem, which had kept up the bond of attachment, had long ceased to be observed. It is said that petitions were presented to the emperors requesting the abolition of the impost. However that may have been, an edict was issued by Honorius, forbidding the levying of the duty at Rome, and, most probably, in any part of the Western empire. That raised in the East appears to have gone directly into the Imperial treasury. This step did not formally abrogate the patriarchal office, but it was a deathblow to it. Gamaliel retained the name, and some show of authority, during the remainder of his life, but no successor was appointed when he died.

FOOTNOTES:

[60] I have elsewhere pointed out how fearfully mistaken is such a belief. Granting, for the argument’s sake, that the Jews who crucified our Lord are to be regarded as His enemies, and, as such, just objects of our abhorrence, their genuine descendants, those who should inherit that abhorrence, are not their children according to the flesh, but they (St. John viii. 41, 44) who imitate their deeds. These are their genuine children. These ‘crucify the Son of God afresh.’ If we must abhor any as the enemies of Christ, let us abhor these.

[61] Ambrose, Epist. xxix.

[62] A similar case occurred at Antioch, under Theodosius II. (A.D. 423), where the clergy were ordered to make restitution to the Jews, whose synagogue they had gutted and plundered. The celebrated Simeon Stylites interfered on this occasion, and succeeded, as Ambrose had done, in annulling the Imperial order.

[63] Cod. Theod. viii. 16.

[64] It is not improbable that the tradition of this occurrence gave rise to the charge so often made, and which seems so inexplicable, against the Jews in after ages, of crucifying boys in mockery of the Saviour’s passion, though no evidence of such an act was ever produced.

[65] The historian Socrates is persuaded that the impostor was a demon, who assumed human shape to beguile the Jews. But seeing that the cheat resulted in a numerous conversion to the Christian faith, it is strange that he should have entertained such a notion.

[66] Hypatia was a young lady of Alexandria, professing heathenism, and of rare accomplishments, great beauty, and unspotted character. Cyril is said to have been jealous of her influence in the city; and, in the hope of pleasing him by the deed, the fierce Christian mob tore her from her chariot, and cut her to pieces with oyster shells. This barbarous and revolting murder is the worst deed of those cruel and lawless times.

CHAPTER VIII.
A.D. 429-622.
HONORIUS TO HERACLIUS.—JEWISH SLAVE-HOLDERS.—JUSTINIAN.—CHOSROES.

The great change in the condition of Europe, the first symptoms of which had appeared a generation or two previously to this era, now began to make itself everywhere felt. The irruption of the barbarian tribes of the North, which resembled at first the few drops of an approaching shower, became, as the century advanced, the heavy downpour of the storm itself. Every year witnessed their further advance into Europe, in vast and irresistible hordes, disorganizing, and, in some instances, wholly changing the face of society. There were new rulers in the seats of Government, new languages spoken in the streets of cities. The armies carried strange standards, and wielded weapons hitherto unknown in European warfare. Even at the plough and by the cottage fireside, there were forms and faces of a type hitherto unknown. In many places the ancient inhabitants had been driven into exile; in many more, they had been put to the sword; in many more, they cowered out of the sight of their new masters. There must have been terrible and protracted suffering among high and low alike.

But there was one class upon whom these woes fell harmlessly, and this class was the Jews. It is bitter for men to be driven from their homes and deprived of their rights of citizenship. But the Jew had no home to lose, no right of citizenship to forfeit. His nationality had long been destroyed, and could not be taken from him. He was like Ladurlad, in Southey’s poem, whom the flood could not swallow up or the sea-monster destroy, because Kehama’s curse had rendered him secure against all minor ills. If the country in which the Jew was a sojourner was threatened by the approach of an invading horde, he simply removed elsewhere, and took his money with him. Nay, the march of the barbarian armies, which brought terror and destruction to others, was to him a source of profit. When some bloody defeat on the battle-field, or some frightful sack of a populous town, had plunged a whole people in misery and desolation, the Jew would drive a thriving trade with the ignorant conquerors, purchasing of them the spoil they had obtained by the plunder of palaces and churches, for, it might be, the twentieth part of their value, and conveying it to lands which were, as yet, safe from invasion; where they sold it again at an enormous profit. Their establishment in all the great cities of the known world, and the strong bonds of brotherhood which subsisted among them, made it easy for them to carry on mercantile transactions of this kind; nor can the rapidity with which they acquired wealth—and which was popularly attributed to their alliance with the Evil One—be any cause of wonder to us. Even in times when the principles on which commerce is conducted have become generally understood and acted on, the Jews have always had the advantage over their Christian neighbours, by reason of their greater astuteness and perseverance. But in those days, when they alone understood those principles, even in the rudest manner, it would have been a marvel indeed, if they had failed to gather riches, almost as easily as a child gathers pebbles on the shore.

One very profitable, but somewhat odious, branch of commerce seems to have fallen almost entirely into their hands. After one of the great victories of the Goths or Huns, when large numbers of captives became the property of the barbarian conquerors, their native ferocity often induced them to put their vanquished enemies to the sword; and possibly they might always have done so, had it not been that avarice, stimulated by the offer of money in exchange for them, proved the more potent passion of the two. The Jew knew what would be the value of an able-bodied slave in the markets of Alexandria or Constantinople, and was willing to pay, it might be, the sixth part of that price to the Goth or the Hun, for the prisoner whom he had at his disposal. None but the Jews, as has been observed, pursued this particular traffic; and the consequence was, that large numbers of Christian slaves passed into the possession of Hebrew masters, who in every city exposed them publicly for sale. It would not have been human nature if the Jews, despised and rejected as they were by their Christian fellow-citizens, had not experienced a sense of triumph, at finding themselves in this manner the undisputed owners and masters of those who had long held them in contempt. It is even less wonder that the spectacle should have roused the greatest indignation among the Christians themselves.

By the ancient law it was illegal, nay, a capital offence, for a Jew to keep a Christian in bondage. But either this law was treated from the first as a nullity, or it had been repealed by one of Constantine’s successors; for the edict of Honorius, while it forbids Jews to proselytize their Christian slaves, allows the full right of ownership over them. Now, however, the Jews had become the masters, not of a few Christian bondsmen, but of large numbers of them, many being persons belonging to a higher station, and reduced to their present state of degradation by having been conquered in battle with the barbarians. This appeared an intolerable scandal; and it is not unlikely that the old law of Constantine would have been re-enacted, if it had not been for the pretty certain fact that, in that case, all prisoners taken in battle would thenceforth be massacred. Therefore, though many efforts were made, and especially by the Church, to mitigate the evil, it was never proposed to prohibit the purchase of slaves by Hebrew masters. The Council of Macon, A.D. 582, distinctly lays down that ‘the conditions upon which a Christian—whether as a captive in war or by purchase—has become the slave of a Jew, must be respected.’ All that is stipulated for by that, or any other of the many Councils which deal with the subject, is, that the slaves shall have the right of purchasing their own freedom, or that others shall have the right of purchasing it for them. The Councils, further, continually exhort the clergy, indeed, all Christians, to shelter any slaves who may take refuge with them from the tyranny of their masters, and even to pay the price which will redeem them from captivity.

It is needless to add that these injunctions had but little effect. Neither clergy nor laity have, in any age, except that of the Apostles, been thus ready to part with their money for the benefit of any unhappy sufferer who might appeal to them. Gregory the Great, who succeeded to the Papal chair A.D. 590, was very earnest in his efforts to put down a traffic which he regarded as abominable. His letters, addressed to kings and bishops and others in authority, evince the warmth of his zeal and the nobility of his nature; but they show also that all efforts, up to that time, to eradicate the evil had proved abortive.

The condition of the Italian Jews at this period seems to have been unusually prosperous. They were protected by Theodoric, who several times—at Rome, at Milan, at Genoa—interfered to chastise those who had wrecked and plundered Jewish synagogues, and directed that due reparation should be made. The Bishops of Rome, throughout the century, and especially Gregory, towards its close, treated them with justice and clemency, and, though filled with an earnest desire for their conversion, repressed all violence or imprudent zeal.

But it was different in other parts of the world about this time. The attempts at proselytizing, which had hitherto erred on the side of holding out worldly inducements to bribe men to embrace the Gospel, were now exchanged for the still worse method of violent compulsion. Chilperic, the youngest son of Clotaire I., a monster of lust and cruelty, appears to have been the first who practised this. Believing, perhaps, that his own misdeeds might be atoned for by what he regarded as zeal in the cause of Christ, he forcibly compelled all the Jews in his dominions to receive baptism on pain of instant death. They appear to have complied—nothing more than the mere performance of the ceremony having been required of them—but to have carried on their own form of worship exactly as before.

Turning now to the Eastern Empire, we find that there is but little mention of the Jews during the fifth century of Christianity. But, whatever changes took place in their condition, we may reasonably infer that they were changes for the worse. Notwithstanding the religious distractions of the reign of the Eutychian Anastasius, the Church continued throughout this century to grow in power, several of the Roman emperors, Theodosius II., Marcian, and Leo, being her devoted adherents. We do not wonder at hearing that in the reign of Justin I., A.D. 518, who was at least as orthodox as any of his predecessors, the Jews were excluded by statute from all offices of state, as well as from holding commissions in the army. His nephew, Justinian, who succeeded him, not only confirmed these laws, but evinced such harshness to both Jews and Samaritans, as provoked a rebellious outbreak among the latter people. One Julian, who (like so many before and after him) professed himself the Messiah, stirred up an insurrection, and was only put down and slain after a bloody battle. Many of the Samaritans, we are told, became converts to the Gospel: but there are shrewd reasons for suspecting that their motive was to escape thereby the consequences of their rebellion.

Encouraged apparently by this success, Justinian proceeded to still harsher measures against the Jews. He no longer allowed their evidence to be taken against Christians. He materially limited their power of making wills and disposing of their property. He enacted that in case of a marriage between a Jew and a Christian—which he strongly discouraged—the control of the children should belong to the Christian parent. Finally, he interdicted the use of the Jewish Mishna, as a production full of absurdity and falsehood, and urged the use of the Greek language by the Jews, instead of the Hebrew. It is hardly necessary to add that these harsh measures had but little effect. The use of the Talmud was not discontinued, and the empire experienced, in the alienation of a wealthy and powerful body, such as the Jews then constituted, a sensible loss of strength.[67] A few years afterwards a new Imperial decree somewhat modified the rigour of these enactments. The Samaritans were allowed to make wills; but in case of intestacy, if any of their children had embraced the Christian faith, they inherited the father’s property to the exclusion of the others; if a will had been made, unbelievers could inherit one-sixth only of the property under it. About twenty-five years afterwards, the Jews and Samaritans in Cæsarea broke out in insurrection, and were with difficulty put down.

Farther eastward, under the reigns of the Persian sovereigns, beginning with that of Artaxerxes (the successor, A.D. 384, of Sapor), the Magians, who had obtained the upper hand in the royal counsels, persecuted Jews and Christians with equal severity. Even the observance of the Sabbath by the former is said to have been suppressed. Nevertheless, we are told that the Prince of the Captivity still retained his office, and even his wealth and dignity. The animosities between him and Chanina, the master of the Jewish schools, are related at length by the historians of those times; but are intermingled with wild and fanciful tales, to which it is impossible to attach any credit. It was at some time during this dark period that the Babylonian Talmud, to which reference was made in a recent chapter, first saw the light. It was mainly the work of Rabbi Asa, or Asche, chief of the schools at Sora. But he died before its completion, and the finishing touches were given to it by his pupils. The date of its appearance is a matter of much dispute; but the probability is that it was first published during this period. (See Appendix II.)

Not long after its appearance—early in the sixth century—a fierce persecution was set on foot by Cavades, or Kobad, one of the Persian kings, who desired to oblige all unbelievers in Magianism to embrace its tenets. In his time a Rabbinical impostor, named Meir, who probably pretended to be the Messiah, raised a rebellion, which was prolonged for seven years. Whether the insurrection was due to the persecution or the persecution to the insurrection, does not clearly appear. The impostor pretended, as nearly all his prototypes had done, to work miracles, and, amongst others, to raise up a fiery column, which always accompanied his march, as had been the case with his fathers in the wilderness. He was defeated, and slain by Kobad, and the Prince of the Captivity was involved in his fate.[68]

The Jews fared no better under Chosroes, or Nushirvan, called ‘the Great,’[69] who closed their schools and forbade the propagation of their faith. But, notwithstanding this harshness, the severities of Justinian were felt by the Western Jews to be so intolerable, that they sent a deputation to Chosroes, inciting him to make war on the empire. They roused his cupidity by describing to him the riches which were to be found in Jerusalem, and offered to aid him with 50,000 men. Chosroes listened to their overtures, and twice made preparations for war. But on the first occasion Justinian purchased peace by payment of a large bribe; and on the second the superior generalship of Belisarius obliged him to retreat.

After a reign of nearly fifty years, Chosroes was succeeded by Hormisdas, a weak and vicious ruler, but who nevertheless permitted the Jews to reopen their schools; and a new series of presidents of these, called the Geonim, or the illustrious, assumed authority. Hormisdas was assassinated after a reign of eleven years, and a usurper named Behram (or Varanes, as he is also called) seized the throne, and received considerable support from the Jews. By the help of the Greek Emperor Mauritius, Hormisdas’s son, Chosroes II. succeeded in crushing Behram, punishing at the same time with great severity the Jews, who had upheld him. Among others, the Jews of Antioch were put to death, or reduced to slavery.

In A.D. 602, Mauritius was murdered by Phocas, who usurped the throne; and Chosroes, claiming to avenge his old ally, declared war on the assassin and marched on Constantinople. Meanwhile the Jews in Palestine, too eager to wait for the arrival of Carusia, Chosroes’s general, rose against Phocas, who had attempted their forcible conversion, and laid siege to Jerusalem. It was defended by the Bishop Zacharias, whose first step was to seize all the Jews in the city. The besiegers gained possession of the suburbs, and began burning the Christian churches. The besieged retaliated by beheading 100 Jewish prisoners for every church destroyed. Neither party would be outdone in barbarity. Twenty churches were demolished, and the heads of 2000 Jews were thrown over the city wall! Unable to reduce the place, the Jews retired to join Carusia, under whose standard they presently entered Jerusalem. They had the insults and wrongs of five centuries to avenge, and they exacted the penalty with no sparing hand, their Persian allies permitting them apparently to do much as they pleased. Every Christian church was destroyed, and the entire Christian population, to the number of 90,000, massacred.

But neither they nor Chosroes reaped much advantage from this success. The war with Phocas was carried on with various fortune until 610, when Heraclius,[70] the son of the Exarch of Africa, attacked Constantinople, overthrew Phocas, and was proclaimed emperor in his place. After a few years of inaction, he roused himself to confront the enemies of the empire. In a campaign, extending over several years, conducted with amazing energy and ability, he recovered the whole of the provinces overrun by Chosroes, who was soon afterwards deposed and slain. Palestine was among the countries reconquered; and we are told that in 629 Heraclius went as a pilgrim to Jerusalem, where the cross was replaced in its ancient position, the Christian bishop restored to his patriarchal throne, and heavy retribution exacted of the Jews. Among other severities, the law of Adrian was revived, forbidding the Jews to approach nearer than three miles’ distance from Jerusalem.

But a new actor now appears on the scene, destined to exercise the most momentous influence on the fortunes of the Jews for many generations to come. We must direct our attention to him.

FOOTNOTES:

[67] What injury they were capable of inflicting on their oppressors, was seen plainly enough at the siege of Naples by Belisarius. Convinced that they would receive no mercy at his hands, the Jews persuaded the citizens to abandon the proposals for capitulation which they were meditating, by promising them supplies of provisions and arms. The siege was in consequence considerably prolonged; and when the assault took place, the Jews defended one quarter with a desperation which caused great loss of life.

[68] He was hanged, together with the President of the Council. No successor to him was appointed. His son, Zutia II., fled to Judæa, and became President of the Senate there. The office, however, was subsequently revived, and lasted as late as the eleventh century. The Resch Glutha, or Exilarch, as the Prince of the Captivity was called, was, it should be remarked, a distinct person from the Geon. The latter was concerned with religious matters only; the former, with politics.

[69] Of this king many fables are related. A monkish chronicler says that he besieged a fortress defended by evil spirits. Failing to take it by assault, he summoned the ministers of all the religious bodies in his dominions, and ordered them to use their superhuman powers for its capture. The Magi, the Magicians, and the Jews, each in turn essayed the task, but in vain. But, it is added, when the Christian priests employed the sign of the cross, the place was immediately captured.

[70] Heraclius is one of the most extraordinary characters in history. Some of his exploits are as grand as any achieved by the most renowned of his predecessors, while sometimes his conduct was unaccountably weak and contemptible. He began by restoring the ancient glory of the Roman empire, but he left it at last weaker than he had found it. The first few years of his reign are the last of Roman glory.

CHAPTER IX.
A.D. 622-651.
MAHOMET.—CONQUEST OF ARABIA, PERSIA, SYRIA, AND EGYPT.

Mahomet was born at Mecca, in the April of the year 569. His father Abdallah, and his mother Amina, belonged to the illustrious tribe of the Koreish; and the guardianship of the Kaaba,[71] the great centre of Arabian worship, was hereditary in his family. Brought up in a priestly household, a man of his intelligent mind would naturally be drawn to examine the received traditions and ceremonial of the national faith; and, considering how corrupt and degraded this had become in his day, we can well understand how an earnest desire to reform and purify it would suggest itself to him. That Mahomet was, in a certain sense, an impostor cannot be denied; though he cannot fairly be considered such at the outset of his career. But his genuine wish to rescue religion from the grossness of idolatry, and his enthusiastic belief in the sacredness of his mission, became gradually lessened by the admixture of worldly policy, which is ever the besetting danger of reformers. Then pious frauds were resorted to, to ensure the success which zeal and honesty had failed to obtain. When these, too, failed, simple imposture was employed—though, so far as we can judge, his belief in his divine office remained unimpaired to the last. Such has been the history of many a religious zealot before, and since, his time, though none have ventured to put forth claims so daring, or have produced results so vast and enduring.

All sorts of portents are related to have occurred coincidently with his birth. A divine light illuminated Mecca and its vicinity; the palace of the Persian kings tottered to its foundations; the sacred fire of the Magi was extinguished in the Gheber temples; the newborn infant raised his eyes to heaven, and exclaimed, ‘God is great.’ But notwithstanding these, and many other, divine tokens of the mission he was to accomplish, he continued to lead the life of an ordinary Arab, until at the age of twenty-five a marriage with a wealthy widow, named Kadijah, lifted him to a position of importance amongst his countrymen.

Some fifteen years afterwards the corrupt state of the national religion[72]—which, it is probable, had always more or less engaged his thoughts—seems wholly to have engrossed them. He withdrew from society, passing his days and nights in mountain caverns, visited by continual dreams and visions. The idea took possession of his mind that the Deity had sent into the world a succession of Prophets, each of whom was to restore to its pristine purity the faith, which had been gradually declining since the removal of his predecessor. Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus Christ, had all in this manner succeeded one another. Now the time had arrived for the appearance of another—that other being himself. This was the revelation which had been vouchsafed to him; this was the message[73] he was to deliver to men.

He returned home, and began to attempt the conversion of proselytes to this belief; but his progress was slow, and the opposition he provoked bitter and deadly. He was in his fifty-third year when the crisis of his career arrived, and he had to fly, at the imminent peril of his life, from Mecca to Medina. This is regarded by the disciples of Islam as the first open promulgation of their faith. At Medina he found himself at the head of an armed force, with which he resolved to enter on his mission of converting the world. At the same time he determined that the instrument by which this was to be effected was the sword.

The attempt seemed a wild one. Yet we must remark that the condition of the world at that period was unusually favourable to it. There existed then but two powerful sovereignties—the Eastern Empire, governed by Heraclius, and the Persian kingdom of Chosroes and afterwards of Yezdegird. The two last named were men of very ordinary capacity; and either indolence or the pressure of external circumstances kept Heraclius inactive. Nor could they command the services of any great soldier, such as Aetius, or Narses, or Belisarius, whose military genius might avail in driving back the invasion of barbarous and fanatic hordes. They were also greatly weakened by long and desolating wars. But, however propitious the occasion may have been, it is obvious that Mahomet, whatever might be his ultimate views, could not then attempt hostile measures against them. Necessarily his first task must be to reduce to obedience the inhabitants of Arabia itself; and the most formidable of these were the various Jewish communities, with which the land was at that time overspread.

For many centuries previously to this time, seven or eight at the least, a Jewish kingdom had been established in that district of Yemen which was known as Homeritis. During the long ages when their brethren, in the Holy Land and elsewhere, were experiencing the most terrible miseries, the Jews of Homeritis seem to have lived in unbroken peace and prosperity in the lovely and fertile valleys of Arabia Felix. The Arians, after a while, had made their way into the country; and with them, as seems always to have been the case, the Jews lived on terms of amity. But when the Catholic Christians also obtained a domicile in the country, under the protection of the neighbouring King of Ethiopia, Dunaan, the Homeritic king, made an effort to exterminate them. He attacked their principal city, Nagra, with a large army, induced it to capitulate, and then, breaking faith, slew and imprisoned the chief men among the Christians. They were avenged in the ensuing year by the King of Ethiopia, who marched against Dunaan with 120,000 men, conquered, dethroned, and slew him. With him the Homeritic kingdom expired; but the subjects of Dunaan formed themselves into a number of independent tribes, more difficult, probably, to subdue than any single community would have been. Mahomet seems to have hoped at first to bring these over to his views. As has been pointed out, their faith was nearly the same as that proclaimed by himself, except as regarded that one article of his own supernatural claims. But the fact of his descent from Ishmael, instead of Isaac, was an insuperable obstacle to any acknowledgment of him by them; and he was obliged to resort to the method of conversion which he had himself proclaimed. The tribes of Kainoka and of Nadir, the inhabitants of Koraidha, Fadai, and Khaibar were attacked in turn, and in every instance overpowered and almost exterminated. The most merciless severity was shown to the conquered. Seven hundred Koraidhites, who had surrendered to his mercy, were dragged into the city of Medina, and slaughtered in cold blood, in the presence of the Prophet, who himself enjoined and applauded the deed.

In the same spirit, after the capture of the citadel of Khaibar, Kenana, the gallant Jewish prince, was put by the conquerors to the severest tortures, to induce him to confess where he had concealed his treasure; and when these failed to accomplish their purpose, his head was struck off with a sabre. But Mahomet narrowly escaped, at this time, feeling the vengeance of the Jewish people, by the act of a woman. On his arrival within the citadel, he required that some food should be served, and a shoulder of lamb was placed before him and his followers. But the first mouthful caused him severe internal pain; and though he instantly vomited forth what he had eaten, his system had imbibed so much of the poison which the meat had contained, as to cause him continual paroxysms of suffering during the remainder of his life. The Jewish woman by whom the lamb had been poisoned calmly avowed and justified the deed.[74] Her fate is uncertain.

Having now attained the position of an independent potentate, Mahomet despatched letters to Heraclius, Chosroes, and the Governor of Egypt, inviting them to adopt his faith. By Chosroes these were received with scorn and anger; by the other two, we are told, with civility and feigned respect. Nevertheless, reports were brought that Heraclius was assembling an army for the purpose of crushing him; and it is probable that Mahomet would now have followed out what had long been his persistent purpose, and entered on the forcible conversion of neighbouring nations, if he had not felt the approaching decay of the powers of life. He did go so far as to assemble an army, and advance across the country to Tabuc; but the tidings brought him that the Syrians had collected large bodies of troops, and the experience of the battle of Muta, in which they had proved themselves formidable enemies, induced him to withdraw to Medina.

But after his death, Abu Beker, the first Caliph, prepared to carry out without delay the programme of his predecessor. An army was sent into Irak, the ancient Chaldæa and Babylonia, under Khaled, called the ‘Sword of God,’ and one of the most able of the Moslem leaders, with orders to overrun and subdue Hira, Cufa, and Aila, all of them tributary kingdoms owning the suzerainty of Persia.[75] Khaled accomplished his task with astonishing rapidity and completeness; and when he was withdrawn to take the command in Syria, his successors followed up his victories, with but few reverses, into the very heart of Persia, won great battles, captured Modayn, Hamadan, and Istakan (the ancient Ctesiphon, Ecbatana, and Persepolis), and finally hunted down and slew the hapless Yezdegird. With him the Sassanian dynasty came to an end, and the whole of Persia, A.D. 651, submitted to the dominion of the Caliphs.

The like amazing success marked the progress of the warriors of Islam in Syria and Egypt. In the former country, notwithstanding that they were opposed to disciplined troops, who still retained the tradition of ancient Roman warfare, their fiery valour proved everywhere victorious. The light Arab horsemen recoiled indeed from the serried ranks of the Grecian phalanx; but only to return again and again to the encounter, till their trained antagonists were daunted or wearied out. Whether they fought behind the ramparts of a fortified city or in the open plain, it was the same. Bosra, Damascus, Baalbec, Emesa, after protracted sieges, were compelled to open their gates to the conquerors. At Aizhadin, and on the banks of the Yermouk, military skill and superior numbers were alike of no avail to check the overwhelming tide of conquest.

After allowing themselves a brief repose, the victorious Saracens advanced to besiege Jerusalem, a city regarded by them with a reverence almost as deep as that of the Jews themselves.[76] The reader has already been told how nature and art have combined to render this city almost impregnable to assault. In the present instance its fortifications had been carefully repaired and strengthened, in expectation of a siege; it was well victualled, and garrisoned by a large and disciplined force. Against an enemy so inexperienced in the arts of warfare as the Saracens, it might well have defied even the most persistent blockade. Yet but four months elapsed before an offer of surrender was made and accepted, and the Caliph Omar[77] arrived to arrange the terms. These were, that the lives and property of the inhabitants should be spared, and the free exercise of their religion allowed; but upon conditions to which nothing but the fear of immediate and inevitable death could have induced the Christians to submit. They were to build no new churches; set up no new crosses; were to make no proselytes to their faith; nor hinder any Christian from professing Islamism. They were to wear a peculiar dress, carry no arms, possess no Moslem slaves, and salute every Mussulman as a superior! On the site of the Jewish temple, which had so long lain desolate, a Mahometan mosque was erected: in which, from that day to this, with but a brief intermission, the worship of Islam has been carried on.

If the narratives of the conquests of Persia and Syria appear to us surprising, that of Egypt must be regarded with still greater wonder. The empire of the Pharaohs had indeed greatly deteriorated from its ancient consequence and strength; but it was still a powerful State, capable of bringing numerous armies into the field. Nevertheless, Amru, who was entrusted with the command of an expedition to overrun and subdue it, had but five thousand men assigned him for the purpose. With these he proceeded to invest Farwah, or Pelusium; and having captured this city through the treachery of the governor, marched on to Alexandria. That also, after a siege of fourteen months, was surrendered to them, and the submission of all Egypt followed.

In recording this extraordinary career of conquest, our concern of course is, how it affected the Jews; and everywhere it will be found that—as in the instance of the incursion of the Northern nations—what was ruin and misery to others failed to injure, nay, benefited them. In Persia, Yezdegird had visited them with the most cruel persecutions, had shut up their synagogues and schools, and slain numbers who refused to embrace Magianism. In Palestine they had been subject to harsh laws, unmerited scorn, and exclusion from their ancient capital. In Africa, they had similarly undergone violence at the hands of Arian Vandals and Catholic Christians. All this had now come to an end. Their new masters allowed them equal rights of residence and citizenship, the free exercise of their religion, the secure tenure of their property, equality of imports with their Christian neighbours. Whoever else might have reason to lament the change which had passed over the face of the world, they, at least, had none.

FOOTNOTES:

[71] The Kaaba is said to have been built by Ishmael, aided by his father Abraham, in imitation of the shrine which, according to legend, existed in Paradise, and in which Adam worshipped. In one corner of it stands the sacred stone, believed by the Arabs to be the Guardian Angel of Adam and Eve, changed into that shape, in punishment of the neglect which permitted their fall. It was originally of a dazzling white colour, but the kisses of sinful men have reduced it to its present blackness. To this shrine the Arabs make their pilgrimages, performing seven circuits round it, in memory of the seven circuits which the Angels in Paradise had been wont to practise.

[72] The idolatry of the Arabs was, at this time, of the grossest kind. No less than 360 idols had been set up in the Kaaba—many of them gods of neighbouring nations, or of deceased kings and patriarchs.

[73] The Koran claims to be, not the composition of Mahomet, but a divine revelation, which he had to report with the minutest accuracy. It professes to republish what had been already delivered to Abraham, Moses, and Christ, and now more explicitly, to Mahomet. It teaches I. The Unity of God. II. The Ministrations of Angels and Prophets. III. Absolute Predestination, or Fatalism. IV. The Resurrection and Future Judgment. It rejects the Trinity, and Godhead of our Lord, and insists on the divine mission of Mahomet. In this last particular, and in the respect shown to Christ, it differs from Judaism.

[74] ‘If he is the Messiah,’ she said, ‘the poison cannot hurt him; if he is not, he is an impostor, and deserves death.’

[75] When Chosroes received Mahomet’s letter, inviting him to embrace Islamism, he disdainfully tore it in pieces. When Mahomet heard of this he exclaimed, ‘Even so shall his kingdom be torn.’ Doubtless Abu Beker had this in mind when he sent out the expedition.

[76] On the morning of the assault on Jerusalem, the address of Moses to the Israelites in the Koran, ‘Enter, O ye people, into the Holy Land, which God hath destined for you,’ was shouted aloud after morning prayer, by the whole besieging army.

[77] Omar had succeeded Abu Beker, A.D. 633, less than two years after the death of the Prophet. He was the Caliph who burned the Alexandrian library, and was the first of the Ommiades.

CHAPTER X.
A.D. 622-740.
THE JEWS IN THE EASTERN EMPIRE; IN SPAIN, IN FRANCE.

Recurring now to the Jews under the rule of the Eastern emperors, we cannot fail to be struck by the difference of the demeanour exhibited by these latter towards them from what has been recorded of the Moslem conquerors. Mahomet, it is true, would permit the existence of but one faith in Arabia; but outside the bounds of that sacred land, all who would acknowledge the dominion of the Caliph were secure from insult or wrong. But the Christian emperors of Constantinople—such of them, that is to say, as felt themselves strong enough to invade the rights of any portion of their subjects—made it a matter of conscience to endeavour to require the acceptance of Christianity by the Jews, though at this period they did not proceed to inflict penalties in case of refusal. Even Phocas, whose zeal for the faith could not have been very keen, had sent the Prefect Georgius to Jerusalem, requiring the principal Jews there, on their allegiance, to receive baptism. Heraclius attempted the same, using, it is said, violent and cruel measures to accomplish his purpose, but with very partial success. This emperor had two special causes of dislike to them, one of which appealed to the nobler, the other to the weaker side of his character. The first was the recollection of the barbarities practised by them at the capture of Jerusalem by the Persian troops; the second, the prediction delivered to him by a soothsayer in whom he trusted, that the Roman empire should be overthrown by a circumcised people.[78] Ignorant altogether of the storm which was gathering in the mountains of Arabia, he naturally presumed the people in question to be the Jews, and therefore sought to avert the evil by converting these to the Gospel. He is said to have been so far influenced by his alarm as to despatch letters to the Kings of Spain and France, urging them to unite with him in the extirpation of the dangerous race.

Whether any of the many feeble successors to the purple who intervened between him and the Isaurian Leo pursued the same policy, we are not informed. But it is unlikely that they would attempt it. The existence of a circumcised and warlike race different from that of the Jews, would in their time have become matter of notoriety; and alarm would have been directed to a different quarter. Nor would it have been either safe or politic to attack the Jews. Their wealth and intelligence rendered them useful instruments in carrying out the imperial policy, and their numbers and turbulent spirits discouraged interference with them. In the numerous riots which took place between the Orthodox Christians and their adversaries, the Jews were wont to interfere and give the preponderance to the latter.[79] Unless they provoked interference of the authorities by actual sedition, it is likely that they would be left to themselves.

But when a powerful ruler in the person of Leo again grasped the sceptre, A.D. 716, the case became different. It was said, indeed, that this emperor had been promised the purple, on condition of his employing the power thus committed to him in the destruction of images in Christian churches; but the tale rests on no trustworthy evidence, and is disproved by his acts at the very outset of his reign; for he was no sooner seated on his throne than he required that all his Jewish and Montanist subjects should submit to baptism. The Jews seem to have consented to the ceremony, though they continued the exercise of their own faith without change. What part they took in the subsequent destruction of images,[80] and wrecking of Christian churches, may readily be surmised from what has been already told.

Passing to Spain, we find the Jews, during this century, occupying a different position, and subjected to far heavier penalties. In this country they had long been settled, certainly previously to the Christian era, and, as it would appear, lived in peace and security. Previously to the Council of Elvira, no law is recorded to have been made which restrained their liberty. But it was then decreed that no marriages should take place between Christians and Jews, nor should they sit down to table together. This was the first note, as it were, of the bigotry and intolerance which afterward rang with such hideous discord throughout the length and breadth of Spain. The outburst was checked for a while by the incursion of the Visigoths, who, though Christians, professed the Arian creed. With them, as has been already remarked, the Jews always lived on terms of amity. But towards the end of the sixth century Reccared abjured Arianism, embracing the Catholic faith; and a new condition of things was soon the result.[81] By the decree of the Council of Toledo, held in the fourth year of his reign, Jews were not allowed to have Christian slaves, or to hold public offices, or marry Christian wives, or sing psalms when carrying their dead to the grave.

These decrees were soon followed up by much severer measures. Sisebut, who succeeded to the Gothic kingdom A.D. 612, is supposed to have received an urgent entreaty from the Emperor Heraclius, as has already been intimated, to put down Judaism throughout his dominions. Whether the report be true or not, he certainly acted as though such was his intention. He issued the command that all Jews should offer themselves for baptism, imprisoning many, and putting to death many more, who would not obey his order. Large numbers abandoned their whole possessions, and migrated to various parts of Gaul. Yet the Spanish historians affirm that as many as 90,000 were baptized, not because of any change in their convictions, but through dread of the consequences of refusal. After the death of Sisebut there seems to have been a short lull in the storm of persecution, and many of the pseudo-converts thereupon returned to the profession of their ancient faith.

The fourth Council of Toledo, held A.D. 633, under the presidency of Isidore of Seville, enacted that ‘men ought not to be forced into believing, but believe of their own free will.’ But although Isidore—to whom in all likelihood this single ray of light in the midst of surrounding darkness must be attributed—could thus give expression to the language of charity and truth, he was not wise enough, or perhaps influential enough, to be consistent; for the decree adds, immediately afterwards, that all who had received baptism—whether willingly or unwillingly—must be compelled to abide by it, ‘because otherwise the Holy Name of God would be blasphemed, and the faith disgraced;’ as though there was not worse blasphemy and deeper disgrace in a false profession than in an honest renunciation!

The same Council adds decrees against which Isidore’s large and charitable nature must have rebelled. The 60th canon requires ‘that the sons and daughters of Jews should be separated from their parents, lest they be involved in their errors;’ the 63rd, that ‘Jews who have Christian wives, if they wish to live with them, must become Christians; and if they refuse to obey, they are to be separated;’ the 64th, that ‘Jews who were formerly Christians are not to be admitted as witnesses;’ the 65th, that ‘Jews and their descendants are not to hold public offices, and any one who obtains such office shall be publicly scourged.’ A still more monstrous decree enacts that any Christian convert who so much as speaks to a Jew shall become a slave, and the Jew he spoke to be publicly scourged!

The twelfth Council of Toledo, in 681, repeats these merciless severities, which (it is no wonder to find) could not be carried into effect, except by direct State interference, and adds others of a like character. ‘The Jews,’ it is ordered, ‘are to offer themselves, their children, and their servants for baptism:’ they ‘shall not celebrate the Passover, or practise circumcision:’ they ‘shall not presume to observe the Sabbath or any Jewish festival:’ they ‘shall not dare to defend their religion to the disparagement of the Christian faith:’ and ‘they shall not read books abhorred by the Christian faith.’ The penalties for breach of these and the like statutes had hitherto been death. But the extreme severity of such a sentence, it is argued, had acted as a preventive to its being enforced. Therefore new orders were issued, by which the rigour of the punishments was abated. Henceforth, if a Jew profaned the name of Christ or of the Holy Trinity, or rejected the Sacraments, or kept the Jewish feasts, or worked on the Sunday, he was only to receive one hundred lashes on his naked body, and afterwards be put into chains and banished from the country, his whole property being confiscated to the State! If a man circumcised his child, he was to suffer mutilation, or if it were a woman who so offended, she was to lose her nose. If a Jew presumed to take a public office under a noble, he was to forfeit half his property, and suffer scourging; but if it was under an ecclesiastical superior that he undertook a situation of trust, he was to lose his whole estate, or be burned alive! The reader will surely call to mind Solomon’s saying, respecting the ‘tender mercies of the wicked,’ as he reads these ordinances.

But the avenger was at hand. For some years past the tide of Saracen conquest had been rolling along the northern coast of Africa, until it had reached the kingdom of Morocco; when it must turn southward into the barren wastes of the Sahara, or northwards, into the populous and fertile land of Spain. There could be little doubt which of the two they would prefer; and Wamba, one of the wisest and ablest of the Gothic sovereigns of Spain, in anticipation of such a catastrophe, collected a fleet, with which he encountered the Saracens, A.D. 675, and inflicted on them a disastrous defeat, which deferred the invasion of Spain for nearly forty years. But in the reign of Egica, and still more in that of his successor, Witiza, the imminent danger of the Spanish monarchy became so evident, and the fear that the Jews would co-operate in and accelerate the Mussulman invasion so alarming, that measures were taken to prevent it which indicate at once terror, haste, and self-reproach.

At first attempts were made to intimidate the Jews. Egica declared that he had learned, by their open avowal, that the Jews had plotted with enemies beyond the sea to effect the ruin of Christendom. Therefore, to counteract their efforts, all Jewish children upwards of seven years old were to be taken from their parents, the males married to Christian girls, and the girls to Christian men, and the children in all instances brought up in the Christian belief, so that in the next generation the Jews might cease altogether to exist as a separate people. This seems to have had no other effect than that of causing a general flight of Jews from Spain, the very thing of all others likely to bring about the mischief that was dreaded. Witiza endeavoured to repair the mistake. He issued a proclamation permitting all Jews to return to Spain, and enjoy there the full rights of freedom and citizenship. But the step was taken too late. If the Jews had concerted with Muza the invasion of Spain, as their enemies affirmed, their intrigues could not be annulled. In the year 711, two years after the accession of a new sovereign, Roderic,[82] to the throne, the Moors crossed into Spain; a decisive battle was fought on the banks of the Guadelete, in which the Moslems were victorious, and the Gothic kingdom of Spain ceased to exist.

Once more the miseries of fire and sword, which laid waste the whole of the Spanish peninsula, inflicted no suffering on the Jews residing within it. Whether any of the accusations with which the Christians have assailed them—of leaguing with the Moslem, furnishing them with secret information, opening the gates of beleaguered cities to them and the like—contain any admixture of truth, it would be difficult to say. In some instances the charges are manifestly false; in others the decision is very doubtful. But even allowing them to be true, it cannot be matter of wonder that men so persistently wronged and slandered should turn on their oppressors, when the opportunity was given them. The settlement of the Moors in Spain was followed by a long period of prosperity and peace, during which the Jews became famous throughout Europe for their wealth, their intelligence, and their learning. A famous Hebrew school was founded at Cordova, to which students from all parts of Europe are said to have resorted.

In France, during this century, something of the same spirit seems to have prevailed, by which the Catholic kings of Spain were actuated. Chilperic, as has been already recorded, towards the end of the previous century had insisted on the compulsory baptism of his Jewish subjects.

Early in the seventh century Clotaire II. issued a decree forbidding Jews to hold any military or civil office. Dagobert, who reigned from 628 to 638, enacted still more sternly, that the whole of his Jewish subjects should forswear their faith or depart from his dominions. It is said that he too acted under the influence of the Emperor Heraclius.[83] But of this there is no evidence, and it has been urged that the royal order, if issued, was but little observed, since the Jews, in the southern parts of his kingdom at least, continued to be a numerous and wealthy body throughout his reign. Wamba, the Gothic king of Languedoc, however, certainly took the step in question, and banished them from his kingdom.

FOOTNOTES:

[78] One would suspect the genuineness of this story, but that historians accept it apparently without doubt.

[79] The Jews took the opportunity of the popular outbreak against Martina and Heracleonas, to desecrate the church of St. Sophia with every kind of outrage, and apparently with impunity.

[80] Beyond doubt they were charged with having incited it.

[81] I do not desire to imply that the concord between the Arians and Jews, as contrasted with the disagreements between the Catholics and Jews, is any ground for commending the one or blaming the other. It may not unreasonably be argued that it is the indifference of the Arians to our Lord’s honour, and the zeal of the Catholics for its maintenance, which occasion both the concord and the strife. I only record the fact.

[82] The commonly received story—that Count Julian persuaded Muza to invade Spain, in order to avenge the violation of his daughter Florinda—is in all likelihood mere fiction. It is not mentioned by any historian for nearly 500 years after Roderic’s death, and then only as a legend. Considering the manners of the time and the unbounded licence of the Gothic kings, it is most unlikely that such an act, if perpetrated, would have been so furiously resented: and the invasion of Spain is to be accounted for in a more simple way, viz., the carrying out of Mahomet’s plan of progressive conquest.

[83] Rabbi Joseph, i. p. 2.

CHAPTER XI.
A.D. 740-980.
THE JEWS UNDER THE CALIPHS IN THE EAST.

The period which ensued after the Conquest of Persia and Syria in the East, and of Spain in the West, is called by Milman the ‘Golden Age of Judaism’; but the title does not suit very well with the circumstances of the case. It was not, as the Golden Age of legend is represented to have been, a peaceful and happy beginning, which the crimes of men gradually embittered and corrupted. It rather resembled a succession of cool showers on a burning summer day, when the fierce heat of the morning is tempered during the midday hours, but only to break out with more intolerable oppression as the afternoon comes on. The contrast which this lull in the storm of injustice and cruelty presented to the savage fury of preceding, as well as after times, is indeed most striking. Everywhere the flames of persecution sank down; and what had been a consuming fire smouldered on, with only a feeble flicker here and there, to show that it was not quite extinct.

In the Byzantine empire we are told singularly little of the condition and actions of the Jews during this period. The emperors who filled the throne were, for the most part, men of very ordinary ability. Nor were there among their subjects men of greater mark. ‘On the throne, in the camp, and in the schools,’ says the historian Gibbon, ‘we search, perhaps with fruitless diligence, for names and characters that deserve to be rescued from oblivion.’ This may in itself explain why so little is heard of the Jews. Occupy high positions in Church or State we know they could not, or openly interfere with the direction of public affairs; and what private influence they might exercise in these would be carefully kept secret. As for attacks upon them, we have already seen that their numbers, their rare intelligence, and their ever increasing wealth, rendered them a dangerous body for any but a powerful ruler to assail; and assuredly the weak and incompetent occupants of the imperial throne at that era would be but little inclined to make the experiment. What little has been recorded goes to prove that the emperors were anxious to conciliate them. Nicephorus, who received the purple A.D. 793, is said to have shown them particular favour, probably because of their acquiescence in his iconoclastic views; and Michael the Stammerer, whose reign dates from 821, was reviled by his enemies as being half a Jew.[84] When we remember how Constantinople was at this period distracted at once by civil and religious factions, and that the Jews—however little they might seem to be personally interested in the question at issue—were always ready to throw their weight into the one scale or the other, we shall cease to wonder that they remained wholly unmolested.

In the dominions of the newly established Caliphs they were not only left in peace, but treated with especial honour.[85] The victorious Arabs were but a rude and uncivilized people, and the aid of the Jews in teaching them the arts and pleasures of a refined state of society was found alike useful and welcome. Their learning, their intelligence, their widespread knowledge of foreign lands, rendered them especially qualified for this office. Omar, the second Caliph, is related to have entrusted the coinage to a Jew, immediately after his accession to the throne. It was a subject with which, as might be expected, he had no acquaintance, nor was there any one among his principal officers who knew more of the matter. Similarly, if an embassy was to be despatched to a foreign sovereign, or a subsidy negotiated, the person selected for the office would in all likelihood be a Jew. When Abu Giafar imposed a heavy fine on the Christians, it was to Hebrew officials that the collection of the impost was committed; and even between sovereigns so potent as Charlemagne and the Caliph Haroun Alraschid, the envoy who was entrusted with the letters and presents was a Jew.

In war they were no less necessary than in peace. The sums required for the equipment of a fleet or the victualling of an army were furnished from Hebrew coffers. Nor were their avocations limited to this. The Jews would accompany the march of the Mussulman armies, and—as their fathers had done in the instance of the Gothic and Hunnite invasions—purchase from the ignorant soldiery the plunder they had amassed, at a price which brought them an enormous profit,[86] or it might be a captive whose family or friends afterwards redeemed him at a price tenfold exceeding what they had given. We learn that at this time they almost entirely abandoned agriculture; partly because of the heavy tax laid on unbelievers, and partly because trade had become so much more profitable to them. They cultivated also astrology and medicine, and became everywhere the most successful professors of both sciences. In many, if not in most of the royal courts, the chief physicians and astrologers were Jews. Nor were they less successful in literature. In the East and West alike, their schools were crowded with students, and the names of their learned men of this era are held in reverence even to the present day.

It is at this date that we first hear of a sect called the Karaites.[87] They claim, indeed, a far greater antiquity, insisting on their descent from the ten tribes led captive by Shalmaneser, and putting forward a catalogue of their doctors, in regular succession from the time of Ezra. But it is believed that their first founder was one Ananus, a Babylonian Jew of the race of David, who, together with his son Saul, A.D. 750, entered a public protest against the extent to which tradition had corrupted the written word, and insisted on this latter as the sole rule of faith. We have evidence in the Gospels, of the length to which tradition had run even in our Lord’s day, and how He had, declared that the Pharisees ‘had made the Word of God of none effect’ through it. But after that time the Cabbalist and Masoric Rabbins, who were the successors of the Pharisees, laid greater stress than ever on the importance of tradition; and the completion of the Babylonian Talmud in the sixth century, was, as it were, the keystone of their work. We cannot wonder that men of sense and reverent feeling should be shocked at the wild fables and ridiculous fancies of the Talmudists. It would appear that a strong feeling was widely entertained in secret on the subject; but its first expression was due to the failure of Ananus to obtain the dignity of Prince of the Captivity, for which office he was a candidate. Disgusted at the election of a younger man to the post, Ananus gathered together the remains of the old Sadducean party, or what was so called, and induced them to nominate him as a rival to his successful opponent. Ananus was thrown into prison, but gained the ear of the Caliph sufficiently to obtain his release. He then retired, with his followers, to the neighbourhood of Jerusalem, where they established themselves as a separate sect. They still exist, chiefly in Eastern countries, and in parts of Europe, especially the Crimea.[88]

Notwithstanding the general prosperity enjoyed by the Jews at this period, there were some reverses. Giaffir, called the Great, is said to have issued an edict requiring Christians and Jews alike to embrace Islamism. Al Wathek also, the successor of Mamun, one of the Abasside Caliphs, residing at Cufa, inflicted heavy fines upon them, partly because they had committed frauds in the management of the finances entrusted to them, and partly because they refused the religion of Mahomet. But the amount of suffering inflicted could not, in either instance, have been great. Motakavel, however, his brother and successor, was still harsher in his dealings with them. He compelled them to wear a leathern girdle, to distinguish them from the Faithful. He prohibited them from using stirrups when they rode on horseback, and afterwards from riding horses at all. A summary of the various badges and marks of degradation imposed on the Jews by European and Asiatic sovereigns would form a curious study.

To this period also belongs the strange story of the kingdom of Khozar, which has been regarded by some historians as being full of misstatement and exaggeration, and by some as simple fiction. Khozar belonged to the Turcomans, a heathen people; and it is reported that, somewhere about the middle of the eighth century, Bular, its king, a pious and thoughtful prince, received a revelation through a dream,—or, according to another version, through the instruction of an angel,—which showed the hollowness of the religion he professed. Thereupon he began to make inquiry after a purer faith: and having conversed with learned men professing Christianity, Islamism, and Judaism, he made his election in favour of the last-named creed. According to one version of the story, he came to this resolution in a somewhat singular manner. Conversing apart with a Christian, he asked of him whether he did not consider Judaism preferable to Mahometanism, and was answered that he did. Then holding a similar discussion with a Mahometan, he inquired whether he did not regard Judaism as superior to Christianity. Receiving an affirmative answer here also, he decided in favour of the first-named faith, as it appeared that it held the first place in the estimation of the Jew, and the second in that of each of the other two. Having himself received circumcision, he sent for learned Jews from neighbouring countries, by whom in time the whole of his people were brought over to the faith of Israel. A tabernacle was erected, similar to that set up by Moses in the wilderness, and the Jewish worship regularly carried on.

The authenticity of the story having been disputed some two centuries and a half afterwards, Rabbi Hosdai, a learned man, much patronized by Abderraman, the Caliph of Cordova, resolved to ascertain the truth respecting it, and obtained, with considerable difficulty, a letter from Joseph, the reigning sovereign of Khozar. In this the king repeated the history of his ancestor’s conversion, very much as popular rumour had stated it. The letter of Hosdai is still extant, as well as the reply, and there seems no reason to doubt the authenticity of the former, at all events.

Basnage and others reject the whole story as fable. It is argued that this kingdom of Khozar, when searched for, could no more be found than the Eldorado of the Spaniards, or the dominions of Prester John; even the famous traveller of Hosdai’s time, Benjamin of Tudela, though anxious, for the credit of his patron, to discover it, entirely failed to do so. But modern research has proved that such a kingdom did at all events exist; and the most judicious historians, Jost among them, incline to believe that the story may have at all events a groundwork of truth.

In Spain, during this period, all seems to have gone prosperously with the Jews, except that an impostor named Serenus, who professed, as so many before and after his time have done, to be the Messiah, taking advantage of the unsettled state of things between France and Spain, persuaded large numbers of his countrymen to follow him into Palestine, where he proposed to set up his kingdom. He does not seem to have reached the Holy Land, and the greater part of his followers perished in the attempt. Those who survived returned to their homes, but only to find that their possessions had been confiscated to the State.

In the year 750 a revolution took place at Damascus, during which nearly the whole of the Ommiad dynasty (as the descendants of Caliph Omar were called) was cut off, and Abul Abbas succeeded to the Caliphate. Yusef, the Mussulman Emir in Spain, sided with the usurping family; but the Moorish chiefs generally were desirous of establishing their own independence, and finding in Abderachman ben Moasiah a still surviving representative of the Ommiad family, placed him on the throne, under the title of the Caliph of Cordova. His government was wise and powerful, and under him the Jews attained the zenith of their prosperity.

We are now about to transfer our attention to the countries of Western Europe, where occurred almost every event of importance in which the Jews are concerned for several ensuing centuries. But before doing so, it will be proper to record what is known of the Hebrew communities who dwelt in those countries of the distant East which acknowledged neither the sceptre of Rome nor of Persia. The records of these are very scanty, and rest upon very doubtful authority, but that affords no sufficient reason for not preserving all that can be gleaned from various sources respecting them.

FOOTNOTES:

[84] Similarly, and for the like reason, Constantine Copronymus was nicknamed ‘the Jew.’

[85] The Caliph Almamon, a great patron of learning, caused many of the Rabbinical books to be translated into Arabic, and placed in the Royal Library at Bagdad.

[86] After the capture of Rhodes, a Jew belonging to Edessa purchased the remains of the celebrated Colossus, which had been lying on the ground since its overthrow by an earthquake. It had been seventy cubits high, and was constructed of brass. The fragments are said to have loaded nine hundred camels. Probably the purchase money was a sum ridiculously small, the profit enormous.

[87] Textualists, that is. It was attached to them in the first instance as a term of reproach.

[88] The tenets of the Karaites are said to have been:

1. The Creation of the world, as opposed to its eternal existence.

2. That God had no beginning, has no form, and that His unity is absolute.

3. That He sent Moses, and delivered to him the Law.

4. That every believer must derive his belief from the simple interpretation of Holy Scripture, without regard to tradition.

5. That God will raise the dead, and judge men hereafter.

6. That He has not cast away His chosen people.

In recording these opinions, it should be noted that it is quite possible (indeed, likely) that a party existed among the Jews, long previously to the time of Ananus, who held notions identical with or very like them, and who were also called Karaites, i.e., ‘Textualists;’ but they did not withdraw themselves into a separate community, under the name of Karaites, until A.D. 780.

CHAPTER XII.
THE JEWS OF THE FAR EAST.