History of the Jews, Vol. 2 (of 6)

The Judaic Christians saw with terror the fruits of the ceremonial freedom preached by Paul in the communities founded by him in Corinth and Ephesus, where every species of vice and immorality was rife. Other Apostles, therefore, followed Paul, and proclaimed his teachings full of error and misrepresentation, and maintained that the Law of Judaism was binding on Christians, as it was only by this Law that the lower passions could be held in check. In Antioch a violent quarrel arose between Paul and the Judaic-Christian Apostle. Peter, who till then had disregarded the dietary laws and eaten at one table with the heathens, was censured by the leaders of the severe party of the Apostle James, and was now obliged to acknowledge his fault, and to speak openly against Paul's contempt of the Law. Paul, on the other hand, reproached him with hypocrisy. The influence of the severe, Law-loving Judaic Christians was, however, so great that all the Judæan Christians of Antioch gave up eating at the tables of the heathen, and their example was even followed by Barnabas, the disciple of Paul.

Racial feelings also helped to widen the breach between the two parties. The Greek Christians despised the Judaic Christians in the same way as the Hellenes had looked down upon the Judæans. Paul sent out violent epistles against the adherents of the Law, and laid a curse on those who preached salvation in a manner differing from his own. These did not spare him either, and related how he had loved the daughter of a high priest; how, on being despised by her, he had in disgust written against circumcision, the Sabbath, and the Law. Thus, within barely thirty years after the death of its founder, Christianity was split into two parties, namely, a Judaic-Christian and a heathen-Christian sect. The Judaic Christians remained attached to the foundations of Judaism, compelled their converts to adhere to the Law, and clung to Jerusalem, where they awaited the return of the Messiah. The heathen Christians, on the other hand, separated themselves more and more from Judaism, and took up an inimical position towards it.

CHAPTER IX.

AGRIPPA II. AND OUTBREAK OF THE WAR

Position of Affairs in Judæa – Roman Oppression – Character of Agrippa II. – The last High Priest – The Zealots and the Sicarii – Eleazar ben Dinai – Quarrel with the Samaritans – Violence in Cæsarea – The Procurators – Florus – Insurrection in Cæsarea – Bloodshed in Jerusalem – The Peace and War Parties – The Leader of the Zealots, Eleazar ben Ananias – Menahem, chief of the Zealots – Massacres of Heathens and Judæans – Defeat of the Romans – The Synhedrion and its President, Simon ben Gamaliel – Position of the Synhedrion.

49–66 C. E

Whatever triumph Judaism might celebrate by the accession of proselytes, and bright as seemed the dawn of the day predicted by the prophet, when the peoples of the earth would turn their eyes to Zion, and towards the light issuing thence to illumine the human race, yet in their native land, and more especially in Jerusalem, the yoke of the Romans weighed heavily on the Judæans, and became daily more oppressive.

The pitiable state of existing affairs crushed down all joyful feelings as to the prospective dominion of Judaism. A veil of sadness had for the last twenty years been spread over the nation, and no joyful feelings could exist beneath it. The last decades exhibit the nation as a captive who, continually tormented and goaded on by his jailer, tugs at his fetters, with the strength of despair, until he wrenches them asunder. The bloody contest between Rome, strong in arms and fertile in stratagem, and Judæa, poor in outward means of warfare and powerful only through indomitable will, inspires the deepest interest because, in spite of the disproportion between the combatants, the weak daughter of Zion would probably have gained the victory had she not been torn by conflicting parties and surrounded by treachery. Perhaps, had she awaited a more favorable moment, success might have been hers; but Providence had decreed the destruction of her national life.

This great combat, to which few struggles in the history of the world are comparable, was waged not merely for liberty, like the wars in which the Gauls, Germans, and Britons were engaged against Rome, but had likewise a religious character. The Judæan people were daily wounded in their religious sentiments by the arbitrary rule of Rome, and desired to gain their independence in order to acquire and maintain the free exercise of their religion. Such being their aim, the frequent reverses they sustained could not abate the ardent longing they felt to be free; on the contrary, it rose with each fresh disaster, and in the most trivial circumstances they saw and resented an attack upon their most sacred convictions. It was seldom, indeed, that Rome outraged the religious feelings of the Judæans as she had done under Caligula; on the contrary, she rather indulged their susceptibilities, but she often wounded them unintentionally through her despotic and jealous supervision.

The higher classes, poisoned by the seductive arts of Rome, had become deaf to the voice of duty, and the wise and vigilant among the nation feared, with reason, that the whole body would be infused with the moral prostration of its highest members. The aristocratic families were, indeed, so deeply steeped in immorality that the middle classes could hardly escape its contaminating influence. The bad example was set by the last members of the house of Herod, who were educated either in Rome itself or in the small courts of the princely Roman vassals. Agrippa II (born 27, died 91–93), son of the last noble Judæan king Agrippa I, a mere stripling of seventeen years at the time of his father's death, drank in the poisoned air of the Roman court, where the Messalinas and Agrippinas openly displayed the most hideous vices. After the demise of Herod II, the Emperor Claudius gave Agrippa the tiny kingdom of Chalcis (about 50). It was whispered that this last scion of the Hasmonæan and Herodian houses led an incestuous life with his beautiful sister Berenice, who was a year younger than himself, and a widow on the death of her husband, Herod II. There was probably some truth in the rumor, as Agrippa found himself forced to silence it. He betrothed his sister to Polemon, king of Cilicia, who, perhaps allured by her wealth even more than by her beauty, adopted Judaism to obtain her hand. But impelled by her inconstant humor, Berenice soon left Polemon, and was free again to indulge in her licentious intrigues.

Agrippa's second sister, Mariamne II (born 34), married to a native of Palestine, Julius Archelaus, dissolved that union, though she had borne him a daughter, and became the wife of the Judæan Demetrius of Alexandria, probably the son of the Alabarch Alexander, and in that case the brother of the apostate Tiberius Alexander. Still more depraved was his youngest sister, the beautiful Drusilla (born 38). Her father had promised her, when still a child, to the prince Epiphanes, the son of his friend Antiochus of Commagene, but only upon condition of his becoming a convert to Judaism. After Agrippa's death, however, Epiphanes refused to accept Judaism, and the young Agrippa gave his sister Drusilla to Aziz, king of Emesa, who declared himself willing to embrace her faith. Heedless, however, of conjugal duty, Drusilla soon abandoned her husband, married a Roman, the Governor Felix, and for his sake gave up her faith and became a pagan. The envy with which Berenice inspired Drusilla was supposed to have been the motive of the infidelity of the younger sister both to her husband and to her religion.

Although Agrippa was only prince of Chalcis, he was looked upon as the king of Judæa. Rome certainly had not deprived him of the royal title, but had divested him of all power, and made use of him only as a pliant tool and as a guard upon the movements of the surrounding nations. Agrippa was devoted to the imperial house, styling himself the emperor's friend. He displayed weakness and impotency when it behooved him to put bounds to the usurpations, insolence, and arrogance of Rome, and only showed his strength when he opposed the struggles of his people to regain their freedom and liberty. The whole house of Agrippa, including his most distant connections, Antipas and the two brothers Costobar and Saul, were all immoral, rapacious, and hostile to their own people. The only authority which Claudius, or rather his council, had left in the hands of the titular king, and which was ratified by his successors, was that which he was allowed to exercise over the Temple, and which enabled him to appoint the high priest. It was not religious zeal or moral worth that swayed Agrippa in the choice of the high priest, but simply the sentiments felt by the candidate for that office towards Rome. He who carried servility and the surrender of national aspirations furthest gained the prize. In barely twenty years Agrippa had named at least seven high priests. Among that number was Ananias (son of Eleazar?), whose enormous wealth, either acquired or inherited, allowed him to ingratiate himself with all who were open to bribery, and set him free to practise acts of lawlessness and violence. Since the time when Herod had lowered the dignity of the high priest's office by permitting it to be sold or gained by pandering to most degraded sentiments, there were certain families who seemed to have acquired a right to it – those of Boëthus, Cantheras, Phabi, Camith, and Anan or Seth, and it was but seldom that any one was elected outside that circle. The members of these families vied with each other in dishonorable conduct and frivolous thoughtlessness. Often their fierce jealousy broke out in acts of violence, and the streets of Jerusalem occasionally were the scenes of bloody skirmishes between the followers of those hostile rival houses. Each succeeding high priest tried to gain as much as possible out of his office, giving – heedless of the worth or fitness of the recipient – the most lucrative places in the Temple to his relatives and friends. So reckless were the high priests in the use, or rather abuse, of their power, that they would send their slaves, armed with clubs, to the barns to seize for themselves the tithes which every one was legally free to give to whichever priest he might select. Those priests who had not the good fortune to be related to the high priest were thus deprived of the means of subsistence, and fell into stringent poverty. Avarice and greed of power were the mainsprings of the actions of those who were elected to represent the highest ideal of morality; the Temple was despoiled by its dignitaries even before the enemy forced his way into it with his weapons of murder.

From this time, according to tradition, the visible signs of divine mercy ceased to appear in the Temple. Like some cankerous affection, this demoralization of princes and high priests extended ever more and more to the classes closest to them, producing evils which are depicted in dark colors by the pen of a contemporary. Since the penal laws were administered in the name of the emperor, and were placed under the control of the governors, the judiciary became dependent upon the Romans and the wealthy and influential classes. Selfishness, bribery, calumny, and cowardice, according to the painter of the manners and morality of that period, were ever increasing. "They throw off," he bitterly exclaims, "the yoke of heaven, and place themselves under the yoke of men; their judgments are false and their actions perverse. The vain and thoughtless are made great, while the nobler citizens are despised." Frivolity in the women and licentiousness in the men were so completely the order of the day that the most eminent teacher of morality of that time, Jochanan ben Zaccai, found himself obliged to abolish the ritual hitherto used in cases of suspicion of adultery. With deep sorrow, the nobler-minded Judæans lamented a state of things in which outward forms of worship stood higher than morality, and the defiling of the Temple caused more scandal and wrath than an act of murder. In the lower classes, crime of another but of a not less alarming nature appeared. The frequent insurrections which had been stimulated and fomented by the Zealots since Rome had arrogantly treated Judæa like a conquered province, had given rise to bands of free troops, which roved wildly about the country, confounding liberty with licentiousness, and trampling upon both customs and laws. They crowded the caves and hollows which abound in the rocky mountains of Judæa, and from those retreats made frequent irruptions to gratify their love of unbridled liberty. Some bands of Zealots, led by Eleazar ben Dinai and Alexander, were incited by feelings of patriotism to deeds of cruelty. They had sworn destruction and death to the Romans, and they included among the latter all those who consorted with them; they would not recognize them as Judæans, and deemed it no crime to plunder and destroy them. The degenerate friends of Rome were, according to their views, and the oaths they had taken, mere outlaws, and the Zealots kept their oath only too well. They attacked the nobles as often as they fell in their way, ravaged their possessions and did them as much harm as lay in their power. If there was any wrong to be avenged upon the enemy of their country, they were the first to lend their sword in defense of their outraged nationality.

Another band of Zealots, grown wild and savage, forgot the original aim of liberating their country, and turned their attacks upon the foes of the latter into profit for themselves. They were called Sicarii, from the short dagger "sica," which they wore concealed under their cloaks, and with which, either openly or insidiously, they struck and killed their enemies. The Sicarii belonged to the very refuse of the Zealots. Later they acknowledged the grandsons of Judas of Galilee, Menahem and Eleazar ben Jair, as their leaders, but at the commencement of this epoch they were under no discipline whatever. They wandered about the country without any defined object, lending their assistance to those who either offered them a reward or an opportunity for satisfying their thirst for revenge. Armed with daggers, they wandered among the various groups that thronged the colonnade of the Temple during the festivals, and unperceived, struck down those they had marked out as their victims. These murders were committed with such extraordinary rapidity and skill, that for a long time the assassins remained undiscovered, but all the greater were the dread and horror excited by those dark, mysterious deeds. Murders became so frequent that Jochanan ben Zaccai and the teachers of the Law found it necessary to abrogate the sin-offering for the shedding of innocent blood, as too many animals would have been slaughtered for the human victims. It may have been about this time that the Great Synhedrion, which witnessed with intense grief the constant increase of lawlessness and immorality, gave up its functions and transferred its place of meeting from the Hewn-stone Hall to the Commercial Hall in Bethany, an act which seemed to imply its dissolution.

To stem, if possible, the confusion and disorder which existed, the noblest citizens combined, and keeping aloof from conflicts and strifes, sought to further by all means in their power the spiritual advancement of Judaism. To keep the Law intact was their self-imposed, sacred task. In Jochanan ben Zaccai they found a fitting representative. He was considered, next to the president of the Synhedrion, Simon ben Gamaliel (and perhaps even before him), as the greatest teacher of that time. On account of his deep knowledge of the Law and of the worth and dignity of his character, Jochanan ben Zaccai was made vice-president of the Synhedrion. That position gave him the power to cancel such laws as could not be enforced in that stormy period. His chief office, however, was that of teacher. In the cool shade cast by the Temple walls, he sat, encircled by his disciples, to whom he delivered the laws that were to be observed, and expounded the Scriptures.

Besides the spirit of anarchy there was another source of discord and misery. As the existing situation became more and more sad and hopeless, the longing in the hearts of faithful believers for the expected deliverer who was to bring peace to Judæa became more and more intense. Messianic hopes were rifer among the people now than they had been even during the time of the first Roman governors; and these hopes stirred up enthusiasts who proclaimed themselves to be prophets and Messiahs, and who inspired belief and obtained followers. Freedom from the yoke of Rome was the one great aim of all these enthusiasts. What the disciples of Judas attempted to bring about by force of arms, the disciples of Theudas hoped to accomplish without fighting, having recourse only to signs and miracles. A Judæan from Egypt calling himself a prophet, found no less than three, or according to another account, four thousand followers. These he summoned to the Mount of Olives, and there promised to overthrow the walls of Jerusalem with the breath of his mouth and to defeat the Roman soldiers. He was not the only one who, carried away by the fervor of desire, prophesied the approach of better times. And well may those enthusiasts have found acceptance among the people. A nation that had enjoyed so rich a past and looked forward even to a more glorious future, might allow itself to be lulled into forgetfulness of the dismal present by pictures of freedom and happiness. These visions and prophecies, harmless enough in themselves, derived a sad importance from the bitter and savage animosity with which they inspired the Roman governors. If the people, jealous of any interference with their religion, looked upon the slightest offense to it as an attack upon Judaism itself, and made the governors, the emperor, and the Roman state responsible for the delinquency, the imperial officials in Judæa were not less susceptible, for they treated the most trivial agitation among the people as an insult to the majesty of Rome and the emperor, and punished with equal severity the innocent and the guilty. Vain was the favor shown to the Judæan nation by the emperors Claudius and Nero – the procurator constantly over-stepped the limit of his authority, and urged on by greed and the love of power, acted the part of tyrant. Judæa had the misfortune to be almost always governed by depraved creatures, who owed their position to the reckless favorites who ruled at court. They rivaled one another in acts of wickedness and cruelty, thus ever increasing the discontent and provoking the wrath of the people. Cumanus, who succeeded Tiberius Alexander (about 48–52), was the first of five such avaricious and bloodthirsty procurators. He governed only the provinces of Judæa and Samaria, Claudius having bestowed the command of the province of Galilee on Felix, the brother of his favorite, Pallas. Cumanus and Felix became deadly foes.

It was the governor of Judæa who first excited the resentment of the people. Jealous suspicion of any great concourse of people assembled in the Temple, a suspicion which, since the revolt at the time of the census, had become traditional among the Roman governors, induced Cumanus, at the time of the Passover, to place an armed cohort in the colonnade of the Temple to watch the throngs which gathered there during that festival. On that occasion a soldier, with the recklessness often exhibited by the inferior Roman troops, made an offensive gesture towards the sanctuary, which the people interpreted as an insult to their Temple. Carried away by indignation and anger, they threw stones at the soldiers and abused the governor. A tumult ensued, which threatened to become a serious sedition. Cumanus ordered fresh troops to advance and take possession of the fortress of Antonia, and assuming a menacing aspect, alarmed the people assembled round the Temple, who now hastened to escape from his reach. In their anxiety to get away, the crowds pressed fearfully through the various places of exit, and it is believed that more than ten or indeed twenty thousand persons were suffocated or trampled to death.

A similar occasion might have led to a like disastrous result, had not Cumanus prudently complied with the wishes of the people. On the highway, not far from Bethoron, a band of Sicarii having fallen upon and robbed a servant of the emperor, Cumanus resolved that all the neighboring villages should suffer bitterly for the act of violence committed in their vicinity. One of the Roman soldiers, infuriated by an attack upon a fellow-countryman, got possession of a Book of the Law, tore it in pieces and threw the fragments into the fire. Here was a new cause for angry excitement and wrathful reproaches in the desecration of what they held most sacred. Countless bands flocked to Cumanus at Cæsarea, crying out against the blasphemer. Much rather, they exclaimed, would they suffer the worst fate themselves than see their Holy Scriptures profaned; and in tones of fury they called for the death of the guilty man. The governor yielded this time to the counsel of his friends, and ordered the soldier to be executed in the presence of those whose religious feelings he had outraged.

Another occurrence took a more serious form and led to strife and bloodshed. Some Galilæans who were on their way to a festival at Jerusalem, passed through Samaria, and whilst in the town of Ginæa, on the southeastern end of the plain of Jezreel, they were murdered in a fray with the hostile Samaritans. Was this only an accidental mischance, or the result of the burning hatred which existed between the Judæans and the Samaritans? In either case the representatives of Galilee were justified in demanding vengeance at the hands of the governor upon the murderers. But Cumanus treated the affair with contemptuous indifference, and thus obliged the Judæans to deal with the matter themselves. The leaders of the Zealots, Eleazer ben Dinai and Alexander, incited both by the Galilæans and their governor, Felix, took the matter into their own hands, entered with their troops the province of Acrabatene, inhabited by Samaritans, and pitilessly destroyed and killed all within their reach. The Samaritans appealed to Cumanus for redress for this attack upon their province, and he gave them permission to take up arms, sending at the same time Roman troops to assist them in a fearful massacre.

This proof, as they considered it, of the partisanship of the emperor's officials roused the anger of the inhabitants of Jerusalem to such a degree that, spurred on among others by Dortus, a man of some position, they were on the point of attacking the troops of Cumanus, which would doubtless have seriously increased the gravity of the situation, and might have hastened the final catastrophe by twenty years. The principal inhabitants of Jerusalem, however, alarmed at the possible consequences of an outbreak against the Roman arms, strove to prevent so dangerous an act, and, clothed in deep mourning, implored the irritated multitude to pause and think of the future. At their prayer the people laid down their arms. But neither the Judæans nor the Samaritans were really pacified, and still smarting under the wrongs mutually received, they sent deputies to the Syrian governor, Umidius Quadratus, accusing each other, and asking him to investigate the whole dispute. To effect that object, Quadratus visited Samaria; but he was not an impartial judge, and many of the captive Judæans were doomed to perish on the cross. It was only after those executions had taken place that he formed a tribunal of justice, and summoned both parties to appear before it. In the meantime, however, Felix having taken the part of the Galilæans against the Samaritans, such entanglements ensued that Quadratus would not venture to adjudicate between the disputants, and ordered them to send deputies to Rome to obtain the decision of the emperor. Among the Judæan envoys were Jonathan, the former high priest, and Anan, the governor of the Temple. Cumanus was also obliged to leave his post in order to appear at Rome and justify himself there.

All the intricate court intrigues were brought into play by this trial, which took on a more serious aspect from the fact that the governor himself was one of the accused. The emperor caused a tribunal to be formed, but the verdict was given not by himself, but by his depraved wife, the notorious Agrippina, who was the paramour of Pallas, the brother of Felix. It had been arranged between the Judæan deputies and Pallas that after sentence was pronounced against Cumanus, the emperor should be asked to name Felix governor of Judæa in his stead. The verdict given in favor of the Judæans could not be considered an impartial one, and was not in itself a proof that the Samaritans had been the aggressors. Many of them were pronounced guilty and executed, and Cumanus was sent into banishment. At the same time, probably also through the intercession of the empress, a kingdom in the northeast of Judæa was bestowed upon Agrippa; it consisted of that part of the country which had once belonged to Philip's tetrarchy, Batanæa, Gaulanitis, Auranitis, Trachonitis, as well as Paneas and Abilene. On Judæa proper Rome kept a firm grasp, and would never allow a native prince, however much he might be under Roman influence and control, to exercise in that domain any regal prerogatives.