The History of Judaism
A History of Judaism
Author: Salo Wittmayer Baron: Professor of Jewish History, Literature, and Institutions, Columbia
University, 1930–63. Author of A Social and Religious History of the Jews
It is history that provides the clue to an understanding of Judaism, for its primal affirmations appear in early historical narratives. Many contemporary scholars agree that although the biblical (Old Testament) tales report contemporary events and activities, they do so for essentially theological reasons. Such a distinction, however, would have been unacceptable to the authors, for their understanding of events was not super-added to but was contemporaneous with their experience or report of them. For them, it was primarily within history that the divine presence was encountered. God's presence was also experienced within the natural realm, but the more immediate or intimate disclosure occurred in human actions. Although other ancient communities saw a divine presence in history, this was taken up in its most consequent fashion within the ancient Israelite community and has remained, through many developments, the focus of its descendants' religious affirmations. It is this particular claim--to have experienced God's presence in human events--and its subsequent development that is the differentiating factor in Jewish thought. As ancient Israel believed itself through its history to be standing in a unique relationship to the divine, this basic belief affected and fashioned its life-style and mode of existence in a way markedly different from groups starting with a somewhat similar insight. The response of the people Israel to the divine presence in history was seen as crucial not only for itself but for all mankind. Further, God had--as person--in a particular encounter revealed the pattern and structure of communal and individual life to this people. Claiming sovereignty over the people because of his continuing action in history on its behalf, he had established a berit ("covenant") with it and had required from it obedience to his Torah (teaching). This obedience was a further means by which the divine presence was made manifest--expressed in concrete human existence. The corporate life of the chosen community was thus a summons to the rest of mankind to recognize God's presence, sovereignty, and purpose--the establishment of peace and well-being in the universe and in mankind.
History, moreover, disclosed not only God's purpose but also manifested man's inability to live in accord with it. Even the chosen community failed in its obligation and had, time and again, to be summoned back to its responsibility by divinely called spokesmen--the prophets--who warned of retribution within history and argued and re-argued the case of affirmative human response. Israel's role in the divine economy and thus Israel's particular culpability were dominant themes sounded against the motif of fulfillment, the ultimate triumph of the divine purpose, and the establishment of divine sovereignty over all mankind.
General observations
Nature and characteristics
In nearly 4,000 years of historical development, the Jewish people and their religion have displayed both a remarkable adaptability and continuity. In their encounter with the great civilizations, from ancient Babylonia and Egypt down to Western Christendom and modern secular culture, they have assimilated foreign elements and integrated them into their own socioreligious system, thus maintaining an unbroken line of ethnic and religious tradition. Furthermore, each period of Jewish history has left behind it a specific element of a Judaic heritage that continued to influence subsequent developments, so that the total Jewish heritage at any time is a combination of all these successive elements along with whatever adjustments and accretions are imperative in each new age.
The fundamental teachings of Judaism have often been grouped around the concept of an ethical (or ethical-historical) monotheism. Belief in the one and only God of Israel has been adhered to by professing Jews of all ages and all shades of sectarian opinion. By its very nature monotheism ultimately postulated religious universalism, although it could be combined with a measure of particularism. In the case of ancient Israel (see below Biblical Judaism [20th-4th century BCE]), particularism took the shape of the doctrine of election; that is, of a people chosen by God as "a kingdom of priests and a holy nation" to set an example for all mankind. Such an arrangement presupposed a covenant between God and the people, the terms of which the chosen people had to live up to or be severely punished. As the 8th-century-BCE prophet Amos expressed it: "You only have I known of all the families of the earth; therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities." Further, it was a concept that combined with the messianic idea, according to which, at the advent of the Redeemer, all nations would see the light, give up war and strife, and follow the guidance of the Torah (divine guidance, teaching, or law) emanating from Zion (a hill in Jerusalem that has a special spiritual significance). With all its variations in detail, messianism has, in one form or another, permeated Jewish thinking throughout the ages and, under various guises, has colored the outlook of many secular-minded Jews (see also eschatology).
Law became the major instrumentality by which Judaism was to bring about the reign of God on earth. In this case law meant not only what the Romans called jus (human law) but also fas, the divine or moral law that embraces practically all domains of life. The ideal, therefore, as expressed in the Ten Commandments, was a religioethical conduct that involved ritualistic observance as well as individual and social ethics, a liturgical-ethical way constantly expatiated on by the prophets and priests, rabbinic sages, and philosophers. Such conduct was to be placed in the service of God, as the transcendent and immanent Ruler of the universe, and as such the Creator and propelling force of the natural world, and also as the One giving guidance to history and thus helping man to overcome the potentially destructive and amoral forces of nature. According to Judaic belief, it is through the historical evolution of man, and particularly of the Jewish people, that the divine guidance of history constantly manifests itself and will ultimately culminate in the messianic age. Judaism, whether in its "normative" form or its sectarian deviations, never completely departed from this basic ethical-historical monotheism.
Periodization
The division of the Millennia of Jewish history into periods--a procedure frequently dependent on individual preferences--has not been devoid of theological or scholarly presuppositions.
On the other hand, 19th-century biblical scholars moved the decisive division back into the period of the Babylonian Exile and restoration of the Jews to Judah (6th-5th centuries BCE). They asserted that after the first fall of Jerusalem (586 BCE) the ancient "Israelitic" religion gave way to a new form of the "Jewish" faith, or Judaism, as formulated by Ezra the Scribe and his school (5th century BCE). A German historian, Eduard Meyer, in 1896 published Die Entstehung des Judentums ("The Origin of Judaism"), in which he placed the origins of Judaism in the Persian period (see below Biblical Judaism [20th-4th century BCE]) or the days of Ezra and Nehemiah (5th century BCE) and actually attributed to Persian imperialism an important role in shaping the new emergent Judaism.
These theories have been discarded by most scholars, however, in the light of a more comprehensive knowledge of the ancient Middle East and the abandonment of a theory of gradual evolutionary development that was dominant at the beginning of the 20th century. Most Jews share a long-accepted notion that there never was a real break in continuity and that Mosaic-prophetic-priestly Judaism was continued, with but few modifications, in the work of the Pharisaic and rabbinic sages (see below Rabbinic Judaism [2nd-18th century]) well into the modern period. Even today the various Jewish groups, whether Orthodox, Conservative, or Reform, all claim direct spiritual descent from the Pharisees and the rabbinic sages. In actual historical development, however, many deviations have occurred from so-called normative or rabbinic Judaism.
In any case, the history of Judaism here is viewed as falling into the following major periods of development: biblical Judaism (c. 20th-4th century BCE), Hellenistic Judaism (4th century BCE-2nd century CE), rabbinic Judaism (2nd-18th century CE), and modern Judaism (c. 1750 to the present).
The ancient Middle Eastern setting
Judaism: Important sites and regions of biblical Judaism.The family of the Hebrew patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob) is depicted in the Bible as having had its chief seat in the northern Mesopotamian town of Harran--then (mid-2nd millennium BCE) belonging to the Hurrian kingdom of Mitanni. From there Abraham, the founder of the Hebrew people, is said to have migrated to Canaan (comprising roughly the region of modern Israel and Lebanon)--throughout the biblical period and later ages a vortex of west Asian, Egyptian, and east Mediterranean ethnoculture. Thence the Hebrew ancestors of the people of Israel (named after the patriarch Jacob, also called Israel) migrated to Egypt, where they lived in servitude, and a few generations later returned to occupy part of Canaan. The Hebrews were seminomadic herdsmen and occasionally farmers, ranging close to towns and living in houses as well as tents.
The initial level of Israelite culture resembled that of its surroundings; it was neither wholly original nor primitive. The tribal structure resembled that of West Semitic steppe dwellers known from the 18th-century-BCE tablets excavated at the north central Mesopotamian city of Mari; their family customs and law have parallels in Old Babylonian and Hurro-Semite law of the early and middle 2nd millennium. The conception of a messenger of God that underlies biblical prophecy was Amorite (West Semitic) and found in the tablets at Mari. Mesopotamian religious and cultural conceptions are reflected in biblical cosmogony, primeval history (including the Flood story in Gen. 6:9-8:22), and law collections. The Canaanite component of Israelite culture consisted of the Hebrew language and a rich literary heritage--whose Ugaritic form (which flourished in the northern Syrian city of Ugarit from the mid-15th century to about 1200 BCE) illuminates the Bible's poetry, style, mythological allusions, and religiocultic terms. Egypt provides many analogues for Hebrew hymnody and wisdom literature. All the cultures among which the patriarchs lived had cosmic gods who fashioned the world and preserved its order, including justice; all had a developed ethic expressed in law and moral admonitions; and all had sophisticated religious rites and myths.
Though plainer when compared with some of the learned literary creations of Mesopotamia, Canaan, and Egypt, the earliest biblical writings are so imbued with contemporary ancient Middle Eastern elements that the once-held assumption that Israelite religion began on a primitive level must be rejected. Late-born amid high civilizations, the Israelite religion had from the start that admixture of high and low features characteristic of all the known religions of the area. Implanted on the land bridge between Africa and Asia, it was exposed to crosscurrents of foreign thought throughout its history.
The pre-Mosaic period: the religion of the patriarchs
Israelite tradition identified YHWH (by scholarly convention pronounced Yahweh), the God of Israel, with the Creator of the world, who had been known to and worshipped by men from the beginning of time. Abraham (perhaps 19th or 18th-17th centuries BCE) did not discover this God, but entered into a new covenant relation with him, in which he was promised the land of Canaan and a numerous progeny. God fulfilled that promise through the actions of the 13th-century-BCE Hebrew leader Moses: he liberated the people of Israel from Egypt, imposed Covenant obligations on them at Mt. Sinai, and brought them to the promised land.
Historical and anthropological studies present formidable objections to the continuity of YHWH worship from Adam (the biblical first man) to Moses, and the Hebrew tradition itself, moreover, does not unanimously support even the more modest claim of the continuity of YHWH worship from Abraham to Moses. Against it is a statement in chapter 6, verse 3, of Exodus that God revealed himself to the patriarchs not as YHWH but as El Shaddai--an epithet (of unknown meaning) the distribution of which in patriarchal narratives and Job and other poetical works confirms its archaic and un-specifically Israelite character. Comparable is the distribution of the epithet El Elyon (God Most High). Neither of these epithets appears in postpatriarchal narratives (excepting the Book of Ruth). Other compounds with El are unique to Genesis: El Olam (God the Everlasting One), El Bethel (God Bethel), and El Ro'i (God of Vision). An additional peculiarity of the patriarchal stories is their use of the phrase "God of my [your, his] father." All of these epithets have been taken as evidence that patriarchal religion differed from the worship of YHWH that began with Moses. A relation to a patron god was defined by revelations starting with Abraham (who never refers to the God of his father) and continuing with a succession of "founders" of his worship. Attached to the founder and his family, as befits the patron of wanderers, this unnamed deity (if indeed he was one only) acquired various Canaanite epithets (El, Elyon, Olam, Bethel, qone eretz [possessor of the Land]) only after their immigration into Canaan. Whether the name of YHWH was known to the patriarchs is doubtful. It is significant that while the epithets Shaddai and El occur frequently in pre-Mosaic and Mosaic-age names, YHWH appears as an element only in the names of Yehoshua' (Joshua) and perhaps of Jochebed--persons who were closely associated with Moses.
The patriarchs are depicted as objects of God's blessing, protection, and providential care. Their response is loyalty and obedience and observance of a cult whose ordinary expression is sacrifice, vow, and prayer at an altar, stone pillar, or sacred tree. Circumcision was a distinctive mark of the cult community. The eschatology (doctrine of ultimate destiny) of their faith was God's promise of land and a great progeny. Any flagrant contradictions between patriarchal and later mores have presumably been censored; yet distinctive features of the post-Mosaic religion are absent. The God of the patriarchs shows nothing of YHWH's "jealousy"; no religious tension or contrast with their neighbors appears, and idolatry is scarcely an issue. The patriarchal covenant differed from the Mosaic Sinaitic Covenant in that it was modeled upon a royal grant to favorites and contained no obligations, the fulfillment of which was to be the condition of their happiness. Evidently not the same as the later religion of Israel, patriarchal religion prepared the way for it in its familial basis, its personal call by the deity, and its response of loyalty and obedience to him.
Little can be said of the relation of the religion of the patriarchs to the religions of Canaan. Known points of contact between the two are the divine epithets mentioned above. Like the God of the fathers, El, the head of the Ugaritic pantheon was depicted both as a judgmental and a compassionate deity. Baal (Lord), the aggressive young agricultural deity of Ugarit, is remarkably absent from Genesis. Yet the socioeconomic situation of the patriarchs was so different from the urban, mercantile, and monarchical background of the Ugaritic myths as to render any comparisons highly questionable.
The Mosaic period: foundations of the Israelite religion
The Egyptian sojourn
Judaism: Important sites and regions of biblical Judaism. According to Hebrew tradition, a famine caused the migration to Egypt of the band of 12 Hebrew families that later made up a tribal league in the land of Israel. The schematic character of this tradition does not impair the historicity of a migration to Egypt, an enslavement by Egyptians, and an escape from Egypt under an inspired leader by some component of the later league of Israelite tribes. To disallow these events would make their centrality as articles of faith in the later religious beliefs of Israel inexplicable.
Tradition gives the following account of the birth of the nation. At the Exodus from Egypt (13th century BCE), YHWH showed his faithfulness and power by liberating Israel from bondage and punishing their oppressors with plagues and drowning at the sea. At Sinai, he made Israel his people and gave them the terms of his Covenant, regulating their conduct toward him and each other so as to make them a holy nation. After sustaining them miraculously during their 40-year wilderness trek, he enabled them to take the land that he had promised to their fathers, the patriarchs. Central to these events is God's apostle, Moses, who was commissioned to lead Israel out of Egypt, mediate God's Covenant to them, and bring them to Canaan.
Behind the biblical and the multiform law collections, a historical figure must be posited to whom the bibles and the legislative activity could be attached. And it is precisely Moses' unusual combination of roles that makes him credible as a historical figure. Unlike Muhammad at the birth of Islam, Moses fills oracular, legislative, executive, and military functions. The main institutions of Israel are his creation: the priesthood and the sacred shrine, the Covenant and its rules, the administrative apparatus of the tribal league. Significantly, though Moses is compared to a prophet in various texts in the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible), he is never designated as one--the term being evidently unsuited for so comprehensive and unique a figure.
Mosaic religion
The distinctive features of Israelite religion appear with Moses. The proper name of Israel's God, YHWH, was revealed and interpreted to Moses as meaning ehye asher ehye--an enigmatic phrase (literally meaning "I am/shall be what I am/shall be") of infinite suggestiveness. The Covenant, defining Israel's obligations, is ascribed to Moses' mediation. Although it is impossible to determine what rulings go back to Moses, the Decalogue, or Ten Commandments, presented in chapter 20 of Exodus and chapter 5 of Deuteronomy, and the larger and smaller Covenant codes in Ex. 20:22-23:33; 34:11-26) are held by critics to contain early covenant law. From them, the following features may be noted: (1) The rules are formulated as God's utterances--i.e., expressions of his sovereign will. (2) They are directed toward, and often explicitly addressed to, the people at large; Moses merely conveys the sovereign's message to his subjects. (3) Publication being of the essence of the rules, the people as a whole are held responsible for their observance (see also covenant).
The liberation from Egypt laid upon Israel the obligation of exclusive loyalty to YHWH. This meant eschewing all other gods--including idols venerated as such--and the elimination of all magical recourses. The worship of YHWH was aniconic (without images); even such figures as might serve in his worship were banned--apparently owing to the theurgic overtones (the implication that through them men may influence or control the god by fixing his presence in a particular place and making him accessible). Though a mythological background lies behind some cultic terminology (e.g., "a pleasing odor to YHWH," "my bread"), sacrifice is rationalized as tribute or (in priestly writings) is regarded purely as a sacrament; i.e., as a material means of relating to God. Hebrew festivals also have no mythological basis; they either celebrate God's bounty (e.g., at the ingathering of the harvest) or his saving acts (e.g., the festival of unleavened bread, which is a memorial of the Exodus).
The values of life and limb, labor, and social solidarity are protected in the rules on relations between man and man. The involuntary perpetual slavery of Hebrews is abolished, and a seven-year limit is set on bondage. The humanity of slaves is defended: one who beats his slave to death is liable to death; if he maims a slave he must set the slave free. A murderer is denied asylum and may not ransom himself from death, while for deliberate and severe bodily injuries the lex talionis ("an eye for an eye" principle) is ordained. Harm to property or theft is punished monetarily, never by death.
Moral exhortations call for solidarity with the poor and the helpless, for brotherly assistance to fellows in need. Institutions are created (e.g., the sabbatical, or seventh, fallow year, in which land is not cultivated) to embody them in practice.
Since the goal of the people was the conquest of a land, their religion had warlike features. Organized as an army (called "the hosts of YHWH" in Ex. 12:41), they encamped in a protective square around their palladium--the tent housing the ark in which the stone "tablets of the Covenant" rested. When journeying, the sacred objects were carried and guarded by the Levites (a tribe serving religious functions), whose rivals, the Aaronites, had a monopoly on the priesthood. God, sometimes called "the warrior," marched with the army; in war, part of the booty was delivered to his ministers.
The period of the conquest and settlement of Canaan
The conquest of Canaan was remembered as a continuation of God's marvels at the Exodus. The Jordan River was split asunder, Jericho's walls fell at Israel's shout; the enemy was seized with divinely inspired terror; the sun stood still in order to enable Israel to exploit its victory. Such stories are not necessarily the work of a later age; they reflect rather the impact of these victories on the actors in the drama, who felt themselves successful by the grace of God.
A complex process of occupation, involving both battles of annihilation and treaty arrangements with the natives, has been simplified in the biblical account of Joshua's wars. Gradually, the unity of the invaders dissolved (most scholars believe that the invading element was only part of the Hebrew settlement in Canaan; other Hebrews, long since settled in Canaan from patriarchal times, then joined the invaders' covenant league). Individual tribes made their way with more or less success against the residue of Canaanite resistance. New enemies, Israel's neighbors to the east and west, appeared, and the period of the judges (leaders, or champions) began.
The Book of Judges, the main witness for the period, does not speak with one voice on the religious situation. Its editorial framework describes repeated cycles of apostasy, oppression, appeal to God, and relief through a God-sent champion. The pre-monarchic troubles (before the kingship of Saul; see below) caused by the weakness of the disunited tribes were thus accounted for by the covenantal sin of apostasy. The individual stories, however, present a different picture. Apostasy does not figure in the exploits of the judges Ehud, Deborah, Jephthah, and Samson; YHWH has no rival, and faith in him is periodically confirmed by the saviors he sends to rescue Israel from their neighbors.
This faith is shared by all the tribes; and it is owing to their common cult that a Levite from Bethlehem could serve first at an Ephraimite and later also at a Danite sanctuary. The religious bond, preserved by the common cult, was enough to enable the tribes to act more or less in concert under the leadership of elders or an inspired champion in time of danger or religious scandal.
To be sure, both written and archaeological testimonies point to the Hebrews' adoption of Canaanite cults--the Baal worship of Gideon's family and neighbors in Ophrah in Judges, chapter 6, is an example. The many cultic figurines (usually female) found in Israelite levels of Palestinian archaeological sites also give color to the sweeping indictments of the framework of the Book of Judges. But these phenomena belonged to the private, popular religion; the national God, YHWH, remained one--Baal sent no prophets to Israel--though YHWH's claim to exclusive worship was obviously not effectual. Nor did his cult conform with later orthodoxy; Micah's idol in Judges, chapter 17, and Gideon's ephod (priestly or religious garment) were considered apostasies by the editor, in accord with the dogma that other than orthodoxy there is only apostasy--heterodoxy (nonconformity) being unrecognized and simply equated with apostasy.
To the earliest sanctuaries and altars honored as patriarchal foundations--at Shechem, Bethel, Beersheba, and Hebron in Cisjordan (west of the Jordan); at Mahanaim, Penuel, and Mizpah in Transjordan (east of the Jordan)--were now added new ones at Dan, Shiloh, Ramah, Gibeon, and Gilgal, among others. A single priestly family could not operate all these establishments, and Levites rose to the priesthood; at private sanctuaries even non-Levites might be consecrated as priests. The ark of the Covenant was housed in the Shiloh sanctuary, staffed by priests of the house of Eli, who traced their consecration back to Egypt. But the ark remained a portable palladium in wartime; Shiloh was not regarded as its final resting place. The law in Exodus, chapter 20, verses 24-26, authorizing a plurality of altar sites and the simplest forms of construction (earth and rough stone) suited the plain conditions of this period.
The period of the united monarchy
The religiopolitical problem
The loose, decentralized tribal league could not cope with the constant pressure of external enemies--camel-riding desert marauders who pillaged harvests annually or iron-weaponed Philistines (an Aegean people settling coastal Palestine c. 12th century BCE) who controlled key points in the hill country occupied by Israelites. In the face of such threats to the Israelites, local, sporadic, God-inspired saviors had to be replaced by a continuous central leadership that could mobilize the forces of the entire league and create a standing army. Two attitudes were distilled in the crisis, one conservative and antimonarchic, the other progressive and promonarchic. The conservative appears first in Gideon's refusal, in Judges, chapter 8, verse 23, to found a dynasty: "I will not rule you," he tells the people, "my son will not rule over you; YHWH will . . . !" This theocratic view pervades one of the two contrasting accounts of the founding of the monarchy fused in chapters 8-12 of the First Book of Samuel: the popular demand for a king was viewed as a rejection of the kingship of God, which was embodied in a series of inspired saviours from Moses and Aaron, through Jerubbaal, Bedan, and Jephthah, to Samuel. The other account depicts the monarchy as a gift of God, designed to rescue his people from the Philistines (I Sam. 9:16). Both accounts represent the seer-judge Samuel as the key figure in the founding of Israel's monarchy, and it is not unlikely that the two attitudes struggled in his breast.
The Benjaminite Saul was made king (c. 1020 BCE) by divine election and by popular acclamation after his victory over the Ammonites (a Transjordanian Semitic people), but his career was clouded by conflict with Samuel, the major representative of the old order. Saul's kingship was bestowed by Samuel and had to be accommodated to the ongoing authority of that man of God. The two accounts of Saul's rejection by God (through Samuel) involve his usurpation of the prophet's authority. King David, whose forcefulness and religiopolitical genius established the monarchy (c. 1000 BCE) on an independent spiritual footing, resolved the conflict.
The Davidic monarchy
The essence of the Davidic innovation was the idea that, in addition to divine election through Samuel and public acclamation, David had God's promise of an eternal dynasty (a conditional, perhaps earlier, and an unconditional, perhaps later, form of this promise exist in Psalms, 132 and II Samuel, chapter 7, respectively). In its developed form, the promise was conceived of as a covenant with David, parallelling the Covenant with Israel and instrumental in the latter's fulfillment; i.e., that God would channel his benefactions to Israel through the chosen dynasty of David. With this new status came the inviolability of the person of God's anointed (a characteristically Davidic idea) and a court rhetoric--adapted from pagan models--in which the king was styled "the [firstborn] son of God." An index of the king's sanctity was his occasional performance of priestly duties. Yet the king's mortality was never forgotten--he was never deified; prayers and hymns might be said on his behalf, but they were never addressed to him as a god.
David captured the Jebusite stronghold of Jerusalem, paid for it, and made it the seat of a national monarchy (Saul had never moved the seat of his government from his home town, the Benjaminite town of Gibeah, about three miles north of Jerusalem). Then, fetching the ark from an obscure retreat, David installed it in his capital, asserting his royal prerogative (and obligation) to build a shrine for the national God--at the same time joining the symbols of the dynastic and the national covenants. This move of political genius linked the God of Israel, the chosen dynasty of David, and the chosen city of Jerusalem in a henceforth indissoluble union.
David planned to erect a temple to house the ark, but the tenacious tradition of the ark's portability in a tent shrine forced postponement of the project to his son Solomon's reign. As part of his extensive building operations, Solomon built the Temple on a Jebusite threshing floor, located on a hill north of the royal city, which David had purchased to mark the spot where a plague had been halted. The ground plan of the Temple--a porch with two free-standing pillars before it, a sanctuary, and an inner sanctum--followed Syrian and Phoenician sanctuary models. A bronze "sea" resting on bulls and placed in the Temple court has a Babylonian analogue. Exteriorly, the Jerusalem Temple resembled Canaanite and other Middle Eastern religious structures, but there were differences; e.g., no god image stood in the inner sanctum, but rather only the ancient ark and the new large cherubim (hybrid creatures with animal bodies, human or animal faces, and wings) whose wings covered it, symbolizing the presence of YHWH who was enthroned upon celestial cherubim.
Alongside a brief, ancient inaugural poem in I Kings, chapter 8, verses 12-13, an extensive (and, in its present form, later) prayer expresses the distinctively biblical view of the temple as a vehicle of God's providing for his people's needs. Since, strangely, no reference to sacrifice is made, not a trace appears of the standard pagan conception of the temple as a vehicle of man's providing for the gods.
That literature flourished under the aegis of the court is to be gathered from the quality of the preserved narrative of the reign of David, which gives every indication of having come from the hand of a contemporary eyewitness. The royally sponsored Temple must have had a library and a school attached to it (in accord with the universally attested practice of the ancient Middle East), among whose products were not only royal psalms but also such liturgical pieces intended for the common man as eventually found their way into the book of Psalms.
The latest historical allusions in the Torah literature (the Pentateuch) are to the period of the united monarchy; e.g., the defeat and subjugation of the peoples of Amalek, Moab, and Edom by Saul and David, in Numbers, chapter 24, verses 17-20. On the other hand, the polity reflected in the laws is tribal and decentralized, with no bureaucracy. Its economy is agricultural and pastoral, class distinctions apart from slave and free are lacking, and commerce and urban life are rudimentary. A premonarchic background is evident, with only rare explicit reflections of the later monarchy; e.g., in Deuteronomy, chapter 17, verses 14-20. The groundwork of the Torah literature may thus be supposed to have crystallized under the united monarchy.
It was in this period that the traditional wisdom cultivated among the learned in neighboring cultures came to be prized in Israel. Solomon is represented as the author of an extensive literature comparable to that of other Eastern sages. His wisdom is expressly attributed to YHWH in the account of his night oracle at Gibeon (in which he asked not for power or riches but for wisdom), thus marking the adaptation to biblical thought of this common Middle Eastern genre. As set forth in Proverbs, chapter 2, verse 5, "It is YHWH who grants wisdom; knowledge and understanding are by his command." Patronage of wisdom literature is ascribed to the later Judahite king, Hezekiah, and the connection of wisdom with kings is common in extra-biblical cultures as well.
Domination of all of Palestine entailed the absorption of "the rest of the Amorites"--the pre-Israelite population that lived chiefly in the valleys and on the coast. Their impact on Israelite religion is unknown, though some scholars contend that a "royally sponsored syncretism" arose with the aim of fusing the two populations. That popular religion did not meet the standards of the biblical writers and that it incorporated pagan elements--and that such elements may have increased as a result of intercourse with the newly absorbed "Amorites"--is likely and required no royal sponsorship. On the other hand, the court itself welcomed foreigners--Philistines, Cretans, Hittites, and Ishmaelites are named, among others--and made use of their service. Their effect on the court religion may be surmised from what is recorded concerning Solomon's many diplomatic marriages: foreign princesses whom Solomon married brought along with them the apparatus of their native cults, and the King had shrines to their gods built and maintained on the Mount of Olives. Such private cults, while indeed royally sponsored, did not make the religion of the people syncretistic.
Such compromise with the pagan world, entailed by the widening horizons of the monarchy, violated the sanctity of the holy land of YHWH and turned the king into an idolator in the eyes of zealots. Religious opposition, combined with grievances against the organization of forced labor for state projects, led to the secession of the northern tribes (headed by the Joseph tribes) after Solomon's death.
The period of the divided kingdom
Jeroboam I (10th century BCE), the first king of the north (now called Israel, in contradistinction to Judah, the southern Davidic kingdom), appreciated the inextricable link of Jerusalem and its sanctuary with the Davidic claim to divine election to kingship over all Israel (the whole people, north and south). He therefore founded rival sanctuaries at Dan and at Bethel--ancient cult sites--and manned them with non-Levite priests whose symbol of YHWH's presence was a golden calf--a pedestal of divine images in ancient iconography and the equivalent of the cherubim of Jerusalem's Temple. He also moved the autumn in-gathering festival one month ahead so as to foreclose celebration of this most popular of all festivals in common with Judah.
For the evaluation of Jeroboam's innovations and the subsequent official religion of the north down to the mid-8th century, one must rely almost exclusively on the Book of Kings (later divided into two books). This work has severe limitations as a source for religious history. The material of this book, in good part contemporary, is subjugated to a dogmatic historiography that regards the whole enterprise of the north as one long apostasy ending in a deserved disaster. The culmination of Kings' history with the exile of Judah shows its provenience to have been Judahite. Yet the evaluation of Judah's official religion is subject to an equally dogmatic standard, namely, the royal adherence to the Deuteronomic rule of a single cult site. The author considered the Solomonic Temple to be the cult site chosen by God, according to Deuteronomy, chapter 12, the existence of which rendered all other sites illegitimate. Every king of Judah is judged according to whether or not he did away with all extra-Jerusalemite places of worship. (The date of this criterion may be inferred from the indifference toward it of all persons [e.g., the 9th-century-BCE prophets Elijah and Elisha and the Jerusalemite priest Jehoiada] prior to the late-8th-century-BCE Judahite king Hezekiah.) Another serious limitation is the restriction of Kings' purview: excepting the Elijah-Elisha stories, it notices only the royally sponsored cult; notices of the popular religion are very few. From the mid-8th century the writings of the classical prophets, starting with Amos, set in. These take in the people as a whole, in contrast to Kings; on the other hand their interest in theodicy (justification of God) and their polemical tendency to exaggerate and generalize what they deem evil must be taken into consideration before approving their statements as sober history.
For a half-century after the north's secession (c. 922 BCE), the religious situation in Jerusalem was unchanged. The distaff side of the royal household perpetuated, and even augmented, the pagan cults. King Asa (reigned c. 908-867 BCE) is credited with a general purge, including the destruction of an image made for the goddess Asherah by the queen mother, granddaughter of an Aramaean princess. He also purged the qedeshim ("consecrated men"--conventionally rendered as "sodomites," or "male sacred prostitutes").
Foreign cults entered the north with the marriage of the 9th-century-BCE king Ahab to the Tyrian princess Jezebel. Jezebel brought with her a large entourage of sacred personnel to staff the temple of Baal and Asherah that Ahab built for her in Samaria, the capital of the northern kingdom of Israel. In all else, Ahab's orthodoxy was irreproachable, though others of his court may have joined the worship of the foreign princess. That fierce opposition to the non-YWHW cults sprang up must be supposed in order to account for Jezebel's persecution of the prophets of YHWH, conduct untypical of a polytheist except in self-defense. Elijah's assertion that the whole country apostatized is a hyperbole based on the view that whoever did not actively fight Jezebel was implicated in her polluted cult. Such must have been the view of the prophets, whose fallen were the first martyrs to die for the glory of God. The quality of their opposition may be gauged by Elijah's summary execution of the foreign Baal cultists after they failed the test at Mt. Carmel, where they vied against him in a contest over whose god was truly God. A three-year drought (attested also in Phoenician sources), declared by Elijah to be punishment for the sin, must have done much to kindle the prophets' zeal.
To judge from the Elisha stories, the Baal worship in the capital city, Samaria, was not felt in the countryside. There the religious tone was set by the popular prophets and the prophetic companies ("the sons of the prophets") who attached themselves to them. In popular consciousness these men were wonder-workers--healing the sick and reviving the dead, foretelling the future, and helping to find lost objects. To the biblical narrator they witness the working of God in Israel. Elijah's rage at the Israelite king Ahaziah's recourse to the pagan god Baalzebub, Elisha's cure of the Syrian military leader Naaman's leprosy, and anonymous prophets' directives and predictions in matters of peace and war all serve to glorify God. Indeed, the equation of Israel's prosperity with God's interest generated the issue of "true" and "false" prophecy that made its first appearance at this time. That prophecy of success could turn out to be a snare is exemplified in a story of conflict between Micaiah, the lone 9th-century-BCE prophet of doom, and 400 unanimous prophets of victory who lured Ahab to his death. The poignancy of the issue is highlighted by Micaiah's acknowledgment that the 400 were also prophets of YHWH--but inspired by him deliberately with a "lying spirit."
The period of classical prophecy and cult reform
The emergence of the literary prophets
By the mid-8th century a hundred years of chronic warfare between Israel and Aram had finally ended--the Aramaeans having suffered heavy blows from the Assyrians. King Jeroboam II (8th century BCE) was able to undertake to restore the imperial sway of the north over its neighbour, and a prophecy of Jonah that he would extend Israel's borders from the Dead Sea to the entrance to Hamath (Syria) was borne out. The well-to-do expressed their relief in lavish attentions to the institutions of worship and their private mansions. But the strain of the prolonged warfare showed in the polarization of society between the wealthy few who had profited from the war and the masses whom it had ravaged and impoverished. Dismay at the dissolution of Israelite society animated a new breed of prophets who now appeared--the literary or classical prophets, first of whom was Amos, an 8th-century-BCE Judahite who went north to Bethel.
That apostasy would set God against the community was an old conception of early prophecy; that violation of the sociomoral injunctions of the Covenant would have the same result was first proclaimed by Amos. Amos almost ignored idolatry, denouncing instead the corruption and callousness of the oligarchy and rulers. The religious exercises of such villains he proclaimed were loathsome to God; on their account Israel would be oppressed from the entrance to Hamath to the Dead Sea and exiled from its land.
The westward push of the Neo-Assyrian Empire in the mid-8th century BCE soon brought Aram and Israel to their knees. In 733-732 Assyria took Gilead and Galilee from Israel and captured Aramaean Damascus; in 721 Samaria, the Israelite capital, fell. The northern kingdom sought to survive through alliances with Assyria and Egypt; its kings came and went in rapid succession. The troubled society's malaise was interpreted by Hosea, a prophet of the northern kingdom (Israel), as a forgetting of God. As a result, in his view, all authority had evaporated: the king was scoffed at, priests became hypocrites, and pleasure seeking became the order of the day. The monarchy was godless; it put its trust in arms, fortifications, and alliances with the great powers. Salvation, however, lay in none of these but in repentance and reliance upon God.
Prophecy in the southern kingdom
Judah was subjected to such intense pressure to join an Israelite-Aramaean coalition against Assyria that its 8th-century-BCE king Ahaz chose to submit himself to Assyria in return for relief. Ahaz introduced a new Aramaean-style altar in the Jerusalem Temple and adopted other foreign customs that are counted against him in the book of Kings. It was at this time that Isaiah prophesied in Jerusalem. At first (under Uzziah, Ahaz' prosperous grandfather), his message focussed on the corruption of Judah's society and religion, stressing the new prophetic themes of indifference to God (which went hand in hand with a thriving cult) and the fateful importance of social morality. Under Ahaz the political crisis evoked Isaiah's appeals for trust in God, with the warning that the "hired razor from across the Euphrates" would shave Judah clean as well. Isaiah interpreted the inexorable advance of Assyria as God's chastisement; Assyria was "the rod of God's wrath." But, since Assyria ignored its mere instrumentality and exceeded in an insolent manner its proper function, God, when he finished his purgative work, would break Assyria on Judah's mountains. Then the nations of the world, who had been subjugated by Assyria, would recognize the God of Israel as the lord of history. A renewed Israel would prosper under the reign of an ideal Davidic king, all men would flock to Zion (the hill symbolizing Jerusalem) to learn the ways of YHWH and submit to his adjudication, and universal peace would prevail (see also eschatology).
The prophecy of Micah (8th century BCE), also a Judahite, was contemporary with that of Isaiah and touched on similar themes (e.g., the vision of universal peace is found in both their books). Unlike Isaiah, however, who believed in the inviolability of Jerusalem, Micah shocked his audience with the announcement that the wickedness of its rulers would cause Zion to become a plowed field, Jerusalem a heap of ruins, and the Temple mount a wooded height. Moreover, from the precedence of social morality over the cult, Micah drew the extreme conclusion that the cult had no ultimate value and that God's requirement of men can be summed up as "to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God."
Reforms in the southern kingdom
According to Jeremiah (about 100 years later), Micah's prophetic threat to Jerusalem had caused King Hezekiah (reigned c. 715-c. 686 BCE) to placate God--possibly an allusion to the cult reform instituted by the King in order to cleanse Judah from various pagan practices. A heightened concern over assimilatory trends resulted in his also outlawing certain practices considered legitimate up to his time. Thus, in addition to removing the bronze serpent that had been ascribed to Moses (and that had become a fetish), the reform did away with the local altars and stone pillars, the venerable (patriarchal) antiquity of which did not save them from the taint of imitation of Canaanite practice. Hezekiah's reform, part of a restorational policy that had political, as well as religious, implications, appears as the most significant effect of the fall of the northern kingdom on official religion. The outlook of the reformers is suggested by the catalog in II Kings, chapter 17, of religious offenses that had caused the fall, which the objects of Hezekiah's purge closely resemble. Hezekiah's reform is the first historical evidence for Deuteronomy's doctrine of cult centralization. Similarities between Deuteronomy and the Book of Hosea lend colour to the supposition that the reform movement in Judah, which culminated a century later under King Josiah, was sparked by attitudes inherited from the north.
Hezekiah was the leading figure in a western coalition of states that coordinated a rebellion against the Assyrian king Sennacherib with the Babylonian rebel Merodach-Baladan, shortly after the Assyrian's accession in 705 BCE. When Sennacherib appeared in the west in 701, the rebellion collapsed; Egypt sent a force to aid the rebels, but it was defeated. Hezekiah saw his kingdom overwhelmed and offered tribute to Sennacherib; the Assyrian, however, pressed for the surrender of Jerusalem. In despair, Hezekiah turned to the prophet Isaiah for an oracle. Though the prophet condemned the King's reliance upon Egyptian help, he stood firm in his faith that Jerusalem's destiny precluded its fall into heathen hands. The King held fast, and Sennacherib, for reasons still obscure, suddenly retired from Judah and returned home. This unlooked-for deliverance of the city may have been regarded as a vindication of the prophet's faith and was doubtless an inspiration to the rebels against Babylonia a century later. For the present, while Jerusalem was intact, the country had been devastated and its kingdom turned into a vassal state of Assyria.
During Manasseh's long and peaceful reign in the 7th century BCE, Judah was a submissive ally of Assyria. Manasseh's forces served in the building and military operations of the Assyrian kings Esarhaddon and Ashurbanipal. Judah benefitted from the upsurge of commerce that resulted from the political unification of the whole Near East. The prophet Zephaniah attests to heavy foreign influence on the mores of Jerusalem--merchants who adopted foreign dress, cynics who lost faith in the efficacy of YHWH to do anything, people who worshipped the pagan host of heaven on their roofs. Manasseh's court was the centre of such influences. The royal sanctuary became the home of a congeries of foreign gods--the sun, astral deities, and Asherah (the female fertility deity) all had their cults there alongside YHWH. The countryside also was provided with pagan altars and priests, alongside the local YHWH altars that were revived. Presumably, at least some of the blood that Manasseh is said to have spilled freely in Jerusalem must have belonged to YHWH's devotees. No prophecy is dated to his long reign.
With Ashurbanipal's death in 627, Assyria's power faded quickly; the young Judahite king Josiah (reigned c. 640-609 BCE) had already set in motion a vigorous movement of independence and restoration, a cardinal aspect of which was religious. First came the purge of foreign cults in Jerusalem, under the aegis of the high priest Hilkiah; then the countryside was cleansed. In the course of renovating the Temple, a scroll of Moses' Torah (by scholarly consensus an edition of Deuteronomy) was found. Anxious to abide by its injunctions, Josiah had the local YHWH altars polluted to render them unusable and collected their priests in Jerusalem. The celebration of the Passover that year was concentrated in the Temple, as it had not been "since the days of the judges who judged Israel," according to II Kings 23:22, or since the days of Samuel, according to II Chron. 35:18; both references reflect the unhistorical theory of the Deuteronomic (Josianic) reformers that the Shiloh sanctuary was the precursor of the Jerusalem Temple as the sole legitimate site of worship in Israel (as demanded by Deuteronomy, chapter 12). To seal the reform, the King convoked a representative assembly and had them enter into a covenant with God over the newfound Torah. For the first time, the power of the state was enlisted on behalf of the ancient covenant and in obedience to a covenant document. It was a major step toward the fixation of a sacred canon.
Josiah envisaged the restoration of Davidic authority over the entire domain of ancient Israel, and the retreat of Assyria facilitated his program--until he became fatally embroiled in the struggle of the powers over the dying empire. His death in 609 was doubtless a setback for his religious policy as well as his political aspirations. To be sure, the royally sponsored syncretism of Manasseh's time was not revived, but there is evidence of recrudescence of unofficial local altars. Whether references in Jeremiah and Ezekiel to child sacrifice to YHWH reflect post-Josianic practices is uncertain. There is stronger indication of private recourse to pagan cults in the worsening political situation.
That Assyria's fall should have been followed by the yoke of a harsh new heathen power dismayed the devotees of YHWH who had not been prepared for it by prophecy. Their mood finds expression in the oracles of the prophet Habakkuk in the last years of the 7th century BCE. Confessing perplexity at God's toleration of the success of the wicked in subjugating the righteous, the prophet affirms his faith in the coming salvation of YHWH, tarry though it might. And in the meantime, "the righteous must live in his faith."
But the situation in fact grew worse as Judah was caught in the Babylonian-Egyptian rivalry. Some attributed the deterioration to the burden of Manasseh's sin that still rested on the people. For the prophet Jeremiah (active c. 626-c. 580 BCE), the Josianic era was only an interlude in Israel's career of guilt that went back to its origins. His pre-reform prophecies denounced Israel as a faithless wife and warned of imminent retribution at the hands of a nameless northerner. After Nebuchadrezzar's decisive defeat of Egypt at Carchemish (605 BCE), Jeremiah identified the scourge as Babylon. King Jehoiakim's attempt to be free of Babylonia ended with the exile of his successor, Jehoiachin, along with Judah's elite (597); yet the court of the new king, Zedekiah, persisted in plotting new revolts, relying--against all experience--on Egyptian support. Jeremiah now proclaimed a scandalous doctrine of the duty of all nations, Judah included, to submit to the divinely appointed world ruler, the Babylonian monarch Nebuchadrezzar. In submission lay the only hope of avoiding destruction; a term of 70 years had been set to humiliate all men beneath Babylon. Imprisoned for demoralizing the populace, Jeremiah persisted in what was viewed as his traitorous message; the leaders, on their part, persisted in their policy, confident of Egypt and the saving power of Jerusalem's Temple, to the bitter end.
Jeremiah also had a message of comfort for his hearers. He foresaw the restoration of the entire people--north and south--in the land, under a new David. And since events had shown that man was incapable of achieving a lasting reconciliation with God on his own, he envisioned the penitent of the future being met halfway by God, who would remake their nature so that to do his will would come naturally to them. God's new covenant with Israel would be written on their hearts, so that they should no longer need to teach each other obedience, for young and old would know YHWH.
Among the exiles in Babylonia, the prophet Ezekiel, Jeremiah's contemporary, was haunted by the burden of Israel's sin. He saw the defiled Temple of Manasseh's time as present before his eyes, and described God as abandoning it and Jerusalem to their fates. Though Jeremiah offered hope through submission, Ezekiel prophesied an inexorable, total destruction as the condition of reconciliation with God. The majesty of God was too grossly offended for any lesser satisfaction. The glory of God demanded Israel's ruin, but the same cause required its restoration. For Israel's fall disgraced YHWH among the nations; to save his reputation he must therefore restore Israel to its land. The dried bones of Israel must revive, that they and all the nations should know that he was YHWH (Ezek. 37). Ezekiel, too, foresaw the remaking of human nature, but as a necessity of God's glorification; the concatenation of Israel's sin, exile, and consequent defamation of God's name must never be repeated. In 587/586 BCE the doom prophecies of Jeremiah and Ezekiel came true. Rebellious Jerusalem was reduced by Nebuchadrezzar, the Temple was burnt, and much of Judah's population dispersed or deported to Babylonia.
The exilic period
The survival of the religious community of exiles in Babylonia demonstrates how rooted and widespread the religion of YHWH was. Abandonment of the national religion as an outcome of the disaster is recorded of a minority only. There were some cries of despair, but the persistence of prophecy among the exiles shows that their religious vitality had not flagged. The Babylonian Jewish community, in which the cream of Judah lived, had no sanctuary or altar (in contrast to the Jewish garrison of Elephantine in Egypt); what developed in their place can be surmised from new postexilic religious forms: fixed prayer; public fasts and confessions; and assembly for the study of the Torah, which may have developed from visits to the prophets for oracular edification. The absence of a local or territorial focus must also have spurred the formation of a literary-ideational centre of communal life--the sacred canon of Covenant documents that came to be the core of the present Pentateuch. Observance of the Sabbath--a peculiarly public feature of communal life--achieved a significance among the exiles virtually equivalent to all the rest of the Covenant rules together. Notwithstanding its political impotence, the spirit of the exiles was so high that foreigners were attracted to their ranks, hopeful of sharing their future glory.
Assurance of that future glory was given not only in the consolations promised by Jeremiah and Ezekiel (the fulfillment of whose prophecies of doom lent credit to their consolations); the great comforter of the exile was the writer or writers of what is known as Deutero-Isaiah (Isa. 40-66), who perceived in the rise and progress (from c. 550) of the Persian king Cyrus II the Great the instrument of God's salvation. Going beyond the national hopes of Ezekiel, animated by the universal spirit of the pre-exilic Isaiah, Deutero-Isaiah saw in the miraculous restoration of Israel a means of converting the whole world to faith in Israel's God. Israel would thus serve as "a light for the nations, that YHWH's salvation may reach to the end of the earth." In his conception of the vicarious suffering of God's servant--through which atonement is made for the ignorant heathen--Deutero-Isaiah found a handle by which to grasp the enigma of faithful Israel's lowly state among the Gentiles. The idea was destined to play a decisive role in the self-understanding of the Jewish martyrs of the Syrian king Antiochus IV Epiphanes' persecution in the 2nd century BCE (in, for example, Daniel) and later again in the Christian appreciation of the death of Jesus.
The period of the restoration
After conquering Babylon, Cyrus so far justified the hopes put in him that he allowed those Jews who wished to do so to return and rebuild their Temple. Though, in time, some 40,000 made their way back, they were soon disillusioned by the failure of the glories of the restoration to materialize and by the controversy with the Samaritans, and left off building the Temple. (The Samaritans were a judaized mixture of native north Israelites and Gentile deportees settled by the Assyrians in the erstwhile northern kingdom.) A new religious inspiration came under the governorship of Zerubbabel, a member of the Davidic line, who became the centre of messianic expectations during the anarchy attendant upon the accession to the Persian throne of Darius I (522). The prophets Haggai and Zechariah perceived the disturbances as heralds of an imminent overthrow of the heathen Persian Empire and a worldwide manifestation of God and glorification of Zerubbabel. Against that day they urged the people quickly to complete the building of the Temple. The labour was resumed and completed in 516; but the prophecies remained unfulfilled. Zerubbabel disappears from the biblical narrative, and the spirit of the community flagged again.
The one religious constant in the vicissitudes of the restored community was the mood of repentance and the desire to win back God's favour by adherence to his Covenant rules. The anxiety that underlay this mood produced a hostility to strangers, which encouraged a lasting conflict with the Samaritans, who asked permission to take part in rebuilding the Temple of the God they too worshipped. The Jews, however, rejected them on ill-specified grounds--apparently ethnoreligious; i.e., they felt the Samaritans to be alien to their historical community of faith, especially to its messianic hopes. Nonetheless, intermarriage occurred and precipitated a new crisis when, in 458, the priest Ezra arrived from Babylon, intent on enforcing the regimen of the Torah. By construing ancient and obsolete laws excluding Canaanites and others so as to make them apply to their own times and neighbours, the leaders of the Jews brought about the divorce and expulsion of several dozen non-Jewish wives and their children. Tension between the xenophobic (fear of strangers) and xenophilic (love of strangers) in postexilic Judaism was finally resolved some two centuries later with the development of a formality of religious conversion, whereby Gentiles who so wished could be taken into the Jewish community by a single, simple procedure.
The decisive constitutional event of the new community was the covenant subscribed to by its leaders in 444, making the Torah the law of the land: a charter granted by the Persian king Artaxerxes I to Ezra--scholar and priest of the Babylonian Exile--empowered him to enforce the Torah as the imperial law for the Jews of the province Avar-nahra (Beyond the River), in which the district of Judah (now reduced to a small area) was located. The charter required the publication of the Torah and the publication, in turn, entailed its final editing--now plausibly ascribed to Ezra and his circle. Survival in the Torah of patent inconsistencies and disaccords with the postexilic situation indicate that its materials were by then sacrosanct, to be compiled but no longer created. But these survivals made necessary the immediate invention of a harmonizing and creative method of text interpretation to adjust the Torah to the needs of the times. The Levites were trained in the art of interpreting the text to the people; the first product of the creative exegesis later known as Midrash is to be found in the covenant document of Nehemiah, chapter 9--every item of which shows development, not reproduction, of a ruling of the Torah. Thus, with the publication of the Torah as the law of the Jews the basis of the vast edifice of the Oral Law characteristic of Judaism was laid.
Concern over observance of the Torah was fed by the gap between messianic expectations and the gray reality of the restoration. The gap signified God's continued displeasure, and the only way to regain his favour was to do his will. Thus it is that Malachi, the last of the prophets, concludes with an admonition to be mindful of the Torah of Moses. God's displeasure, however, had always been signalized by a break in communication with him. As time passed and messianic hopes remained unfulfilled, the sense of a permanent suspension of normal relations with God took hold, and prophecy died out. God, it was believed, would some day be reconciled with his people, and a glorious revival of prophecy would then occur. For the present, however, religious vitality expressed itself in dedication to the development of institutions that would make the Torah effective in life. The course of this development is hidden from view by the dearth of sources from the Persian period. But the community that emerged into the light of history in Hellenistic times is one made over radically by this momentous, quiet process.
Hellenistic Judaism (4th century BCE-2nd century CE)
The Greek period (332-63 BCE)
Hellenism and Judaism
Hellenistic Judaism: Important historical sites of Hellenistic and medieval Judaism.Actual contact between Greeks and Semites goes back to Minoan and Mycenaean times and is reflected in certain terms in Homer and in other early Greek authors. It is not until the end of the 4th century, however, that Jews are first mentioned by Greek writers, who praise the Jews as brave, self-disciplined, and philosophical.
After being conquered by Alexander the Great (332 BCE), Palestine-Israel became part of the Hellenistic kingdom of Ptolemaic Egypt, the policy of which was to permit the Jews considerable cultural and religious freedom.
When in 198 BCE Palestine-Israel was conquered by King Antiochus III (247-187 BCE), of the Syrian Seleucid dynasty, the Jews were treated even more liberally, being granted a charter to govern themselves by their own constitution, namely, the Torah. Greek influence, however, was already becoming manifest. Some of the 29 Greek cities of Palestine-Israel attained a high level of culture. The mid-3rd century-BCE Zenon papyri--containing the correspondence of a business manager of a high Ptolemaic official--present the picture of a wealthy Jew, Tobiah, who through commercial contact with the Ptolemies acquired a veneer of Hellenism, to judge at least from the pagan and religious expressions in his Greek letters. His son and especially his grandsons became ardent Hellenists. It has been argued that the Hellenic influence was so strong among the Jews of Judaea by the beginning of the 2nd century that if the process had continued without the forcible intervention of the Seleucids in Jewish affairs (see below) Judaean Judaism would have become even more syncretistic than that of Philo, the Hellenistic Jewish philosopher of Alexandria (c. 15 BCE-c. 40 CE). The apocryphal writer Jesus ben Sirach so bitterly denounced the Hellenizers in Jerusalem (c. 180 BCE) that he was forced by the authorities to temper his words.
In the early part of the 2nd century BCE, Hellenizing Jews came into control of the high priesthood itself. Jason as high priest (175-172 BCE) established Jerusalem as a Greek city, Antioch-at-Jerusalem, with Greek educational institutions. His ouster by an even more extreme Hellenizing faction, which established Menelaus (died 162 BCE) as high priest, occasioned a civil war, with the wealthy aristocrats supporting Menelaus and the masses Jason. The Syrian king Antiochus IV Epiphanes, who had initially bestowed exemptions and privileges upon the Jews, intervened upon the request of Menelaus' party. Antiochus' promulgation of decrees against the practice of Judaism and the offensive and cruel measures to enforce them led to the revolt of an old priest, Mattathias, and his five sons--the so-called Maccabees or Hasmoneans. It has been conjectured that one of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the War of the Sons of Light Against the Sons of Darkness, mirrors the fierceness of this struggle. In any case, the figure of the martyr, as known in Judaism and Christianity--the person who bears witness to the faith through his suffering and death--dates from this event.
The tactics employed both in the countryside and in Jerusalem by the Hasmoneans in their counterattack against Hellenizing Jews, whose children they forcibly circumcised, indicate the inroads that Hellenism had already made. On the whole, however, the chief strength of the Hellenizers lay among the wealthy urban population, while the Maccabees derived their strength from the peasants and urban masses. Yet, there is evidence that the ruthlessness exhibited by the Hasmoneans toward the Greek cities of Palestine had political rather than cultural origins, and that, in fact, they were fighting for personal power no less than for the Torah. In any case, some of those who fought on the side of the Maccabees were idol-worshipping Jews. The Maccabees soon found a modus vivendi with Hellenism: Jonathan (160-142), according to the Jewish historian Josephus (c. 38-c. 100 CE), negotiated a treaty of friendship with Sparta; Aristobulus (104-103 BCE) actually called himself Philhellene (a lover of Hellenism); Alexander Jannaeus (103-76) hired Greek mercenaries and inscribed his coins with Greek as well as with Hebrew. The Greek influence reached its height under King Herod I of Judaea (37-4 BCE), who built a Greek theatre, amphitheatre, and hippodrome in or near Jerusalem.
Social, political, and religious divisions
During the Hellenistic period the priests were both the wealthiest class and the strongest political group among the Jews of Jerusalem. The wealthiest of all were the Oniad family, who held the hereditary office of high priest until they were replaced by the Hasmoneans; the Temple that they supervised was, in effect, a bank, where the Temple wealth was kept and where private individuals also deposited their money. Hence, from a social and economic point of view, Josephus is justified in calling the government of Judaea a theocracy (rule by those having religious authority). Opposition to the priests' oppression arose among an urban middle class group known as scribes (soferim), who were interpreters and instructors of the Torah on the basis of an oral tradition probably going back to the time of the return from the Babylonian Exile (538 BCE and after). A special group of the scribes known as Hasidim (Greek, Hasideans), or "Pietists," became the forerunners of the Pharisees (middle-class liberal Jews who reinterpreted the Torah and the prophetic writings to meet the needs of their times) and joined the Hasmoneans in the struggle against the Hellenists, though on religious rather than on political grounds.
Josephus held that the Pharisees and the other Jewish parties were philosophical schools, and some modern scholars have argued that the groupings were primarily along economic and social lines; but the chief distinctions among them were religious and go back well before the Maccabean revolt. The equation of Pharisaic with "normative" Judaism can no longer be supported, at any rate not before the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE. The fact that in 70 CE, according to the Palestinian Talmud (see below Rabbinic Judaism [2nd-18th century]), there were 24 types of "heretics" in Palestine indicates that there was, in fact, much divergence among Jews; and this picture is confirmed by Josephus, who notes numerous instances of religious leaders who claimed to be prophets and who obtained considerable followings.
Some other modern scholars have sought to interpret the Pharisees' opposition to the Sadducees--wealthy, conservative Jews who accepted the Torah alone as authoritative--as based on an urban-rural dichotomy; but a very large share of Pharisaic concern was with agricultural matters. To associate the rabbis with urbanization seems a distortion. The chief support for the Pharisees came from the lower classes, whether in the country or in the city.
The chief doctrine of the Pharisees (literally "Separatists") was that the Oral Law had been revealed to Moses at the same time as the Written Law. In their exegesis and interpretation of this oral tradition, particularly under the rabbi Hillel at the end of the 1st century BCE, the Pharisees were liberal, and their regard for the public won them considerable support. That the Maccabean ruler John Hyrcanus I broke with them and that Josephus set their number at merely "more than 6,000" at the time of King Herod indicates that they were less numerous and influential than Josephus would have his readers believe. The Pharisees stressed the importance of performing all the commandments, including those that appeared to be of only minor significance; those who were particularly strict in their observance of the Levitical rules were known as haverim ("companions"). They believed in the providential guidance of the universe, in angels, in reward and punishment in the world to come, and in resurrection of the dead, in all of which beliefs they were opposed by the Sadducees. In finding a modus vivendi with Hellenism, at least in form and in terminology, however, the Pharisees did not differ greatly from the Sadducees. Indeed, the supreme council of the Great Synagogue (or Great Assembly) of the Pharisees was modelled in its organization on Hellenistic religious and social associations. Because they did not take an active role in fostering the rebellion against Rome in 66-70 CE, they were able, through their leader Johanan ben Zakkai, to obtain Roman permission to establish an academy at Jabneh (Jamnia), where, in effect, they replaced the cult of the Temple with study and prayer.
The Sadducees and their subsidiary group, the Boethusians (Boethosaeans), who were identified with the great landowners and priestly families, were more deeply influenced by Hellenization. The rise of the Pharisees may thus be seen, in a sense, as a reaction against the more profound Hellenization favoured by the Sadducees, who were allied with the philhellenic Hasmoneans. From the time of John Hyrcanus (135-104 BCE) the Sadducees generally held a higher position in comparison with the Pharisees and were in favour with the Jewish rulers. Religiously more conservative than the Pharisees, they rejected the idea of a revealed oral interpretation of the Torah, though, to be sure, they had their own tradition, the sefer gezerot ("book of decrees" or "decisions"). They similarly rejected the inspiration of the prophetic books of the Bible, as well as the Pharisaic beliefs in angels, rewards, and punishments in the world to come, providential governance of human events, and resurrection of the dead. For them Judaism centred on the Temple; but about 10 years before the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE, the Sadducees in effect disappeared from Jewish life when the Pharisees excluded them from entering the Temple.
Not constituting any particular party were the unlearned rural masses known as 'amme ha-aretz ("people of the land"), who were to be found among both the Pharisees and Sadducees and even among the Samaritans, descendants of the northern Israelites who had their own Torah and their own sanctuary. The 'amme ha-aretz did not give the prescribed tithes, did not observe the laws of purity, and were neglectful of the laws of prayer; and so great was the antagonism between them and the learned Pharisees that to their daughters was applied the biblical verse, "Cursed be he who lies with any kind of beast." The antipathy was reciprocated, for in the same passage in the Babylonian Talmud (Pesahim) are added the words, "Greater is the hatred wherewith the 'amme ha-aretz hate the scholar than the hatred wherewith the heathens hate Israel." That there was, however, social mobility is clear from the Talmudic dictum, "Heed the sons of the 'am ha-aretz, for they will be the living source of the Torah." That there is little evidence that the early Christian church was particularly successful in converting 'amme ha-aretz suggests that their position was not unbearable.
Proselytes (converts) to Judaism, though not constituting a class, became increasingly numerous both in Palestine and especially in the Diaspora (the Jews living beyond Palestine). Scholarly estimates of the Jewish population of this era range from 700,000 to 5,000,000 in Palestine and from 2,000,000 to 5,000,000 in the Diaspora, with the prevailing opinion being that about one-tenth of the population of the Mediterranean world at the beginning of the Christian Era was Jewish. Such numbers represent a considerable increase from previous eras and must have included large numbers of proselytes. Already in 139 BCE the Jews of Rome were charged by the praetor (civil administrator) with attempting to contaminate Roman morals with their religion, presumably an allusion to proselytism. The first large-scale conversions were by John Hyrcanus and Aristobulus, who, in 130 and 103 BCE, respectively, forced the people of Idumaea in southern Palestine and of Ituraea in northern Palestine to become Jews. The eagerness of the Pharisees to win converts is seen in a statement in Matthew that the Pharisees would "traverse sea and land to make a single proselyte." To be sure, some of the proselytes, according to Josephus, did return to their pagan ways, but the majority apparently remained true to their new religion. In addition, there were many "sympathizers" with Judaism who observed one or more Jewish practices without being fully converted.
Outside the pale of Judaism in most, though not all, respects were the Samaritans, who, like the Sadducees, refused to recognize the validity of the Oral Law; and, in fact, the break between the Sadducees and the Samaritans did not occur until the conquest of Shechem by John Hyrcanus (128 BCE). Like the later so-called Qumran covenanters (the monastic group with whom are associated the Dead Sea Scrolls), they were opposed to the Jewish priesthood and the covenant of the Temple, regarded Moses as a messianic figure, and forbade the revelation of esoteric doctrines to outsiders.
Scholars have recently revised an older conception of a "normative" Pharisaic Judaism dominant in Palestine and a deviant Judaism dominant in the Diaspora. On the one hand, the picture of "normative" Judaism is broader than at first believed, and it is clear that there were many differences of emphasis within the Pharisaic party; and, on the other hand, supposed differences between Alexandrian and Palestinian Judaism were not as great as had been formerly thought. In Palestine, no less than in the Diaspora, there were then deviations from Pharisaic standards.
Despite the attempts of the Pharisaic leaders to restrain the wave of Greek influence, they themselves showed at least a surface Hellenization. In the first place, as many as 2,500-3,000 words of Greek origin are to be found in the Talmudic corpus, and they supply important terms in the fields of law, government, science, religion, technology, and everyday life, especially in the popular sermons preached by the rabbis. When preaching, the Talmudic rabbis often gave the Greek translation of biblical verses for the benefit of those who understood Greek only. The prevalence of Greek in ossuary (burial) inscriptions and the discovery of Greek papyri in the Dead Sea caves confirm the widespread use of the language, though few Jews, it seems, really mastered Greek. Again, there was a surface Hellenization in the frequent adoption of Greek names, even by the rabbis; and there is evidence (Talmud, Sota) of a school at the beginning of the 2nd century that had 500 students of "Greek wisdom." Even after 117 CE, when it was prohibited by the rabbis to teach one's son Greek, Rabbi Judah the Prince, the editor of the Mishna (authoritative compilation of the Oral Law) at the end of the 2nd century, remarked, "Why talk Syriac in Palestine? Talk either Hebrew or Greek." Even the synagogues of the period have the form of Hellenistic-Roman basilicas, have frequent inscriptions in Greek, and often have pagan motifs. Many of the anecdotes told about the rabbis have Socratic and Cynic parallels. There is evidence of discussions of rabbis with Athenians, Alexandrians, and Roman philosophers, and even with the emperor Antoninus; but in all of these discussions there is evidence of only one rabbi, Elisha ben Abuyah, who became a Gnostic heretic, accepting certain esoteric religious dualistic views. The rabbis never mention the Greek philosophers Plato or Aristotle or the Hellenistic Jewish philosopher Philo, and they never use any Greek philosophical terms; the only Greek author whom they name is Homer. Again, the parallels between Hellenistic rhetoric and rabbinic hermeneutics are in the realm of terminology rather than of substance, and those between Roman and Talmudic law are inconclusive. Part of the explanation of this may be that, although there were 29 Greek cities in Palestine-Israel, none was in Judea, the real stronghold of the Jews.
Religious rites and customs in Palestine: Temple and synagogues
The most important religious institution of the Jews until its destruction in 70 was the Temple in Jerusalem--the Second Temple, erected 538-516 BCE. Though services were interrupted for three years by Antiochus Epiphanes (167-164 BCE) and though the Roman general Pompey desecrated the Temple (63 BCE), Herod lavished great expense in rebuilding it. The high priesthood itself became degraded by the extreme Hellenism of such high priests as Jason and Menelaus; and the institution declined when Herod began the custom of appointing the high priests for political and financial considerations. That not only the multitude of Jews but the priesthood itself suffered from sharp divisions is clear from the bitter class warfare that ultimately erupted in 59 CE between the high priests on the one hand and the ordinary priests and the leaders of the populace of Jerusalem on the other.
Though the Temple remained central in Jewish worship, synagogues may already have emerged during the Babylonian Exile in the 6th century BCE. In any case, in the following century, Ezra stood upon a pulpit of wood and read from the Torah to the people (Nehemiah). According to the interpretation of some scholars, a synagogue existed even within the precincts of the Temple; and certainly by the time of Jesus, to judge from the references to Galilean synagogues in the New Testament, synagogues were common in Palestine. Hence, when the Temple was destroyed in 70, the spiritual vacuum was hardly as great as it had been after the destruction of the First Temple (586 BCE).
The chief legislative, judicial, and educational body of the Palestinian Jews during the period of the Second Temple was the Great Sanhedrin (council court), consisting of 71 members, among whom the Sadducees were an important party. The members shared the government with the king during the early years of the Hasmonean dynasty, but beginning with Herod's reign their authority was restricted to religious matters. In addition, there was another Sanhedrin, set up by the high priest, which served as a court of political council, as well as a kind of grand jury.
Religious and cultural life in the Diaspora
Hellenistic Judaism: Important historical sites of Hellenistic and medieval Judaism.During the Hellenistic-Roman period the chief centres of Jewish population outside Palestine were in Syria, Asia Minor, Babylonia, and Egypt, each of which is estimated to have had at least 1,000,000 Jews. The large Jewish community of Antioch--which, according to Josephus, had been given all the rights of citizenship by the Seleucid founder-king, Seleucus Nicator (died 280 BCE)--attracted a particularly large number of converts to Judaism. It was in Antioch that the apocryphal book of Tobit was probably composed in the 2nd century BCE to encourage wayward Diaspora Jews to return to their Judaism. As for the Jews of Asia Minor, whose large numbers were mentioned by Cicero (1st century BCE), their not joining in the Jewish revolts against the Roman emperors Nero, Trajan, and Hadrian would indicate that they had sunk deep roots into their environment. In Babylonia, in the early part of the 1st century CE, two Jewish brothers, Asinaeus and Anilaeus, were able to establish an independent minor state; their followers were so meticulous in observing the Sabbath that they assumed that it would not be possible to violate the Sabbath even in order to save themselves from a Parthian attack. In the early part of the 1st century CE, according to Josephus, the royal house and many of their entourage in the district of Adiabene in northern Mesopotamia were converted to Judaism; some of the Adiabenian Jews distinguished themselves in the revolt against Rome in 66 (see below Judaism under Roman rule).
The largest and most important Jewish settlement in the Diaspora was in Egypt. There is evidence (papyri) of a Jewish military colony at Elephantine (Yeb), Upper Egypt, as early as the 6th century BCE. These papyri reveal the existence of a Jewish temple--which most certainly would be considered heterodox--and some syncretism (mixture) with pagan cults. Alexandria, the most populous and most influential Hellenistic Jewish community in the Diaspora, had its origin when Alexander the Great assigned a quarter of the city to the Jews. Until about the 3rd century BCE the papyri of the Egyptian Jewish community were written in Aramaic; after that, with the exception of the Nash papyrus in Hebrew, all papyri until 400 CE were in Greek. Similarly, of the 116 Jewish inscriptions from Egypt, all but five are written in Greek. The process of Hellenistic acculturation is, thus, obvious.
The most important work of the early Hellenistic period, dating, according to tradition, from the 3rd century BCE, is the Septuagint, a translation of the Pentateuch into Greek. (The translation of the whole Hebrew Bible was completed during the next two centuries.) The fact that, in the Letter of Aristeas and the works of Philo and Josephus, this translation was itself regarded as divinely inspired led to the neglect of the Hebrew original. The translation shows some knowledge of Palestinian exegesis and the tradition of Halakha (the Oral Law); but the rabbis themselves, noting that the translation diverged from the Hebrew text, apparently had ambivalent feelings about it, as is evidenced in their alternate praise and condemnation of it. The fact that such a concept as Torah was translated as nomos ("law") and tzedaqa as dikaiosyne ("justice") opened the way to antilegalism in early Christianity and to Platonic interpretations; and the introduction of such Greek mythological terms as "Titans" and "Sirens" helped to pave the way for the syncretism of Judaism and paganism.
The establishment of a temple at Leontopolis in Egypt (c. 145 BCE) by a deposed high priest, Onias IV, indicates that the temple was clearly heterodox; but this temple never really offered a challenge to the one in Jerusalem and was merely the temple of the military colony of Leontopolis. It is significant that the Palestinian rabbis ruled that a sacrifice intended for the temple of Onias might be offered in Jerusalem. That the temple of Onias made little impact upon Egyptian Jewry can be seen from the silence about it on the part of Philo, who often mentions the Temple in Jerusalem. The temple of Onias, however, continued until it was closed by the Roman emperor Vespasian in 73 CE.
The chief religious institutions of the Egyptian Diaspora were synagogues. As early as the 3rd century BCE there were inscriptions mentioning two proseuchai, Jewish prayerhouses. In Alexandria there were numerous synagogues throughout the city, of which the largest was so famous that it is said in the Talmud that he who has not seen it has never seen the glory of Israel.
Egyptian Jewish literature
In Egypt the Jews produced a considerable literature (most of it now lost), intended to inculcate in Greek-speaking Jews a pride in their past and to counteract an inferiority complex that some of them felt about Jewish cultural achievements. In the field of history, Demetrius, near the end of the 3rd century BCE, wrote a work On the Kings in Judaea--perhaps intended to refute an anti-Semitic Egyptian priest and author--showing considerable concern for chronology. In the 2nd century BCE a Jew who used the name of Hecataeus wrote On the Jews. Another, Eupolemus (c. 150 BCE), like Demetrius, wrote On the Kings in Judaea; an indication of its apologetic nature may be seen from the fragment asserting that Moses taught the alphabet not only to the Jews but also to the Phoenicians and to the Greeks. Artapanus (c. 100 BCE), in his book On the Jews, went even further in romanticizing Moses by identifying him with the Greek Musaeus and the Egyptian Hermes-Thoth (god of Egyptian writing and culture) and by asserting that Moses was the real originator of Egyptian civilization and that he even taught the Egyptians the worship of the deity Apis (the sacred bull) and the ibis (sacred bird). In his history, Cleodemus (or Malchus), in an obvious attempt to win for the Jews the regard of the Greeks, asserted that two sons of Abraham had joined Heracles in his expedition in Africa and that the Greek hero had married the daughter of one of them. On the other hand, Jason of Cyrene (c. 100 BCE) wrote a history, of which II Maccabees is a summary, glorifying the Temple and violently attacking the Jewish Hellenizers; but his manner of writing history is typically Hellenistic, with emphasis on pathos. III Maccabees (1st century BCE) is a work of propaganda intended to counteract those Jews who sought to win citizenship in Alexandria. The Letter of Aristeas, though ascribed to a pagan courtier, Ptolemy II Philadelphus, was probably composed by an Alexandrian Jew about 100 BCE to defend Judaism and its practices against detractors.
Egyptian Jews also composed poems and plays, now extant only in fragments, to glorify their history. Philo the Elder (c. 100 BCE) wrote an epic On Jerusalem in Homeric hexameters. Theodotus (c. 100 BCE) wrote an epic On Shechem, quite clearly apologetic, to judge from the fragment connecting the name of Shechem with Sikimios, the son of the Greek god Hermes. At about the same time, a Jewish poet wrote a didactic poem, ascribing it to the pagan Phocylides, though closely following the Bible in some details; the author disguised his Jewish origin by omitting any attack against idolatry from his moralizing. A collection known as The Sibylline Oracles, containing Jewish and Christian prophecies in pagan disguise, includes some material composed by a 2nd-century-BCE Alexandrian Jew who intended to glorify the pious Jews and perhaps to win converts; it is possible that the Oracles were known to the Roman poet Virgil when he wrote his fourth Eclogue.
A Jewish dramatist of the period, Ezekiel (c. 100 BCE), composed tragedies in Greek. Fragments of one of them, The Exodus, show how deeply he was influenced by the Greek dramatist Euripides. Whether such plays were actually presented on the stage or not, they edified Jews and showed the pagans that the Jews had as much material for drama as they did.
The greatest achievement of Alexandrian Judaism was in the realm of wisdom literature and philosophy. In a work on the analogical interpretation of the Law of Moses, Aristobulus in the 2nd century BCE anticipated Philo in attempting to harmonize Greek philosophy and the Torah, in using the method of allegory to explain anthropomorphisms in the Bible, and in asserting that the Greek philosophers were indebted to Moses. The Wisdom of Solomon, dating from the 1st century BCE, shows an acquaintance with the Platonic doctrine of the preexistence of the soul and with a method of argument known as sorites that was favoured by the Stoics (Greek philosophers). During the same period the author of IV Maccabees showed an intimate knowledge of Greek philosophy, particularly of Stoicism.
By far the greatest figure in Alexandrian Jewish literature is Philo, who has come to be recognized as a major philosopher. His synthesis of Greek philosophy, particularly that of Plato, and of the Torah, and his formulation of the Logos (Word, or Divine Reason) as an intermediary between God and the world, helped lay the groundwork for Neoplatonism (a philosophy dealing with levels of being), Gnosticism (a dualistic religious movement teaching that matter is evil and that spirit is good), and the philosophical framework of the early Church Fathers. Philo was a devotee of Judaism neither as a mystic cult nor as a collateral branch of Pharisaic Judaism; he was a Diaspora Jew with a profound knowledge of Greek literature who, though almost totally ignorant of Hebrew, tried to find a modus vivendi between Judaism and secular culture.
Hellenistic Judaism: Important historical sites of Hellenistic and medieval Judaism.Mention may be made of the Jewish community of Rome. Numbering perhaps 50,000, it was, to judge from the inscriptions in the Jewish catacombs, predominantly Greek-speaking and almost totally ignorant of Hebrew. References in Roman writers, particularly Tacitus and the satirists, have led scholars to conclude that the community--which was influential, to judge from the pagan jibes--observed the Sabbath and the dietary laws and was active in seeking converts.
The Hellenization of the Diaspora Jews is, however, to be seen not merely in their literature but even more in the papyri and art objects that have recently been studied at great length. As early as 290 BCE, Hecataeus of Abdera, a Greek non-Jew living in Egypt, had remarked that under the Persians and Macedonians the Jews had greatly modified the traditions of their fathers. The fact that--to judge from other papyri--at least three-fourths of the Egyptian Jews had personal names of Greek, rather than Hebrew, origin is significant. That the only schools of which mention is made are Sabbath schools intended for adults and that, on the contrary, Jews were extremely eager to gain admittance for their children to Greek gymnasia--where quite obviously they would have to make compromises with their Judaism--indicates their scale of values. Again, there are a number of violations from the norms of Halakha (which precluded the charging of interest for a loan), most notably in the fact that of 11 known extant loan documents only two are without interest. There are often striking similarities between the documents of sale, marriage, and divorce of the Jews and of the Greeks in Egypt, though some of this, as with the documents of the Elephantine Jewish community, may be due to a common origin in the cuneiform law of ancient Mesopotamia. The charms and apotropaic (designed to avert evil) amulets are often syncretistic, and the Jews can hardly have been unaware of the religious significance of symbols that were still very much filled with meaning in pagan cults. The fact that the Jewish community of Alexandria was preoccupied in the 1st century BCE and the 1st century CE with obtaining rights as citizens--which certainly involved compromises with Judaism, including participation in pagan festivals and sacrifices--shows how far they were ready to deviate. Philo mentions Jews who scoffed at the Bible, which they insisted on interpreting literally, and of others who failed to adhere to the biblical laws that they regarded as mere allegory; he writes too of Jews who observed nothing of Judaism except the holiday of Yom Kippur. But despite such deviations, the pagan writers constantly accuse the Diaspora Jews of being "haters of mankind" and of being absurdly superstitious; and Christian writers later similarly attack the Jews for refusing to give up the Torah. At least they were loyal Jews in their contributions of the Temple tax and in pilgrimages to Jerusalem on the three festivals. Actual apostasy and intermarriage were apparently not common, but the virulent anti-Semitism and the pogroms perpetrated by the Egyptian non-Jews must have served as a deterrent.
Palestinian-Hebrew literature
During this period literature was composed in Palestine in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, with the exact language still a subject of dispute among scholars in many cases and with the works often apparently composed by more than one author over a considerable period of time. Most of the works composed in Hebrew, many of them existing only in Greek--Ecclesiasticus, I Maccabees, Judith, Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, Baruch, Psalms of Solomon, Prayer of Manasseh--and many of the Dead Sea Scrolls are generally conscious imitations of biblical books, often reflecting the dramatic events of the Maccabean struggle and often with an apocalyptic tinge (involving the dramatic intervention of God in history). The literature in Aramaic consists of the following: (1) biblical or Bible-like legends or midrashic (interpretive) additions--Testament of Job, The Martyrdom of Isaiah, Paralipomena of Jeremiah, Life of Adam and Eve, the Dead Sea Genesis Apocryphon, Tobit, Susanna, Bel and the Dragon; and (2) apocalypses--Enoch (perhaps originally written in Hebrew), Assumption of Moses, the Syriac Baruch, II (IV) Esdras, and Apocalypse of Abraham. In Greek the chief works by Palestinians are histories of the Jewish War against Rome and of the Jewish kings by Justus of Tiberias (both are lost) and the history of the Jewish War, originally in Aramaic, and the Jewish Antiquities by Josephus (both written in Rome).
Of the wisdom literature composed in Hebrew, the book of the Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach, or Ecclesiasticus (c. 180-175 BCE), modelled on the book of Proverbs, identified Wisdom with the observance of the Torah. The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, probably written in the latter half of the 2nd century BCE, patterned on Jacob's blessings to his sons, are now thought to belong to eschatological literature related to the Dead Sea Scrolls. The identification of Wisdom and Torah is stressed in the Mishnaic tract Pirqe Avot ("Sayings of the Fathers"), which, though edited 200 CE, contains the aphorisms of rabbis dating back to 300 BCE.
Books such as the Testament of Job, the Dead Sea Scroll Genesis Apocryphon, the Book of Jubilees (now known to have been composed in Hebrew, as seen by its appearance among the Dead Sea Scrolls), and Biblical Antiquities, falsely attributed to Philo (originally written in Hebrew, then translated into Greek, but now extant only in Latin), as well as the first half of Josephus' Jewish Antiquities, often show affinities with rabbinic Midrashim (interpretive works) in their legendary accretions of biblical details. Sometimes, as in Jubilees and in the Pseudo-Philo work, these accretions are intended to answer the questions of heretics, but often, particularly in the case of Josephus, they are apologetic in presenting biblical heroes in a guise that would appeal to a Hellenized audience.
Apocalyptic trends, given considerable impetus by the victory of the Maccabees over the Syrian Greeks, were not--as was formerly thought--restricted to Pharisaic circles. They were (as is clear from the Dead Sea Scrolls) found in other groups as well, and are of particular importance for their influence on both Jewish mysticism and early Christianity. These books, which have a close connection with the biblical Book of Daniel, stress the impossibility of a rational solution to the problem of theodicy--how to reconcile the righteousness of God with observable evil. They also stress the imminence of the day of salvation, which is to be preceded by terrible hardships, and presumably reflected the current historical setting. In the book of Enoch there is stress on the terrible punishment inflicted upon sinners in the Last Judgment, the imminent coming of the Messiah and of his kingdom, and the role of angels.
The sole Palestinian Jewish author writing in Greek whose works are preserved is Josephus. His account of the war against the Romans in his Life and, to a lesser degree, in the Jewish War are largely a defense of his own questionable behaviour as the commander of the Jewish forces in Galilee. But these works and more especially Against Apion and the Jewish Antiquities are largely defenses of Judaism against anti-Semitic attacks. Josephus' Jewish War is often quite deliberately parallel to Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War; and his Jewish Antiquities is quite deliberately parallel to Dionysius of Halicarnassus' Roman Antiquities, dating from earlier in the same century.
The Roman period (63 BCE-135 CE)
New parties and sects
Hellenistic Judaism: Important historical sites of Hellenistic and medieval Judaism.Under Roman rule a number of new groups, largely political, emerged in Palestine. Their common aim was to seek an independent Jewish state. All were zealous for, and strict in their observance of, the Torah.
The Herodians were a political group that after the death of Herod--whom they apparently regarded as the Messiah--sought the reestablishment of the rule of Herod's descendants over an independent Palestine as a prerequisite for Jewish preservation. Unlike the Zealots, however, they did not refuse to pay taxes to the Romans.
The Zealots' party, founded c. 6-9 CE, refused to pay tribute to the Romans and advocated overthrowing them on the ground that they should acknowledge God alone as their master. A priestly, eschatologically oriented resistance movement, the Zealots were particularly dedicated to keeping the Temple and its cult pure and used guerrilla tactics toward that end. The Sicarii (Assassins), so-called because of the dagger (sica) they carried, arose c. 54, according to Josephus, as a group of bandits who kidnapped or murdered those who had found a modus vivendi with the Romans. It was they who made a stand at the fortress of Masada near the Dead Sea, committing suicide rather than be captured by the Romans (73).
A number of other parties--various types of Essenes, Damascus Covenanters, and the Qumran Dead Sea groups--were distinguished by their pursuit of an ascetic monastic life, disdain for material goods and sensual gratification, sharing of material possessions, concern for eschatology, strong apocalyptic views in anticipation of the coming of the Messiah, practice of ablutions to attain greater sexual and ritual purity, prayer, contemplation, and study. The Essenes were like the Therapeutae, a Jewish religious group that had flourished in Egypt two centuries earlier, but the latter actively sought "wisdom" whereas the former were anti-intellectual. Only some of the Essenes were celibate. The Essenes have been termed Gnosticizing Pharisees because of their belief, shared with the Gnostics, that the world of matter was evil; some have seen in them the influence of a quasi-monasticism.
The Damascus sect (New Covenanters) were a group of Pharisees who went beyond the letter of the Pharisaic Halakha. Like the Essenes and the Dead Sea sect, they had a monastic type of organization and opposed the way in which sacrifices were offered in the Temple.
The continuing recent discoveries of scrolls in caves of the Dead Sea area have focussed attention on the groups that lived there. On the basis of paleography, carbon-14 testing, and the coins discovered there, most scholars accept a 1st-century date for them. A theoretical relationship of the communities with John the Baptist and the nascent Christian groups remains in dispute, however. The sectaries have been identified variously as Zealots, an unnamed anti-Roman group, and especially Essenes; but a major difference between the Qumran groups and the Essenes is that the former were militarily activist (the discovery of hymns and a calendar at Masada--a stronghold of the Sicarii--that had previously been found at Qumran, may indicate a connection between the groups), while the latter were, for the most part, pacifist. That the groups had secret, presumably apocalyptic, teachings is clear from the fact that among the scrolls are some in cryptographic script and reversed writing; and yet, despite their extreme piety and legalistic conservatism, they apparently were not unaware of Hellenism, to judge from the presence of Greek books at Qumran.
It has long been debated whether the Gnostic systems of the 1st and 2nd centuries go back to the collapse of the apocalyptic strains in Judaism--which expected a final transforming catastrophic event--when the Temple was destroyed in 70. It is doubtful that there is any direct Jewish source for this Gnosticism, though some characteristic Gnostic doctrines are found in certain groups of particularly apocalyptic 1st-century Jews--the dichotomy of body and soul and a disdain for the material world, a notion of esoteric knowledge, and an intense interest in angels and in problems of creation.
Origin of Christianity: the early Christians and the Jewish community.
Though it attracted little attention among pagans and Jews at the beginning, the rise of Christianity was by far the most important "sectarian" development of the Roman period. With the revision, largely due to the discoveries at Qumran, of the view that Pharisaic Judaism was to be considered normative, primitive Christianity, with its apocalyptic and eschatological interests, has come to be viewed by many scholars as no longer "sectarian" or peripheral to Jewish development but, at least initially, as part of a broad spectrum of attitudes within Judaism. Jesus himself, despite his criticisms of Pharisaic legalism, may now be classified as a Pharisee with strong apocalyptic inclinations; he proclaimed that he had no intention of abrogating the Torah, but of fulfilling it. It is possible to envision a direct line between Jewish currents, both in Palestine and the Diaspora in the Hellenistic Age, and Christianity, particularly in the traditions of martyrdom, proselytism, monasticism, mysticism, liturgy, and religious philosophy, especially the doctrine of the Logos (Word) as an intermediary between God and the world and the synthesis of faith and reason. The Septuagint, in particular, played an important role both theoretically, in the transformation of Greek philosophy into the theology of the Church Fathers, and practically, in converting Jews and Jewish "sympathizers" to Christianity. The connection of nascent Christianity with the Qumran groups may be seen in their dualism and apocalypticism; but there are differences, notably in the conception of the Incarnation, in the relationship of the Son and the Father, and in Jesus' vicarious suffering for sinners as against the direct suffering of the Qumran Teacher of Righteousness. Again, the Qumran group constituted an esoteric movement, militant, with enforced community of goods, concerned with strict observance of the Torah, especially with its calendar, whereas Christianity was pacifist, was open to all, and represented a New Covenant, with stress away from the Torah ritual and with voluntary community of possessions. In general, moreover, Christianity was more positively disposed toward Hellenism than was Pharisaism, particularly under the leadership of Paul, a thoroughly Hellenized Jew.
When Paul proclaimed his antinomianism (against Torah observance as a means of salvation) many Jewish followers of Jesus became Jewish Christians and continued to observe the Torah. Their two main groupings were the Ebionites--probably to be identified with those called minim, or "sectaries," in the Talmud--who accepted Jesus as the Messiah but denied his divinity, and the Nazarenes, who regarded Jesus as both Messiah and God, but regarded the Torah as binding upon Jews alone.
The percentage of Jews converted to any form of Christianity was extremely small, as can be seen from the frequent criticisms of Jews for their stubbornness by Christian writers. In the Diaspora, despite the strong influence of Hellenism, there were relatively few Jewish converts, though the Christian movement had some success in winning Alexandrian Jews.
There were four major stages in the final break between Christianity and Judaism: (1) the flight of the Jewish Christians from Jerusalem to Pella across the Jordan in 70 and their refusal to continue the struggle against the Romans; (2) the institution by the patriarch Gamaliel II of a prayer in the Eighteen Benedictions against such heretics (c. 100), and (3 and 4) the failure of the Christians to join the messianic leaders Lukuas-Andreas and Bar Kokhba in the revolts against Trajan (115-117) and Hadrian (132-135), respectively.
Judaism under Roman rule
Hellenistic Judaism: Important historical sites of Hellenistic and medieval Judaism.When Pompey entered the Temple in 63 BCE as an arbiter both in the civil war between Hyrcanus and Aristobulus and in the struggle of the Pharisees against both Jewish rulers, Judaea in effect became a puppet state of the Romans. During the civil war between Pompey and Julius Caesar, the Idumaean Antipater had ingratiated himself with Caesar by aiding him and was rewarded by being made governor of Judaea; the Jews were rewarded through the promulgation of a number of decrees favourable to them, which were reaffirmed by Augustus and later emperors. His son Herod, king of Judaea, an admirer of Greek culture, supported a cult worshipping the Emperor and built temples to Augustus in non-Jewish cities. Since he was by origin an Idumaean, he was regarded by many Jews as a foreigner. (The Idumaeans, or Edomites, were forcibly converted to Judaism by John Hyrcanus; see above.) On several occasions during and after his reign, Pharisaic delegations sought to convince the Romans to end the quasi-independent Jewish government. After the death of Herod's son and successor Archelaus in 6 CE, his realms were ruled by Roman procurators, the most famous or infamous of whom, Pontius Pilate (26-36), attempted to introduce busts of the Roman emperor into Jerusalem and discovered the intense religious zeal of the Jews in opposing this measure. When Caligula ordered the governor of Syria, Petronius, to install a statue of himself in the Temple, a large number of Jews proclaimed they would suffer death rather than to permit such a desecration. Petronius in response succeeded in getting the Emperor to delay. The procurators of Judaea, being of equestrian (knightly) rank and often of Oriental Greek stock, were more anti-Semitic than the governors of Syria, who were of the higher senatorial order. The last procurators in particular were indifferent to Jewish religious sensibilities; and various patriotic groups, to whom nationalism was an integral part of their religion, succeeded in polarizing the Jewish population and bringing on an extremely bloody war with Rome in 66-70. The climax of the war was the destruction of the Temple in 70, though, according to Josephus, the Roman general (and later emperor) Titus sought to spare it. The war was not ended, however, until 73, when the Sicarii at Masada committed suicide rather than submit to the Romans.
The papyri indicate that the war against Trajan (115-117), involving the Jews of Egypt, Cyrenaica, Cyprus, and Mesopotamia (though only to a minor degree those of Palestine), was a widespread revolt under a Cyrenian king-messiah, Lukuas-Andreas, aimed at freeing Palestine from Roman rule. The same spirit of freedom impelled another messiah, Bar Kokhba, who had the support of the greatest rabbi of the time, Akiba, in his spontaneous uprising (132-135). The result was Hadrian's decrees prohibiting circumcision and public instruction in the Torah, though these were soon revoked by Antoninus Pius. Having suffered such tremendous losses on the field of battle, Judaism turned its dynamism to the continued development of the Talmud.
Rabbinic Judaism (2nd-18th century)
The age of the Tannaim (135-c. 200)
The role of the rabbis
With the defeat of Bar Kokhba and the ensuing collapse of active Jewish resistance to Roman rule (135-136), politically moderate and quietist rabbinic elements remained the only cohesive group within Jewish society. With Jerusalem off limits to the Jews, rabbinic ideology and practice, which were not dependent on Temple, priesthood, or political independence for their vitality, provided a viable program for autonomous community life and thus filled the vacuum created by the suppression of all other Jewish leadership. The Romans, confident that the will for insurrection had been shattered, soon relaxed the Hadrianic prohibitions of Jewish ordination, public assembly, and regulation of the calendar and permitted rabbis who had fled the country to return and reestablish an academy in the town of Usha in Galilee.
The strength of the rabbinate lay in its ability to represent simultaneously the interests of the Jews and the Romans, whose religious and political needs, respectively, now chanced to coincide. The rabbis were regarded favourably by the Romans, as a politically submissive class, which, with its wide influence over the Jewish masses, could translate the Pax Romana (the peace imposed by Roman rule) into Jewish religious precepts. To the Jews, on the other hand, the rabbinic ideology gave the appearance of continuity to Jewish self-rule and freedom from alien interference. The rabbinic program fashioned by Johanan ben Zakkai's circle (see above Hellenistic Judaism [4th century BCE-2nd century CE]) had replaced sacrifice and pilgrimage to the Temple with study of Scripture, prayer, and works of piety, thus eliminating the need for a central sanctuary (in Jerusalem) and making of Judaism a religious association capable of fulfillment anywhere. Judaism was now, for all intents and purposes, a Diaspora religion even on its home soil. Any sense of real break with the past was mitigated by continued adherence to purity laws (dietary and bodily) and by assiduous study of Scripture, including those legal sections that historical developments had now made obsolete. The reward held out for scrupulous study and fulfillment was the promise of messianic deliverance; i.e., divine restoration of all those institutions that had become central in Jewish notions of national independence--the Davidic monarchy, Temple service, the ingathering of Diaspora Jewry--and, above all, the assurance of personal reward to the righteous through resurrection and participation in the national rebirth.
Apart from the right to teach Scripture publicly, the most pressing need felt by the surviving rabbis was for the reorganization of a recognized body that would reactivate the functions of the former Sanhedrin and pass on disputed questions of law and dogma. A high court was, accordingly, organized under the leadership of Simeon ben Gamaliel (reigned c. 135-c. 175), the son of the previous patriarch (the Roman term for the head of the Palestinian Jewish community) of the house of Hillel, in association with rabbis representing other schools and interests. In the ensuing struggle for power, the patriarch managed to concentrate all communal authority in his office. The dominating role of the patriarchate reached its zenith in the days of his son and successor, Judah the Prince, whose reign (c. 175-c. 220) marked the climax of this period of rabbinic activity, otherwise known as the "age of the tannaim" (teachers). Armed with wealth, Roman backing, and dynastic legitimacy (which the patriarch now traced to the house of David), Judah sought to standardize Jewish practice through a corpus of legal norms that would reflect recognized views of the rabbinate on every aspect of life. The Mishna (collection of rabbinic law) that soon emerged became the primary source of reference in all rabbinic schools and constituted the core around which the Talmud (commentary on Mishna, literally "teaching") was later compiled. It thus remains the best single introduction to the complex of rabbinic values and practices as they evolved in Roman Palestine.
Accession Of King Solomon
B.C. 1017
Introduction
After many weary years of travail and fighting in the wilderness and the
land of Canaan, the Jews had at last founded their kingdom, with Jerusalem as
the capital. Saul was proclaimed the first king; afterward followed David,
the "Lion of the tribe of Judah." During the many wars in which the Israelites
had been engaged, the Ark of the Covenant was the one thing in which their
faith was bound. No undertaking could fail while they retained possession of
it.
In their wanderings the tabernacle enclosing the precious ark was first
erected before the dwellings for the people. It had been captured by the
Philistines, then restored to the Hebrews, and became of greater veneration
than before. It will be remembered that, among other things, it contained the
rod of Aaron which budded and was the cause of his selection as high-priest.
It also contained the tables of stone which bore the Ten Commandments.
David desired to build a fitting shrine, a temple, in which to place the
Ark of the Covenant; it should be a place wherein the people could worship; a
centre of religion in which the ark should have paid it the distinction due it
as the seat of tremendous majesty.
But David had been a man of war; this temple was a place of peace. Blood
must not stain its walls; no shedder of gore could be its architect. Yet David
collected stone, timber, and precious metals for its erection; and, not being
allowed to erect the temple himself, was permitted to depute that office to
his son and successor, "Solomon the Wise".
At this time all the enemies of Israel had been conquered, the country
was at peace; the domain of the Hebrews was greater than at any other time,
before or afterward. It was the fitting time for the erection of a great
shrine to enclose the sacred ark. Nobly was this done, for no human work of
ancient or modern times has so moved the multitude as the mention of Solomon's
Temple.
[See Solomon: Solomon, Last King of Judah and Israel. From the picture by Van
Ghent in the Palazzo Barberini.]
Building Of The Temple At Jerusalem
Solomon succeeded to the Hebrew kingdom at the age of twenty. He was
environed by designing, bold, and dangerous enemies. The pretensions of
Adonijah still commanded a powerful party: Abiathar swayed the priesthood;
Joab the army. The singular connection in public opinion between the title to
the crown and the possession of the deceased monarch's harem is well
understood. ^1 Adonijah, in making request for Abishag, a youthful concubine
taken by David in his old age, was considered as insidiously renewing his
claims to the sovereignty. Solomon saw at once the wisdom of his father's
dying admonition: he seized the opportunity of crushing all future opposition
and all danger of a civil war. He caused Adonijah to be put to death;
suspended Abiathar from his office, and banished him from Jerusalem: and
though Joab fled to the altar, he commanded him to be slain for the two
murders of which he had been guilty, those of Abner and Amasa. Shimei,
another dangerous man, was commanded to reside in Jerusalem, on pain of death
if he should quit the city. Three years afterward he was detected in a
suspicious journey to Gath, on the Philistine border; and having violated the
compact, he suffered the penalty.
[Footnote 1: Kings, i.]
Thus secured by the policy of his father from internal enemies, by the
terror of his victories from foreign invasion, Solomon commenced his peaceful
reign, during which Judah and Israel dwelt safely, Every man under his vine
and under his figtree, from Dan to Beersheba. This peace was broken only by a
revolt of the Edomites. Hadad, of the royal race, after the exterminating war
waged by David and by Joab, had fled to Egypt, where he married the sister of
the king's wife. No sooner had he heard of the death of David and of Joab
than he returned, and seems to have kept up a kind of predatory warfare during
the reign of Solomon. Another adventurer, Rezon, a subject of Hadadezer, king
of Zobah, seized on Damascus, and maintained a great part of Syria in
hostility to Solomon.
Solomon's conquest of Hamath Zobah in a later part of his reign, after
which he built Tadmor in the wilderness and raised a line of fortresses along
his frontier to the Euphrates, is probably connected with these hostilities.
^2 The justice of Solomon was proverbial. Among his first acts after his
accession, it is related that when he had offered a costly sacrifice at
Gibeon, the place where the Tabernacle remained, God had appeared to him in a
dream, and offered him whatever gift he chose: the wise king requested an
understanding heart to judge the people. God not merely assented to his
prayer, but added the gift of honor and riches. His judicial wisdom was
displayed in the memorable history of the two women who contested the right to
a child. Solomon, in the wild spirit of Oriental justice, commanded the
infant to be divided before their faces: the heart of the real mother was
struck with terror and abhorrence, while the false one consented to the
horrible partition, and by this appeal to nature the cause was instantaneously
decided.
[Footnote 2: I Kings, xi., 23; I Chron., viii, 3.]
The internal government of his extensive dominions next demanded the
attention of Solomon. Besides the local and municipal governors, he divided
the kingdom into twelve districts: over each of these he appointed a purveyor
for the collection of the royal tribute, which was received in kind; and thus
the growing capital and the immense establishments of Solomon were abundantly
furnished with provisions. Each purveyor supplied the court for a month. The
daily consumption of his household was three hundred bushels of finer flour,
six hundred of a coarser sort; ten fatted, twenty other oxen; one hundred
sheep; besides poultry, and various kinds of venison. Provender was furnished
for forty thousand horses, and a great number of dromedaries. Yet the
population of the country did not, at first at least, feel these burdens:
Judah and Israel were many, as the sand which is by the sea in multitude,
eating and drinking, and making merry.
The foreign treaties of Solomon were as wisely directed to secure the
profound peace of his dominions. He entered into a matrimonial alliance with
the royal family of Egypt, whose daughter he received with great magnificence;
and he renewed the important alliance with the king of Tyre. ^1 The friendship
of this monarch was of the highest value in contributing to the great royal
and national work, the building of the Temple. The cedar timber could only be
obtained from the forests of Lebanon: the Sidonian artisans, celebrated in the
Homeric poems, were the most skilful workmen in every kind of manufacture,
particularly in the precious metals.
[Footnote 1: After inserting the correspondence between King Solomon and King
Hiram of Tyre, according to I Kings, v., Josephus asserts that copies of these
letters were not only preserved by his countrymen, but also in the archives of
Tyre. I presume that Josephus adverts to the statement of Tyrian historians,
not toan actual inspection of the archives, which he seems to assert as
existingand accessible.]
Solomon entered into a regular treaty, by which he bound himself to
supply the Tyrians with large quantities of corn; receiving in return their
timber, which was floated down to Joppa, and a large body of artificers. The
timber was cut by his own subjects, of whom he raised a body of thirty
thousand; ten thousand employed at a time, and relieving each other every
month; so that to one month of labor they had two of rest. He raised two
other corps, one of seventy thousand porters of burdens, the other of eighty
thousand hewers of stone, who were employed in the quarries among the
mountains. All these labors were thrown, not on the Israelites, but on the
strangers who, chiefly of Canaanitish descent, had been permitted to inhabit
the country.
These preparations, in addition to those of King David, being completed,
the work began. The eminence of Moriah, the Mount of Vision, i.e., the height
seen afar from the adjacent country, which tradition pointed out as the spot
where Abraham had offered his son (where recently the plague had been stayed,
by the altar built in the threshing-floor of Ornan or Araunah, the Jebusite),
rose on the east side of the city. Its rugged top was levelled with immense
labor; its sides, which to the east and south were precipitous, were faced
with a wall of stone, built up perpendicular from the bottom of the valley, so
as to appear to those who looked down of most terrific height; a work of
prodigious skill and labor, as the immense stones were strongly mortised
together and wedged into the rock. Around the whole area or esplanade, an
irregular quadrangle, was a solid wall of considerable height and strength:
within this was an open court, into which the Gentiles were either from the
first, or subsequently, admitted. A second wall encompassed another
quadrangle, called the court of the Israelites. Along this wall, on the
inside, ran a portico or cloister, over which were chambers for different
sacred purposes. Within this again another, probably a lower, wall separated
the court of the priests from that of the Israelites. To each court the
ascent was by steps, so that the platform of the inner court was on a higher
level than that of the outer.
The Temple itself was rather a monument of the wealth than the
architectural skill and science of the people. It was a wonder of the world
from the splendor of its materials, more than the grace, boldness, or majesty
of its height and dimensions. It had neither the colossal magnitude of the
Egyptian, the simple dignity and perfect proportional harmony of the Grecian,
nor perhaps the fantastic grace and lightness of later Oriental architecture.
Some writers, calling to their assistance the visionary temple of Ezekiel,
have erected a most superb edifice; to which there is this fatal objection,
that if the dimensions of the prophet are taken as they stand in the text, the
area of the Temple and its courts would not only have covered the whole of
Mount Moriah, but almost all Jerusalem. In fact our accounts of the Temple of
Solomon are altogether unsatisfactory. The details, as they now stand in the
books of Kings and Chronicles, the only safe authorities, are unscientific,
and, what is worse, contradictory.
[See The Temple Of Jerusalem: A reconstruction.]
Josephus has evidently blended together the three temples, and attributed
to the earlier all the subsequent additions and alterations. The Temple, on
the whole, was an enlargement of the tabernacle, built of more costly and
durable materials. Like its model, it retained the ground-plan and
disposition of the Egyptian, or rather of almost all the sacred edifices of
antiquity: even its measurements are singularly in unison with some of the
most ancient temples in Upper Egypt. It consisted of a propylaeon, a temple,
and a sanctuary; called respectively the Porch, the Holy Place, and the Holy
of Holies. Yet in some respects, if the measurements are correct, the Temple
must rather have resembled the form of a simple Gothic church.
In the front to the east stood the porch, a tall tower, rising to the
height of 210 feet. Either within, or, like the Egyptian obelisks, before the
porch, stood two pillars of brass; by one account 27, by another above 60 feet
high, the latter statement probably including their capitals and bases. These
were called Jachin and Boaz (Durability and Strength). ^1 The capitals of
these were of the richest workmanship, with net-work, chain-work, and
pomegranates. The porch was the same width with the Temple, 35 feet; its
depth 17 1/2. The length of the main building, including the Holy Place, 70
feet, and the Holy of Holies, 35, was in the whole 105 feet; the height 52 1/2
feet. ^2
[Footnote 1: Ewald, following, as he states, the LXX., makes these two pillars
not standing alone like obelisks before the porch, but as forming the front of
the porch, with the capitals connected together, and supporting a kind of
balcony, with ornamental work above it. The pillars measured 12 cubits (22
feet) round.]
[Footnote 2: Mr. Fergusson, estimating the cubitrather lower than in the text,
makes the porch 30 by 15; the pronaos, or HolyPlace, 60 by 30; the Holy of
Holies, 30; the height 45 feet. Mr. Fergusson, following Josephus, supposes
that the whole Temple had an upper story ofwood, a talar, as appears in other
Eastern edifices. I doubt the authorityof Josephus as to the older Temple,
though, as Mr. Fergusson observes, the discrepancies between the measurements
in Kings and in Chronicles may bepartially reconciled on this supposition.
Mr. Fergusson makes the height ofthe eastern tower only 90 feet. The text
followed 2 Chron., iii., 4, reckoning the cubit at 1 foot 9 inches.]
Josephus carries the whole building up to the height of the porch; but
this is out of all credible proportion, making the height twice the length and
six times the width. Along each side, and perhaps at the back of the main
building, ran an aisle, divided into three stories of small chambers: the wall
of the Temple being thicker at the bottom, left a rest to support the beams of
these chambers, which were not let into the wall. These aisles, the chambers
of which were appropriated as vestiaries, treasuries, and for other sacred
purposes, seem to have reached about half way up the main wall of what we may
call the nave and choir: the windows into the latter were probably above them;
these were narrow, but widened inward.
If the dimensions of the Temple appear by no means imposing, it must be
remembered that but a small part of the religious ceremonies took place within
the walls. The Holy of Holies was entered only once a year, and that by the
High-priest alone. It was the secret and unapproachable shrine of the
Divinity. The Holy Place, the body of the Temple, admitted only the
officiating priests. The courts, called in popular language the Temple, or
rather the inner quadrangle, were in fact the great place of divine worship.
Here, under the open air, were celebrated the great public and national rites,
the processions, the offerings, the sacrifices; here stood the great tank for
ablution, and the high altar for burnt-offerings.
But the costliness of the materials, the richness and variety of the
details, amply compensated for the moderate dimensions of the building. It
was such a sacred edifice as a traveller might have expected to find in El
Dorado. The walls were of hewn stone, faced within with cedar which was
richly carved with knosps and flowers; the ceiling was of fir-tree. But in
every part gold was lavished with the utmost profusion; within and without,
the floor, the walls, the ceiling, in short, the whole house is described as
overlaid with gold. The finest and purest - that of Parvaim, by some supposed
to be Ceylon - was reserved for the sanctuary. Here the cherubim, which stood
upon the covering of the Ark, with their wings touching each wall, were
entirely covered with gold.
The sumptuous veil, of the richest materials and brightest colors, which
divided the Holy of Holies from the Holy Place was suspended on chains of
gold. Cherubim, palm-trees, and flowers, the favorite ornaments, everywhere
covered with gilding, were wrought in almost all parts. The altar within the
Temple and the table of shewbread were likewise covered with the same precious
metal. All the vessels, the ten candlesticks, five hundred basins, and all
the rest of the sacrificial and other utensils, were of solid gold. Yet the
Hebrew writers seem to dwell with the greatest astonishment and admiration on
the works which were founded in brass by Huram, a man of Jewish extraction,
who had learned his art at Tyre.
Besides the lofty pillars above mentioned, there was a great tank, called
a sea, of molten brass, supported on twelve oxen, three turned each way; this
was seventeen and one-half feet in diameter. There was also a great altar,
and ten large vessels for the purpose of ablution, called lavers, standing on
bases or pedestals, the rims of which were richly ornamented with a border, on
which were wrought figures of lions, oxen, and cherubim. The bases below were
formed of four wheels, like those of a chariot. All the works in brass were
cast in a place near the Jordan, where the soil was of a stiff clay suited to
the purpose.
For seven years and a half the fabric arose in silence. All the timbers,
the stones, even of the most enormous size, measuring seventeen and eighteen
feet, were hewn and fitted, so as to be put together without the sound of any
tool whatever; as it has been expressed, with great poetical beauty:
"Like some tall palm the noiseless fabric grew."
At the end of this period, the Temple and its courts being completed, the
solemn dedication took place, with the greatest magnificence which the king
and the nation could display. All the chieftains of the different tribes, and
all of every order who could be brought together, assembled.
David had already organized the priesthood and the Levites; and assigned
to the thirty-eight thousand of the latter tribe each his particular office;
twenty-four thousand were appointed for the common duties, six thousand as
officers, four thousand as guards and porters, four thousand as singers and
musicians. On this great occasion, the Dedication of the Temple, all the
tribe of Levi, without regard to their courses, the whole priestly order of
every class, attended. Around the great brazen altar, which rose in the court
of the priests before the door of the Temple, stood in front the sacrificers,
all around the whole choir, arrayed in white linen. One hundred and twenty of
these were trumpeters, the rest had cymbals, harps, and psalteries. Solomon
himself took his place on an elevated scaffold, or raised throne of brass.
The whole assembled nation crowded the spacious courts beyond. The ceremony
began with the preparation of burnt-offerings, so numerous that they could not
be counted.
At an appointed signal commenced the more important part of the scene,
the removal of the Ark, the installation of the God of Israel in his new and
appropriate dwelling, to the sound of all the voices and all the instruments,
chanting some of those splendid odes, the 47th, 97th, 98th, and 107th psalms.
The Ark advanced, borne by the Levites, to the open portals of the Temple. It
can scarcely be doubted that the 24th psalm, even if composed before, was
adopted and used on this occasion. The singers, as it drew near the gate,
broke out in these words: - Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and be ye lifted
up, ye everlasting doors, and the King of Glory shall come in. It was
answered from the other part of the choir, - Who is the King of Glory? - the
whole choir responded, - The Lord of Hosts, he is the King of Glory.
When the procession arrived at the Holy Place, the gates flew open; when
it reached the Holy of Holies, the veil was drawn back. The Ark took its
place under the extended wings of the cherubim, which might seem to fold over,
and receive it under their protection. At that instant all the trumpeters and
singers were at once to make one sound to be heard in praising and thanking
the Lord; and when they lifted up their voice, with the trumpets, and cymbals,
and instruments of music, and praised the Lord, saying, For he is good, for
his mercy endureth forever, the house was filled with a cloud, even the house
of the Lord, so that the priests could not stand to minister by reason of the
cloud; for the glory of the Lord had filled the house of God. Thus the
Divinity took possession of his sacred edifice.
The king then rose upon the brazen scaffold, knelt down, and spreading
his hands toward heaven, uttered the prayer of consecration. The prayer was
of unexampled sublimity: while it implored the perpetual presence of the
Almighty, as the tutelar Deity and Sovereign of the Israelites, it recognized
his spiritual and illimitable nature. But will God in very deed dwell with
men on the earth? behold heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain thee,
how much less this house which I have built? It then recapitulated the
principles of the Hebrew theocracy, the dependence of the national prosperity
and happiness on the national conformity to the civil and religious law. As
the king concluded in these emphatic terms: - Now, therefore, arise, O Lord
God, into thy resting-place, thou and the ark of thy strength: let thy
priests, O Lord God, be clothed with salvation, and thy saints rejoice in
goodness. O Lord God, turn not away the face of thine anointed: remember the
mercies of David thy servant, - the cloud which had rested over the Holy of
Holies grew brighter and more dazzling; fire broke out and consumed all the
sacrifices; the priests stood without, awestruck by the insupportable
splendor; the whole people fell on their faces, and worshipped and praised the
Lord, for he is good, for his mercy is forever.
Which was the greater, the external magnificence, or the moral sublimity
of this scene? Was it the Temple, situated on its commanding eminence, with
all its courts, the dazzling splendor of its materials, the innumerable
multitudes, the priesthood in their gorgeous attire, the king, with all the
insignia of royalty, on his throne of burnished brass, the music, the radiant
cloud filling the Temple, the sudden fire flashing upon the altar, the whole
nation upon their knees? Was it not rather the religious grandeur of the
hymns and of the prayer: the exalted and rational views of the Divine Nature,
the union of a whole people in the adoration of the one Great,
Incomprehensible, Almighty, Everlasting Creator?
This extraordinary festival, which took place at the time of that of
Tabernacles, lasted for two weeks, twice the usual time: during this period
twenty-two thousand oxen and one hundred and twenty thousand sheep were
sacrificed, ^1 every individual probably contributing to this great
propitiatory rite; and the whole people feasting on those parts of the
sacrifices which were not set apart for holy uses.
[Footnote 1: Gibbon, in one of his malicious notes, observes, "As the blood
and smoke of so many hecatombs might be inconvenient, Lightfoot, the Christian
Rabbi, removes them by a miracle. Le Clerc (ad loc.) is bold enough to
suspect the fidelity of the numbers." To this I ventured to subjoin the
following illustration:" According to the historian Kotobeddyn, quoted by
Burckhardt, Travels in Arabia, p. 276, the Khalif Moktader sacrificed during
his pilgrimage to Mecca, in the year of the Hegira 350, forty thousand camels
and cows, and fifty thousand sheep. Barthema describes thirty thousand oxen
slain, and their carcasses given to the poor. Tavernier speaks of one hundred
thousand victims offered by the king of Tonquin." Gibbon, ch. xxiii., iv., p.
96, edit. Milman.]
Though the chief magnificence of Solomon was lavished on the Temple of
God, yet the sumptuous palaces which he erected for his own residence display
an opulence and profusion which may vie with the older monarchs of Egypt or
Assyria. The great palace stood in Jerusalem; it occupied thirteen years in
building. A causeway bridged the deep ravine, and leading directly to the
Temple, united the part either of Acra or Sion, on which the palace stood,
with Mount Moriah. In this palace was a vast hall for public business, from
its cedar pillars called the House of the Forest of Lebanon. It was 175 feet
long, half that measurement in width, above 50 feet high; four rows of cedar
columns supported a roof made of beams of the same wood; there were three rows
of windows on each side facing each other. Besides this great hall, there
were two others, called porches, of smaller dimensions, in one of which the
throne of justice was placed. The harem, or women's apartments, adjoined to
these buildings; with other piles of vast extent for different purposes,
particularly, if we may credit Josephus, a great banqueting hall.
The same author informs us that the whole was surrounded with spacious
and luxuriant gardens, and adds a less credible fact, ornamented with
sculptures and paintings. Another palace was built in a romantic part of the
country in the valleys at the foot of Lebanon for his wife, the daughter of
the king of Egypt; in the luxurious gardens of which we may lay the scene of
that poetical epithalamium, ^1 or collection of Idyls, the Song of Solomon. ^2
The splendid works of Solomon were not confined to royal magnificence and
display; they condescended to usefulness. To Solomon are traced at least the
first channels and courses of the natural and artificial water supply which
has always enabled Jerusalem to maintain its thousands of worshippers at
different periods, and to endure long and obstinate sieges. ^3
[Footnote 1: I here assume that the Song of Solomon was an epithalamium. I
enter not into the interminable controversy as to the literal or allegorical
or spiritual meaning of this poem, nor into that of its age. A very
particular though succinct account of all these theories, ancient and modern,
may be found in awork by Dr. Ginsberg. I confess that Dr. Ginsberg's theory,
which is rather tinged with the virtuous sentimentality of the modern novel,
seems to me singularly out of harmony with the Oriental and ancient character
of the poem. It is adopted, however, though modified, by M. Renan.]
[Footnote 2: According to Ewald, the ivory tower in this poem was raised in
one of these beautiful "pleasances," in the Anti-Libanus, looking toward
Hamath.]
[Footnote 3: Ewald: Geschichte, iii., pp. 62-68; a very remarkable and
valuable passage.]
The descriptions in the Greek writers of the Persian courts in Susa and
Ecbatana; the tales of the early travellers in the East about the kings of
Samarcand or Cathay; and even the imagination of the Oriental romancers and
poets, have scarcely conceived a more splendid pageant than Solomon, seated on
his throne of ivory, receiving the homage of distant princes who came to
admire his magnificence, and put to the test his noted wisdom. ^1 This throne
was of pure ivory, covered with gold; six steps led up to the seat, and on
each side of the steps stood twelve lions.
[Footnote 1: Compare the great Mogul's throne, in Tavernier; that of the King
of Persia, in Morier.]
All the vessels of his palace were of pure gold, silver was thought too
mean: his armory was furnished with gold, two hundred targets and three
hundred shields of beaten gold were suspended in the house of Lebanon.
Josephus mentions a body of archers who escorted him from the city to his
country palace, clad in dresses of Tyrian purple, and their hair powdered with
gold dust. But enormous as this wealth appears, the statement of his
expenditure on the Temple, and of his annual revenue, so passes all
credibility, that any attempt at forming a calculation on the uncertain data
we possess may at once be abandoned as a hopeless task. No better proof can
be given of the uncertainty of our authorities, of our imperfect knowledge of
the Hebrew weights of money, and, above all, of our total ignorance of the
relative value which the precious metals bore to the commodities of life, than
the estimate, made by Dr. Prideaux, of the treasures left by David, amounting
to eight hundred millions, nearly the capital of our national debt.
Our inquiry into the sources of the vast wealth which Solomon undoubtedly
possessed may lead to more satisfactory, though still imperfect, results. The
treasures of David were accumulated rather by conquest than by traffic. Some
of the nations he subdued, particularly the Edomites, were wealthy. All the
tribes seem to have worn a great deal of gold and silver in their ornaments
and their armor; their idols were often of gold, and the treasuries of their
temples perhaps contained considerable wealth. But during the reign of
Solomon almost the whole commerce of the world passed into his territories.
The treaty with Tyre was of the utmost importance: nor is there any instance
in which two neighboring nations so clearly saw, and so steadily pursued,
without jealousy or mistrust, their mutual and inseparable interests. ^1.
[Footnote 1: The very learned work of Movers, Die Phonizier (Bonn, 1841,
Berlin, 1849) contains everything which true German industry and
comprehensiveness can accumulate about this people. Movers, though in such an
inquiry conjecture is inevitable, is neither so bold, so arbitrary, nor so
dogmatic in his conjectures as many of his contemporaries. See on Hiram, ii.
326 et seq. Movers is disposed to appreciate as of high value the fragments
preserved in Josephus of the Phoenician histories of Menander and Dios. Mr.
Kenrick's Phoenicia may also be consulted with advantage.]
On one occasion only, when Solomon presented to Hiram twenty inland
cities which he had conquered, Hiram expressed great dissatisfaction, and
called the territory by the opprobrious name of Cabul. The Tyrian had perhaps
cast a wistful eye on the noble bay and harbor of Acco, or Ptolemais, which
the prudent Hebrew either would not, or could not - since it was part of the
promised land - dissever from his dominions. So strict was the confederacy,
that Tyre may be considered the port of Palestine, Palestine the granary of
Tyre. Tyre furnished the shipbuilders and mariners; the fruitful plains of
Palestine victualled the fleets, and supplied the manufacturers and merchants
of the Phoenician league with all the necessaries of life. ^2
[Footnote 2: To a late period Tyre and Sidon were mostly dependent on
Palestine for their supply of grain. The inhabitants of these cities desired
peace with Herod (Agrippa) because their country was nourished by the king's country (Acts xi
Judas Maccabaeus Liberates Judea
Judah Maccabe
Author: Josephus
Judas Maccabaeus Liberates Judea
B.C. 165
Introduction
The noble-minded Judas Maccabaeus was the hero of Jewish independence -
the deliverer of Judea and Judaism during the bloody persecutions of the
Syrian king Antiochus Epiphanes, in the second century B.C. This King was
attempting to destroy in Palestine the national religion. For this purpose
pagan altars were set up among the Jews and pagan sacrifices enjoined upon the
worshippers of Jehovah. Many Jews fled from their own towns and villages into
the uninhabited wilderness, in order that they might have liberty to worship
the God of their fathers; but a few conformed to the ordinances of Antiochus.
Soon, however, open resistance to the decrees of the pagan ruler began to
manifest itself among the faithful.
The first protest in the shape of active opposition was made by
Mattathias, a priest living at Modin. When the servants of Antiochus came to
that retired village and commanded Mattathias to do sacrifice to the heathen
gods, he refused; he went so far as to strike down at the altar a Jew who was
preparing to offer such a sacrifice. Then he escaped to the mountains with
his five sons and a band of followers. These followers grew in numbers and
activity, overthrowing pagan altars, circumcising heathen children, and
putting to the sword both apostates and unbelievers. When Mattathias died, in
B.C. 166, he was succeeded as leader by his son Judas, called Maccabaeus, "the
Hammer"; as Charles, who defeated the Saracens at Tours, is called Martel or
hammer.
The successes of Judas were uninterrupted, and culminated B.C. 165 in the
repulse of Lysias, the general of Antiochus, at Bethzur, where a large Syrian
force gathered in the expectation of crushing the patriotic army of Judas.
After this victory Judas led his followers into Jerusalem and proceeded to
restore the Temple and the worship of the national religion, and to cleanse
the Temple from all traces of pagan worship. The great altar was rebuilt; new
sacred vessels provided; and an eight-days' dedication festival begun on the
very day when, three years before, the altar of Jehovah had been desecrated by
a heathen sacrifice. This Feast of the Dedication was ever afterward observed
in the Temple at Jerusalem and is mentioned in the gospels (John x. 22).
Judas established a dynasty of priest-kings, which lasted until supplanted by
Herod, with the aid of the Romans, in B.C. 40; and gave by his genuinely
heroic bearing his name to this whole glorious epoch of Jewish history.
Judas Maccabaeus Liberates Judea
Now at this time there was one whose name was Mattathias, who dwelt at
Modin, the son of John, the son of Simeon, the son of Asamoneus, a priest of
the order of Joarib, and a citizen of Jerusalem. He had five sons: John, who
was called Gaddis, and Simon, who was called Matthes, and Judas, who was
called Maccabaeus, ^1 and Eleazar, who was called Auran, and Jonathan, who was
called Apphus. Now this Mattathias lamented to his children the sad state of
their affairs, and the ravage made in the city, and the plundering of the
Temple, and the calamities the multitude were under; and he told them that it
was better for them to die for the laws of their country than to live so
ingloriously as they then did.
[Footnote 1: That this appellation of Maccabee was not first of all given to
Judas Maccabaeus, nor was derived from any initial letters of the Hebrew words
on his banner, Mi Kamoka Be Elim, Jehovah? ("Who is like unto thee among the
gods, O Jehovah?"), Exod. xv. ii, as the modern rabbins vainly pretend, see
Authent. Rec., part i., pp. 205, 206. Only we may note, by the way, that the
original name of these Maccabees and their posterity was Asamoneans, which was
derived from Asamoneus, the great-grandfather of Mattathias, as Josephus here
informs us.]
But when those that were appointed by the King were come to Modin that
they might compel the Jews to do what they were commanded, and to enjoin those
that were there to offer sacrifice, as the King had commanded, they desired
that Mattathias, a person of the greatest character among them, both on other
accounts and particularly on account of such a numerous and so deserving a
family of children, would begin the sacrifice, because his fellow-citizens
would follow his example, and because such a procedure would make him honored
by the King. But Mattathias said that he would not do it, and that if all the
other nations would obey the commands of Antiochus, either out of fear or to
please him, yet would not he nor his sons leave the religious worship of their
country; but as soon as he had ended his speech there came one of the Jews
into the midst of them and sacrificed as Antiochus had commanded. At which
Mattathias had great indignation, and ran upon him violently with his sons,
who had swords with them, and slew both the man himself that sacrificed and
Apelles, the King's general who compelled him to sacrifice, with a few of his
soldiers.
He also overthrew the idol altar and cried out, "If," said he, "anyone be
zealous for the laws of his country and for the worship of God, let him follow
me"; and when he had said this he made haste into the desert with his sons,
and left all his substance in the village. Many others did the same also, and
fled with their children and wives into the desert and dwelt in caves; but
when the King's generals heard this, they took all the forces they then had in
the citadel at Jerusalem, and pursued the Jews into the desert; and when they
had overtaken them, they in the first place endeavored to persuade them to
repent, and to choose what was most for their advantage and not put them to
the necessity of using them according to the law of war; but when they would
not comply with their persuasions, but continued to be of a different mind,
they fought against them on the Sabbath day, and they burned them as they were
in the caves, without resistance, and without so much as stopping up the
entrances of the caves. And they avoided to defend themselves on that day
because they were not willing to break in upon the honor they owed the
Sabbath, even in such distresses; for our law requires that we rest upon that
day.
There were about a thousand, with their wives and children, who were
smothered and died in these caves; but many of those that escaped joined
themselves to Mattathias and appointed him to be their ruler, who taught them
to fight even on the Sabbath day, and told them that unless they would do so
they would become their own enemies by observing the law [so rigorously] while
their adversaries would still assault them on this day, and they would not
then defend themselves; and that nothing could then hinder but they must all
perish without fighting. This speech persuaded them, and this rule continues
among us to this day, that if there be a necessity we may fight on Sabbath
days. So Mattathias got a great army about him and overthrew their idol
altars and slew those that broke the laws, even all that he could get under
his power; for many of them were dispersed among the nations round about them
for fear of him. He also commanded that those boys who were not yet
circumcised should be circumcised now; and he drove those away that were
appointed to hinder such their circumcision.
But when he had ruled one year and was fallen into a distemper, he called
for his sons and set them round about him, and said: "O my sons, I am going
the way of all the earth; and I recommend to you my resolution and beseech you
not to be negligent in keeping it, but to be mindful of the desires of him who
begat you and brought you up, and to preserve the customs of your country, and
to recover your ancient form of government which is in danger of being
overturned, and not to be carried away with those that either by their own
inclination or out of necessity betray it, but to become such sons as are
worthy of me; to be above all force and necessity, and so to dispose your
souls as to be ready when it shall be necessary to die for your laws, as
sensible of this, by just reasoning, that if God see that you are so disposed
he will not overlook you, but will have a great value for your virtue, and
will restore to you again what you have lost and will return to you that
freedom in which you shall live quietly and enjoy your own customs.
"Your bodies are mortal and subject to fate; but they receive a sort of
immortality by the remembrance of what actions they have done; and I would
have you so in love with this immortality that you may pursue after glory, and
that when you have undergone the greatest difficulties you may not scruple for
such things to lose your lives. I exhort you especially to agree one with
another, and in what excellency any one of you exceeds another, to yield to
him so far, and by that means to reap the advantage of everyone's own virtues.
Do you then esteem Simon as your father because he is a man of extraordinary
prudence, and be governed by him in what counsels he gives you. Take
Maccabaeus for the general of your army, because of his courage and strength,
for he will avenge your nation and will bring vengeance on your enemies.
Admit among you the righteous and religious, and augment their power."
When Mattathias had thus discoursed to his sons and had prayed to God to
be their assistant and to recover to the people their former constitution, he
died a little afterward, and was buried at Modin, all the people making great
lamentation for him. Whereupon his son Judas took upon him the administration
of public affairs, in the hundred and forty-sixth year; and thus, by the ready
assistance of his brethren and of others, Judas cast their enemies out of the
country and put those of their own country to death who had transgressed its
laws, and purified the land of all the pollutions that were in it.
When Apollonius, the general of the Samaritan forces, heard this he took
his army and made haste to go against Judas, who met him and joined battle
with him, and beat him and slew many of his men, and among them Apollonius
himself, their general, whose sword, being that which he happened then to
wear, he seized upon and kept for himself; but he wounded more than he slew,
and took a great deal of prey from the enemy's camp, and went his way; but
when Seron, who was general of the army of Celesyria, heard that many had
joined themselves to Judas, and that he had about him an army sufficient for
fighting and for making war, he determined to make an expedition against him,
as thinking it became him to endeavor to punish those that transgressed the
King's injunctions. He then got together an army as large as he was able, and
joined to it the runagate and wicked Jews, and came against Judas.
He then came as far as Bethoron, a village of Judea, and there pitched
his camp; upon which Judas met him, and when he intended to give him battle he
saw that his soldiers were backward to fight because their number was small
and because they wanted food, for they were fasting. He encouraged them and
said to them that victory and conquest of enemies are not derived from the
multitude in armies, but in the exercise of piety toward God; and that they
had the plainest instances in their forefathers, who, by their righteousness
and exerting themselves on behalf of their own laws and their own children,
had frequently conquered many ten thousands, for innocence is the strongest
army. By this speech he induced his men to contemn the multitude of the
enemy, and to fall upon Seron; and upon joining battle with him he beat the
Syrians; and when their general fell among the rest they all ran away with
speed, as thinking that to be their best way of escaping. So he pursued them
unto the plain and slew about eight hundred of the enemy, but the rest escaped
to the region which lay near to the sea.
When king Antiochus heard of these things he was very angry at what had
happened; so he got together all his own army, with many mercenaries who he
had hired from the islands, and took them with him, and prepared to break into
Judea about the beginning of the spring; but when, upon his mustering his
soldiers, he perceived that his treasures were deficient, and there was a want
of money in them, for all the taxes were not paid, by reason of the seditions
there had been among the nations, he having been so magnanimous and so liberal
that what he had was not sufficient for him, he therefore resolved first to go
into Persia and collect the taxes of that country. Hereupon he left one whose
name was Lysias, who was in great repute with him, governor of the kingdom, as
far as the bounds of Egypt and of the Lower Asia and reaching from the river
Euphrates, and committed to him a certain part of his forces and of his
elephants and charged him to bring up his son Antiochus with all possible care
until he came back; and that he should conquer Judea and take its inhabitants
for slaves and utterly destroy Jerusalem, and abolish the whole nation; and
when king Antiochus had given these things in charge to Lysias, he went into
Persia, and in the hundred and forty-seventh year he passed over Euphrates and
went to the superior provinces.
Upon this Lysias chose Ptolemy the son of Dorymenes, and Nicanor, and
Gorgias, very potent men among the King's friends, and delivered to them forty
thousand foot-soldiers and seven thousand horsemen, and sent them against
Judea, who came as far as the city Emmaus and pitched their camp in the plain
country. There came also to them auxiliaries out of Syria and the country
round about, as also many of the runagate Jews; and besides these came some
merchants to buy those that should be carried captives - having bonds with
them to bind those that should be made prisoners - with that silver and gold
which they were to pay for their price; and when Judas saw their camp and how
numerous their enemies were, he persuaded his own soldiers to be of good
courage, and exhorted them to place their hopes of victory in God and to make
supplication to him, according to the custom of their country, clothed in
sackcloth, and to show what was their usual habit of supplication in the
greatest dangers, and thereby to prevail with God to grant them the victory
over their enemies. So he set them in their ancient order of battle used by
their forefathers, under their captains of thousands, and other officers, and
dismissed such as were newly married, as well as those that had newly gained
possessions, that they might not fight in a cowardly manner out of an
inordinate love of life, in order to enjoy those blessings.
When he had thus disposed his soldiers he encouraged them to fight by the
following speech, which he made to them: "O my fellow-soldiers, no other time
remains more opportune than the present for courage and contempt of dangers;
for if you now fight manfully you may recover your liberty, which, as it is a
thing of itself agreeable to all men, so it proves to be to us much more
desirable, by its affording us the liberty of worshipping God. Since,
therefore, you are in such circumstances at present, you must either recover
that liberty and so regain a happy and blessed way of living, which is that
according to our laws and the customs of our country, or to submit to the most
opprobrious sufferings; nor will any seed of your nation remain if you be beat
in this battle. Fight therefore manfully, and suppose that you must die
though you do not fight; but believe that besides such glorious rewards as
those of the liberty of your country, of your laws, of your religion, you
shall then obtain everlasting glory. Prepare yourselves, therefore, and put
yourselves into such an agreeable posture that you may be ready to fight with
the enemy as soon as it is day to-morrow morning."
And this was the speech which Judas made to encourage them. But when the
enemy sent Gorgias with five thousand foot and one thousand horse, that he
might fall upon Judas by night, and had for that purpose certain of the
runagate Jews as guides, the son of Mattathias perceived it and resolved to
fall upon those enemies that were in their camp, now their forces were
divided. When they had therefore supped in good time and had left many fires
in their camp he marched all night to those enemies that were at Emmaus; so
that when Gorgias found no enemy in their camp, but suspected that they were
retired and had hidden themselves among the mountains, he resolved to go and
seek them wheresoever they were.
But about break of day Judas appeared to those enemies that were at
Emmaus, with only three thousand men, and those ill-armed by reason of their
poverty; and when he saw the enemy very well and skilfully fortified in their
camp he encouraged the Jews and told them that they ought to fight, though it
were with their naked bodies, for that God had sometimes of old given such men
strength, and that against such as were more in number, and were armed also,
out of regard to their great courage. So he commanded the trumpeters to sound
for the battle, and by thus falling upon the enemy when they did not expect
it, and thereby astonishing and disturbing their minds, he slew many of those
that resisted him and went on pursuing the rest as far as Gadara and the
plains of Idumea, and Ashdod, and Jamnia; and of these there fell about three
thousand. Yet did Judas exhort his soldiers not to be too desirous of the
spoils, for that still they must have a contest and battle with Gorgias and
the forces that were with him, but that when they had once overcome them then
they might securely plunder the camp because they were the only enemies
remaining, and they expected no others.
And just as he was speaking to his soldiers, Gorigas' men looked down
into that army which they left in their camp and saw that it was overthrown
and the camp burned; for the smoke that arose from it showed them, even when
they were a great way off, what had happened. When, therefore, those that
were with Gorgias understood that things were in this posture, and perceived
that those that were with Judas were ready to fight them, they also were
affrighted and put to flight; but then Judas, as though he had already beaten
Gorgias' soldiers without fighting, returned and seized on the spoils. He
took a great quantity of gold and silver and purple and blue, and then
returned home with joy, and singing hymns to God for their good success; for
this victory greatly contributed to the recovery of their liberty.
Hereupon Lysias was confounded at the defeat of the army which he had
sent, and the next year he got together sixty thousand chosen men. He also
took five thousand horsemen and fell upon Judea, and he went up to the hill
country of Bethsur, a village of Judea, and pitched his camp there, where
Judas met him with ten thousand men; and when he saw the great number of his
enemies, he prayed to God that he would assist him, and joined battle with the
first of the enemy that appeared and beat them and slew about five thousand of
them, and thereby became terrible to the rest of them. Nay, indeed, Lysias
observing the great spirit of the Jews, how they were prepared to die rather
than lose their liberty, and being afraid of their desperate way of fighting,
as if it were real strength, he took the rest of the army back with him and
returned to Antioch.
When, therefore, the generals of Antiochus' armies had been beaten so
often, Judas assembled the people together, and told them that after these
many victories which God had given them, they ought to go up to Jerusalem and
purify the Temple and offer the appointed sacrifices. But as soon as he with
the whole multitude was come to Jerusalem and found the Temple deserted and
its gates burned down and plants growing in the Temple of their own accord on
account of its desertion, he and those that were with him began to lament and
were quite confounded at the sight of the Temple; so he chose out some of his
soldiers and gave them orders to fight against those guards that were in the
citadel until he should have purified the Temple. When therefore he had
carefully purged it and had brought in new vessels, the candlestick, the table
[of shew-bread], and the altar [of incense], which were made of gold, he hung
up the veils at the gates and added doors to them.
He also took down the altar [of burnt-offering], and built a new one of
stones that he gathered together and not of such as were hewn with iron tools.
So on the five-and-twentieth day of the month of Casleu, which the Macedonians
call Apelleus, they lighted the lamps that were on the candlestick and offered
incense upon the altar [of incense], and laid the loaves upon the table [of
shew-bread], and offered burnt-offerings upon the new altar [of
burnt-offering]. Now it so fell out that these things were done on the very
same day on which their divine worship had fallen off and was reduced to a
profane and common use after three years' time; for so it was, that the Temple
was made desolate by Antiochus, and so continued for three years. This
desolation happened to the Temple in the hundred forty and fifth year, on the
twenty-fifth day of the month Apelleus, and on the hundred and fifty-third
Olympiad; but it was dedicated anew, on the same day, the twenty-fifth of the
month Apelleus, in the hundred and forty-eighth year, and on the hundred and
fifty-fourth Olympiad. And this desolation came to pass according to the
prophecy of Daniel, which was given four hundred and eight years before, for
he declared that the Macedonians would dissolve that worship [for some time].
Now Judas celebrated the festival of the restoration of the sacrifices of
the Temple for eight days, and omitted no sort of pleasures thereon; but he
feasted them upon very rich and splendid sacrifices, and he honored God and
delighted them by hymns and psalms. Nay, they were so very glad at the
revival of their customs, when after a long time of intermission they
unexpectedly had regained the freedom of their worship, that they made it a
law for their posterity that they should keep a festival, on account of the
restoration of their Temple worship, for eight days. And from that time to
this we celebrate this festival and call it Lights. I suppose the reason was,
because this liberty beyond our hopes appeared to us, and that thence was the
name given to that festival. Judas also rebuilt the walls round about the
city, and reared towers of great height against the incursions of enemies, and
set guards therein. He also fortified the city Bethsura that it might serve
as a citadel against any distresses that might come from our enemies.
When these things were over, the nations round about the Jews were very
uneasy at the revival of their power and rose up together and destroyed many
of them, as gaining advantage over them by laying snares for them and making
secret conspiracies against them. Judas made perpetual expeditions against
these men, and endeavored to restrain them from those incursions and to
prevent the mischiefs they did to the Jews. So he fell upon the Idumeans, the
posterity of Esau, at Acrabattene, and slew a great many of them and took
their spoils. He also shut up the sons of Bean, that laid wait for the Jews;
and he sat down about them, and besieged them, and burned their towers and
destroyed the men [that were in them]. After this he went thence in haste
against the Ammonites who had a great and a numerous army, of which Timotheus,
was the commander. And when he had subdued them he seized on the city of
Jazer, and took their wives and their children captives and burned the city
and then returned into Judea. But when the neighboring nations understood
that he was returned they got together in great numbers in the land of Gilead
and came against those Jews that were at their borders, who then fled to the
garrison of Dathema, and sent to Judas to inform him that Timotheus was
endeavoring to take the place whither they were fled. And as these epistles
were reading, there came other messengers out of Galilee who informed him that
the inhabitants of Ptolemais, and of Tyre and Sidon, and strangers of Galilee,
were gotten together.
Accordingly Judas, upon considering what was fit to be done with relation
to the necessity both these cases required, gave order that Simon his brother
should take three thousand chosen men and go to the assistance of the Jews in
Galilee, while he and another of his brothers, Jonathan, made haste into the
land of Gilead with eight thousand soldiers. And he left Joseph, the son of
Zacharias, and Azarias, to be over the rest of the forces, and charged them to
keep Judea very carefully and to fight no battles with any persons whomsoever
until his return. Accordingly Simon went into Galilee and fought the enemy
and put them to flight, and pursued them to the very gates of Ptolemais, and
slew about three thousand of them, and took the spoils of those that were
slain and those Jews whom they had made captives, with their baggage, and then
returned home.
Now as for Judas Maccabaeus and his brother Jonathan, they passed over
the river Jordan, and when they had gone three days' journey they lighted upon
the Nabateans, who came to meet them peaceably and who told them how the
affairs of those in the land of Galilee stood and how many of them were in
distress and driven into garrisons and into the cities of Galilee, and
exhorted him to make haste to go against the foreigners, and to endeavor to
save his own countrymen out of their hands. To this exhortation Judas
hearkened and returned into the wilderness, and in the first place fell upon
the inhabitants of Bosor, and took the city, and beat the inhabitants, and
destroyed all the males, and all that were able to fight, and burned the city.
Nor did he stop even when night came on, but he journeyed in it to the
garrison where the Jews happened to be then shut up, and where Timotheus lay
round the place with his army; and Judas came upon the city in the morning,
and when he found that the enemy were making an assault upon the walls, and
that some of them brought ladders on which they might get upon those walls,
and that others brought engines [to batter them], he bid the trumpeter to
sound his trumpet, and he encouraged his soldiers cheerfully to undergo
dangers for the sake of their brethren and kindred; he also parted his army
into three bodies and fell upon the backs of their enemies. But when
Timotheus' men perceived that it was Maccabaeus that was upon them, of both
whose courage and good success in war they had formerly had sufficient
experience, they were put to flight; but Judas followed them with his army and
slew about eight thousand of them. He then turned aside to a city of the
foreigners called Malle, and took it, and slew all the males and burned the
city itself. He then removed from thence, and overthrew Casphom and Bosor,
and many other cities of the land of Gilead.
But not long after this Timotheus prepared a great army, and took many
others as auxiliaries, and induced some of the Arabians by the promise of
rewards to go with him in this expedition, and came with his army beyond the
brook over against the city Raphon; and he encouraged his soldiers, if it came
to a battle with the Jews, to fight courageously, and to hinder their passing
over the brook; for he said to them beforehand that "if they come over it we
shall be beaten." And when Judas heard that Timotheus prepared himself to
fight he took all his own army and went in haste against Timotheus, his enemy;
and when he had passed over the brook he fell upon his enemies, and some of
them met him, whom he slew, and others of them he so terrified that he
compelled them to throw down their arms and fly, and some of them escaped; but
some of them fled to what was called the temple of Carnaim, and hoped thereby
to preserve themselves, but Judas took the city and slew them and burned the
temple, and so used several ways of destroying his enemies.
When he had done this he gathered the Jews together with their children
and wives and the substance that belonged to them, and was going to bring them
back into Judea. But as soon as he was come to a certain city the name of
which was Ephron, that lay upon the road - and as it was not possible for him
to go any other way, so he was not willing to go back again - he then sent to
the inhabitants, and desired that they would open their gates and permit them
to go on their way through the city; for they had stopped up the gates with
stones and cut off their passage through it. And when the inhabitants of
Ephron would not agree to this proposal, he encouraged those that were with
him, and encompassed the city round and besieged it, and lying round it by day
and night took the city and slew every male in it and burned it all down, and
so obtained a way through it; and the multitude of those that were slain was
so great that they went over the dead bodies. So they came over Jordan and
arrived at the great plain over against which is situate the city Bethshan,
which is called by the Greeks Scythopolis. ^1 And going away hastily from
thence, they came into Judea, singing psalms and hymns as they went, and
indulging such tokens of mirth as are usual in triumphs upon victory. They
also offered thank-offerings both for their good success and for the
preservation of their army, for not one of the Jews was slain in these
battles.
[Footnote 1: The reason why Bethshan was called Scythopolis is well-known from
Herodotus, b. i., p. 105, and Syncellus, p. 214, that the Scythians, when they
overran Asia, in the days of Josiah, seized on this city, and kept it as long
as they continued in Asia; from which time it retained the name of
Scythopolis, or the City of the Scythians.]
But as to Joseph, the son of Zacharias, and Azarias, whom Judas left
generals [of the rest of his forces] at the same time when Simon was in
Galilee fighting against the people of Ptolemais, and Judas himself and his
brother Jonathan were in the land of Gilead, did these men also affect the
glory of being courageous generals in war, in order whereto they took the army
that was under their command and came to Jamnia. There Gorgias, the general
of the forces of Jamnia, met them, and upon joining battle with him they lost
two thousand of their army and fled away, and were pursued to the very borders
of Judea. And this misfortune befell them by their disobedience to what
injunctions Judas had given them not to fight with anyone before his return.
For besides the rest of Judas' sagacious counsels, one may well wonder at this
concerning the misfortune that befell the forces commanded by Joseph and
Azarias, which he understood would happen if they broke any of the injunctions
he had given them. But Judas and his brethren did not leave off fighting with
the Idumeans, but pressed upon them on all sides, and took from them the city
of Hebron, and demolished all its fortifications and set all its towers on
fire, and burned the country of the foreigners and the city Marissa. They
came also to Ashdod, and took it, and laid it waste, and took away a great
deal of the spoils and prey that were in it and returned to Judea.
Judah Maccabe
Author: Josephus
Judas Maccabaeus Liberates Judea
B.C. 165
Introduction
The noble-minded Judas Maccabaeus was the hero of Jewish independence -
the deliverer of Judea and Judaism during the bloody persecutions of the
Syrian king Antiochus Epiphanes, in the second century B.C. This King was
attempting to destroy in Palestine the national religion. For this purpose
pagan altars were set up among the Jews and pagan sacrifices enjoined upon the
worshippers of Jehovah. Many Jews fled from their own towns and villages into
the uninhabited wilderness, in order that they might have liberty to worship
the God of their fathers; but a few conformed to the ordinances of Antiochus.
Soon, however, open resistance to the decrees of the pagan ruler began to
manifest itself among the faithful.
The first protest in the shape of active opposition was made by
Mattathias, a priest living at Modin. When the servants of Antiochus came to
that retired village and commanded Mattathias to do sacrifice to the heathen
gods, he refused; he went so far as to strike down at the altar a Jew who was
preparing to offer such a sacrifice. Then he escaped to the mountains with
his five sons and a band of followers. These followers grew in numbers and
activity, overthrowing pagan altars, circumcising heathen children, and
putting to the sword both apostates and unbelievers. When Mattathias died, in
B.C. 166, he was succeeded as leader by his son Judas, called Maccabaeus, "the
Hammer"; as Charles, who defeated the Saracens at Tours, is called Martel or
hammer.
The successes of Judas were uninterrupted, and culminated B.C. 165 in the
repulse of Lysias, the general of Antiochus, at Bethzur, where a large Syrian
force gathered in the expectation of crushing the patriotic army of Judas.
After this victory Judas led his followers into Jerusalem and proceeded to
restore the Temple and the worship of the national religion, and to cleanse
the Temple from all traces of pagan worship. The great altar was rebuilt; new
sacred vessels provided; and an eight-days' dedication festival begun on the
very day when, three years before, the altar of Jehovah had been desecrated by
a heathen sacrifice. This Feast of the Dedication was ever afterward observed
in the Temple at Jerusalem and is mentioned in the gospels (John x. 22).
Judas established a dynasty of priest-kings, which lasted until supplanted by
Herod, with the aid of the Romans, in B.C. 40; and gave by his genuinely
heroic bearing his name to this whole glorious epoch of Jewish history.
Judas Maccabaeus Liberates Judea
Now at this time there was one whose name was Mattathias, who dwelt at
Modin, the son of John, the son of Simeon, the son of Asamoneus, a priest of
the order of Joarib, and a citizen of Jerusalem. He had five sons: John, who
was called Gaddis, and Simon, who was called Matthes, and Judas, who was
called Maccabaeus, ^1 and Eleazar, who was called Auran, and Jonathan, who was
called Apphus. Now this Mattathias lamented to his children the sad state of
their affairs, and the ravage made in the city, and the plundering of the
Temple, and the calamities the multitude were under; and he told them that it
was better for them to die for the laws of their country than to live so
ingloriously as they then did.
[Footnote 1: That this appellation of Maccabee was not first of all given to
Judas Maccabaeus, nor was derived from any initial letters of the Hebrew words
on his banner, Mi Kamoka Be Elim, Jehovah? ("Who is like unto thee among the
gods, O Jehovah?"), Exod. xv. ii, as the modern rabbins vainly pretend, see
Authent. Rec., part i., pp. 205, 206. Only we may note, by the way, that the
original name of these Maccabees and their posterity was Asamoneans, which was
derived from Asamoneus, the great-grandfather of Mattathias, as Josephus here
informs us.]
But when those that were appointed by the King were come to Modin that
they might compel the Jews to do what they were commanded, and to enjoin those
that were there to offer sacrifice, as the King had commanded, they desired
that Mattathias, a person of the greatest character among them, both on other
accounts and particularly on account of such a numerous and so deserving a
family of children, would begin the sacrifice, because his fellow-citizens
would follow his example, and because such a procedure would make him honored
by the King. But Mattathias said that he would not do it, and that if all the
other nations would obey the commands of Antiochus, either out of fear or to
please him, yet would not he nor his sons leave the religious worship of their
country; but as soon as he had ended his speech there came one of the Jews
into the midst of them and sacrificed as Antiochus had commanded. At which
Mattathias had great indignation, and ran upon him violently with his sons,
who had swords with them, and slew both the man himself that sacrificed and
Apelles, the King's general who compelled him to sacrifice, with a few of his
soldiers.
He also overthrew the idol altar and cried out, "If," said he, "anyone be
zealous for the laws of his country and for the worship of God, let him follow
me"; and when he had said this he made haste into the desert with his sons,
and left all his substance in the village. Many others did the same also, and
fled with their children and wives into the desert and dwelt in caves; but
when the King's generals heard this, they took all the forces they then had in
the citadel at Jerusalem, and pursued the Jews into the desert; and when they
had overtaken them, they in the first place endeavored to persuade them to
repent, and to choose what was most for their advantage and not put them to
the necessity of using them according to the law of war; but when they would
not comply with their persuasions, but continued to be of a different mind,
they fought against them on the Sabbath day, and they burned them as they were
in the caves, without resistance, and without so much as stopping up the
entrances of the caves. And they avoided to defend themselves on that day
because they were not willing to break in upon the honor they owed the
Sabbath, even in such distresses; for our law requires that we rest upon that
day.
There were about a thousand, with their wives and children, who were
smothered and died in these caves; but many of those that escaped joined
themselves to Mattathias and appointed him to be their ruler, who taught them
to fight even on the Sabbath day, and told them that unless they would do so
they would become their own enemies by observing the law [so rigorously] while
their adversaries would still assault them on this day, and they would not
then defend themselves; and that nothing could then hinder but they must all
perish without fighting. This speech persuaded them, and this rule continues
among us to this day, that if there be a necessity we may fight on Sabbath
days. So Mattathias got a great army about him and overthrew their idol
altars and slew those that broke the laws, even all that he could get under
his power; for many of them were dispersed among the nations round about them
for fear of him. He also commanded that those boys who were not yet
circumcised should be circumcised now; and he drove those away that were
appointed to hinder such their circumcision.
But when he had ruled one year and was fallen into a distemper, he called
for his sons and set them round about him, and said: "O my sons, I am going
the way of all the earth; and I recommend to you my resolution and beseech you
not to be negligent in keeping it, but to be mindful of the desires of him who
begat you and brought you up, and to preserve the customs of your country, and
to recover your ancient form of government which is in danger of being
overturned, and not to be carried away with those that either by their own
inclination or out of necessity betray it, but to become such sons as are
worthy of me; to be above all force and necessity, and so to dispose your
souls as to be ready when it shall be necessary to die for your laws, as
sensible of this, by just reasoning, that if God see that you are so disposed
he will not overlook you, but will have a great value for your virtue, and
will restore to you again what you have lost and will return to you that
freedom in which you shall live quietly and enjoy your own customs.
"Your bodies are mortal and subject to fate; but they receive a sort of
immortality by the remembrance of what actions they have done; and I would
have you so in love with this immortality that you may pursue after glory, and
that when you have undergone the greatest difficulties you may not scruple for
such things to lose your lives. I exhort you especially to agree one with
another, and in what excellency any one of you exceeds another, to yield to
him so far, and by that means to reap the advantage of everyone's own virtues.
Do you then esteem Simon as your father because he is a man of extraordinary
prudence, and be governed by him in what counsels he gives you. Take
Maccabaeus for the general of your army, because of his courage and strength,
for he will avenge your nation and will bring vengeance on your enemies.
Admit among you the righteous and religious, and augment their power."
When Mattathias had thus discoursed to his sons and had prayed to God to
be their assistant and to recover to the people their former constitution, he
died a little afterward, and was buried at Modin, all the people making great
lamentation for him. Whereupon his son Judas took upon him the administration
of public affairs, in the hundred and forty-sixth year; and thus, by the ready
assistance of his brethren and of others, Judas cast their enemies out of the
country and put those of their own country to death who had transgressed its
laws, and purified the land of all the pollutions that were in it.
When Apollonius, the general of the Samaritan forces, heard this he took
his army and made haste to go against Judas, who met him and joined battle
with him, and beat him and slew many of his men, and among them Apollonius
himself, their general, whose sword, being that which he happened then to
wear, he seized upon and kept for himself; but he wounded more than he slew,
and took a great deal of prey from the enemy's camp, and went his way; but
when Seron, who was general of the army of Celesyria, heard that many had
joined themselves to Judas, and that he had about him an army sufficient for
fighting and for making war, he determined to make an expedition against him,
as thinking it became him to endeavor to punish those that transgressed the
King's injunctions. He then got together an army as large as he was able, and
joined to it the runagate and wicked Jews, and came against Judas.
He then came as far as Bethoron, a village of Judea, and there pitched
his camp; upon which Judas met him, and when he intended to give him battle he
saw that his soldiers were backward to fight because their number was small
and because they wanted food, for they were fasting. He encouraged them and
said to them that victory and conquest of enemies are not derived from the
multitude in armies, but in the exercise of piety toward God; and that they
had the plainest instances in their forefathers, who, by their righteousness
and exerting themselves on behalf of their own laws and their own children,
had frequently conquered many ten thousands, for innocence is the strongest
army. By this speech he induced his men to contemn the multitude of the
enemy, and to fall upon Seron; and upon joining battle with him he beat the
Syrians; and when their general fell among the rest they all ran away with
speed, as thinking that to be their best way of escaping. So he pursued them
unto the plain and slew about eight hundred of the enemy, but the rest escaped
to the region which lay near to the sea.
When king Antiochus heard of these things he was very angry at what had
happened; so he got together all his own army, with many mercenaries who he
had hired from the islands, and took them with him, and prepared to break into
Judea about the beginning of the spring; but when, upon his mustering his
soldiers, he perceived that his treasures were deficient, and there was a want
of money in them, for all the taxes were not paid, by reason of the seditions
there had been among the nations, he having been so magnanimous and so liberal
that what he had was not sufficient for him, he therefore resolved first to go
into Persia and collect the taxes of that country. Hereupon he left one whose
name was Lysias, who was in great repute with him, governor of the kingdom, as
far as the bounds of Egypt and of the Lower Asia and reaching from the river
Euphrates, and committed to him a certain part of his forces and of his
elephants and charged him to bring up his son Antiochus with all possible care
until he came back; and that he should conquer Judea and take its inhabitants
for slaves and utterly destroy Jerusalem, and abolish the whole nation; and
when king Antiochus had given these things in charge to Lysias, he went into
Persia, and in the hundred and forty-seventh year he passed over Euphrates and
went to the superior provinces.
Upon this Lysias chose Ptolemy the son of Dorymenes, and Nicanor, and
Gorgias, very potent men among the King's friends, and delivered to them forty
thousand foot-soldiers and seven thousand horsemen, and sent them against
Judea, who came as far as the city Emmaus and pitched their camp in the plain
country. There came also to them auxiliaries out of Syria and the country
round about, as also many of the runagate Jews; and besides these came some
merchants to buy those that should be carried captives - having bonds with
them to bind those that should be made prisoners - with that silver and gold
which they were to pay for their price; and when Judas saw their camp and how
numerous their enemies were, he persuaded his own soldiers to be of good
courage, and exhorted them to place their hopes of victory in God and to make
supplication to him, according to the custom of their country, clothed in
sackcloth, and to show what was their usual habit of supplication in the
greatest dangers, and thereby to prevail with God to grant them the victory
over their enemies. So he set them in their ancient order of battle used by
their forefathers, under their captains of thousands, and other officers, and
dismissed such as were newly married, as well as those that had newly gained
possessions, that they might not fight in a cowardly manner out of an
inordinate love of life, in order to enjoy those blessings.
When he had thus disposed his soldiers he encouraged them to fight by the
following speech, which he made to them: "O my fellow-soldiers, no other time
remains more opportune than the present for courage and contempt of dangers;
for if you now fight manfully you may recover your liberty, which, as it is a
thing of itself agreeable to all men, so it proves to be to us much more
desirable, by its affording us the liberty of worshipping God. Since,
therefore, you are in such circumstances at present, you must either recover
that liberty and so regain a happy and blessed way of living, which is that
according to our laws and the customs of our country, or to submit to the most
opprobrious sufferings; nor will any seed of your nation remain if you be beat
in this battle. Fight therefore manfully, and suppose that you must die
though you do not fight; but believe that besides such glorious rewards as
those of the liberty of your country, of your laws, of your religion, you
shall then obtain everlasting glory. Prepare yourselves, therefore, and put
yourselves into such an agreeable posture that you may be ready to fight with
the enemy as soon as it is day to-morrow morning."
And this was the speech which Judas made to encourage them. But when the
enemy sent Gorgias with five thousand foot and one thousand horse, that he
might fall upon Judas by night, and had for that purpose certain of the
runagate Jews as guides, the son of Mattathias perceived it and resolved to
fall upon those enemies that were in their camp, now their forces were
divided. When they had therefore supped in good time and had left many fires
in their camp he marched all night to those enemies that were at Emmaus; so
that when Gorgias found no enemy in their camp, but suspected that they were
retired and had hidden themselves among the mountains, he resolved to go and
seek them wheresoever they were.
But about break of day Judas appeared to those enemies that were at
Emmaus, with only three thousand men, and those ill-armed by reason of their
poverty; and when he saw the enemy very well and skilfully fortified in their
camp he encouraged the Jews and told them that they ought to fight, though it
were with their naked bodies, for that God had sometimes of old given such men
strength, and that against such as were more in number, and were armed also,
out of regard to their great courage. So he commanded the trumpeters to sound
for the battle, and by thus falling upon the enemy when they did not expect
it, and thereby astonishing and disturbing their minds, he slew many of those
that resisted him and went on pursuing the rest as far as Gadara and the
plains of Idumea, and Ashdod, and Jamnia; and of these there fell about three
thousand. Yet did Judas exhort his soldiers not to be too desirous of the
spoils, for that still they must have a contest and battle with Gorgias and
the forces that were with him, but that when they had once overcome them then
they might securely plunder the camp because they were the only enemies
remaining, and they expected no others.
And just as he was speaking to his soldiers, Gorigas' men looked down
into that army which they left in their camp and saw that it was overthrown
and the camp burned; for the smoke that arose from it showed them, even when
they were a great way off, what had happened. When, therefore, those that
were with Gorgias understood that things were in this posture, and perceived
that those that were with Judas were ready to fight them, they also were
affrighted and put to flight; but then Judas, as though he had already beaten
Gorgias' soldiers without fighting, returned and seized on the spoils. He
took a great quantity of gold and silver and purple and blue, and then
returned home with joy, and singing hymns to God for their good success; for
this victory greatly contributed to the recovery of their liberty.
Hereupon Lysias was confounded at the defeat of the army which he had
sent, and the next year he got together sixty thousand chosen men. He also
took five thousand horsemen and fell upon Judea, and he went up to the hill
country of Bethsur, a village of Judea, and pitched his camp there, where
Judas met him with ten thousand men; and when he saw the great number of his
enemies, he prayed to God that he would assist him, and joined battle with the
first of the enemy that appeared and beat them and slew about five thousand of
them, and thereby became terrible to the rest of them. Nay, indeed, Lysias
observing the great spirit of the Jews, how they were prepared to die rather
than lose their liberty, and being afraid of their desperate way of fighting,
as if it were real strength, he took the rest of the army back with him and
returned to Antioch.
When, therefore, the generals of Antiochus' armies had been beaten so
often, Judas assembled the people together, and told them that after these
many victories which God had given them, they ought to go up to Jerusalem and
purify the Temple and offer the appointed sacrifices. But as soon as he with
the whole multitude was come to Jerusalem and found the Temple deserted and
its gates burned down and plants growing in the Temple of their own accord on
account of its desertion, he and those that were with him began to lament and
were quite confounded at the sight of the Temple; so he chose out some of his
soldiers and gave them orders to fight against those guards that were in the
citadel until he should have purified the Temple. When therefore he had
carefully purged it and had brought in new vessels, the candlestick, the table
[of shew-bread], and the altar [of incense], which were made of gold, he hung
up the veils at the gates and added doors to them.
He also took down the altar [of burnt-offering], and built a new one of
stones that he gathered together and not of such as were hewn with iron tools.
So on the five-and-twentieth day of the month of Casleu, which the Macedonians
call Apelleus, they lighted the lamps that were on the candlestick and offered
incense upon the altar [of incense], and laid the loaves upon the table [of
shew-bread], and offered burnt-offerings upon the new altar [of
burnt-offering]. Now it so fell out that these things were done on the very
same day on which their divine worship had fallen off and was reduced to a
profane and common use after three years' time; for so it was, that the Temple
was made desolate by Antiochus, and so continued for three years. This
desolation happened to the Temple in the hundred forty and fifth year, on the
twenty-fifth day of the month Apelleus, and on the hundred and fifty-third
Olympiad; but it was dedicated anew, on the same day, the twenty-fifth of the
month Apelleus, in the hundred and forty-eighth year, and on the hundred and
fifty-fourth Olympiad. And this desolation came to pass according to the
prophecy of Daniel, which was given four hundred and eight years before, for
he declared that the Macedonians would dissolve that worship [for some time].
Now Judas celebrated the festival of the restoration of the sacrifices of
the Temple for eight days, and omitted no sort of pleasures thereon; but he
feasted them upon very rich and splendid sacrifices, and he honored God and
delighted them by hymns and psalms. Nay, they were so very glad at the
revival of their customs, when after a long time of intermission they
unexpectedly had regained the freedom of their worship, that they made it a
law for their posterity that they should keep a festival, on account of the
restoration of their Temple worship, for eight days. And from that time to
this we celebrate this festival and call it Lights. I suppose the reason was,
because this liberty beyond our hopes appeared to us, and that thence was the
name given to that festival. Judas also rebuilt the walls round about the
city, and reared towers of great height against the incursions of enemies, and
set guards therein. He also fortified the city Bethsura that it might serve
as a citadel against any distresses that might come from our enemies.
When these things were over, the nations round about the Jews were very
uneasy at the revival of their power and rose up together and destroyed many
of them, as gaining advantage over them by laying snares for them and making
secret conspiracies against them. Judas made perpetual expeditions against
these men, and endeavored to restrain them from those incursions and to
prevent the mischiefs they did to the Jews. So he fell upon the Idumeans, the
posterity of Esau, at Acrabattene, and slew a great many of them and took
their spoils. He also shut up the sons of Bean, that laid wait for the Jews;
and he sat down about them, and besieged them, and burned their towers and
destroyed the men [that were in them]. After this he went thence in haste
against the Ammonites who had a great and a numerous army, of which Timotheus,
was the commander. And when he had subdued them he seized on the city of
Jazer, and took their wives and their children captives and burned the city
and then returned into Judea. But when the neighboring nations understood
that he was returned they got together in great numbers in the land of Gilead
and came against those Jews that were at their borders, who then fled to the
garrison of Dathema, and sent to Judas to inform him that Timotheus was
endeavoring to take the place whither they were fled. And as these epistles
were reading, there came other messengers out of Galilee who informed him that
the inhabitants of Ptolemais, and of Tyre and Sidon, and strangers of Galilee,
were gotten together.
Accordingly Judas, upon considering what was fit to be done with relation
to the necessity both these cases required, gave order that Simon his brother
should take three thousand chosen men and go to the assistance of the Jews in
Galilee, while he and another of his brothers, Jonathan, made haste into the
land of Gilead with eight thousand soldiers. And he left Joseph, the son of
Zacharias, and Azarias, to be over the rest of the forces, and charged them to
keep Judea very carefully and to fight no battles with any persons whomsoever
until his return. Accordingly Simon went into Galilee and fought the enemy
and put them to flight, and pursued them to the very gates of Ptolemais, and
slew about three thousand of them, and took the spoils of those that were
slain and those Jews whom they had made captives, with their baggage, and then
returned home.
Now as for Judas Maccabaeus and his brother Jonathan, they passed over
the river Jordan, and when they had gone three days' journey they lighted upon
the Nabateans, who came to meet them peaceably and who told them how the
affairs of those in the land of Galilee stood and how many of them were in
distress and driven into garrisons and into the cities of Galilee, and
exhorted him to make haste to go against the foreigners, and to endeavor to
save his own countrymen out of their hands. To this exhortation Judas
hearkened and returned into the wilderness, and in the first place fell upon
the inhabitants of Bosor, and took the city, and beat the inhabitants, and
destroyed all the males, and all that were able to fight, and burned the city.
Nor did he stop even when night came on, but he journeyed in it to the
garrison where the Jews happened to be then shut up, and where Timotheus lay
round the place with his army; and Judas came upon the city in the morning,
and when he found that the enemy were making an assault upon the walls, and
that some of them brought ladders on which they might get upon those walls,
and that others brought engines [to batter them], he bid the trumpeter to
sound his trumpet, and he encouraged his soldiers cheerfully to undergo
dangers for the sake of their brethren and kindred; he also parted his army
into three bodies and fell upon the backs of their enemies. But when
Timotheus' men perceived that it was Maccabaeus that was upon them, of both
whose courage and good success in war they had formerly had sufficient
experience, they were put to flight; but Judas followed them with his army and
slew about eight thousand of them. He then turned aside to a city of the
foreigners called Malle, and took it, and slew all the males and burned the
city itself. He then removed from thence, and overthrew Casphom and Bosor,
and many other cities of the land of Gilead.
But not long after this Timotheus prepared a great army, and took many
others as auxiliaries, and induced some of the Arabians by the promise of
rewards to go with him in this expedition, and came with his army beyond the
brook over against the city Raphon; and he encouraged his soldiers, if it came
to a battle with the Jews, to fight courageously, and to hinder their passing
over the brook; for he said to them beforehand that "if they come over it we
shall be beaten." And when Judas heard that Timotheus prepared himself to
fight he took all his own army and went in haste against Timotheus, his enemy;
and when he had passed over the brook he fell upon his enemies, and some of
them met him, whom he slew, and others of them he so terrified that he
compelled them to throw down their arms and fly, and some of them escaped; but
some of them fled to what was called the temple of Carnaim, and hoped thereby
to preserve themselves, but Judas took the city and slew them and burned the
temple, and so used several ways of destroying his enemies.
When he had done this he gathered the Jews together with their children
and wives and the substance that belonged to them, and was going to bring them
back into Judea. But as soon as he was come to a certain city the name of
which was Ephron, that lay upon the road - and as it was not possible for him
to go any other way, so he was not willing to go back again - he then sent to
the inhabitants, and desired that they would open their gates and permit them
to go on their way through the city; for they had stopped up the gates with
stones and cut off their passage through it. And when the inhabitants of
Ephron would not agree to this proposal, he encouraged those that were with
him, and encompassed the city round and besieged it, and lying round it by day
and night took the city and slew every male in it and burned it all down, and
so obtained a way through it; and the multitude of those that were slain was
so great that they went over the dead bodies. So they came over Jordan and
arrived at the great plain over against which is situate the city Bethshan,
which is called by the Greeks Scythopolis. ^1 And going away hastily from
thence, they came into Judea, singing psalms and hymns as they went, and
indulging such tokens of mirth as are usual in triumphs upon victory. They
also offered thank-offerings both for their good success and for the
preservation of their army, for not one of the Jews was slain in these
battles.
[Footnote 1: The reason why Bethshan was called Scythopolis is well-known from
Herodotus, b. i., p. 105, and Syncellus, p. 214, that the Scythians, when they
overran Asia, in the days of Josiah, seized on this city, and kept it as long
as they continued in Asia; from which time it retained the name of
Scythopolis, or the City of the Scythians.]
But as to Joseph, the son of Zacharias, and Azarias, whom Judas left
generals [of the rest of his forces] at the same time when Simon was in
Galilee fighting against the people of Ptolemais, and Judas himself and his
brother Jonathan were in the land of Gilead, did these men also affect the
glory of being courageous generals in war, in order whereto they took the army
that was under their command and came to Jamnia. There Gorgias, the general
of the forces of Jamnia, met them, and upon joining battle with him they lost
two thousand of their army and fled away, and were pursued to the very borders
of Judea. And this misfortune befell them by their disobedience to what
injunctions Judas had given them not to fight with anyone before his return.
For besides the rest of Judas' sagacious counsels, one may well wonder at this
concerning the misfortune that befell the forces commanded by Joseph and
Azarias, which he understood would happen if they broke any of the injunctions
he had given them. But Judas and his brethren did not leave off fighting with
the Idumeans, but pressed upon them on all sides, and took from them the city
of Hebron, and demolished all its fortifications and set all its towers on
fire, and burned the country of the foreigners and the city Marissa. They
came also to Ashdod, and took it, and laid it waste, and took away a great
deal of the spoils and prey that were in it and returned to Judea.
Jews' Last Struggle For Freedom: Their Final Dispersion
Author: Merivale, Charles
Jews' Last Struggle For Freedom: Their Final Dispersion
A.D. 132
Author: Merivale, Charles
Jews' Last Struggle For Freedom: Their Final Dispersion
A.D. 132
Introduction
The successful revolt of the Maccabees against the bloody persecutions
of the Assyrian king Antiochus Epiphanes, about B.C. 164, inaugurated a
glorious epoch in Jewish history. From that time the Jews enjoyed their
freedom under the dynasty of their priest-kings till, B.C. 63, the Romans
under Pompey took possession of Jerusalem. A period of Roman tyranny and
oppression followed. In A.D. 66-70 a great revolt of the Jews occurred. The
Romans burned Jerusalem to the ground. Josephus says the number killed in
this revolt was one million one hundred thousand, and the number of prisoners
ninety-seven thousand. Of those who survived, "all above seventeen years old
were sent to Egypt to work in the mines, or distributed amo g the provinces
to be exhibited as gladiators in the public theatres and in the combats
against wild beasts."
About fifty years later, A.D., 116, a tremendous uprising occurred among
the Jews of the eastern Mediterranean, in which many lives were lost. It was
quickly suppressed by the emperor Trajan, and the punishments were similar in
cruelty to those which followed the previous insurrection.
But this dauntless people were not yet conquered. When the emperor
Hadrian, A.D., 130, arrived at Jerusalem on his tour of the empire, he
resolved that the holy city of the Jews should be rebuilt as a Roman colony,
and its name changed to Aelia Capitolina; and the Jews were forbidden to
sojourn in the new city. By this and other measures the spark of revolt was
once more kindled among the religious and patriotic spirits of the Jewish
nation. The Jews in Palestine flew to arms, A.D., 132, encouraged by the
prayers, the vows, and the material support of their compatriots in Rome,
Byzantium, Alexandria, and Babylon. The Jewish war-cry echoed around the
civilized world.
A fitting leader for the insurrectionists soon appeared in the person of
Simon Barcochebas. Julius Severus, who was in Britain ordering the affairs
of that distant province, was summoned to the East to quell the disturbance,
which had swollen to the dimensions of a revolution and threatened to abolish
Roman authority in Palestine. The conflict which ensued lasted from A.D. 132
to 135, and was very bitterly contested on both sides. It was not before the
Hebrew leader fell amid thousands of his followers that the Jewish forces
were defeated. We are told that in this last revolution the Romans took
fifty fortresses, nine hundred and eighty-five villages were occupied, and
that the people killed numbered five hundred and eighty thousand. The Jews
were dispersed to every quarter of the known world and remain so to this day.
The new city of Hadrian continued to exist, but did not prosper; and the Jews
were prohibited under penalty of death from ever setting foot in Jerusalem.
The Jews' Last Struggle For Freedom: Their Final Dispersion
The thread of imperial life could hardly snap without a jar which would
be felt throughout the whole extent of the empire. Trajan, like Alexander,
had been cut off suddenly in the Far East, and, like Alexander, he had left
no avowed successor. Several of his generals abroad might advance nearly
equal claims to the sword of Trajan; some of the senators at home might deem
themselves not unworthy of the purple of Nerva.
On every side there was an army or faction ready to devote itself to the
service of its favorite or its champion.
The provinces lately annexed were at the same time in a state of ominous
agitation; along one half of the frontiers Britons, Germans, and Sarmatians
were mustering their forces for invasion; a virulent insurrection was still
glowing throughout a large portion of the empire. Nevertheless, the compact
body of the Roman Commonwealth was still held firmly together by its inherent
self-attraction. There was no tendency to split in pieces, as in the
ill-cemented masses of the Macedonian conquest; and the presence of mind of a
clever woman was well employed in effecting the peaceful transfer of power
and relieving the State from the stress of disruption.
Of the accession of Publius Aelius Hadrianus, A.D., 117, to the empire;
of the means by which it was effected; of the character and reputation he
brought with him to the throne; of the first measures of his reign, by which
he renounced the latest conquests of his predecessor, while he put forth all
his power to retain the realms bequeathed him from an earlier period - is
matter for another story.
But let us turn to a review of eastern affairs; to the great Jewish
insurrection, and the important consequences which followed from it. Trajan
was surely fortunate in the moment of his death. Vexed, as he doubtless was,
by the frustration of his grand designs for incorporating the Parthian
monarchy with the Roman, and fulfilling the idea of universal empire which
had flitted through the mind of Pompius or Julius, but had been deliberately
rejected by Augustus and Vespasian, his proud spirit would have been broken
indeed had he lived to witness the difficulties in which Rome was plunged at
his death, the spread of the Jewish revolt in Asia and Palestine, the
aggressions of the Moors, the Scythians, and the Britons at the m st distant
points of his dominions.
The momentary success of the insurgents of Cyprus and Cyrene had
prompted a general assurance that the conquering race was no longer
invincible, and the last great triumphs of its legions were followed by a
rebound of fortune still more momentous.
The first act of the new reign was the formal relinquishment of the new
provinces beyond the Euphrates. The Parthian tottered back with feeble step
to his accustomed frontiers. Arabia was left unmolested; India was no longer
menaced. Armenia found herself once more suspended between two rival
empires, of which the one was too weak to seize, the other too weak to retain
her.
All the forces of Rome in the East were now set free to complete the
suppression of the Jewish disturbances. The flames of insurrection which had
broken out in so many remote quarters were concentrated, and burned more
fiercely than ever in the ancient centre of the Jewish nationality.
Martius Turbo, appointed to command in Palestine, was equally amazed at
the fanaticism and the numbers of people whose faith had been mocked, whose
hopes frustrated, whose young men had been decimated, whose old men, women,
and children had been enslaved and exiled. Under the teaching of the doctors
of Tiberia faith had been cherished and hope had revived. Despised and
unmolested for fifty years, a new generation had risen from the soil of their
ancestors, recruited by the multitudes who flocked homeward, year by year,
with an unextinguishable love of country, and reenforced by the fugitives
from many scenes of persecution, all animated with a growing conviction that
the last struggle of their race was at hand, to be contested on the site of
their old historic triumphs.
It is not perhaps wholly fanciful to imagine that the Jewish leaders,
after the fall of their city and Temple and the great dispersion of their
people, deliberately invented new means for maintaining their cherished
nationality. Their conquerors, as they might observe, were scattered like
themselves over the face of the globe and abode wherever they conquered; but
the laws, the manners, and the traditions of Rome were preserved almost
intact amid alien races by the consciousness that there existed a visible
centre of their nation, the source, as it were, to which they might repair to
draw the waters of political life. But the dispersions of the Jews seemed
the more irremediable as the destruction of their central home was complete.
To preserve the existence of their nation one other way presented
itself. In their sacred books they retained a common bond of law and
doctrine, such as no other people could boast. In these venerated records
they possessed, whether on the Tiber or the Euphrates, an elixir of
unrivalled virtue. With a sudden revulsion of feeling the popular orators
and captains betook themselves to the study of law, its history and
antiquities, its actual text and its inner meaning. The schools of Tiberias
resounded with debate on the rival principles of interpretation, the ancient
and the modern, the stricter and the laxer, known respectively by the names
of their teachers, Schammai and Hillel.
The doctors decided in favor of the more accommodating system, by which
the stern exclusiveness of the original letter was extenuated, and the law of
the rude tribes of Palestine moulded to the varied taste and temper of a
cosmopolitan society, while the text itself was embalmed in the Masora, an
elaborate system of punctuation and notation, to every particle of which, to
insure its uncorrupted preservation, a mystical significance was attached.
By this curious contrivance the letter of the Law, the charter of Judaism,
was sanctified forever, while its spirit was remodelled to the exigencies of
the present or the future, till it would have been no longer recognized by
its authors, or even by very recent disciples. To this new learning of
traditions and glosses the ardent youth of the nation devoted itself with a
fanaticism not less vehement than that which had fought and bled half a
century before. The name of the rabbi Akiba is preserved as a type of the
hierophant of restored Judaism.
The stories depicting him are best expounded as myths and figures. He
reached, it was said, the age of a hundred and twenty years, the period
assigned in the sacred records to his prototype, the law-giver Moses.
Like David, in his youth he kept sheep on the mountains; like Jacob, he
served a master, a rich citizen of Jerusalem, for Jerusalem in his youth was
still standing. His master's daughter cast the eyes of affection upon him
and offered him a secret marriage; but this damsel was no other than
Jerusalem itself, so often imaged to the mind of the Jewish people by the
figure of a maiden, a wife, or a widow.
This mystic bride required him to repair to the schools, acquire
knowledge and wisdom, surround himself with disciples; and such, as we have
seen, was the actual policy of the new defenders of Judaism.
The damsel was rebuked by her indignant father; but when, after the
lapse of twelve years, Akiba returned to claim his bride, with twelve
thousand scholars at his heels, he heard her replying that, long as he had
been absent, she only wished him to prolong his stay twice over, so as to
double his knowledge; whereupon he returned patiently to his studies, and
frequented the schools twelve years longer. Twice twelve years thus passed,
he returned once more with twice twelve thousand disciples, and then his wife
received him joyfully, and, covered as she was with rags, an outcast and a
beggar, he presented her to his astonished followers as the being to whom he
owed his wisdom, his fame, and his fortune.
Such were the legends with which the new learning was consecrated to the
defence of Jewish nationality.
The concentration of the Roman forces on the soil of Palestine seems to
have repressed for a season all overt attempts at insurrection.
The Jewish leaders restrained their followers from action as long as it
was possible to feed their spirit with hopes only. It was not till about the
fourteenth year of Hadrian's reign that the final revolt broke out.
When the Jews of Palestine launched forth upon the war, the doctor Akiba
gave place to the warrior Barcochebas. This gallant warrior, the last of the
national heroes, received or assumed his title, "the Son of the Star," given
successively to several leaders of the Jewish people, in token of the fanatic
expectations of divine deliverance by which his countrymen did not yet cease
to be animated. Many were the legends which declared this champion's claims
to the leadership of the national cause. His size and strength were vaunted
as more than human. "It was the arm of God, not of man," said Hadrian when
he saw at last the corpse encircled by a serpent, "that could alone strike
down the giant." Flame and smoke were seen to issue from his lips in
speaking, a portent which was rationalized centuries later into a mere
conjurer's artifice. The concourse of the Jewish nation at his summons was
symbolized, with a curious reference to the prevalent idea of Israel as a
school and the Law as a master, by the story that at Bethar, the appointed
rendezvous and last stronghold of the national defence, were four hundred
academies, each ruled by four hundred teachers, each teacher boasting a class
of four hundred pupils.
Akiba, now at the extreme point of his protracted existence, like Samuel
of old, nominated the new David to the chiefship of the people. He girded
Barcochebas with the sword of Jehovah, placed the staff of command in his
hand, and held himself the stirrup by which he vaulted into the saddle.
The last revolt of the Jewish people was precipitated apparently by the
increased severity of the measures which the rebellion under Trajan had drawn
down. They complained that Hadrian had enrolled himself as a proselyte of
the Law, and were doubly incensed against him as a persecutor and a renegade.
This assertion, indeed, may have no foundation. On the other hand, it
is not unlikely that this prince, a curious explorer of religions of
opinions, had sought initiation into some of the mysteries of the Jewish
faith and ritual.
But however this may be, he gave them mortal offence by perceiving the
clear distinction between Judaism and Christianity, and by forbidding the
Jews to sojourn in the town which he was again raising on the ruins of
Jerusalem, while he allowed free access to their rivals. He is said to have
even prohibited the rite of circumcision by which they jealously maintained
their separation from the nations of the West.
At last, when they rose in arms, he sent his best generals against them.
Tinnius Rufus was long baffled and often defeated; but Julius Severus,
following the tactics of Vespasian, constantly refused the battle they
offered him, and reduced their strongholds in succession by superior
discipline and resources. Barcochebas struggled with the obstinacy of
despair. Every excess of cruelty was committed on both sides, and it is
well, perhaps, that the details of this mortal spasm are almost wholly lost
to us.
The later Christian writers, while they allude with unseemly exultation
to the overthrow of one inveterate enemy by another who proved himself in the
end not less inveterate, affirmed that the barbarities of the Jewish leader
were mainly directed against themselves.
On such interested assertions we shall place little reliance. In the
counter-narration of the Jews even the name of Christian is contemptuously
disregarded. It relates, however, how at the storming of Bethar, when
Barcochebas perished in the field, ten of the most learned of the rabbis were
taken and put cruelly to death, while Akiba, reserved to expire last, and
torn in pieces with hot pincers, continued to attest the great principle of
the Jewish doctrine, still exclaiming in his death throes, Jehovah Erhad!
"God is one").
The Jews who fell in these their latest combats are counted by hundreds
of thousands, and we may conclude that the suppression of the revolt was
followed by sanguinary proscriptions, by wholesale captivity and general
banishment. The dispersion of the unhappy race, particularly in the West,
was now complete and final. The sacred soil of Jerusalem was occupied by a
Roman colony, which received the name of Aelia Capitolina, with reference to
the Emperor who founded it, and to the supreme God of the pagan mythology,
installed on the desecrated summits of Zion and Moriah.
The fane of Jupiter was erected on the site of the holy Temple, and a
shrine of Venus planted, we are assured, on the very spot hallowed to
Christians by our Lord's crucifixion. But Hadrian had no purpose of
insulting the disciples of Jesus, and this desecration, if the tradition be
true, was probably accidental. A Jewish legend affirms that the figure of a
swine was sculptured, in bitter mockery, over a gate of the new city. The
Jews have retorted with equal scorn that the effigy of the unclean animal,
which represented to their minds every low and bestial appetite, was a
fitting emblem of the colony and its founder, of the lewd worship of its
gods, and the vile propensities of its Emperor.
The fancy of later Christian writers that Hadrian regarded their
coreligionists with special consideration seems founded on misconception. We
hear, indeed, of the graciousness with which he allowed them, among other
sectarians, to defend their usages and expound their doctrines in his
presence; and doubtless his curiosity, if no worthier feeling, was moved by
the fact, which he fully appreciated, of the interest they excited in certain
quarters of the empire. But there is no evidence that his favor extended
further than to the recognition of their independence of the Jews, from whom
they now formally separated themselves, and the discouragement of the local
persecutions to which they were occasionally subjected.
So far the bigoted hostility of their enemies was overruled at last in
their favor.
In another way they learned to profit by the example of their rivals.
From the recent policy of the Jews they might understand the advantage to a
scattered community, without a local centre or a political status, of
erecting in a volume of sacred records their acknowledged standard of faith
and practice.
The scriptures of the New Testament, like the Nuschua of the Jewish
rabbis, took the place of the holy of holies as the tabernacle of their God
and the pledge of their union with him.
The cannon of their sacred books, however casual its apparent formation,
was indeed a providential development. The habitual references of bishops
and doctors to the words of their Founder, and the writings of the first
disciples, guided them to the proper sources of their faith and taught them
justly to discriminate the genuine from the spurious.
Meagre as are the remains of Christian literature of the second century,
they tend to confirm our assurance that the scriptures of the new
dispensation were known and recognized as divine at that early period, and
that the Church of Christ, the future mistress of the world, was already
become a great social fact, an empire within the empire.
Title: Civilization Of the Hebrews
Along The Banks Of Rivers
Edited By: Robert Guisepi
The Hebrew Kingdoms
In war, diplomacy, inventions, and art, the Hebrews made little splash in
the stream of history. In religion and ethics, however, their contribution to
the world civilization was tremendous. Out of their experience grew three
great religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
Much of Hebrew experience is recorded in the Holy Writ of Israel, the Old
Testament of the Christian Bible, whose present content was approved about
A.D. 90 by a council of rabbis. Asa work of literature it is outstanding; but
it is more than that. "It is Israel's life story - a story that cannot be told
adequately apart from the conviction that God had called this people in his
grace, separated them from the nations for a special responsibility, and
commissioned them with the task of being his servant in the accomplishment of
his purpose." ^26
[Footnote 26: B. W. Anderson, Understanding the Old Testament, 2nd ed.
(Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1966), p. 559.]
The Biblical account of the history of the Hebrews (later called
Israelites and then Jews) begins with the patriarchal clan leader Abraham,
called in Genesis 14:15 "the Hebrew" (Habiru). About 1800 B.C. Abraham led his
people out of Ur in Sumer, where they had settled for a time in their
wanderings, and eventually they arrived in the land of Canaan, later called
Palestine.
About 1700 B.C., driven by famine, some Hebrews followed Abraham's
great-grandson Joseph, son of Israel (also called Jacob), into Egypt. Joseph's
rise to power in Egypt, and the hospitable reception of his people there, is
attributed to the presence of the largely Semitic Hyksos, who had conquered
Egypt about 1720 B.C. Following the expulsion of the Hyksos by the pharaohs of
the Eighteenth Dynasty, the Hebrews were enslaved by the Egyptians. Shortly
after 1300 B.C. Moses led them out of bondage and into the wilderness of
Sinai, where they entered into a pact or covenant with their God, Yahweh. The
Sinai Covenant bound the people as a whole - the nation of Israel, as they now
called themselves - to worship Yahweh before all other gods and to obey his
Law. In return, Yahweh made the Israelites his chosen people whom he would
protect and to whom he granted Canaan, the Promised Land "flowing with milk
and honey." The history of Israel from this time on is the story of the
working out of this covenant.
The Israelites had to contend for Palestine against the Canaanites, whose
Semitic ancestors had migrated from Arabia early in the third millennium B.C.
Joined by other Hebrew tribes already in Palestine, the Israelites formed a
confederacy of twelve tribes and, led by war leaders called judges, in time
succeeded in subjugating the Canaanites.
The decisive battle in 1125 B.C. at Megiddo, called Armageddon ("Hill of
Megiddo") in the New Testament, owed much to Deborah the prophetess who
"judged Israel at that time" (Judges 4:4). God bade Deborah, already famed
throughout Israel for her wisdom, to accompany the discouraged war leaders and
stir them to victory. For this reason she has been called the Hebrew Joan of
Arc.
The vigorous and decisive role played by Deborah and other Israelite
women (Moses' sister Miriam, for example), reflects the absence of female
inferiority in early Israel. Genesis describes the two sexes as being equal
and necessary for human livelihood: "So God created mankind in his image,
...male and female he created them. And God blessed them and said to them, 'Be
fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it [together]'" (1:27-28).
And in the Song of Songs the maiden and the youth share equally in the desire
and expression of love; there is no sense of subordination of one to the
other. But the continuing dangers that faced the nation led to the creation of
a strong centralized monarchy, and with it came male domination and female
subordination. Deborah was the last Israelite woman upon whom God's spirit and
wisdom descended.
Soon after the Canaanites were defeated, a far more formidable foe
appeared. The Philistines, part of the Sea Peoples who had tried
unsuccessfully to invade Egypt and from whom we get the word Palestine,
settled along the coast about 1175 B.C. Aided by the use of iron weapons,
which were new to Palestine, the Philistines captured the Ark of the Covenant,
the sacred chest described as having mysterious powers, in which Moses had
placed the Ten Commandments. By the middle of the eleventh century B.C., were
well on their way to dominating the entire land.
The loose twelve-tribe confederacy of Israel could not cope with the
Philistine danger. "Give us a king to govern us," the people demanded, "that
we also may be like all the nations, and that our king may govern us and go
before us and fight our battles." This move was strongly opposed by the
conservative upper class, led by the prophet-judge Samuel. He warned the
assembled Israelites that if they set up a king they would "reject the rule of
God" and incur divine disapproval. He predicted that a king would subject them
to despotic tyranny. But the Israelite assembly rejected Samuel's advice and
elected Saul as their first king. Thereupon "the Lord said to Samuel, 'Hearken
to the voice of the people in all that they say to you; for they have not
rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them'" (1 Samuel
8:7). This appears to have been a grudging concession on God's part - like that
of a father who allows his wayward son to learn from experience the folly of
his ways.
Saul's reign (1020-1000 B.C.) was not successful. Continuously undercut
by the conservatives led by Samuel and overshadowed by the fame of the
boy-hero David, who had slain the Philistine giant Goliath in single combat,
Saul made no attempt to transform Israel into a centralized state. He
collected no taxes, and his army was composed of volunteers. A victim also of
his own tempestuous and moody nature, Saul finally committed suicide after an
unsuccessful battle with the Philistines. "How are the mighty fallen," the Old
Testament concludes the story of Saul - a story with all the pathos of a Greek
tragedy.
Saul's successor, the popular David (1000-961 B.C.), not only restricted
the Philistines to a narrow coastal strip but became the ruler of the largest
state in the ancient history of the area, stretching from the Euphrates to the
Gulf of Aqaba. David also conquered Jerusalem from the Canaanites and made it
the private domain of his royal court, separate from the existing twelve
tribes. His popularity was enhanced when he deposited the recovered Ark of the
Covenant in his royal chapel, to which he attached a priesthood. The priests
in turn proclaimed that God had made a special covenant with David as "the
Lord's servant," and with the throne of David through all generations to
come.
David's work was completed by his son Solomon (961-922 B.C.), under whom
Israel reached a pinnacle of worldly power and splendor as an oriental-style
monarchy. In the words of the Bible:
Solomon ruled over all the kingdoms from the Euphrates to
the land of the Philistines and to the border of Egypt; they
brought tribute and served Solomon all the days of his life....
And Judah and Israel dwelt in safety, from Dan even to Beersheba,
every man under his vine and under his fig tree, all the days of
Solomon....And God gave Solomon wisdom and understanding beyond
measure, and largeness of mind....Now the weight of gold that
came to Solomon in one year was six hundred and sixty-six talents
of gold, besides that which came from the traders and from the
traffic of the merchants, and from all the kings of Arabia and
from the governors of the land....The king also made a great
ivory throne, and overlaid it with the finest gold....
(1 Kings 4:20 f.; 10:14 f.)
But the price of Solomon's vast bureaucracy, building projects (especially the
palace complex and the Temple at Jerusalem), standing army (1400 chariots and
12,000 horses), and harem (700 wives and 300 concubines) was great. High
taxes, forced labor, and the loss of tribal independence led to dissension.
The Old Testament attributed this dissension to Solomon's feeble old age, "For
when Solomon was old, his wives turned away his heart after other gods; and
his heart was not wholly true to the Lord his God, as was the heart of David
his father....Therefore the Lord said to Solomon, 'Since...you have not kept
my covenant and my statutes which I have commanded you, I will surely tear the
kingdom from you'" (1 Kings 11: 4-11).
When Solomon died in 922 B.C., the realm split into two kingdoms - Israel
in the north and Judah in the south. These two weak kingdoms were in no
position to defend themselves when new, powerful empires rose again in
Mesopotamia. In 721 B.C. the Assyrians captured Samaria, the capital of the
northern kingdom, taking 27,290 Israelites into captivity (the "ten lost
tribes") and settling foreign peoples in their place. The resulting mixed
population, called Samaritans, made no further contribution to Hebrew history
or religion.
The southern kingdom of Judah held out until 586 B.C. when
Nebuchadnezzar, the Chaldean ruler of Babylonia, destroyed Jerusalem and
carried away an estimated 15,000 captives; "none remained, except the poorest
people of the land" (2 Kings 25:14). Thus began the famous Babylonian Exile of
the Jews (Judeans), which lasted until 538 B.C. when Cyrus the Persian, having
conquered Babylon, allowed them to return to Jerusalem where they rebuilt the
Temple destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar.
Persian rule was followed by that of the Hellenistic Greeks and Romans.
From A.D. 66 to 70, the Jews rebelled against Rome, and Jerusalem was largely
destroyed in the savage fighting that ensued. The Jews were again driven into
exile, and the Diaspora - the "scattering"was at its height.
[See Ancient Israel: 8th Century BC]
Hebrew Religion
From the time of Abraham the Hebrews worshiped one god, a stern, warlike
tribal deity whose name Yahweh (Jehovah) was first revealed to Moses. Yahweh
differed from the many Near Eastern nature gods in being completely separate
from the physical universe which he had created. This view of Yahweh as the
Creator of all things everywhere was inevitably to lead to the monotheistic
belief that Yahweh was the sole God in the universe.
After their entrance into Palestine, many Hebrews adopted the fertility
deities of the Canaanites as well as the luxurious Canaanite manner of living.
As a result, prophets arose who "spoke for" (from the Greek word prophetes)
Yahweh in insisting on strict adherence to the Sinai Covenant and in
condemning the "whoring" after other gods, the selfish pursuit of wealth, and
the growth of social injustice.
Between roughly 750 and 550 B.C. appeared a series of great prophets who
wrote down their messages. They sought to purge the religion of Israel of all
corrupting influences and to refine the concept of Yahweh. As summed up by
Micah (c. 750 B.C.) in a statement often cited as the essence of all advanced
religions, "He has shown you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord
require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly
with your God" (Micah 6:8)? Micah's contemporary, the shepherd-prophet Amos,
stressed the need for social justice: "Thus saith the Lord:...[the rich and
powerful] sell the righteous for silver, and the needy for a pair of sandals.
They trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth, and turn aside
the way of the afflicted...so that they have profaned my holy name" (Amos
2:6-7).
The prophets viewed the course of Hebrew history as being governed by the
sovereign will of Yahweh, seeing the Assyrians and the Chaldeans as "the rod
of Yahweh's anger" to chastise his stubborn, wayward people. They also
developed the idea of a coming Messiah (the "anointed one" of God), a
descendant of King David. As "a king in righteousness," the Messiah would
inaugurate a reign of peace and justice. This ideal would stir the hopes of
Jews for centuries.
Considered the greatest of the Hebrew prophets are Jeremiah and the
anonymous Second Isaiah, so-called because his message was incorporated in the
Book of Isaiah (chapters 40-55). Jeremiah witnessed the events that led to
Nebuchadnezzar's destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple and to the Babylonian
Captivity of the Jews. He prepared the people for these calamities by
affirming that Yahweh would forgive their sins and restore "a remnant" of his
people by proclaiming a "new covenant." The old Sinai Covenant had been
between Yahweh and the nation, which no longer existed. It had become overlaid
with ritual and ceremony and centered in the Temple, which had been destroyed.
The new covenant was between Yahweh and each individual; religion was now a
matter of one's own heart and conscience, and both the nation and the Temple
were considered superfluous. Second Isaiah, who lived at the end of the
Babylonian Captivity, capped the work of his predecessors by proclaiming
Israel to be Yahweh's "righteous servant," purified and enlightened by
suffering and ready to guide the world to the worship of the one, eternal,
supreme God. Thus the Jews who returned from the Exile were provided with a
renewed faith in their destiny and a new comprehension of their religion that
would sustain them through the centuries.
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