'y, .:^^- ^'11. %/., 'k PRINCETON, N. J. Shelf.. BS 2410 .H3"8i3'^i878 v.l Hausrath, Adolf, 1837-1909. A history of the New Testament times A HISTORY NEW TESTAMENT TIMES. DR A. '^AUSEATH, OIIDINARY PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF HEIDELBERa. THE TIME OF JESUS. VOL. I. TRANSLATED, WITH THE AUTHORS SANCTION, FROM THE SECOND GERMAN EDITION, BY CHARLES T. POINTING, B.A, & PHILIP QUENZER. WILLIAMS AND N R G A T E, 14, HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, LONDON; And 20, SOUTH FREDERICK STREET, EDINBURGH. 1878. LONDON : PRINTED BY 0. GREEN AND SON, 178, STRAND. THE TIME OF JESUS. VOL. I. XM'^^^ic^ PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. The History of the New Testament Times is now presented to tlie reader in a revised and enlarged edition. The latter part of the work, especially, has at the same time been much altered under the influence of Dr. Keim's Jesus of Nazara. In the plan of the book nothing has been altered. The aim in view is still to present a history of the development of culture in the times of Jesus and the writers of the New Testa- ment, so far as this development had a direct influence upon the rise of Christianity ; and then to give the history of this rise itself, so far as it can be treated as an objective history, and not as a subjective religious process. The author, in the Preface to the first edition, wrote as follows : " "What we call the sacred history, is the presentation of only the most prominent points of a far broader historical life. The history of the Old Testament has always been treated in connec- tion with the history of Israel ; while, on the other hand, the attempt to give a connected presentation of all the historical circumstances which form the basis of the New Testament his- tory and literature, was not made before the time of Dr. Mat- thew Schneckenburcjer, owincj to the dissimilar character of tlie materials. For the New Testament history is not like that of the Old Testament, member of one single national development, but displays itself in various territories, and enters into the most vi PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. diverse develoiDinents. Although the time of Jesus is connected with the confines of Jewish history, yet with every new period does its borders become wider and its perspective more exten- sive. We have to commence our narrative at the time when affairs in general present themselves in the form reflected by the Gospels. Thus we find ourselves thrown into the first period of the Eoman dominion in Judaja. It will be our task to describe this period, so far as its events stand in either direct or indirect relations to the chief religious facts of the New Tes- tament. " In doing this, there will be no necessity to attempt the useless task of tracing the origin of Christianity itself from the transi- tory relations of the j^eriod. There were at other times, also, favourable relations, operative conditions, and circumstances tending irresistibly to catastroj)hes, and yet no new religion proceeded from them, because the creative and moulding Spirit was not present in the chaos. Christianity in its essence is the work, not of circumstances, but of Christ. But the personal life, this creative point around which the seething elements are gathered, and that gives form to the molten metal that otherwise becomes dross, this is ever the immediate act of God, which cannot be farther explained or derived. Here is the thread to be sought for whicli connects things immediately with God. Yet no one will fall into the error of supposing that this sacred history is not a part of the history of the time. It has not been phantasmagori- cally reflected down from Heaven upon the background of actual history, but has been developed as an actual part of actual his- tory, and amidst the most vigorous reciprocal efforts with the given conditions of the time ; although we have been accus- toming ourselves to consider it apart from its original connection, as though it were the course of a divine revelation which passed PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. Vll over all the historical occurrences as well as the life of that generation. Thus the task has arisen of again uniting this New Testament history to the chronological connections in which it stood when it was the present ; to observe it, not, indeed, as a product, but yet as a part of a more general historical process ; to present it as tliose who experienced it knew it, mingled and confused with thoroughly secular circumstances. " In this view of our task there lies, however, a two-fold limita- tion. Not everything which occurred in the two centuries which we have designated by the name of the ' New Testament Times,' can be an object of our study, but only those which stand in connection with the New Testament history. But tliis history is not, in and for itself, the object of our description ; we are concerned only with it in its relation to the time. That this side of the subject also can demand attention, will be denied by none. " Such an attempt certainly must hold itself, from the first, opposed to both the magical and the mythical derivation of Christianity. Within a purely historical presentation there is no room for the poetical world of the religious Saga ; its images fade away when thrown before a clear historical background. The sharper the boundary of terrestrial things is drawn, the less is the place foiind for good and evil angels. But even that assumption which supposes that the concrete life of the New Testament history is only the mythical figure of the phantasy of a later time, does not find here any support. If we can demon- strate that the sacred history is a fragment of universal history and show how the edges fit, if we can again gather up the broken threads which unite it with the secular world, then the supposition that this history is the beautiful dream of a later generation is excluded. VUl PREFACE TO TEE SECOND EDITION. " Of materials for the solution of this problem there is no -want. How things appeared from the standpoint of the upper classes, is best described by Josephus in the palace of the Flavians near the Septizonium ; how the ordinary man found them, is known by the expressions of the first Christian communities. The task is to sec the circumstances descril^ed by Josephus with the eyes of the Evangelists, and from their experiences to complete them ; and also to read the narratives of the Gospels in connection with the historical circumstances described by Josephus. So far as the current of the narrative permits, it is the intention of the writer to allow the sources themselves to speak. " The task, as the writer therefore understands it, is from its very nature a positive one. Not only do the events, considered historically, rest upon a firm foundation, since they are taken in connection with historically certain data, but the figures of the sacred history stand out in sharper outlines when we paint the pale background of the historical circumstances with the deeper colours with which the hand of Josephus especially supplies us. A pleasure in negative results will be found by none in this book. To the writer's eye, the negative pictures of criticism usually present themselves as positive ones ; perhaps often too quickly so. But in any case, for him criticism has value only as means of correction ; of negation, never. This will not prevent those who regard the industry and earnest work of our theolo- gical tendency only as a species of that obstinacy with which sin adheres to sin, or at the most as the course of headstrong vanity, from pouring out the vials of their wrath upon this book. These people make the mistake of supposing that the present theolo- gical position is the mere arbitrary product of some few indi- viduals, and that they can prevent any alteration being made, if only they will exert themselves to embitter the lives of certain PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. ix theologians. Theology, on its side, is not responsible for this position. To the more exact knowledge of the times and home of primitive Christianity, orientalists, classical philologists and travellers in Palestine have made the most valuable contribu- tions, and thus it has happened that much must now be taken in connection with historical ideas and relations which formerly was accepted as revelation. What is in Philo, Josephus and the Eabbis, historical theology, cannot immediately become in the Apostles inspiration. This situation is the product of the development of the last few decades ; it is not we who have made it. It has always happened that the first attempts to substitute a more adequate method of presenting the funda- mental religious facts for the traditional, have immediately raised the suspicion that religion itself was being injured. On this point also we find ourselves to-day upon historical ground." Although holding fast by this standpoint to-day, yet we can- not deny that in many other respects our first attempts to give a purely historical treatment of the commencement of our religion was somewhat unsatisfactory. The splendid manner in which Ferdinand Christian Eaur attempted this same task, some thirty years ago, is well known. Never has the internal criticism of historical sources been treated in a more lofty manner than, for example, in his Church History of the First Three Centuries. In this work the collected literary materials were sifted, and its position allotted to every part ; and thus the old ecclesiastical history became pre-eminently a history of literature. But the presentation of the literary pro- cess is only a part of the work to be accomplished. Literary monuments are always only a casual deposit of historical move- ments, not tliese movements themselves. After the contest about theological conceptions wliich presents itself more espe- X PREFACE TO TEE SECOND EDITION. cially in literature, there remain ricli historical materials, which had little interest for Baur. The true motive power of Chris- tianity was not its theology, hut the strong religious and moral impulse which proceeded from Jesus himself The rest is merely local and individual. Much, too, was developed from the rela- tions of the young Church to the century and the state. To complete the picture of theological movements which Baur has so splendidly described, upon this side, is the task which histo- rical theology has inherited from the mighty dead. An attempt to bring out the historical connection interwoven between the primitive Church and its age, was first undertaken by Kenan. But just as certainly as he who needs the mechanical impulse of miracle as an explanation of the conquest of Christianity over the powers of its age, has not comprehended its internal pre- eminence, so neither has he who seeks to explain that great movement by any of the childish vehicles used by Eenan. Various kinds of idyllic situations, foolish coincidents, innocent deceits, cannot make a new theory of life. History, more especially the religious, declines such a petty derivation. What is needed is rather such a comprehension of the internal pre-eminence of Christianity over the theories and tendencies of its age, that its course can be understood without recourse to the crutches of miracles and convenient coincidences. Certainly, there must be above all a religious understanding, which has a proper sense of the power of tlie factors here at work. Wlien an irreligiousness which is self-conscious and founded on prin- ciple undertakes to write "A Life of Jesus," it at once becomes apparent tliat, in order to understand a founder of religion, one must oneself be religious ; just as much as to compose a useful history of music, one must be musical. Only on the supposition that he was not able to appreciate the power of religion, can we PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. xi explain the strange judgment of David Strauss, that all the true and good things uttered by Jesus are scarcely worthy of regard wlien compared with the results of the belief in the resurrection ; so that, historically considered, this must be declared to be the greatest historic humbug which ever occurred. Thus it was considered possible liistoricalbj to derive a revolution like that of Christianity from an illusion. When the one theory refutes the other, it is because it rests upon internal grounds ; and where tliose are wanting, neither actual nor invented miracles can turn the course of the world's history. But for him who places no value upon the power of religious impulse, all the mighty revolutions in the world's history proceeding from this source remain unintelligible ; and because he sees movements whose motive power he cannot recognize, the whole of the ante- cedents appear to him to be — humbug ! Such a conception may be interesting, but it cannot be called historic. An historical view of Christianity is that alone which under- stands the conquest of Christianity as internally necessary. To this task this present book offers a contribution, in so far as it describes the events of that great epoch, and at the same time attempts to picture how this age itself appeared in the little rehgious circles. Should it at times seem as though the history of the period was transformed into a New Testament histoiy, this will be excused on the ground that the external influences of the time upon the young Church were always conditioned by its own internal development. The present conclusion of the whole work will assure the reader that the author remains con- scious of his plan. A. HAUSEATH. Heidelberg, Aiyril \st, 1873. TRANSLATORS' NOTE. In order to make this work more useful to our readers, whenever an English edition or translation exists of works referred to in the notes, the reference given is to the English edition. Thus all the references to Eohinson in this translation will be found in the second edition of Dr. Eobinson's "Biblical Eesearches in Palestine" (London: John Murray, 1856). Those to the Pirqe Aboth will be fovmd in " Sayings of the Jewish Fathers," by Charles Taylor, M.A. (Cambridge, at the University Press, 1877). The references to Josephus are those of the edition of Didot : Paris, mdcccxlv, which will be found to correspond to those of Whiston's Translation, with very few exceptions. Those of the Bible are to the English Bible. When practicable, the words of the Authorized Version have been preserved. It has at times been found necessary to depart from this Version in order to preserve the meaning of the original. Great assistance has been obtained in this work from "The Holy Bible," edited, with various Eenderings and Eeadings, by Eevds. T. K. Cheyne, E. L. Clarke, S. E. Driver, and Alfred Goodman : London, 1876. The references to the Psalms of Solomon will be foimd in the "Messias Judseorum" of Dr. Hilgenfeld, Leipzig, 1868; to Enoch, in "Das Buch Enoch" of Dr. A. Dillmann, Leipzig, 1853; and to the Sibylline Oracles, in "Die Sibyllinischen Weissagungen, vollstandig Gesammelt," von Dr. J. H. Friedlieb, Leipzig, 1852. xiv translators' note. The reader is requested to make tlie following corrections : Page 89, note 1. The reference to " Jesus of Nazai-a," Theological Trans- lation Fund Library, i. 433, is to the German edition. The reference to the English is ii. 157. Page 99, note 1. For Philo, De curit, read De carit. Page 111. The reference to note 1 is Berachot, bab. 61 a. At line 16 from the top of the page, at the word "• out," read note 2, a reference to Philo, de profugis i. Mang. 554. Page 191. Line 22 from top, for " were the first which enabled," read " were those which at last enabled." Page 200. Line 17 from top, for "deceived," read "undeceived;" and line 26 from top, for " by the most celebrated Eabbis," read " of the most celebrated Rabbis." CONTENTS. The Holy Land at the Time op Jesus. PAGE 1. Galilee ....... 1 2. The Domain of the Samaritans . . . 14 3. Jiidtea ....... 28 4. The Territory East of the Jordan . . . 51 5. The Neighboiuing Nations . . . .57 ^cconb piijisiou. The State of Public Affairs. 1. The Civil and Ecclesiastical Powers . . .73 2. The Sanhedrin . . .. . . 80 3. The Synagogue ...... 84 4. The Tendencies of Rabhinism . . . 93 5. The Learning of the Scribes . . . .108 6. Secret Doctrine . . . . . 113 7. The Practical Application of Secret Doctrine . .124 ®^iriJ ^ibision. The Parties. 1. The Sadducees and Pharisees . . . .135 2. The Essenes ...... 153 xvi CONTENTS. Condition and 5!'eelinq of the Times since the Commencement OF the Eoman Dominion. PAGE 1. The Opposition of ^Nationalities . . . .174 2. The First Conflicts . . . . . 181 3. The Economic Condition of Juchea under the Eomans . 186 4. The Messianic Expectation . . . . 191 ^xii\ ^ibisioit. Herod. 1. The Work of Antipater . . . . .207 2. Herod's Youth . . .. . . 216 3. Antonius and Cleopatra . . . . .225 4. Herod conquers his Kingdom . . . . 235 5. The ISTew Government ..... 244 6. The First Family Disputes . . . . 249 7. Condition of Affairs at Home .... 255 8. The Last Days of Antonius . . . . 260 9. INIariamne . . . . . • .267 ifirst ^ibisioir. THE HOLY LAND AT THE TIME OF JESUS. THE HOLY LAND AT THE TIME OF JESUS. 1. Galilee. The land of the Jews lies iinmecliately before the final setting of its political existence once more clearly in the light of history. Josephus, the classic authority of this period, has narrated all the circumstances with an affection which is felt for one's own country only when it has been lost for ever. The Eoman historians speak with the ardour with which an intense hatred inspires tliem. The Christian sources everywhere describe the land the more faithfully because unconsciously. Let us begin our journey in the north, Avhere on the w^est the broad and even ridge of Lebanon, and on the east the lofty heights of Hermon, covered by eternal snow, form the natural and historical frontiers of the country. Towards Lebanon, the deep and rocky valley of the foam- ing Leontes has drawn an irremovable boundary between the countries, which through all the centuries, therefore, has remained the same. The district of Ulatiia and Paneas, not being enclosed in this way, runs up into the valleys of Hermon. Upon the elevated terraces of this mountain was situated in the time of Jesus the newly-built C.esarea Philippi, the most northerly town of the land of the Jews, lying back in a gorge of Mount Hermon, which towers majestically behind it to the clouds. On the declivity of the mountain, a thousand feet above the B 2 4 THE HOLY LAND AT THE TIME OF JESUS. town, stands the ancient fortress, " the tower of Lebanon, which looketh towards Damascus."^ This district,, to which Mount Panios gave its name, and that from the year 19 B. C. had been again united to the kingdom of Herod, had by the poets of the Song of Solomon and the Psahns been celebrated for its forests and rushing streams;^ and now, too, was most highly esteemed on account of its fresh mountain meadows and smiling fields, as was testified by the fact that here were the Sanctuary of Pan and the marl)le temple of Augustus, and that to it were assigned the proud names of Ciesarea and Neronias, — names through which the tetrarchs Philip and Agrippa manifested their devotion in thus offering the town as their most valued possession to the master of the world.^ Beneath the steep declivities of these highlands a marshy plain extends, upon which grow immense flags and sedges, giving rise to a miasmal atmosphere that no inhabitants can endure.* The Jordan finds a languid course through this marsh on its way to the weed-covered Lake of Merom. The inhabitants of Galilee only visited this district as a hunting-ground, in order to chase the wild boar and buffalo, which, collected in herds, rejoiced in its marshy thickets. Otherwise the country was shunned, because robbers as well as political exiles were accustomed to find refuge in the impassable morasses and thickets of reeds.^ It is below the lake of Merom that the district first becomes habitable again, and here a tolerably active traffic commences, in that the caravan road, which runs from Damascus to Ptolemais, crosses the Jordan in this place, in the neighbourhood of the present Jacob's-bridge, and descends to the lake of Tiberias. The real life and business of the district also was found here, and the Lake of Tjberias can with good reason be called the eye of Galilee. At that time, even more tlian at the present day, was the full splendour of a southern climate exhibited there. In 1 Song Sol. vii. 4. " Song Sol. iv. 8, vii. 5 ; Ps. xlii. C, &c. " Jo.s. ISell. i. 21, 3, ii. 9, 1 ; Jos. Ant. xx. 9, 4. * Jos. IJell. iii. 10, 7; Robhiooii, Falestiue, li. 434. ^ Bell. i. 16, 5. GALILEE. O exquisite contrast, the blue surface of the lake lies embosomed iu the yellow limestone mountains. The shores smile in a lovely profusion of flowers, and only on the eastern side does the barren and gloomy precipice stand forth with its naked and dismal- looking basaltic rocks. The most delightful spot on the lake Is the plain of Gennesareth, where formerly all the fruits of Pales- tine ripened. The mountains, too, were not wanting in a growth of trees. Cypresses, fir-trees, almonds, pines, Scotch firs, cedars, Savin-trees, olives, myrtles, laurels, palms and balsams were mentioned by a younger contemporary of Jesus as the noblest trees of his home.^ Here, according to Josephus, all of them throve. The district which is now barren was then one luxuriant garden. Bushes of the red blooming oleander, figs and vine- trellises and soft lawns surrounded the bank ; and while stately walnut-trees and olive-groves covered the heights, on the bank slender palms waved their fan-like branches to and fro." On the lake, wliich is about fifteen miles long and six miles broad,^ were situated three good-sized towns and rpiite a suc- cession of villages. There, where the caravan-road meets the lake, do we find the town of Jesus, Capernaum. While Ciiorazin is to be looked for on the heights near the outflow of the Jordan into the lake, and Betiisaida on its banks towards the north, Dalmanutha and Magdala are to be found at the southern end. The houses and streets of these places we must picture to our- selves as resembling those of oriental ones of the present day, and not after the analogy of the Grieco-Roman architecture ; for where the latter prevails, as, for example, in Zebulon, Josephus finds it necessary to inform us expressly of the fact.^ It was different in Tiberias, which Antipas had built to the north of the hot springs of Emmaus in the Eoman style. The lake, which as a rule only looked upon uniform Syrian huts and plain four- 1 Jubil, 21 (Gottg. Jahrbuch. 1851, p. 19). » Bell. iii. 10, 7, 8. ' Robinson, ii. p. 417, gives the length as only twelve miles; Stanley, Sinai and Pal. p. 367, as thirteen miles. * Bell. ii. 18, 'J. 6 THE HOL Y LAND A T THE TIME OF JESUS. cornered synagogues, here reflected proud Grecian colonnades and Koman arches, and pahices adorned with sculptures, the beauty of which could afford no pleasure, certainly, to the Jewish eye. Still the town was also distinguished as possessing a stately synagogue, in whose immense Basilica meetings of the people were held during the period of the revolution.^ A larger town and of more Jewish character was TARictLEA, which lay at the southern end of the lake. Here, where the Jordan flows out of Gennesareth, which is one of the most fish-abounding lakes in the whole world, the trade of fisherman was a very prosperous one. Pickled in barrels, the fish of Tarichtea Avere sent far and wide.^ The Gospels, too, are aware of this busy fish-trade. The vessels sail ujs and down ;^ the fishermen in their boats set their nets to right with the help of assistants,* or glide busily over the surface with their nets spread out to dry.^ The number of boats upon tlie lake was so great, that in the Jewish war a formal engagement took place before Tarichaea between the fishing-boats of tlie Jews and the rafts of the Romans.*^ The eastern side is bounded by the steep and barren declivi- ties of the mountains of Gaulanitis, the feet of which run out right into the lake. Below Julias, which was situated upon both banks of the Jordan above its outflow into the lake, are Geegesa, Gamala and Hippos, the most important places upon the farther bank. The smiling fields of the bank-side are continued for some considerable distance into the plains of Jordan to the south of Taricha?a and Hippos. Tlie Jordan waters the valley by means of its sinuous windings and the multitude of its tributaries that run down into it, on the west from the table-land of Tabor and the mountains of Gilboa, and on the east from the steep terraces of the mountains of Gaulanitis. Where the plain is most fruit- ful, and a broad valley, green with Avoods through which the clear stream of the (Dschalud) Jillud roars, leads up to Scytho- POLis, one of the towns of the Decapolis, there Ave stand upon ^ Jos. Vita, 54. 2 straho, 16, 2. ^ Matt. viii. 23, xiv. 13. ■* Matt. iv. 2], 5 Luke v. 4, 6. « Bell. iii. 10, !). GALILEE. 7 the frontier of Galilee.''- The part of Galilee which rises on the west of the valley of the Jordan is an undulating hilly coun- try, that only in the north attains any considerahle elevation. Towards Lebanon the forests are wild and extensive, while in the middle and southern districts there is a deficiency of trees, hut not of verdant dales and fruitful table-lands. The northern boundary descends rapidly towards the Leontes, while the western boundary descends somewhat more gently towards the sea-coast. From this north-western declivity the eye looked down directly upon the venerable Tyke and the white sands of the coast which divide the blue sea from the mountains. As now the steam- boats, so then the high -built triremes and stately "ships of Tarshish" attracted attention as they glided up and down along the coast. Farther to the south towards Ecdippa, the mountains recede from the coast, and give place to the considerable plain of Ptolemais, as far as the wooded cape of Carmel, that at the southern boundary of Galilee descends precipitously into the sea. The glittering sands of the coast, Tyre made gloomy by its dye- works and factories, the smoking chimneys of the glass-works, the busy commercial life, — all remind us that there the Hebrew world ceases, and that of the Phcenicio-Grecian with its interests begins. On the other hand, in the hilly district between the valley of the Jordan and the sea-coast, a number of important Jewish villages are situated — as Giscala, Hazor, Kamah, Ga- BARA, Zebulon, Jotapata, Japha, Cana, Kimmon, Sepphoris, Nazareth, Simonias, and Gabatha. From the western declivity of these heights we look over towards Carmel, whose line of hills, running towards the south- west, formed the boundary of Galilee, which continued over the southern end of the plain of Esdraelon away towards the mountains of GiLBOA, at whose eastern declivity it reached Scv- THOPOLis. This champaign — which was bounded by the wooded heights of Carmel and over-towered in the nortli by the peak of 1 Pliu. 5, 16; Bell. ii. 18, 3; Robinson, Vol. iii. 331. 8 THE UOLY LAND AT THE TIME OF JESUS. Tabor, rich in flowers, through which, too, the Kishon, the ancient river, winds like a thread of silver — was the real market of Galilee, and the historic ground upon which all the great battles of Israel liad been fought. " A river of battles is the river Kishon,"^ was said even at the time of the Judges. "With each of the hills around are connected ancient traditions. In the south, Legio, the ancient Megiddo ;^ in the east, Jezreel, with the vineyard of Naboth, and the tower where the dogs devoured the body of Jezebel ; to the north, situated on another line of hills, the village Shunem, which Elijah sometimes used to visit, and where Avas the dwelling of the beautiful Abishag, the most beautiful woman in the kingdom of David. At the back are concealed the hills of Endor, where Saul called up the shade of Samuel. Certainly, these mountains must then have presented a blooming appearance, very different from the present, when, according to the poet's description, the beautiful Shulamite went down into the garden of nuts " to see the fruits of the valley, and to see whether the vine flourished and the pomegranates budded;" when lilies could be gathered on the plain, and balsam -espaliers and vine -trellises surrounded the gardens.^ With the plain of Jezreel, Galilee ends. We enter the district, at the commencement of our period, to find it thronged with towns, villages and hamlets ; we leave it at its end covered with ruins. Josephus enumerates in it two hundred and four town- ships, and fifteen fortified places.^ According to his account, which is, however, incredible, the population on these from ninety to a hundred square miles must have amounted to more than 3,000,000.^ Moreover, the Gospels introduce us to a thickly- ^ Judges V. 21. 2 Revelation xvi. IG. 3 Song of Sol. vi. 11, vii. 12. * Bell. ii. 20, 6; Vita, 37, 45. * Bell. iii. 3, 2. Although it is inconceivable that a man like Josephus, who is supposed to have had command of an army of 100,000 men, should not have had a thorough knowledge of enumeration, yet his accounts of numbers are throughout in themselves impossible. In no part of tiie world in a mountainous country, especially in chalk mountains, have there been 30,000 human beings to the square mile ; in the GALILEE. 9 populated country, and in more than one scene allow us to gather that, at least in lower Galilee, the population is confined and presses upon itself, and that all interests are associated together.^ Towns, villages and farmsteads are mentioned by Mark as lying on the declivity of the Galilean mountains." No spot of land was, according to Josephus, without an owner,^ and owing to the excessive subdivision of the ground, the spade had often displaced the plough.^ The meadows were ploughed up for sowing. " No small beasts," says the Talmud,^ " are bred in Israel, nor even in Syria and the deserts of the land of Judah." This means that tillage repaid the farmer. The heavy soil of the plain of Jezreel produces excellent maize and wheat ; on the declivities a fiery wine is grown, and olives and rape-fields pro- duce rich crops.*^ ]\Ien waded in oil, said the Eabbis, in their hyperbolical manner." In the tropical climate of the deep valley-hollows of Gennesareth, the Indian banana and the bal- sam shrub grew. Indigo grows even now at Magdala, which the Talmud at that time called the town of dyers. " The land," Josephus informs us with pride, of his former province, " never suffered for want of inhabitants, for it is fertile and full of mea- dows, where trees of every kind grow, and promises a rich reward through its luxuriant fruitfulness to even the most mise- rable husbandry. The ground is most excellently tilled, and not a single plot left uncultivated. Moreover, through this ease in obtaining the means of life, the land was tliickly covered with towns and numerous populous villages. The smallest of them had more than 15,000 inhabitants."^ The descriptions, too, in the Gospels, teU everywhere of an most populous districts of Flanders at the present day there are only 15,000 to the square mile. 1 Mark iii. 31, i. 35, 45, ii. 4, iil. 8, vi. 31, and other places. 2 Mark vi. 36, 56. ^ ^^]x_ Yi.\. 3, 2. * Luke xvi. 3. 6 Bava Kama, 7, 9. « Bell. ii. 21, 2. ' Gratz, Geschichte d. Juden, iii. 359. •* Bell. iii. 3, 2. This number is intellisiljlo only when by kw/i?/ the whole district of the town and its suburbs is understood, according to the Hebrew manner of speaking. 10 THE HOLY LAND AT TEE TIME OF JESUS. active life. There is toiling in the vineyards,^ ploughing in the fields,^ and digging in the gardens.^ In the towns there is con- stant building.* Before the mill the mill-stone lies in readiness;^ the barns are filled, and new ones are formed.^ On the heights are vineyards ; while apart from the townships the whitewashed grave-stones of the burial-places gleamJ In the highways and hedges, the blind and halt await the alms of the travellers.^ Day la'oourers are hired in the market, and paid in the evening;^ with plough reversed, the labourer takes his homeward way;^° even at a distance from the village, the singing and dancing of the holiday-makers can be heard ;^^ in the market-places the children wrangle in their sports ;^^ until late at night the noise of revelry and knocking at closed doors continues.^^ The drunken steward storms and beats and otherwise misuses the maid- servants.^* In short, from morning until night, life is boisterous and much occupied and gay, and the busy people find no time for meditating on the kingdom of God. The one has bought a piece of ground and must needs go and see it ; the other must prove the oxen which have been knocked down to him ; the third has other business, a feast, a funeral, or a marriage.-^^ " They ate, they drank, tliey bought, they sold, they planted, they builded, they married and were given in marriage." So does Jesus de- scribe the restless, busy life of his native land.^^ Yet its industrious inhabitants were little respected by the Jews, in that their nationality was of a very composite character.^^ Not only Israelites, but also Phoenicians, Syrians, Arabs, and even Greeks dwelt in the land.^^ Carmel had almost been given up to the Syrians as their own;^^ it was the same with Kades, 1 Matt. XX. 8. 2 Luke ix. 02 ; Mark it. 3. ' Matt. xxi. 28 . * Matt. vii. 24; Luke xiv. 30. ^ Mark ix. 42. « Luke xii. 17, 18. "^ Matt, xxiii. 27. » Luke xiv. 23. » Matt. xx. 3, 4. ^" Luke xvii. 7. " Luke xv. 25. ^^ Matt. xi. 16. " Luke xiii. 25. " Luke xii. 45. ^^ Luke xiv. 18, 19, 20. ^« Luke xvii. 28. i'' Matt. xxvi. 73; John i. 46, vii. 41, 52; Acts ii. 7, 8. !» Matt. iv. 15; Strabo, 16, 2; Jos. Vita, 12. i» B'jll. ii. IS, 1 ; Plin. V. 17, 1 ; xxxvi. 65, 1. GALILEE. 11 on the other side of the lake of Merom.^ Even the road from the plain of Jezreel to the valley of the Jordan ran through the Gentile Scythopolis, a place which the Jews much disliked.^ The chief cause of this intermixture was, that the so-called via maris — the great commercial road which united Damascus and Ptolemais — ran with its Gentile station-houses right through Galilee.^ From tlie present Jacob's-bridge the road led down towards Capernaum, and ran across the plateau of Ramah and Gabara, direct through the mountains of Ptolemais. The large caravan trade not only brought in many foreigners, but drew the natives, too, as caravan guides, camel-drivers, packers, labourers and in a hundred other occupations, into Gentile pursuits. The towns on the western declivity had consequently become very much like Phoenician places. Thus Josephus calls Zebulon a town " which had most beautiful houses, as beautiful as those of Tyre, Sidon and Berytus,"^ The new erections of the Herods, as, for example, Sepphoris, which had been rebuilt by Antipas, exhibited, moreover, the style of Roman architec- ture, — a sign that the inhabitants had lost many of their Jewish ways of thinking as well.^ Thus the common people in Galilee had become less sensitive to what was foreign. Gentile towns like Tiberias would have been impossible in the more narrow 25reciucts of Judeea, and would have excited the inhabitants into rebellion ; whilst in Galilee the Herods, with their foreign character, were tolerated. Separated from the barren land of Levites and Rabbis by the intervening Samaritans, less leavened by the intense sectarianism which prevailed there, less hardened in Jewish orthodoxy, and in many ways influenced by their extensive foreign relations, the Galileans had not become of that narrowly exclusive character which was usually the product of Judaism.^ Yet in spite of their many Gentile influences, the people of these mountains were, on the whole, uncorrupted. They had, it is true, learned many a superstitioii from their 1 Bell. ii. 18, 1. * Vita, 6; Bell. iii. 3, 1. ^ Jlatt. iv. 15, -x. 5. * Bell. ii. IS, 9. 5 ^nt xviii. 2, 1 ; Vita, 22. ^ Mark iii. 22. 12 THE HOLY LAND AT THE TIME OF JESUS. Syrian neighbours, and nowhere was the fear of witchcraft and the terror of demons greater than among them ; nevertheless, their morals had remained pure : as, for example, in relation to the intercourse between the sexes much was forbidden among them which was allowed in the more bigoted Judrea.^ The Galileans, moreover, in spite of their greater tolerance of Gentile ways, were in nowise inferior in patriotism. They held fast to the promises of Israel, and, as the Gospels show, took a vigorous interest in the synagogue. At the sacred festivals " they went up to Jerusalem, as was the custom of the feast." ^ In this way was it possible for the province to be compared, as regards national feeling, with every other Jewish district. Even tbe love of fighting kept their patriotism a living principle among these vivacious mountaineers. " Cowardice was never a failing of the Galileans," declares Josephus,^ who also calls them in another place, " the usual disturbers of the peace of the country."^ At the feasts in Jerusalem they were generally those who com- menced the tumults f and in the Jewish war they were the first to offer resistance to the Eoman armies, and among the last who defended the ruins of Jerusalem stone by stone — worthy sons of those fathers of whom Deborah formerly sang : " Zebulon is a people that jeoparded their lives unto death ; And i^aplitali in the high places of the field." ^ There were families, as that of the robber Ezekias and Judas, Galileans, in which hatred towards Eome was inherited from generation to generation, and that in every generation had its martyrs to the popular cause.^ These bold soldiers formed in times of peace a quarrelsome people, whom it was difficult to manage, and on the frontiers some fray was nearly always on foot.^ ^ Compare Gratz, Gesclnclite d. Jutlen, iii. 223. " Luke ii. 42. 3 Bell. iii. 3, 2 ; compare also 1 Maccab. v. 20—23. * Bell. i. 16, 5, SiQ tOog i/v Oopvfini', ' Luke xiii. 1 ; Antiq. xvii. 10, 2 ; Bell. ii. 3, 2, 4, 1, iii. 3, 2, &c. « Judges V. 18. 7 Antiq. xx. 5, 2, xvii. 10, 5; Bell. ii. 17, 8. " Autiq. XX. 6, 1 ; Bell. i. 16, 5; Tacitus, Ann, 12, 54. GALILEE. 13 The numerous clefts and caves of the limestone mountains of the highlands afforded refuge frequently to numerous bands of robbers, and the shepherds on Lebanon and Hermon were never to be relied on in times of commotion. In many districts, only too frequently was there a return of the time \vlien, as " In the days of Jael, tlie highways Avere unoccupied, And the travellei-s joiirneyed through by-paths." ^ But even the peaceful citizen of Galilee was not estimated at the full value of a Jewish man. In " Gelil-hagoim," all sepa- ration from the Gentiles could not be carried out as strictly as in Jiidoea ; to the Jew, therefore, anxious about his purity, the Galilean could easily appear an object of suspicion. The Hebraic form of Syriac or Aramaic, which had at this time everywhere supplanted Hebrew, was here certainly spoken in its worst character. The rough dialect, like the language of all mountain dwellers, was rich in gutturals, and was considered boorish, so that the Galilean was at once recognized by the first words he uttered.^ Thus the man from the lake who went down to Judaea was a butt for the jokes of his countrymen there. Even Josephus narrates with self-enjoyment the good joke from which Cabul received its name. Twenty towns of Galilee had been presented by Solomon to king Hiram. " Cabul ! it does not please me," king Hiram is reported to have said when he saw them, " What cities are these which thou hast given me, my brother ? And he called them the land of Cabul unto this day."^ Thus the inhabitants of the highlands were mocked, ridiculed aud joked at by the Jews ; but nevertheless there lay concealed beneath this primitive character a wealth of power and talent far greater than was possessed by the inhabitants of Jerusalem. While every servant-girl in Jerusalem ridiculed their language, and the proverb said, " Can there any good thing come out of 1 Judges V. 6. " Mark xiv. 70 ; Matt. xxvi. 73. ^ 1 Kings ix. 13; Antiq. viii. 5, 3. Cabul means unfruitful, unpleasing. 14 THE HOLY LAND AT THE TIME OF JEl^US. Nazareth ?"i or, "Shall Christ come out of Galilee?"- it has not seldom happened in the history of Israel, as is narrated in the Acts of the Apostles : " They were all amazed and marvelled, saying. Behold ! are not all these Avhich speak Galileans ?"^ Even in the earliest times, the inhabitants had distinguished themselves above the earnest and strict people of Judcea by their poetical talents and sensitive feelings. The first rejoicings of the poetical spirit in Israel were re-echoed from these mountains, when Barak, the hero of the tribe of Naphtali, had defeated the Canaanites in the plain of Jezreel. Here, too, the most powerful of the prophetic utterances found their voice. Here Hosea poured forth his warm and deep-felt words, in which the excitable temperament of the people especially found expression. Here, too, the Song of Songs was composed by a poet, into whose heart the cheerful vicinage had poured its sunniest beams, and whose eyes were open to note how the flowers gleam, and the fig-tree piits forth its green figs, and the vine sprouts, and the bloom of the pomegranates unfolds itself. Amidst the luxuriance of nature there lived still a healthy people, whose conscience was not yet corrupted by Rabbinical sophistries, and where full-grown men were elevated far above their Jewish kinsfolk, sickening with fanaticism.* 2. The Domain of the Samaritans. To the south of the plain of Jezreel, another highland rises with a gradual ascent, the real mountain range of which runs southward even beyond the Dead Sea, with a breadth varying from four to five miles, while to its west a hilly district of about the same breadth leans upon it, through whose valleys, which run parallel to each other, there is a descent to the coast. ^ John i. 46. * John vii. 41. ^ Acts ii. 7. * Bell. iii. 2, 1, 3, 2; Tac. Hist. 5, 6; Pbilo, leg. Frankfurt, Ausg. 1023. THE DOMAIN OF THE SAMARITANS. 15 The northern part of these mountains was at the time of Jesus in possession of the Samaritans. Their territory began at Ginaea (En-Gannim), to the south of the plain, and ended at Acrabi (Acrabbi), to the north of Shiloh.^ In these valleys the descendants of those tribes from the Euphrates were yet dwelling, who had been settled in the deserted territory of the kingdom of the ten tribes, especially by Esarhaddon ; and these people in the course of time had — combined with the remnant of Israel and the exiled Judseans expelled from Jerusalem in its long party contests — coalesced to form a separate Mosaic community." Large tracts of their territory had been lost b}'- them in course of time, through the growth of the new Jewish state,^ and their own proper district embraced at this time scarcely more than forty square miles. Still they had always contrived to retain the more fruitful parts of this highland in their own possession. Here the limestone has not yet absorbed most of the springs, as in the southern part of the country.* Flat districts, with a black alluvial soil, often inundated rich corn-fields, vegetable gardens and fruit orchards, succeed one another in the low grounds. Vine-trellises and various sorts of noble trees clothe the warm limestone declivities, while forests of olives and chestnut trees cover the hills. The meadows and pasture- grounds of Samaria were celebrated throughout Israel.^ Joseph, is a fruitful bough, A fruitful bough by the well, the dying patriarch had said, and his blessing had remained i li- the land.^ But the rich growth of trees constituted in ancient times 1 Bell. iii. 3, 4. " Ezra iv. 2 ; Jos. Ant. xi. 8, 6. 3 Maccab. x. 30, 38, xi. 28, 34, 57 ; Apion, ii. 4. * The usual account, that the mountains of Ephraim and Judah belong to the Jura formation, rests on the authority of Schubert, and is confirmed by Fraas, Aua dem Orient., Stuttg. 1867, p. 40, &c. 5 Bell. iii. 3, 4. « Geu. xli.x. 22, 16 THE nOLY LAND AT THE TIME OF JESrS. tlie great advantage of the Samaritan mountains. The western declivities of the mountains towards the plain of Sharon, were called simply " Tlie oak forest," ^ and even in their time do the prophets speak of the forest-crowned range of Samaria, the pasture-grounds on its heights, and the forest of thickets upon its peaks." Abundant showers of rain were the blessings of Nature, not yet deprived of her forests.^ The climate was temperate and healthy, so that the Eomans often preferred the localities of Samaria to those of Judtiea.* Yet the scenery does not attain the beauty of that of Galilee, and all travellers who looked down from the heights above Engannim, back towards the home of Jesus, have found a marked difference between the bold outlines of the highlands and the tame mountain ridges, the level valleys and rectili- near features of Samaria, which want character as much as its people.^ The first locality of the Samaritans at which the Galileans arrived in their journeys to Jerusalem was Gin^a (En-Gannim).^ Somewhat higher up, upon the table-land, where the old caravan road to Egypt passes by, lies Dothan,''' celebrated in the history of Joseph's youth. Up over the heights, through the little town of Geba, the road proceeded to the capital Sebaste, the ancient Samaria. Proudly and free does the hill arise upon which the town is built, in the middle of an extensive and fruitful range of valleys. Here lay " the crown of pride of the drunkards of Ephraim," as Isaiah called it.^ John Hyrcanus had destroyed the town in the autumn of the year 110 B.C., and in his fanatical hatred brought down streams of water over the ruins, in order that no Samaritan might ever settle upon the 1 Bell. i. 13, 8. ' Isaiah ix. 18, ix. 9, xxviii. &c. So also 1 Sam. xiv. 25; 2 Sam. xviii. 6; 2 Kings ii. 24 ; Tubil. cap. 34. 3 Bell. jii. 3, 4. * Plin. Hist. Nat. 5, 14; Ptol. 5, 16; Strabo, 16, 2. » Robinson, Pal. iii. 116, &c. « Bell. ii. 12, 3. ^ Juditli iii. 9; Gen. xxxvii. 17. ** Isfiiah xxviii. 3. THE DOMAIN OF THE SAMARITANS. 17 hills again.^ The town lay in ruins for more than half a cen- tury, and the Jews held a sj)ecial feast in celebration of the destruction of Samaria. Then Gabinius, the legate of Pompey, restored the town more proudly than ever on the heights of the mountain, and, as in the times of Isaiah, the inhabitants declared, " The bricks are fallen down, but we will build with hewn stones."^ Herod stationed a military garrison here, enlarged its cir- cuit, and encircled the entire hill with a wall. A temple of Augustus, inclosed by a court a stadium and a half round, shone out upon the heights, from which there is a view extending to the sea. The pillars of the colonnade are still visible which formerly surrounded the town, and perhaps led up to the palace to which Herod brought the last of the Maccabees home, and in which he had her sons executed.^ Single trees to the north of the town* are all that remain of the forests in which Herod hunted, when he sought forgetfuluess and rest from the image of the murdered Mariamne.'^ After the deposition of Archelaus, the Samaritan council of elders, which held its meetings here, gained in influence, owing to the land being placed under the procurator, and since then the town may be considered to have been the real capital of the little country.^ In a south-easterly direction from Samaria, a rocky valley proceeds, which, where the ascent of the cliffs is steepest appears to be a mere rocky ravine, and in ancient times was clothed with forests and abounded in springs.'' Here lies the ancient Sichem, hemmed in by the mountains Ebal and Geri- zim. The valley is hardly five hundred paces broad, and appears most charming, adorned by its fruit trees. Mount Gerizim was, from its position, its fertility, and its imposing form, from ancient times downwards, the central point of the ^ Antiq. iiii. 10, 2. ^ Isaiah ix. 10. 3 Robinson, iii. 126; Bell. i. 17, 8, ii. 27, 5. * Furrer, Wandg. in Palestin, pp. 255, 257. ^ Antiq. xv. 7, 7. * Antiq. xviii. ■!, 2. ^ Judges ix. 48, 49. C 18 THE HOLY LAXD AT THE TIME OF JESUS. land.^ Here the men able to bear arms used to assemble when the enemy swejjt over the land." Upon its broad summit the temple of the Samaritans had stood for some two liundred years. '' Our fathers worshipped in this mountain,"^ does the woman of Samaria say in the fourth Gospel ; but this sanctuary of the race had also been levelled with the ground by John Hyrcanus, and the great synagogue of the later Neapolis was a miserable substitute for the temple formerly so celebrated.* The men of Sichem, how^ever, could not be robbed of their old sacred associations by the sanguinary sacerdotal king. The oaks still rustled, under which Abraham had erected the first altar to the Lord.^ At Jacob's Well before the town, the thirsty traveller yet drank at the same spring at which the patriarch had watered his flocks f and in the neighbourhood the grave of Joseph was yet pointed out, which the children of Israel made in the field of Hamor.'^ Upon their mountain Gerizim had Moses put the blessing of Jehovah,^ and had buried the ancient sacred vessels in its clefts.^ In their market-place had Joshua pronounced the law.^*^ Sichem had been the first royal residence in the kingdom of Israel,^^ and had been flourishing while Jerusalem lay in ruins. ^- To the south of Gerizim the district of Acrabi begins, which had already been allotted by the Koman administration among the Toparchies of Judcea,^^ but which, according to the majority of its localities, were Samaritan. Much Jewish and Samaritan blood had been poured out here upon this ground, for this border-land was most generally the spot where the feuds of both people were fought out. As often as the hatred of the Jews had found fresh nutriment by a festival at Jerusalem, 1 Deut. xi. 29, xxvii. 11—13. ^ ^nt;q_ ^iv. 6, 2; Bell. iii. 7, 32. 3 John iv. 20. ^ Epiph. Hmr. 80, 1. ^ Genesis xii. 7. Compare Jubil. cap. 31 ; Gottiugen Jabrbuch, 1850, p. 39. ^ John iv. 12. '' Joshua xxiv. 32. ^ Deuter. xi. 29. " Antiq. xviii. 4, 1. ^" Joshua xxiv. 25. ^^ 1 Kings xii. 25. 12 Jeremiah xii. 5. " Bell. iii. 4; Plin. v. 15; Ptol. 5, 16. THE DOMAIN OF THE SAMARITANS. 19 the villages of Acrabatene wliicli could be first reached from the town were in flames.^ Even during the w^ar with the Eomans, this district suffered the most of all.^ In addition to those Samaritan places named, we find that a great number more are mentioned ; as Tirathaba,^ at the foot of Gerizim,^ Eabbitli,^ Salem,^ Thebez,*' Gitta and Pirathon near Sichem, the beautiful Tirzah'^ and Geba near Sebaste, Taanach^ and Bethulia^ on the plain of Esdraelon, and others/*' whose often Hellenicised names in themselves show how little opposition had been offered by the people to the Greek influence that since the time of Alex- ander had been continually pouring itself out upon the world with ever increasing power. The nearer the frontiers of Juda3a are approached, the more barren do the meadows and swards become, the barer and more rocky grow the mountains, the more rare are fountains and foliage. The commerce of the Samaritans did not turn thither therefore. It had its natin-al road below to the coast, where several localities on the plain of Sharon belonged to them as it seems.i^ They would at times, therefore, pass with strangers for Phoenicians.^- In their mountains they followed agriculture, and bred cattle and furnished wool for the Phoenician manufactories. Their young men took military service, and were somewhat celebrated as soldiers.^^ The town of Sebaste alone furnished the Eomans with a squadron of cavalry.^*^ Skill in trade failed them as little as it did the other children of the Phoenician coast, and not 1 Bell. ii. 12, 4; Tac. Ann. 12, 54, 2 Bell. ii. 22, 2. ^ Antiq. xviii 4, 1. * Joshua xix. 20. ^ Hieron. qusest. in Gen. xiv. 18; Jubil. cap. 30; Gbttg. Year-book, 1850, p. 37. ^ Judges ix. 50. " Song of Solomon, vi. 4. 8 1 Kings iv. 12. ^ Judith vi. 14. 1" A list of them is to be found in the Samaritan Chronicle of Abutfatch (printed by Ewald, 2nd edit. iv. 108). The places still known are collected in Robinson, Palestine, iii. 134. " Plin. V. 13. ^" Antiq. xii. 6, 6, xi. 8, 6. " Antiq. XX. 8, 7, xix. 9, 2, xx. 6, 2 ; Bell. ii. 12, 5. Compare also Antiq. xi. 8, 4. " Bell. ii. 12, 5. C 2 20 THE HOLY LAND AT THE TIME OF JESUS. seldom do we meet Samaritan usurers and money-cliangers even abroad/ where trade or war had gathered together Samaritan congregations with Samaritan synagogues. They were especially numerous in Egypt, where it is reported they were settled even by Alexander.^ The religious peculiarities of Samaria had been developed from their very commencement in opposition to the new Jewish influence. The children of the Captivity had after their return prevented the Cutheans, as they called the Samaritans who had come as colonists in part from Cuthah, from taking any part in building the new temple. The synagogues of the Samaritans withdrew, therefore, to that basis of the Mosaic constitution which they had found among the Israelites who had been left behind ; they limited themselves to. the Pen- tateuch, and rejected all other books which had been first collected during or after the exile as Jewish fabrications. Shut up within these narrow limits of their circle of religious ideas, they hung the more closely to the annals of the patriarchal history, and directed much piety to the cultivation of the remi- niscences of that time, the monuments of which lay partly in their valleys, and were regarded with devoutness. All Samaria flocked together when, in addition to all these remiDiscences of the patriarchs, a sorcerer offered, under Pilate, to find the genuine vessels of the tabernacle, which were reported to have been buried in Mount Gerizim.^ In spite of the Jews, to be deemed the true children of the patriarchs was the pride of this misled people. " Thou art not greater," says the woman of Sichem to Jesus, in the fourth Gospel, " than our father Jacob, which gave us the well, and drank thereof himself, and liis sons, and his cattle."^ Even their temple upon Mount Gerizim they ^ Antiq. xviii. 6, 4. As such they are mentioned in the Edict of Justinian : Trspi apyi'poTTpaTLKwv avvaWay^dTiov, in Cellaiius, Collectan. Hist. Samar. i. 7, p. 22. 2 Antiq. xi. 8, 6. ^ Other traces of this reverence for sacred places are also preserved. Compare Acts vii. 16; Antiq. xviii. 4, 1, xiii. 3, 4; Jubil. 31; Giittg. Year-book, 1S50, 39. * John iv. 12 ; Ant. xiii. 3, 4. THE DOMAIN OF THE SAMARITANS. 21 knew how to justify from Deuteronomy xxvii., and violent dis- putations took place at home and abroad on the great subject of discussion, whether Moriah or Gerizim were the place where, according to Moses' intention, they should pray to Jehovah. But none other of the sacred places were allowed to be theirs by the Jews : they even made up the calumny that under the Terebinth at Sichem Jacob had buried the clothes of his sons stained with the blood of the Sichemites, and the idols of Laban, together with the amulets of his wife, and that these were the relics which the Samaritans reverenced.^ " First, when the Cu- theans," said a younger Eabbi, collecting the points at issue between the two parties, " renounce Mount Gerizim, praise Israel, and believe in the resurrection of the dead, can there be unity again between them and Jerusalem ? "^ It was certainly a dif&cult position for this little people to maintain — to be the enemy of Judaism and yet profess its religion • — and the little tribe was not seldom in the position that with its dependence on Israel it must also deny its faith in Jehovah. Even if we may accept without further inquiry what the Eabbis have reported of them, that the temple of Jehovah on Mount Gerizim had at the same time contained an image of a dove^ — j)6rhaps an ancient reminiscence of the doves of Derceto and her daughter Semiramis which the subjects of the kingdom of Assyria had formerly venerated in their homes, and that yet found con- stant culture in the neighbouring Ascalon — yet they cannot be pronounced free from a certain vacillation of character. Whenever necessity demanded, they were prepared in nationality to be now Sidonian, now Persian, now Median, now Jewish, just as was most convenient ;* and they, in like manner, allowed their God to be caUed now by Jewish and now by Hellenic names.^ 1 Jubil. 31 (p. 39). 2 Compare Kirchheim : Seventli Little Jerusalem Massekhet, Frankfort, 1851, p. 37. 3 Cholin, fol. 6. * Antiq. ix. 14, 3, xi. 8, 6, xil. 5, 5. ' 2 Maccab. vi. 2 ; Antiq. xi. 8, 6. 22 TEE HOLY LAND AT THE TIME OF JESUS. To tlie Jews, such want of character was even more offensive than downright heathenism. " The nation that I hate is no nation," accordingly says Jesus, the son of Sirach;^ and "Ye worship ye know not what," does Jesus say, in the fourth Gospel, to the woman of Sichem.^ It was denied that the Samaritans, who had once worshipped five gods, could now have part in Jehovah. The author of John's Gospel, who introduces the woman of Samaria symbolically as the representative of her people to the Messiah, makes Jesus say of Samaria therefore, " Thou hast had five husbands, and he whom thou now hast is not thy husband." Such a syncretism of nationalities and religions was naturally a fruitful soil for the crassest superstition, and clever sorcerers have always reaped the richest harvest in these moun- tains. In the period of which we are now treating, the above- mentioned treasure-finder played an important part. This man assembled half Samaria at Mount Gerizim in the year 35 A.D. in order to dig up the ancient sacred vessels of the tabernacle, which should give a new advantage to the people of Samaria over the servants of the temple on Mount Moriah, and at the same time bear away the Messianic kingdom for the worshippers of Gerizim.2 Perhaps he was the Simon Magus of the Acts of the Apostles and of Josephus, who for years made, it is said, a profit out of these credulous people ?* The sarcastic Jews were never tired of castigating this weak side of the Samaritan character, while on the other hand the Samaritans derided the Jewish sanctuaries from which they were excluded. The old national enmity had by these means become more embittered from generation to generation, and the very storms of the last period had simply blown away the ashes anew from the yet glowing coals. When the Eomans had put an end to the splendour of the Maccabean state, one shout of triumph had, as it were, passed ^ Ecclesiasticus 1. 25. 2 j^^j^ iy_ 22. 3 Antiq. xviii, 4, 1 ; comp. 2 Mace. ii. 5. ^ Acts viii. 9; Clem. Rec. i. 72, ii. 7; Horn. ii. 24. THE DOMAIN OF THE SAMARITANS!. 23 through the Samaritan mountains. For fifty years long had the fragments of the temple on Mount Gerizim and the ruins of their capital been monuments of Jewish oppression, daily admo- nishing every Samaritan to revenge. Pompeius and Gahinius, therefore, had appeared to them as redeemers from the most hateful of thraldoms. As Gabinopolis, Samaria arose again out of the ruins, until Herod conferred upon it the prouder name of Sebaste. In the Samaritans the new tyrant of Judasa, the murderer of the Maccabeans, found his natural allies, who rejoiced, in his army, to pay back to the Jews the calamities which they themselves had suffered. With them Herod took counsel, with them he conducted war, and to them he betook himself, wdien Jerusalem no longer pleased him. As the Idumean was liated in Jerusalem, so was lie beloved in Samaria. All his Eoman proclivities, which the Rabbis of Judaea considered to be a crime in him, he could here the more tho- roughly satisfy. Theatre and temple arose in the new Sebaste, which he had made into a strong fortress against the Jews. All the perplexities, which alarmed the tyrant at Jerusalem in his contest with the followers of the IMaccabean dynasty, did he escape from in Samaria, wdiere none found sympathy for the scions of the Maccabean stock. For them he was the good king, who had brought home a wife of their nation (Malthace), and dwelt as a father among them. They therefore remained quiet when, after his death, Jud;va and Galilee took up arms against the sons of the Samaritan w^oman ; and as a reward for this, Ptome took off the fourth part of their taxes, and then added this amount to the Jewish population. A new^ ground of hatred for the people of Judrea. The complete contrariety of the two peoples now manifested itself under the Eoman dominion in a most glaring manner. While the Jews put themselves on a w^ar footing towards the Eoman influence, and strove by every means to put a stop to the introduction of all that was foreign, the Samaritans rejoiced over their new importance. Their Sichem was blooming ; in 24 TEE HOLY LAND AT THE TIME OF JESUS. Ctesarea, close at hand, was stationed the procurator ; at Sebaste a division of cavahy had been raised, consisting of natives ; in their valleys, green with forests, the Roman strangers were fond of passing the summer. In short, their land enjoyed a pre- ference which they did not allow themselves to destroy by any religious or national prejudice. It was, then, a long account which the two peoples had to settle with one another, and they allowed no opportunity to pass of paying it off with all their might. The dogmatic hatred, which is a characteristic of the Jews, makes them appear here, too, as the more blameable and implacable. The Samaritan character had comparatively a milder side, as Jesus exhibits in his parables of the thankful and the good Samaritan.^ Their unrestrained commerce with the nations of the coast, and the mixed population of their settlements, had already given them a more pliant disposition. Still, they were children, too, of the Syrian sun, in whose veins a hot blood boiled. Not seldom did they plot contests with the Jews as they were passing through on their way to the feasts, in which human lives fell a sacrifice.^ Their huts were closed to Jewish pilgrims,^ and even a drink of cold water was denied to the Jew travelling up to Jerusalem. " And they did not receive him, because his face was as though he w^ould go to Jerusalem." " How is it that thou, beiug a Jew, askest drink of me, which am a woman of Samaria ?" demands the woman at Jacob's Well of the thirsty traveller.^ Moreover, their earlier inclination to the temple of Jehovah had since their rejection been changed into derision and scorn, that was expressed in every sort of mockery. In more ancient times, the priests at Jerusalem had been accustomed to remind those who dwelt in the country of the Easter new moon by fire signals upon the mountains, but the Samaritans caused such confusion among the country population by signals too early or too late, that finally another method of communication had to 1 Luke xvii. 16, 17, x. 30, &c. " Antiq. xx. 6, 1 ; Bell. ii. 12, 13. ^ Luke ix. 53, ■* John iv. 9. THE DOMAIN OF TEE SAMARITANS. 25 be found.^ In a similar manner they mocked the Jewish con- gregation at the feast of the Passover in the year 10 A.D., in that several stole up to Jerusalem, and after the commencement of the feast, when the priests, garments, and vessels, had all been thoroughly purified, strewed human bones in the courts of the temple, so that in the morning the crowd of celebrants had to be turned away at the door of the outer court, and the feast was discontinued in order that the people might not be defiled.^ The rage of the Jews was the greater, in that the procurator Coponius, allowed this defilement of the temple to remain unpunished. While the sentiments of the Samaritans in the direction of mockery and annoyance were thus proclaimed, the Jews, on the other hand, were full of a bloodthirsty hatred towards the Cu- theans, and under the Eoman procuratorship many a man atoned on the cross for his participation in the murderous expeditions to Acrabi, which the inhabitants of Jerusalem were not yet able to give up.^ Jesus, the son of Sirach, had even in his time declared, " There be two nations which my heart abhorreth, and the third which I hate is no nation : they that sit upon the mountain of Seir, and they that dwell among the Philistines, and that foolish people that dwell in Sichem ;" * and with every generation this foolish people at Sichem had become more hateful to the Jews, Their name had already become a term of derision, " We know that thou art a Sama- ritan, and hast a devil," the Jews say to Jesus in the Gospel according to St. John.^ The Galileans took a circuitous route to the feasts at Jerusalem, for the towns of Samaria were, like the streets of the Gentile, impure, and it was forbidden to ask help of them, or receive food from them. The Samaritan woman, therefore, was perfectly right in asking, " How is it that thou, being a Jew, asketh drink of me, which am a woman of Sama- 1 De Sacy, Chrestom., i. 158. ^ Antiq. xviii. 2, 2. 3 Bell. ii. 12, 6 ; Antiq. xx. 6, 1. •* Eccles, 1, 25, 26, * Jolin viii. 48. 26 THE HOLY LAND AT THE TIME OF JESUS. ria," ^ for the Jewish teachers declared that " Ezra, ZerubLabel, Joshua, excommunicated and cursed the Samaritans, so that none in Israel eat the portion of a Samaritan. . . . He who takes bread of a Samaritan is like unto him who eats the flesh of swine. . . . Let no Israelite receive a Samaritan as a prose- lyte : they shall have no part in the resurrection of the dead." - Every contract made in the presence of a Cuthean was void.^ While the Jew might make a companion of the Gentile, of a Samaritan it was forbidden him. He is a stranger,* and if a teacher speaks but a single word to a woman of Samaria he creates astonishment.^ It had become, therefore, a momentous subject of dispute in the Jewdsli schools, how far it w^as lawful for the Jew to enjoy the products of Samaritan soil. The fruits of field and tree were certainly clean, but wdiether was the ground corn or pressed wine ? The egg as laid by the hen defiled no one, but how about the cooked &gg, the prepared food ? The views varied this way and that,*^ and generally the opinion prevailed, " He who eats the bread of a Cuthean is as though he eat swine flesh." Under such circumstances, the mountains on the other side of Acrabi had become to tlie Samaritans a foreign land, and when the Jews wished to travel up to the Highlands, they made a wide circuit round Jacob's Well, where in ancient times the tribes of Ephraim and Judah had watered their herds together. They still used to pass the night at Beeroth or Gophna,^ lived during their forced marches on their own provisions and drank of the springs away from the towns, until with lightened hearts they descended into the plain of Jezreel, and were glad to set their foot again upon Jewish soil, " for the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans." ^ 1 John iv. 9. 2 Plrq. R. El. c. 38. ^ Ibid, * Luke xvii. 18. ^ John iv. 27. ^ Compare passages in Sepp. Thaten in Leben Jesu, 1864, ji. 115. ^ Jos. Belt iii. 5, 1. Compare Euseb. Ouoni., art. ^ijpojO; Eobinson, Pal. i. 452. ** John iv. 9. TEE DOMAIN OF THE SAMARITANS. 27 AAliat were the relations of the Galileans to the Samaritans in the last period of the Jewish state, we learn from the drastic words of Tacitus : " Pillaging upon both sides, marauding bands despatched against each other, ambuscades devised, at times, regular engagements, after which booty and plunder were brought to the procurator. For both tribes which have been long at enmity now restrained their mutual hatred less than formerly, owing to the contemptibleness of the government." ^ But even Jews of milder temperament and pious were pene- trated by a similar feeling towards Samaria. This clearly appears in the Jubilees, which date the full hatred of the latest period back to the times of the patriarchs. According to the author, even in the days of Jacob is Samaria the groimd where treachery and ambuscade lurked behind the trees,^ and the people of Sichem at that time, too, the offscouring of humanity. In glaring colours does he paint the shameful deed which Secliem, the son of Hemor, did to Dinah, " who was a little maiden twelve years old," and describes, quite as though it were one of the usual expeditions to Acrabi, Simeon's assault on Sichem, " where they slew all the men of Sichem, and left not one remaining. And they led their sister out of the house of Sechem. And they took as booty everything which was in Sichem, their sheep and cattle and asses, and all their posses- sions, and all their flocks, and brought them to their father Jacob." 2 " But to the sons of Jacob who had slain the men of Sichem was it inscribed in the book of Heaven, that they had executed righteousness and justice and vengeance upon sinners, and it was counted to them for a blessing." And as they would not give their sister Dinah to any man of Sichem, so should no one in Israel give his daughter to a Samaritan : " Upon the man that does so will come plague upon plague and curse upon curse, and every punishment and plague and curse."* ^ Annals, 12, 54. - Jubil. cap. 34, Jahrbiicher, 1850, 4.5. 3 Jubil. 30 (p. 38). * Jubil. 30 (p. 37). 28 TEE HOLY LAND AT THE TIME OF JESUS. 3. JUD^A. The southern part of Palestine is the least richly endowed by nature. According to the descriptions of Josephus, it appears that the unfruitful limestone mountains of Judsea were more hospitable then than now ; but while even in the earliest times mention was made of the cedars of Lebanon, of the oaks of Bashan, of the forest-crowned heights of Samaria, no similar description of scenic beauty, taken from Judasa, ever became proverbial. Strabo, too, had found the country about Jerusalem rocky and little to be desired,^ and the district unfruitful, barren and stony, " so that no one would risk a serious engagement on its account." ^ There is no natural or geological boundary between the mountains of Ephraim and Judah ; even the historical one had been altered, in that the Jews had taken possession of the southern part of the mountains of Ephraim. The more possible is it, however, to speak of a boundary in the scenery. For the rocky table-land becomes broader, the declivities are steeper ; the whole landscape sterner, more barren and inhospitable ; the precipice towards the valley of the Jordan and Dead Sea waste and deserted. While the mountains towards the south-west sink down into a mere hill-country, the south-eastern declivity takes more and more the character of a desert. There are districts, certainly, of considerable size which form excej)tions to this general physiognomy of Judoea. Visible from the coast is the hill-country — fanned by the fresh sea breezes — that rests, in the north on the mountains of Ephraim, in the south on the mountains of Judah, while its valleys lead down into the fruitful plain of Shepiiela, This district offers as pleasant an aspect as any in Israel.^ The champaign under these hills had been the cavipus trojanus of Jewish history ^ Geogr. 16, 2 : x^P'-^'^ ovk em(p9ovov, TTETpCiSig, &c. 2 Geogr. 16, 2 (p. 761). » Robinson, i. 568, &c. JUD.^A. 29 upon which the heroes of former times had measured their strength with the Philistines. Here lies the valley of Ajalon, on which Joshua had once commanded the sun to stand, in order to shed light upon the downfall of the Amorites. Here were the vineyard ascents on which Samson, the joyous hero, descended to Timnath, in order to visit the daughters of the Philistines/ the secret ravines through which he drove down the foxes in order to set lire to the standing corn and sheaves and olive-yards on the plain, and up which he crept with the gates of Gaza upon his broad shoulders, in order to deposit them upon the mount at Hebron.'-^ Here, too, was the valley of the Terebinths, in which the six-cubits-high Philistine of Gath was defeated by the son of Jesse of Bethlehem.^ But especially is there a hill which both in the landscape and in history attracts the eye, called once Modin, but to-day Latran, the robbers' hill, which commands Bab-el- Wady, the gate of the valley. Upon this mountain Apollos, the ambassador of Epiphanes, built an altar, and ordered the people to sacrifice to Zeus Henios. But Mattathias, the father of the Maccabees, struck down the first who approached wdth frankincense in his hand, and around this hill the most righteous war, which history has ever known, raged. AATien Judas Maccabseus fell, he was laid in his father's sepulchre at Modin, and Jonathan and Simon completed what Mattathias and Judas had begun. Thus this hill-country became for the second time the bii'thplace of Jewish renown in war. Since this time, the plain, too, had, in great part, passed into Jewish hands, and the active commerce with the Syrian towns and the Phoenician population not yet ejected brought more life into this district than we find elsewhere in Judaea. The land and people, however, present quite a different appearance when we proceed higher up on the broad ridge of the mountain, on the same road from the south to the north. The table-land extends uniformly to the south, cut through by deep and rocky valleys. The mountains are broad, arched and ^ Judges xiv. 5. ^ Judges xv. 5, xvi. 3. ^1 Sam. xvii. 2. 30 THE HOLY LAND AT THE TIME OF JESUS. bare, and for the most part arise alone iu the wide-extended plains, which are level as a table. The black weather-beaten limestone which frequently projects out from the fields, gives the whole country a wild and deserted appearance. But on this very account is the way from the frontiers of Samaria to Jeru- salem one great pilgrim road. Shilou is the first place which the pious wanderer reaches, whither once the mother of Samuel made a pilgrimage to the tabernacle in order to pray for the gift of a child ;^ and Gilgal, where her great son judged the people. Farther on, the road leads through the desert rocky valley of tears, of which the poet sang :^ ** Blessed is the man who thinketh on the ways of Jerusalem. They going through tlie valley of tears make it a well, And an early rain covereth it with blessing. As they go they increase in strength, Untn they apjDear before God in Zion," ^ Through the capital of the district, Gophna, past the ancient sanctuary of Bethel, the road leads on to Beeroth and Eamah, where Eachel the mother of the tribes lay buried.* At the time of Jesus a pillar still stood by the road-side over the grave of Eachel,^ and opposite lay the tomb of two other unfortunate members of Jacob's womens' tent, Billah and Dinah.'^ Away beyond the pillar had once the captive Jews wandered into their Babylonian exile,'' and Jeremiah received their lamentations at the grave. " A voice was heard in Eamah, lamentation and bitter weeping ; Eachel weeping for her children, refused to be comforted for her children, because tliey were not."^ Opposite, Gibeon's " noble heights" appear, where Solomon prayed to the Lord, and three miles farther south on a free summit the " place-of-prayer,"^*' Mispeli, where Samuel had set 1 1 Sam. i. 3. " 1 Sam. x. 8. 3 Ps. Ixxxiv. 6 — 8. Hitzig reads Baka valley. * 1 Sam. x. 2, 3. « Jubil. 32; Qotting. Year-book, 1850, p. 43. « Ebend. chap, xxxiv. ' Jerem. xxxi. 15. See Hitzig on the passage, Jer. prof. Jer., 2nd ed. p. 245. 8 Matt. ii. 18. » 1 Kings iii. 5. i" 1 Mace. iii. 36. JUD.EA. 31 lip the memorial stone, Ebeiiezer.^ Thus the jom-ney led from sanctuary to sanctuary up to Jerusalem, which lies upon a barren tongue of the mountains which form the watershed be- tween the Dead Sea and the Mediterranean,^ in the very middle of the country, so that Josephus was able to riglitly term it the navel of the land. ^ To the south of Jerusalem the country again assumes a more genial character. Here lie the pleasant hills of Bethlehem, around which a crown of sacred traditions had gathered, even before the Gospel narrator had heard the choirs of angels singing here. An oasis like this, the only green tract between burning deserts of rock, must from the earliest times have excited the poetical fancies of the sons of the desert. While the Jebusites still dwelt upon the rocks of Zion, and Isaac dwelt at Hebron, Jacob came from Eamah here on his way home, and there was it that Eachel died when giving birth to Benjamin, " and was buried in tlie way to Ephrath, wdiich is now called Bethlehem. And Jacob set a pillar upon her grave."* From that time forward Eachel, the mother of the tribes, hovered between Eamah and Bethlehem, and the seer's eye beheld her shade in times of distress, and heard her voice lamenting. But a second mother of the tribes of royal Israel had found, too, her resting- place in these borders. In the fields of Bethlehem Euth had gleaned her corn and become the wife of Boaz and mother of David's tribe. From this place w^as it that Saul had departed to seek his father's asses and found a kingdom. Here Jesse, the son of Obed, the son of Euth, had pitched his tents and huts, and upon this tract had his youngest son David fought with bear and lion for his sheep, and sang his songs of the courses of the stars and the morning's dawn, and the race which the sun as a strong man rejoiceth to run. Here did the last of the sons of Israel which the Chaldseans had left remaining in Judah hold their deliberation, after the murder of Gedaliah, as to whether they should not flee to Egypt and drag with them the unwilling 1 1 Sam. vii. 12. "- Robinson, i. 259. » Bell. iii. 3, 5. •» Gen. xxxv. 20. 32 THE HOLY LAND AT THE TIME OF JESUS. Jeremiah, who opposed the plan, into the land of the Gentile. To this favourite tract of Judah was united finally the promise of the prophets, that from here, where David had been born, the Messiah should proceed, and so tradition joins with Eachel and Euth a third, Mary, who was overtaken by the pains of labour not far from the spot where once Eachel had dis- mounted from her camel in order to give birth to Benjamin. And the parents had no place where they might lay the child, and they took a manger, and the angels sang over the place, and the shepherds came and found him who was greater than Benjamin or David, his ancestors. Thus this is historically, too, the oasis of Judaism before which we are standing. Somewhat further on towards the south lie the dykes of Etam, which Solomon dug "to water the wood that bringeth forth trees." ^ On the saddle of the range, where the road leads down to the Dead Sea, we find upon a rock which appears like a truncated cone the beautiful castle Heeodium, by which Herod intended to cover the retreat from Jerusalem to Arabia, his refuge in days of trouble, and his mausoleum in death. Pic- turesque ravines with sloping walls of rock lead down with a steep declivity to the Dead Sea. The innumerable caves of these lonely mountains were ever, as it is said in 1 Samuel xXii. 22 of the cave of Adullam, the refuge of every one that was in distress, and every one that was in debt, and every one that was discontented.^ Between valleys of rock stretching up from the wilderness lay other lonely tracts also, as the wilder- ness of Tekoa, where the prophet Amos tended his cattle and planted his mulberries ; and towards the south extended the broad valley of Hebron, in which the patriarchs had once pas- tured their herds, and had laid themselves down to eternal rest.^ At the time of Jesus the ancient tower still stood out above the valley, in which Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were said to have abode,* and opposite, at Mamre, the double cave was pointed 1 Eccles. ii. 6. ^ g^^ too, in 1 Maccab. ii. 31. ^ Genesis xiii. 18, xxiii. 2, xsxvii. 14. * Jubil. c. 29, 31, 30, aud other places. JUD^^A. 33 out in the limestone range, which Abraham had purchased from the sons of Heth. " He gave the price for the place of good silver, and bowed himself twice before them, and besought them, Ijeing full of humility, and then he buried Sarah in the double cave." ^ More and more do the mountains subside into hills towards the undulating steppes of IdumiEa. Where the great road from Hebron runs through the 'Arabali to the Eed Sea, lay Malatha, covered- by a castle occupied by a Eoman cohort as a protection to commerce, where once Herod Agrippa had sighed over his debts ; and on the same road, a day's journey farther to the south, Thamae, similarly the seat of a Eoman garrison, for the same purpose of protecting the caravans pro- ceeding from Gaza to Ailah.^ At the spots Aroer and Beer- SHEBA, we stand on the frontiers of Idum?ea, where the sons of Jacob and Esau, united since the time of John Hyrcanus under one sceptre, had dealt with one another not always peacefully. The Idumrean stepj)e is now a flowery meadow and now a wil- derness, according to the time of year and the situation of the district. The contemporary who wrote the book of Jubilees has given a living picture of it in his description of the wander- ings of Hagar, who, with the emptied bottle upon her shoulder and her child by the hand, wandered lost in these sand-hills of the wilderness of Beersheba. " And the child thirsted and could not walk, and fell down. And his mother took him and cast him under an olive. And she went and sat down over against him, as it were a bowshot off, for she said, ' Let me not see the death of my child.' " ^ The valley of the Jordan, where we leave it at Scythopolis, like this district, shows, too, from its very name of the 'Arabah, that it is a steppe, where in spring the herds pasture, but in the glow of summer becomes a wilderness. " In summer," says Josephus,^ " the plain is quite burnt up, and by reason of the heat gives forth a very unwholesome air, productive of fever ; it 1 .lubil. 19 ; Gottin-. Year-book, 1850, p. 15, also clap, xlvi., &c. ' Eiiseb. Onom. 3 Ibid. ■* Jubil. 17 ; Gutting. Jabibucher, 1S50, p. 13. = Bell. iv. 8, 2. D 34 THE HOLY LAND AT THE TIME OF JESUS. is all destitute of water, excepting the river Jordan ; therefore the palms only on its banks are flourishing and fruitful, while those that are more remote are much less so." An exception is made, on the western declivity, by the oasis rich in palms, which extended from Akchelais to Phasaelusi, the winter residence of the Herodian Salome, afterwards a much- prized inheritance of the Empress Livia.-' Otherwise the valley is uninteresting and uninhabited. The Jordan, with its acacias, tamarisks, and copses of willows aiid reeds, forms a green riband on a brown plain surrounded by barren steej) slopes, bare lime- stone ravines and crumblins; chalk beds. The more blooming, therefore, does a rock-crowned oasis apjDear, that extends on the higher part of the Dead Sea, where numerous streams from the mountain ranges of Judah water the plain, and the Jordan has deposited all the rich valley soil which it brings down with it from its upper course. Mention is made here even of marsh land and thick forests.^ A step still farther on grow " the palm trees by the water, the rose plants which are in Jekicho."^ This latter important and celebrated town had been not a little beautified in the time of the Herods. Tlie walls, theatre and circus had been provided by Herod, wliile Archelaus had con- tributed the new palace with its gardens. Here was the race- course on which Herod proposed to have executed the chief elders of the people of Judaea after his death ; here the pond in the king's garden in which he had the last of the Maccabees, the brother of Mariamue, drowned. The great caravan road ran through Jericho to the east of the Dead Sea, then along the mountain range of Seir down to the lied Sea, so that the town was of great importance in the trade with Arabia and Egypt. Its active commerce was called into still greater life at the feasts, when the trains of pilgrims from Galilee, avoiding the Samaritan road, passed through, singing psalms. The sycomore (inulberry-tree) upon wliich Zacclueus climbed in order to see 1 Antiq. xvii. ] 3, 1, xviii. 2, 2, xix. 5, 2; Plin. xiii. 9, 4. • 1 Mace. ix. 45. ^ Ecclu.s. xxiv. 14. JUD^ilA. 35 Jesus, calls such days to mind. Moreover, the most precious production of the valley, the balsam, had given rise to a thriving industry. Tlie balsam slirubs were grown in wide plantations. The drops flowing from the bark when torn with sharp stones, somewhat similar in appearance to viscid milk, were collected in vessels or on wool. The juice, which at first looked clear and then red and thick, was next poured into muscle-shells, where it received a firm shape, and was so exported. It was valued not only for its odour, but still more for its medicinal properties. " It cures headaches in a wonderful manner," says Strabo, " and also weakness of the eyes at its commencement, and short- sightedness." ^ After the incorporation of Judaea, the balsam trade had become a profitable royalty to the Eomans. The chief plantation lay behind the royal castle, and was a pearl for sake of which Cleopatra had more than once attempted the life of her neighbour Herod. In honour of this flourishing trade the Romans had established a special custom-house on the frontiers here, the farmer of which, at the time of Jesus, was the little deformed Zacchffius.^ He had grown rich in the office, and the people decried him as a miser. From this importance of the town, through its own products and as the key of Judaea, it had always been most strongly fortified, especially as a protection against the ISTabatseans. Here, therefore, were situated the for- tresses Thrase and Taurus,^ Dagon or Docus,* and Cypros, which surrounded the smiling oasis in a beautiful crown. As in this remarkable land the strongest contrasts lay imme- diately beside one another, so the rose-gardens and palm-groves of Jericho are succeeded by the wilderness of the Dead Sea. The ground speedily becomes rocky and unfruitful. Between bushy banks covered over with reeds does the Jordan creep along, through a wilderness strewn over with blocks of salt. This was the inhospitable region in which John the Baptist 1 Strabo, xvi. 2 ; Jos. Cell. i. 6, 6 ; riin. Nat, Hist. xii. 54 ; Tac. Ann. v. 6. "- Luke xix. 2. * Strabo, xvi. 2 (p. 763). * Aniiq. xiii. 15, 1 ; Dull. i. 2, 3 ; 1 Mace. xvi. 15. L) 2 36 THE HOLY LASD AT THE TIME OF JESUS. once preached repentance. " The river tarries," says Pliny,^ " as though it unwillingly approached the abominable sea which swallows it up and spoils its precious waters by union with its own reeking waves." In the neighbourhood of the Salt Lake, the vegetation entirely ceases. A long and broad plain opens out, in which lies the lake, some thirty-nine geographical miles long and nine wide, surrounded in the east and west by steep raviued heights of lime. The ground is for some distance around impregnated with salt. Springs of asphalt beneath the lake send their l)itumiuous masses to the surface. Probably an earthquake buried the two sister cities of Sodom and Gomorrah here, in times yet historical, beneath the blue waves of the Salt Lake, by which the numerous asphalt pits on the shore might be set on fire. " And Abraham looked from the hill by Hebron toward Sodom and Gomorrah, and beheld, and, lo, a smoke went up from the earth as the smoke of a furnace." This region was at the time of Jesus as little inhabited as it is at the present day. Only on the western declivity do we lind a genial valley at a beautiful fountain falling from precipitous rocks. Here is situated the oasis of En-gedi, and still farther to the south, upon precii>itous rocks, the fortress Masada, which was built in a most astonishing manner by Herod upon the cliff and made habitable.^ Immense stores of weapons had been stored here by the king, by means of which it first became pos- sible for the Jews, when they had made themselves masters of the fortress in the spring of the year 66, to begin the war against Eome. As the Jewish war had its origin here, so also was this rocky perch the last fortress which held out, and here it ended finally with a dreadful sacrifice; for the entire garrison slew tliemselves when the castle could be held by them no longer.^ On the deserted rocks of Masada, the authorities Strabo and Josephus claim to have seen traces of the flames of the destruc- tion of Sodom and Gomorrah. " Eugged cliffs marked by fire, crevices and earth resembling ashes ; drops of pitch also, which 1 rilu. V. 2. - Bell. vi. 8, 3. 3 uell. vii. 0, 1. JUD^^A. 37 ooze out of the rocks and brooks, that have a disagreeable smell even at a distance, and overthrown dwellings in ruins." ^ Later travellers have put forth similar phantasies. But in real- ity direct volcanic activity has never been in operation here. Earthquakes might have buried towns under the lake, lightnings have set fire to the petroleum springs and asphalt pits, but erup- tions have never taken place here.^ The district itself is un- fruitful, owing to the steep precipices of the limestone and the salt strand. Its only industry was the collection of the asphalt that floated upon the surface of the lake, into which it had run down from the heated rocks of the shore, that rose per- pendicularly out of the sea, or had been forced up to the surface from the bottom of the lake by storms. The inhabitants dragged these masses, of the size of a bullock, it was said, to the shore in boats. After they had been thoroughly dried here, they were split up, like trees, with wedges and axes, and despatched to the sea-coast, where tar was prepared from it.^ The warm springs on the eastern bank had caused many celebrated watering-places to be established. Thus Callirhoe in the valley of the Zurka ]\Ia'in, and others which lay higher in the mountains near the fortress Machterus. The rocky region which extends from the Dead Sea to the neighbourhood of Jerusalem is called the Wilderness of Judah, and is divided into a succession of separate wildernesses — that is to say, of rocky districts of stone and grassy plateaus — which extend around the inhabited valleys after which they are named.* 1 Strabo, 16, 2. So, too, Bell. iv. 8, 4 ; Tacit. Hist. 5, 7, &c. Philo (Vita Mcs. ii., Mangey, 143) claims to know of repeated weaker eruptions: »/ m avaSiSo^i'wr] poTroiwv, Bell. v. 4, 1. 4 Bell. ii. 14, 8, v. 4, 4; Antiq. xv. 9, 3, xx. 8, 11. 5 Bell. V. 4, 2. « Tac. Hist. 5, 11 ; Dio. Ca^s. 16, 4. 40 TUB HOLY LAND AT THE TIME OF JESUS. tlie ISIaccabees.-^ From here a bridge led over the valley of the cheesemakers to the temple-hill.^ This temple-hill had been built over for some distance, and a new substructure raised at its base, in places to the height of four hundred cubits, until at the top an irregular space had been obtained, upon which rose the fore-courts of the temple, one over the other, like terraces. On its north-west corner lay the fortress of Antonia, upon a steep rock fifty cubits high. It contained barracks, halls, baths, and places for exercise. The Eoman garrison stationed here controlled the proceedings in the temple, the northern and western halls of which were here united,^ and at the same time menaced the new city, which lay beneath it. At the festivals the garrison was regularly strengthened for the purpose of pre- serving order. Thus the city, with its houses thronged closely one upon another on the sides of the valley of the Tyi'opceon, its walls threefold on the north, one enclosing the other, togetlier with the numerous castles and towers which lay within it, presented a gloomy and unpleasing appearance, so that strangers called it simply a fortress.^ The temple alone, with its wide spaces, its cedar halls and walls of marble, offered a more agreeable resi- dence, as it, as seen from the neighbouring heights, worthily crowned the turreted city. The' immediate neighbourhood of Jerusalem consisted of gardens, in which were situated pleasure houses and other places of recreation,^ or else tombs cut with great art in the mountain.^ The wealth of olives and chestnut trees gave these waterless and stony valleys a somewhat more genial appearance then than is now the case,'' although their dryness and want of springs was even then a subject of com- plaint.^ 1 Antiq. xiv. 4, 2, xx. 8 ; Bell. vi. 6, '2, ii. 15, 1, 16, 3. 2 Bell. i. 7, 2, ii. 16, 3, vi. 3, 3; Antiq. xiv. 4, 2, xv. 11. 3 Bell. V. 4, 8. * Plin. v. 15, 3; Strabo, 16, 2. 5 Bell. V. 2, 2, V. 3, 2, vi. 1, 1. « Antiq. xx. 4, 3 ; Bell. v. 4, 3 ; Matt, xxvii. 60. 7 Bell. v. 6, 2, &c. 8 Cass. Dio, 66, 4. JUDAEA. 41 The central point and heart of Jerusalem, around which all the activity of city and district turned, was the Temple, which Herod had lately re-erected with a magnificence that surpassed all former ones. The upper surface of the teniple-hill had been increased by a sloping w^all some 300 to 400 cubits high, until at the top a rectangle had been formed, whose sides, according to Josephus, were a stadium broad (600 feet).^ The surrounding walling was not indeed visible on all sides, since roads had been raised against it, and flights of steps made. From the Xystus a bridge was thrown across to the fore-court ; through the so-called Beautiful Gate a way led up from the valley of the Kidron ; one gate gave admittance to the fortress of Antonia, two led down to the city" on the south.^ Through each of these five gates admission was gained to the lowest and largest of the temple courts, the fore-court of the Gentiles, surrounded by double galleries or halls, whose cedar roofs were supported by marble pillars fifty feet liigh.^ The temple terrace had the steepest descent at the east side, towards the valley of the Kidron,'* consequently the temple appeared most splendid from here.^ " He sat upon the Mount of Olives over against the temple,"' does the Gospel of Mark say of Jesus. On the other side, from the flat roof of the western hall, Jerusalem lay at one's feet. There, therefore, does the Gospel place the story of the Temptation. " The devil brought him to Jerusalem, and set him on the pinnacle of the temple, and said unto him. If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down from hence." ^ In the colonnades which surrounded this lower area of tlie sanctuary, an active traffic prevailed, in that here dealers in doves, and, according to the Gospel of John, traders in oxen and sheep, held with their beasts a kind of cattle market for the convenience of those who desired to sacrifice. As the temple- tax could be paid here directly, money-changers had set up their 1 Antiq. xv. 11, 3. 2 ^^^^ iii_ 2, 10; Antiq. xv. 11, 5; Middoth, 1, 3. 3 Bell. V. 5, 2. ■* Antiq. xx. 9, 6. s Bell. V. 5, 6 ; Mark xiii. 3. « Luke iv. 9. 42 THE HOLY LAND AT TEE TIME OF JESrs. tables, in order to exchange the ordinary money for the proper temple currency. From the vehemence with which the Jewish population conducted all money business, there was here often such a profane raving and screaming, such cheating and denun- ciations of cheating, that Jesus called this part of the temple a den of thieves. On the south side was a triple colonnade, the royal porch,^ as the Gospels call it, a kind of basilica, where the Eabbis taught, popular orators collected the people about them, and visitors at the temple wandered up and down. Here has Jesus addressed the people at the feasts, and here have his disciples afterwards disputed with the Eabbis. In this outer fore-court, at the north-west, there was a terrace raised some few steps, on which at certain distances apart were Greek and Latin inscriptions, forbidding those who were not Jews to advance nearer to the sanctuary on pain of death. Here began the rampart, the further wall of which formed the high basement of the proper fore-court. This terrace, some forty cubits higher than the lower court, contained the fore-court of the Israelites, of the women, and, next to the temple, the fore- court of the priests. Cloisters ran round the inner walls also, interrupted by spaces which were allotted to special purposes. Here, for example, was situated the temple synagogue, in which the Sanhedrin for some time was accustomed to hold its meet- ings ; so, too, the extensive magazines for the necessaries for the temple ; the separate small courts for the Nazarites who had their hair cut off here, for the lepers which underwent purifica- tion here, for the examination of the wood for the sacrifices, which might never be worm-eaten ; moreover, there were guard- rooms for the Levites, cells for the instruments, laundries, rooms for garbage, for salt, the well-house, and others for similar purposes. The temple itself stood twelve steps yet higher than the court of the Israelites, also in the north-western part of the space. It was built entirely of white marble. A large portico led up 1 John X. 23. JUD.'EA. 43 to the gilded doorway of the temple, whose doors stood open, while a many-coloured woven Babylonian curtain prevented any one looking into the interior. The roof was flat, studded with golden spikes, which reflected the sun's rays dazzlingly, Eound the walls of this court hung the numberless votive offerings with which pious reverence had adorned the sanctuary. Over the temple itself glittered the golden bunch of grapes, on account of which, according to Tacitus, many thought the sanc- tuary was a temple of Bacchus. Since this marble building rose above all the lower courts and buildings, it presented a proud appearance to the neighbourhood, and was visible far and wide in city and district.^ Through the life of the temple, the city, little inviting as it appeared to strangers,- had the exalted style of a centre of highest and holiest interests, whicli im- pressed even foreigners.^ It betrayed that it was the seat of the theocracy from the very physiognomy of its population. The priests alone, whose number Josephus estimates at 20,000,* and for the most part had their home in Jerusalem itself, formed no small part of the inhabitants ; then the Levites, recognized by their pointed • caps and the pocket which contained their books of the Law;^ Pharisees, whom their broad phylacteries and deep fringes proclaimed to be members of a religious society f Essenes in solemn white dresses and projshetic manner y Herodiau courtiers in the pomp of Oriental display, and amongst them a Roman garrison of now greater and now lesser strength : all these together could not fail to make a powerful impression upon the inhabitants of a district otherwise ^ Much concerning the temple building and the temple is given in Antiquities, xv. 11, 3, Bell. V. 1, 8 ; and much special information by the Tract. Middoth (Mischna), 5, 10. - Strabo, xvi. 2. ' Strabo, xvi. 2 : "Although a certain magnificence attached to their capital, which they did not abhor as the seat of tyranny, but held sacred as the temple of God and venerated." Plin. v. 15, 2 ; Tac. Hist. v. 8. * Apion. ii. 8. ^ Jebamoth, 122 a. ® Matt, xxiii. 5. ^ Bell. i. 3, 5, ii. 8, 3, ii. 7, 3; Antiq. xiii. 11, 2, xvii. 13, 3, and elsewhere. 44 THE HOLY LAND AT THE TIME OF JESUS. poor and uniform. Moreover, the temple service was at that time the only pulsation of national life, and the temple the heart to which all Jewish blood flowed in the regular rhythm of the festivals, even from the most extreme periphery. At the time, moreover, wlien there were no feasts gomg on, the life in the sanctuary did not cease : in the interior courts there were the throng of sacrificers, women after childbed with their doves, lepers who had been cured with their birds or lambs ; Nazarites with their hair grown long; the recitation of prayers and formularies ; the genuflexions and gestures, the slaughtering of the sheep, the lowing of the oxen ; and the whirling columns of smoke from the burnt-offerings. In a most vivid manner does 2 Chronicles xxxv. 1 — 20 describe that life, as it surged up in its fulness through the interior of the temple during the feast. When the priests and Levites had arranged themselves in their courses and in the houses of their fathers, lambs and kids and oxen were led to the sacrifice ; the Passover was roasted with fire, and the other holy offerings they seethed in pots, and in caldrons, and in pans, and brought them speedily to the priests, because these were busied in offering of burut-oflerings and the fat until night. And the singers, the sons of Asaph, Heman and Jeduthun, and the porters, might not depart from their service ; for their brethren prepared for theni.^ In tlie outer courts, on the other hand, do we find the active intercourse of a city population with numerous strangers. In short, all departments of the popular life had its theatre upon this hill. Here is the sanctuary for the sacrifice, the Sanhedrin for judgments, the great fore-court for the cougre- gation of the people. Here is the daily sacrifice for all Israel brought, and tlie twenty-one trumpet blasts which sound from the temple — three at opening of the gates, niue at the morning sacrifice, nine at the evening sacrifice — are for the citizens the signals for prayer, for work, and for rest. Towards the temple ^ Compare also Joseph. Apion, ii. 8. JUDAEA. 45 every Jewish man directed his eyes in prayer/ and every one who was able went at least once np to the feast at Jerusalem. Then the city and surrounding villages were filled. From mid- night on, the frequenters at the feast collected in the courts of the temple. The Diaspora of the whole earth were then assembled in order to greet the home of their people, their faith, their God. " Hear w^e not every one in our own tongue ?" can the Acts of the Apostles say in its description of the day of Pentecost — " Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, and the dwell- ers in Mesopotamia, and in Judtea, and Cappadocia, in Pontus, and Asia, Phrygia, and Pamphylia, in Egypt, and in the parts of Lybia about Gyrene, and the Romans in Jerusalem, Jews and proselytes, Gretes and Arabians."^ According to Josephus, at many feasts there were not less than three millions of male guests ]3i"esent.^ It was of such days that the Gospel of Luke was thinking when it makes the boy Jesus, when twelve years old, lost in the crowd at the Passover, and his parents make not a single attempt to find him, but must content themselves with the hope that some Galilean or other will bring him back to their train. That such a sanctuary impressed a specific character upon the life of the city, and indeed of the whole district, can well be understood. Persistent bigotry and fanatical zeal have always distinguished a people whose every interest has been united with such a sanctuary. The inhabitants of Judaea formed no exception to this rule. They lived upon the concourse of pilgrims, and the important sums which flowed yearly from the entire Diaspora into the temple treasury benefited them either directly or indirectly.* But they brought, too, of their own 1 Even when abroarl, as, for example, of Daniel it is said, " His windows being open in his chamber towai'd Jerusalem, he kneeled upon his knees three times a day, and prayed, and gave thanks befoi-e God" (Daniel vi. 10). 2 Acts u. 8—11. 3 Bell. vi. 9, 3. * [Antiquities?] xviii. 9, 1, 2. The communities of Apaniea, Landicoa, Adramy- thium and Pergamus had in the year 62 collected a sum for the temple tax etpial to £8250, which the prajtor Flaccus confiscated. Cic. pro Flacco, 28. It can thus be well understood that the tciuple passed for the richest iu Asia. 46 THE HOLY LAXD AT THE TIME OF JESUS. possessions into the temple; money for the poor's-box; doves, lambs, oxen, for the sacrifice ; wood for the altar ; and a thousand other gifts. The revenue of the temple supported a numberless body of priests and Levites. The priestly class alone numbered four-and-twenty courses.^ In addition, there were the persons of yet lower rank, tlie Levites, whose duty it was to attend to the guarding of the temple and maintenance of order, the singing and music; the cleansing, the maintenance, the building and keeping in repair of the sanctuary ; the obtaining and charge of the supplies ; the manufacture of the garments ; the preparation of stuffs, utensils and vessels ; their ever necessary cleansing, testing and consecration ; matters which were so complicated and multifarious, that priests and Levites spent their whole lives in learning them, and a considerable number of them were employed solely in instructing the novices properly. In addition to this numerous body of priests occupied in the temple, there were the immense number of those who lived upon the temple indirectly, as lodging-house-keepers during the festivals, as purveyors of cattle, wood, oil, wine, or cloth, and a hundred other things. No wonder, then, that here, in addition to the veneration for the temple which manifested itself throughout all Judaism, a fana- ticism disi)layed itself, whicli distinguished the people of Jeru- salem and Judsea essentially from the Galileans, pious and patriotic as the latter were. Moreover, the seat of the theocracy was at the same time the seat of the Sanhedrin, which represented the sum of public power left to the Jewish people. Consequently all the Eab- binical, learned elements were here collected together. Not less than 480 synagogues were contained in this city, which was only of very moderate size, to which again were attached num- berless Sopherim, Archisynagogoi, Presbyteroi, Chaberim, disciples, precentors, and attendants. Thus Jerusalem was the seat of all the celebrated schools of learning, the theatre of the con- troversies, the x^lace where the teachers gave their instruction, ' Jos. Vita, 1. JUD.^A. 47 the arena of the theological parties — in short, the capital of the Jewish nation so pre-eminently, that only the exclusiveness of the one temple could liave created. It was natural, therefore, that such a capital should exercise a most decisive influence upon the district which immediately surrounded it. The country population, shut off in their valleys from all other influences, were acquainted only with that spiritual interest which the temple life cherished. At every festival they flocked in crowds to the temple, for the proximity of the temple brought, too, increased obligations. " The man who is near," says the Jubilees, " and does not come to the Passover when he is clean, shall be cut off."^ How strong this feeling was, is shown by the fact that the proconsul Cestius, in the year 66 A.D., in sj^ite of the war, found Lydda empty, as the entire body of the inhabitants had gone to the temple festival at Jerusalem.^ But even during the time when there were no feasts, the incidents of private life led them individually to the temple, and the surrounding villages, year in, year out, saw troops of pilgrims pass through their streets singing psalms, as, for example, when the congrega- tions brought their firstlings to the temple, where the donors might themselves consume them. The fruits and animals were borne along in baskets. Before the procession walked the bullock which was destined for the peace-offering, wdth an olive ^^Teatll on its gilded horns, the entire procession being accompanied with the music of pipes, until the temple hill was reached. Then as they ascended they were met by the temple officials, while they sang, " Our feet stand within thy gates, Jerusalem !" In the fore-court the songs of the Levites welcomed the pilgrims. Such and similar customs, as for example the feast of wood, when the country people brought wood to the temple, in order to provide for the perpetual fire f the encaenia, when Jerusalem beamed in garlands of fire ; the feast of Tabernacles, when Israel dwelt under the open sky ; all this obtained a far stronger hold 1 Jiibil. cap. 49. - Bell. ii. 19, 1. ^ Bell. ii. 17, 6. 48 THE UGLY LAND AT THE TIME OF JESUS. u[)on tlie mind of the men of Judtea than it did those of the Galileans or Jews of the Diaspora, who dwelt at a distance. Especially the last-named feast, that of Tabernacles, was in this district, as the example of the inhabitants of Lydda, already mentioned, shows, a feast of the people, of which it was pro- verbially said, " Who has not seen this joy, has not seen the glory of Israel !" The temple was illuminated at night; in the fore-court there were torcldight dances the whole night through, the harps, dulcimers, drums, tymbals and trumpets of the Levites resounded. At tlie break of day tlie people accompanied the priests to the pool of Siloam, where the water was drawn in a golden vessel, which the priest afterwards poured out upon the altar in the temple.^ It was of this feast the fourth Gospel says, " Now in the last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink. He that believeth in me, as the scripture saith, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water." ^ The poorer their life upon the unfruitful Highlands of Judah otherwise was, the more did the people cherish the sanctuary which gave them all their pleasures as the apple of the eye. The wild and poor shepherds of the mountains of Judah always stood ready to obey every nod of the priests at Jerusalem, and most furiously did they give way to their rage when there was the insult of some Samaritan or the sacrilege of some Eoman soldier to be avenged.^ Their table-land was the proper and secure citadel of Judaism ; for they had not, like the Galileans, taken part in the intercourse of the world, nor, like the inhabitants of Penea, become entangled and mixed up with foreign culture, and thus the inhabitants hung tenaciously to old customs, in a way which is only possible for a mountain people sliut off from the rest of the woild. Life in these solitary valleys consisted, in the one house and in the other, in impressing the traditional law upon the young and practising it in the daily life. " We 1 Giatz, 3, 122. - Jolm vii. 37, 38. » Bell. ii. 12, 2, 4, 12, ii. 9, 3, L JUDAEA. 49 Jews," says Joseplius/ " neither inhabit a maritime country, nor do we delight in merchandise, nor in such a mixture with other men as arises from it ; but the cities we dwell in are remote from the sea, and having a fruitful country for our habitation, we take pains in cultivating that only. Our principal care of all is this, to educate our children well ; and we think it to be of the most necessary business of our whole life, to observe the laws that have been given us, and to keep those rules of piety wliich have been handed down to us." ..." Nor can any one perceive amongst us any difference in the conduct of our lives ; but all our works are common to us all. We have one sort of discourse concerning God, which is conformable to our law, and afiirms that He sees all our doings. That all things ought to have piety for their end, anybody may hear from our women and servants themselves. Hence hath arisen that accusation which some make against us, that we have not produced men that have been the inventors of new operations, or of new ways of thinking ; for others think it a fine thing to persevere in nothing that has been delivered down from their forefathers, and these testify it to be an instance of the sharpest wisdom when these men venture to transgress these traditions ; whereas we, on the con- trary, suppose it to be wisdom and virtue to admit no actions nor supposals which are contrary to our original laws." - This certainly is only the one side of the peculiarly tenacious customs of the Jewish household which presented itself in the most profound peace ; but in times of M'ar, as those of which we are treating, this exclusively religious direction of life developed into a fanaticism of a most extreme character. Their patriotic aversion to foreigners, and their religious susceptibilities to the Gentile cultus, were among the population of this district in a constant state of ferment, and at every feast the country people were assured anew by Kabbis and priests and fanatical popular prophets, that Jehovah would for no long time more endure the revilings of the Gentile. This character of the people had com- 1 Josephus, c. Apion, i. 12. - Apion, ii. 20. £ 50 THE HOLY LAND AT THE TIME OF JESUS. pelled Herod to erect five times as many fortresses in Judaea as in Galilee ; but in spite of them, the robbers and bandits of the mountains of Judah had never ceased making war in the name of Jehovah against the existent dominion. The most gross superstition prevailed in the villages and hovels. Not seldom did the most raving Messiahs deceive the bigoted masses, who to-day followed one prophet to the Mount of Olives, in order to behold him overthrow the walls of the Gentile Jerusalem ;^ to- morrow, another to the Jordan, in order to be led by him dry-shod ^ through the river ; and then, yet unwarned, to follow a third into the wilderness, in order to await with him the signs of the Son of Man of Daniel.^ These are phenomena which were never announced as occur- ring in Galilee. Certainly, when one remembers how thickly this little land was strewn with sanctuaries, how strongly this thinly scattered population, hemmed in by deserts and shut off from intercourse with the world, was interfused with priests, orders, anchorites, Eabbis and Eabbis' disciples, — how all the exalted elements of the whole country had been collected here from time immemorial,* — we can well understand that these people were acquainted with only one idea — Jehovah and His Temple ; and that beyond this — of their own or of a foreign power, of the means of commerce or of the conduct of war, or of the political situation of affairs — they had not the least presentiment ; but knew one thing alone, that Jehovah was Lord, and that to the children of Abraham had the promise of the inheritance of the earth been made.^ 1 Bell. ii. 13, 5. " Ant. zx. 5, 1. ^ Bell. ii. 13, 4; Matt. xiiv. 24—26. 4 Tac. Hist. V. 12. ^ Bell. ii. 16, 4. THE TElUilTORY EAST OF TUB JOEDAN. 51 4 The Territory East of the Jordan. The territory east of the Jordan, following the country watered by the river Hieromax, extends as far as Mount Alsadamus (Jebel Hauran) ; on the south, however, it retires before the encroaching desert, so that the lower valley of the Jordan is separated from it only by a narrow mountain-land. The broad northern basis of this territory consists of the districts of Gau- LANiTis, Itur.ea, Trachonitis, Auranitis, and Batan.^^a. Gaulanitis, which rises on tlie east of the lake of Genezareth,^ has much in common with Galilee, excej)t that we pass out of the region of chalk into that of basalt. Instead of flat table- lands we have steep peaks and picturesque ridges, which give the district a severer appearance. In the neighbourhood of the lower lake lay Hippos,^ a town of the Decapolis, as that alliance of towns was called which united the richest towns from Damascus to the Arabian desert in a defensive and offensive league acjainst domestic robbers and maurading Bedouins. Farther to the north, in the mountains, lay Gamala,^ and on the upper lake the pretty town of Julias,* which the Tetrarch Philip had so named after the notorious daughter of the emperor. To the north of the district of Gaulanitis lies Itur^a, a mountainous territory situated on the eastern declivity of Hermon, with many ravines and inaccessible valleys in its rocks, the inhabitants of which, favoured by the locality, lived on plunder, and were a great trouble to the merchants from Da- mascus. The descriptions of the geographers vividly call to mind the present condition of these districts. " The mountain- lands," says Strabo, " are infested with Iturseans and Arabs, the whole of them being robbers ; in the plains dwell husbandmen, who, always being annoyed by them, are always needing foreign assistance."^ In Hermon and Lebanon the Iturteans had fortified 1 Antiq. viii. 2, 3, xiii. 15, 4; Bell. iii. 3, 1. = Plin. v. 15, 18 (16). ' Suet. Tit. 4. 4 Plin. v, 15, 16; Ptolem. v. 16. ^ Strabo, 16, 2 (753—756). E 2 52 THE HOLY LAND AT THE TIME OF JESUS. places of assembly, whence issued armed bands that advanced even to Sidon and Berytos on the coast, and to the gates of Damascus on the east. The sterility of their barren and craggy rocks, which did not repay cultivation, and the proximity of the great roads of commerce, had almost compelled the inhabitants to adopt this manner of life.^ They were skilled archers and bold horsemen. The arrow of the Iturtean was proverbial among the legions,^ which nevertheless regarded them as the vilest dregs of their allies.^ Their frontiers varied according to their fortune in war, whence can be explained the want of agreement in the ancient accounts. Still farther extended towards Damascus, and partly flanking it on the north, lay the district of Trachonitis, a rugged basaltic tract, which derives its name from the Trachones, "rugged mountains difficult of access, in which capacious caves were to be found, one of them being capable of containing 4000 men assembled for those attaclis which the inhabitants of Damascus everywhere experienced."* The capital, Kanath, on the caravan road, belonged to the Decapolis, and was protected from the bands of mountain robbers by strong Eoman fortifications, traces of which are yet to be seen.^ In all other respects it was much worse here than in Iturtea. " The country," says Josephus, " was inhabited by a very miserable race of people, who plun- dered the territory of Damascus ; they possessed neither towns nor fields, but only subterranean dens and caves, where they and their cattle lived in common together. They had provided themselves with abundance of water and provisions, so that by narrowing the entrance into their dens they were able to make a very long resistance. Their dwellings were not elevated above the surface of the soil, but resembled it in their appearance."^ ^ Apul. Flor. i. 6 : frugiim pauperes Ityrei. ^ Caes. Bell. Alex. 20. " Usu sagittae periti," says Vibius Sequester, ed. Hessel, p. 155; Virgil, Georgics, ii. 448; Lucan Pbarsal. vii. ,230, 514. 3 Cic. Philipp. ii. 8, 44, xiii. 8. * Strabo, 16, 2. » Pliu. v. 16. 6 Antiq. xv. 10, 1 ; Ptol. v. 15, 5, 26, 17, 7; Cap. Dio. 54, 9. THE TERRITORY EAST OF THE JORDAN. 53 Herod ravaged here like a Turk, but no good was produced except for a brief period.^ At last he established several mili- tary colonies in the district, whose patrols, being always on the march, managed to keep the bands under tolerable restraint.^ Between Gaulauitis and ]\Iount Alsadamus^ extended the district of AuEANiTis, which is the plain of Hauran, richly watered by the tributaries of the river Hierontax, but treeless. A wide champaign with an endless succession of corn-fields, it was the granary of Damascus ; but even then had the fellah to follow the plough with his weapon upon his slioulder, unless his furrows were formed immediately under the protection of the town walls. The numerous ruins of villages and hamlets, all built of the hard basalt, witness to the earlier prosperity of the district. The most important town was Astaroth, whose name calls to mind the ancient heathenism. Batan^ea, finally, included the mountains of Hauran and the district which extended southwards as far as the desert. Juicy meadows and noble forests of oaks alternated on the mountains, which sometimes attain a height of nearly 6000 feet, and in their vegetation call to remembrance a far more northerly climate. To the north of them had Herod established his mili- tary colony of Bathyea, in order to watch the inhabitants of Trachonitis ; on the southern frontier the Eomans had built the fortress of Bostea, in order to keep the Arabians in check.* In all these districts there had constantly dwelt a j)retty numerous population of Jews,^ but the native inhabitants were Syrian, and in the towns were intermingled with Arabians, Greeks and Phoenicians,^ so that the connection of these districts with Judaja was only occasioned through the common dynasty of the Herods, which certainly did not prevent the rabble from 1 Antiq. xvi. 9, 1. " Antiq. xvi. 9, 2, xvii. 2, 1. ^ ptol. 5, 15. * The fortress dates from the reign of Trajan. The town is mentioned, Cic. ad Q. fr. ii. 12, 3; Ptol. J>, 17; Ammian. Marc. 14, 8. Its identity with ancient Boziah is doubtful. ^ Bell. ii. 18, 2, :J, 5, 6. « Bell. ii. 18, 1, 6; Antiq. xvii. II, 4. 54 THE HOLY LAND AT THE TIME OF JESUS. Leyond the mountains collecting in masses in the disturbances in JudcCa.^ The Jewish element was much more strongly represented in Pee^a, the district which extended from the Hieromax down to the Arnon, between the Jordan and the desert.^ Its most out- lying places, which project on to the very edge of the desert, were Geeasa, a handsome commercial town, whose temple, bridges, aquaducts, colonnades, amphitheatre and public buildings, at the present day, still bear witness to the greatness and splendour of this magnificent city of the Decapolis ;^ farther south, Phila- delphia, the ancient capital of the children of Ammon,* and at this time the southern vanguard of the ten towns against the Arabians ; and lastly, on the eastern declivity of the mountains of Abarim, the beautifully situated Hesbon, to whose pools the poet of the Song of Songs compared the laughing eyes of his Sulamite.^ On the northern edge of the plateau — for to the south of the Hieromax we have again passed into the chalk formation, and the long-continued horizontal mountain-ridges have taken the place of the sharper outlines of the upper district — nearly hidden in the mountains, lies Pella, upon a broad hill, from which numerous streams flow down into the well- watered valleys below.*^ The name may have been given to this fortified town of the Decapolis by Alexander's veterans,'^ who had obtained domiciles in most of these towns. This pleasant mountain town was, during the Jewish war, to the little community of Chris- tians, according to the promises of John, " a place prepared of God, where they were nourished a time, two times, and half a time."^ 1 Bell. iii. 10, 10. 2 BgH {;; 3^ 3, =* Bell. ii. 18, 5 ; Antiq. xiii. 15, 5; Plin. v. 16. 4 Bell. i. 6, 3, 19, 5 ; Plin. v. 16. » Song of Songs, vii. 4. ® "Pellam aquis divitem," Plin. v. 16. Robinson, Biblical Researches, iii. 322. ^ Similarly to Apanea, which the Macedonians also called Pella. Strabo, xvi. 2, 10. ® Revelation xii. 6, 14; Eusebius, iii. 5. THE TERRITORY EAST OF THE JORDAN. 55 In fact, the storm of war which raged severely enough in all the other places in Persea, passed over here without doing any damage. In a similar manner, on the northern border of Peraea, but turned round towards the lake of Tiberias above the narrow ravine through which the Hieromax descends into the Jordan, lies the district of Gadara. Warm sulphurous medicinal springs, which emit clouds of vapour, occasioned the foundation of this watering-place, which Pompeius had re-erected from its ruins at the request of a freed-man. The streets paved with basalt, the colonnades of Corinthian pillars, the massive Eoman buildings, betray its modern origin. Belonging to the Decapolis, it was united to Scythopolis on the other side of the river by a military road which led over Pella to Damascus.^ Its territory was not small, so that it was possible to speak of a district of Gadaritis.^ In the neighbourhood of the town, graves are yet to be seen, excavated in the caves of the limestone declivities, of which Matthew viii. 28 is thinking : " And when Jesus was come to the other side [Perosa] into the country of the Gada- reues, there met him two possessed with devils, coming oiit of the tombs, exceeding fierce, so that no man might pass by that way." From the Hieromax to the neighbourhood of the Dead Sea there run to the east of the Jordan the mountains of Gilead, that with their forests of ever-green oaks, pines and pistachio trees, almost resemble a German landscape. Here lie the fresh mountain meadows which had occasioned the speech of the children of Keuben and Gad: "The country which Jehovah smote is a land for cattle, and thy servants have cattle. Bring us not over Jordan."^ The well-watered valley and lateral valleys of the Jabbok divide the mountains into a northern and southern part, of which the southern has fewer forests, but is not less fruitful. Pleasant towns crowned the declivity ; among them, a little to the north of the valley of the Jabbok, is the pleasant Amatiius, which 1 Antiq. xiv. 3, 4. ^ Bell. iii. 10, 10. ' Numbers xxxii. 1—4; compare Soug of Suugs, iv. 1, 6, 5. 56 THE HOLY LAND AT THE TIME OF JESUS. Gabiuius iutended to make the capital of a transjordanic re- public : to its south, Beth Haran/ in a ravine of the valley between the mountains of Gilead and Pisgah, which Antipas named Livias in honour of the empress-mother, opposite to Jericho and like it in miniature. With the mountains of Pisgah we enter into a wdld inacces- sible region abounding in traditions. Deeper in the mountains, on Mount Nebo, is said to be the grave of Moses, " but no man kuoweth of his sepulchre unto tliis day."^ Jeremiah alone, according to tradition, once climbed up in order to conceal there the tabernacle and ark of the covenant saved from the Chaldeans. Tiiere he found a hollow cave in which he deposited his sacred treasures, stopping up the door from the outside, and some of tliose that followed him came to mark the way, but they were no longer able to find the door.^ Mount Peoe was another peak, from which once Balaam was to have cursed the Israelites and, instead, blessed them.* In a wild valley which runs up from the shores of the Dead Sea to the highest ridge of the mountains, the steep Attaeus, lay the celebrated warm baths of Callirhoe, which were to have relieved Herod in his last illness ; and above, on the steepest declivity of Attarus itself, was perched the Ibrtified town and fortress of MACHiEEUS, the place next in strength to Jerusalem,^ whose watch-towers and turrets had been built for the purpose of observing the Arabians. Herod had built rich palaces in this airy fortress, where afterwards his son Antipas kept John the Baptist in imprisonment. Springs similar to those of Callirhoe bubbled up here, too, and thus Mach?erus was at once a mountain residence and watering- place for the wives of the Tetrarch. At a later period, a Ptoman garrison was quartered in the town, which ingloriously capitulated at the outbreak of tlie war.^ For a purely Jewish population, even in Persea below the llieroraax, there can so far no claim be made. Whilst in the ' Antiq. xiv. 5, 4 ; Ptol. v. 10; Strabo, xvi.-2 (p. 763). * Deut. xxxiv. 6. ^ 2 Mace. ii. 5, 6. '* Numb, xxiii. 28. * Plin. 5, 15. « Bell. ii. 18, 6. THE NEIOHBOURINQ NATIONS. 57 north the Spian element had taken a firm hold, in the south the population was more mmgled with half- Arabian tribes. In the war, the territory belonging to the Decapolis held aloof from the insurrection, which points to a preponderance in the Gentile population in the north, as well as in the district from Pella to Philadelphia.^ 5. The Neighbouring Nations. Among the neighbours of the Jews the Arabs were at this time the most troublesome, for they were not included in the Roman treaties of peace, and from the very nature of their habitations their actual overthrow was almost impossible. The inhospitable, waterless and treeless sandy steppes which extend from the Arabian peninsula up to and across the Euphrates, running on the west to the Syrian line of mountains, and on the east to the Euphrates and Tigris, have been from time immemorial the home of the sons of Ishmael. To the south of t]iis district, the Nabatheans had since the time of the first StaSo^ot^ founded a powerful state, which held sway from the Dead Sea to the vElanitic Gulf, and of which the peninsula of Sinai formed the strong fortress.^ Petea, the splendid residence of the Nabathean kings, lay in the ancient ancestral territory of the children of Edom, between the magnificent sandstone pillars of the mountains of Seir. It was conveniently placed as the capital of this district in the saddle of the peninsulas of Sinai and Arabia ; here, too, the two great caravan-roads crossed each other, of which the one led from Gaza to the mouth of the Euphrates, and the other from Damascus over Jericho to the Arabian Gulf* In the harbours of the Nabatheans the wares 1 Jos. Vita, 65. ' The name given by the historians to the successors of Alexander the Great. » Diod. iii. 43 ; Strabo, 16, 4 (p. 776 f. ). * Plin. vi. 32, 3 ; Strabo, 16, 4 (p. 783). 58 THE HOLY LAND AT THE TIME OF JESUS. of the Mediterranean were exchanged for those of the Indies, and in the west a great opinion was held as to their opulence. Even the ruins of Petra, whose palaces in the rock and sepulchral monuments vie with those of Palmyra and Ba'albek, testify to a luxury and splendour of civilization far exceeding that of con- temporary Judaism. The court of Petra, too, partook of the interests of the great powers in a way quite different to that of Jerusalem, in that upon the one side it controlled the Indian trade of Egypt, upon the other the caravan trade of the Parthian kingdom, and penetrating along the caravan -road towards Jericho, came into conflict even with Eome. A numerous colony of Eoman and Greek strangers kept the Arab king in- formed about the affairs of the Eoman world,^ and he was powerful enough to occasionally attract the attention of the emperor most earnestly upon himself. For the Jews, especially, with whom the Nabathean kings were always engaged in border conflicts, they were the most unsuitable of neighbours, and of the three nations whom the soul of the son of Sirach abhorred, he gave the first place to the nation " that sit on Mount Seir." ^ But even more troublesome than the Nabathean kings were the Bedouins, tent Arabs,^ the several tribes of which, under their own sheikhs, pitched their encampments now here, now there, in order to pasture their camels, and on their fleet steeds follow the chase, but most especially to take passage toll from the caravans.* The majority were under the sovereignty of some neighbouring state, and helped now the Parthians and now the Nabatheans in their wars. For the tribute which they had to pay to their lords, some, either of their own tribe which had settled down in these lands or of their allies, had as a rule to give a warrant.^ They gave the Jews much trouble through their intrigues with the people of Trachonitis and Itunea, in 1 Strabo, 16, 4. " Ecclesiasticus 1. 28, according to the reading of Vet. Lat. ; comp. Douay Version. 3 (TKriviTai in Strabo, 16, 1 ; Plin. vi. 32, 1. ■» Strabo, 16, 1. ^ Antiq. xv. 4, 4 ; Strabo, i. c. THE NEIGHBOURING NATIONS. 59 that they willingly lent their support to the disorders there.^ Moreover, they were themselves difficult to reach : the desert, the heat of the sun, unwholesome water and epidemics were their allies, which inflicted more mischief upon the Eomans and Jews in every war with the Arabs, than did the sons of the desert, who hastened away upon their camels.^ Beyond the Euphrates again were the Parthians, a perpetual source of anxiety to the JeAvish population, which had been betrayed into the Eoman alliance, but yet were little pro- tected against Parthian raids. There were four legions in Syria, it is true, as a reserve against any dangers which might there threaten, and a strong military line on the Euphrates was sup- posed to protect the province, yet there was the most notorious of the frontiers of the empire, and beyond the river were en- camped the trooper kings, always ready to break in upon Syria whenever the court at Ctesiphon gave the signal. They were the dreaded scourge of that time, and not only has Horace given expression to the abhorrence with which the Eoman youth regarded the garrisons on the Euphrates,^ but even the writer of the Eevelation sees there expressly four angels of death bound, which were prepared against the hour and day and month and year, that they might slay the third part of men.* The number of the armies of the horsemen he estimates as two hundred thousand thousand, and gives a fantastic picture of the horses and their riders ; how with their breastplates red as fire, and blue as smoke, and yellow as brimstone, they pour over the earth at the last judgment, across the dried-up Euphrates, as an army of hell.^ Almost in similar terms have the Eoman historians described the tumultuous squadrons of the Parthians ; how they now mass themselves together for a terrible charge, now in their skirmishing lines swarm around the legions ; man and steed glittering in scale armour and coloured leathern collars ; with 1 Antiq. xvi. 9, 1. - Strabo, xvi. 4; Cass. Dio. 53, 29; Antiq. xv. 5, 3. ^ Horace, Odes, ii. 13, i. 12, i. 19; compare also Cass. Dio. 40, 17, 18. * Revelation ix. 15. ^ Rev. ix. 14, &c. 60 TEE HOLY LAND AT THE TIME OF JESUS. lances, bows and slings ; their ensigns interwoven with silk and gold fluttering over them ; their helmets and equipments of steel casting bright rays far and wide, and deafening the ears with their clattering kettle-drums.^ Only too often had Judaea to endure this scourge of Heaven, and to hear the trumpet pro- claim, " Loose the four angels which are bound on the great river Euphrates, that they may slay the third part of men." ^ When they fell upon the land, sweeping through the most distant valleys on their swift horses of the desert, the rape of women, mutilation of men, wanton conflagration and cowardly massacres were the order of the day, and the corps of the elite, the "invulnerable" and the "freemen," even surpassed the common crowd in faithlessness, perjury and treachery.^ With another burden did Eome oppress this little land from Antioch, and with even more anxiety than towards the Euphrates were the looks of the Jewish population directed towards this seat of the proconsul, asking what violation of the law, what idolatries, what profanation of the temple, the Eoman eagle, the beast of which the book of Daniel had already prophesied, w^ould suspend over the sacred land ? Even the principalities similarly wedged in between the oppressions of the Eoman and the Parthian kingdoms, and that were subject, in part to decaying princes of the house of the Seleucida3, in part to growing emirs of the Bedouins, Com- MAGENE and Edessa on the upper Euphrates, Apamea, Aee- THUSA and Emesa between Antioch and Damascus, were to be counted for the most part among the enemies of the Jews. More especially was this the case as regards the sheikhs of the tent Arabs, which had never been expelled from the district between the Euphrates and the mountains of Amanus ; and in the immediate neighbourliood of Lebanon, during the downfall of tlie kingdom of the Seleucida, a predatory state had arisen which long inflicted immense mischief upon the rising kingdom ' Cass. Dio. 40, 15; similarly Appian and Plutavcli. - Rev. ix. 13, ^ Aiitiq. .\iv. 13; Bell. i. 13. THE NEIGHBOURING NATIONS. 61 of the Herods. Ptolenipeiis, the son of Menn?eus, had founded a dominion here which embraced, in the lands east of the Jordan, Batan^a, Aukanitis, Teachonitis and Itue^a -^ to which were united, on the eastern declivity of Hermon, Abilene; and between Hermon and Lebanon, in the plain of Marsyas, the principality of Chalcis, with several fortresses on the other side of Lebanon, on the sea to the north and south of Tripolis.^ This union of deserts, mountains and coast left the caravan-roads, the passes and the harbours at the mercy of robbers ; and by a lucky com- bination of piracy with highway robbery, Ptolemteus had become the richest and most powerful of the Syrian robber-princes ; for from his fortresses on the sea-coast he combined with the Cilician pirates in attacking the merchant ships of the Phrenician ports, and from his robber-castles among the mountains of Trachonitis, in combination with Arabians, did he attack the caravans of the merchants of Damascus. His place of residence varied according as the time of year promised the better harvest on the sea or on the roads of the desert. He held a luxurious court, and in the doings of his seraglio was excelled by none. After he had offered an asylum to the exiled branches of the Maccaboean house, and had married their daughters to his sons, he became the executioner of his own son, because enamoured of one of the beautiful women of the Maccabees, whom after this murder of her husband he took for his own wife.^ When Pompeius, after the overthrow of Mithridates, established order in Syria, the mountain and maritime fortresses of this corsair were all de- stroyed : but while his neighbours and companions, the lords of Lysias, TripoHs and Byblos had to lay their heads upon the block, the rich son of Mennteus purchased his freedom and the continuance of his dominion for 1000 talents (£257,400).^ Both 1 Antiq. xv. 10, 3. 2 Both in Ant. xiv. 7, 4, and Bell. i. 9, 2, does this Chalcis lie inrb rfp \ij3ai>q) opu. Van de Velde describes the great ruius in the upper valley of the Litany on the western declivity of Hermon by this name. Compare Strabo, Geogi-. 16, 2 (p. 753) ; Dio. 37, 7 ; Appian, Mithrid. 106. 3 Antiq. xiv. 1, 4; Bell. i. 9, 2. ■• Antiq. .\iv. 3, 2. 62 THE HOLY LAND AT THE TIME OF JESUS. lie and his son Lysanias were, as relatives of tlie Maccabees, most bitter enemies of Herod, their wealth rendering the expe- ditions of the pretenders possible. But even after Cleopatra, who was ever hungering after fresh territory, had persuaded Antonius to put Lysanias to death, in the year 34 B.C., because the latter had conspired with the Parthians, Herod had still no peace upon this quarter. The whole of the vast territory was mortgaged by Antonius to Zenodorus, the ruler of Ulatlia and Paneas, in order to satisfy the avaricious Cleopatra.-^ To the annoyance of his neighbours, the mortgagee ventured to organize the system of robbery anew, and Augustus first put an end to the nuisance when in the year 23 B.C. he assigned the territory east of the Jordan to Herod ; to whom, after the death of Zeno- dorus, Ulatha and Paneas were also allotted for the purpose of rounding off his northern frontier. Damascus, which in the course of our period fell several times into the hands of the Arabs, was in consequence of its large Jewish population more friendly to Jerusalem than any other town in the Decapolis, where usually the friends of the Jews seldom dwelt. On the Phcenician coast it was different. Even at the first conquest of the Holy Land, the tribe of Asher had not been in a position to overthrow the mighty towns of the plain and the coast ; for the Hebrew was a bad horseman, and had little trust in the sea, consequently he had been defeated in the plain, and could not even venture to attack the towns on the coast. Before Sidon and Tyre, not only had the armies of Barak and David, but even the power of the Maccabees and the intrigues of the Herods, been put to shame. On Carmel, on the other hand, the Jews had firmly planted themselves, and from thence downwards the entire coast, with the exception of Ascalon, belonged to them. Alexander Janmeus was on the point of adding even Ptolemais to his kingdom when he died ; whereupon party contests first hindered the foreign expeditions, and then induced 1 Antiq. XV. 10, 1 ; Dio. 49, 32, THE NEIGHBOURING NATIONS. 63 the interference of the Eomans, who restored their own self- government to the coast towns, under Eoman sovereignty. SiDON, and Tyre which was situated 200 stadia farther soutli, were even yet important seats of commerce. The changed conditions of the world had, it is true, put an end to their monopoly of trade and torn away their colonies ; but the indus- trious citizens only threw themselves the more eagerly into the production of those articles in which they could scorn all com- petition.^ They had still the greatest spinning mills, dye and glass works. To the production of the purple dye were attached a series of other trades. The circumstance that wool receives such an intense and beautiful colour from the purple shell-fish, kept the wool manufactory especially in activity, and occasioned an immense trade in wool in all the harbours. Not only were Palestine, Arabia, Syria, Egypt, their sources of supply, but also Tarentium, Miletus,^ Attica, and even Coraxi and Massilia.^ The wool, as it arrived, was carefully purified and then hot dyed, and when thus finished was woven,* or else it was worked up undyed, and the texture received stripes and figures in purple by means of printing.^ The finished stuffs were then sent by sea or the caravan trade to all known countries and towns, unless some corsair or Bedouin captain in the immediate neigh- bourhood seized upon the whole cargo. To the south of Tyre lay EcDiPPA and the beautiful harbour of Ptoletniais, in whose neighbourhood, on the little stream of the Belus, were situated the great glass works, which had a reputation hardly inferior to that of the Tyrian dyes. The sand which the Belus deposits, as well as the drift sand driven over by the west wind from the coast, produced the fine material which was melted down in numerous furnaces and worked up into the smooth-shaped, cut and coloured glass, and all kinds of glass and crystal ware.*^ 1 Strabo, xvi. 2; Plin. 5, 17. - Ezekiel xxvii. 8. ' Beer, Handelsgeschichte, 1, 42. * Virgil, Georgics, iii. 307. ' Grothe, Geschichte der Wollmanufaktur im Altertlium, Deutsche v. Jabrsschr. lie, 2, s. 271. « Plin. Hist. Nat. 36, 66, &1 ; Jos. Bell. ii. 10, 2. 64 THE HOLY LAND AT THE TIME OF JESUS. From Dora to Joppa the steepisli coast afforded no greater har- bours, until Herod built the noble artificial harbour of C^sarea, near the ancient Straton's Tower. It surpassed the Pirteus in size, and the new seat of trade offered a dangerous competition to Sidon and Tyre, from the magnificence of its quays, its halls, magazines and bazaars, and all the conveniences of a trade market.^ Moreover, everything here was splendid, modern and practical. Even for Judnea was Ca3sarea the most important town of Palestine. Here the Pioman procurator had his seat; here was the Eoman post, the garrison,^ and in regal times the residence of the reigning Herod.^ Most of the travellers to Jerusalem coming by sea landed here, as, for example, in several of his journeys did the Apostle Paid, touch at Csesarea.* A vagrant population of sailors, workmen and traders soon filled the new town, where from the first the Syrian and Greek elements preponderated.^ Jews and Syrians violently contested the possession of municipal rights, which after the death of Herod passed almost exclusively into the hands of the Syrians, to whom ISTero finally expressly adjudged them.*^ Joppa, whose harbour had never been deemed quite secure, fell into decay at the rise of Csesarea ; yet here things were more favourable to the Jews, and their claim to this place was generally recognized at Eome.'^ Lydda, too, was Jewish f Jamnia passed out of the hands of Herod into those of Salome, and then into those of the empress Livia, so that this municipal district, pleasantly situated on the sea in the valley Sorek, had quite an exceptional position.^ The ancient seat of the Derceto-worship, Ascalon,^^ had, on the other hand, preserved its Syrian character, and even during Herod's reign remained a free city. It was the same with the 1 Bell. i. 21, 7; Ant. xv. 9, 6; Strabo, 16, 2; Plin. v. 14; Ptol. v. 16. ' Acts xxiii. 23, xiiv. 27, xxv. 1 ; Bell. ii. 12, 5. ' Antiq. xix. 8, 2. * Acts ix. 30, xviii.- 22, xxi. 7, 8, xxiii. 23. ' Bell. i. 21, 7. « Bell. ii. 13, 7, 14, 4. ^ Antiq. xiv. 10, 6, xvii. 11, 4; Bell. ii. 18, 10. » Bell. ii. 1, 19, 1. ' Bell. ii. 6, 3 ; Antiq. xviii. 2, 2, 1" Bell. i. 21, 11 ; compare Pliny v. 13. THE NEIGHBOURING NATIONS. G5 ancient town of the Philistines, Ashdod. Gaza was of importance commercially from its near connection with the ^lanitic gulf. To the south of Gaza extended sand-hills and downs ; navigation came to an end ; and Eaphia and Ehinocurura were mentioned merely as stations upon the caravan-road to Egypt.^ These Phcenician towns had together territory to their rear, now of less and now of greater amount, which usually, however, extended as far as the foot of the mountains of Ephraim and Judah. The southern coast is sandy and abounds in shallows and reefs ; the mountains, too, here approach nearer to the shore. The less possibility there was of an important commerce here, the farther was it possible for the Jews to extend, and again contest the possession of these downs on which ancient Israel had done battle with the Philistines. At Ashdod once had stood the house of Dagon, the god of the Philistines, half-man, half-fish, the proper tutelar deity of a seafaring people. This was tlie god by whom Goliath swore, and whose temple it was that Samson at his death pulled down the pillars, so that the house of Dagon was overthrown. Upon these downs the Philistines defeated the wicked sons of Eli, when they put the ark of God in the house of Dagon until Jehovah smote them with emerods. Joppa is the Japho to which Hiram sent the cedar-wood that Solomon caused to be dragged up the steep ravines of the valleys for building the temple in Jerusalem. Here is the roadstead where Jonah embarked on his stormy voyage ; whence, too, Scarus, the legate of Pompey, first in the year 64 B.C. sent petrified fragments of the sea-monster to Eome, which the Greeks asserted were those of the sea-dragon that had threat- ened Andromeda, and the Jews those of the fish that had swal- lowed Jonah.2 g^^t ^Q ti-^e New Testament history also is the district familiar in which Samson caught his foxes and David fought the giant. In this border-land of Jew and Gentile do the traditions of the Apostle Peter place the greatest deeds of 1 Bell. i. 14, 2; Strabo, IC, 2. " Pliny, Hist. Nat. 9, 4; comp. James iii. 7. . F 60 THE HOLY LAND AT THE TIME OF JESUS. their hero. Behind the downs which separated Lydda and Joppa, had Peter healed the Lame man that had kept his bed eight years, and was sick of the palsy, and in consequence of this miracle they led the Apostle along the sandy road to Joppa, where he raised Tabitha, the woman full of good works, from the dead. There, too, on the sea was the house of Simon the tanner, with its flat roof, on to which Peter went up about the sixth hour, and he had a vision, and he became very hungry, and the Lord bade him arise and eat, but only spread unclean food before him which it was not lawful for a Jew to eat, and whilst Simon considered what the vision meant, the messengers of the centurion Cornelius knocked below, who were sent to bid him come to the house of the Gentile.^ In the same Joppa, too, the Epistle of James was probably written, which refers so often to the life of the shore and the traffic in the harbour, the fish and wonders of the sea. " Behold also the ships, though they be so great, and are driven by fierce winds, yet are turned about with a very small rudder whithersoever the desire of the helmsman willeth ;" and the writer had in his mind's eye his Jewish bre- thren travelling through Joppa to Eome, when he says, " Go to, now, ye that say. To-day, or to-morrow, we will go into this city, and will spend there one year, and will traffic and get gain ; whereas ye know not wdiat shall be on the morrow." So as we read the Epistle we everywhere hear the roaring of the sea, as when the writer tells us at the very beginning of the Epistle, "For he that doubteth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed." ^ On the neighbouring road from Gaza the evangelist Philip found the eunuch of queen Candace, who after he had understood the text concerning the suffering servant of God, said to Philip, " See, here is water ; what doth hinder me to be baptized?" and whilst, converted, he went on his way rejoicing, the Spirit caught away Philip to Ashdod. Here, then, was a border- land, and in each of these Phoenician towns was a ^ Acts ix. X. 2 James iii. 4, iv. 13, i. 6. TEE NEIGHBOURING NATIONS. 67 strong Judaic element, whose constant attempts to mould their general character into that of Jewish towns, kept most ran- corous contentious ever on foot. In the Eoman times these places were ^^nited into an alliance- of-towns, and allotted to Syria. Their constitution was chiefly aristocratic. In several, as in Tyre, Biblos and Tripolos, tyi-ants had managed in these troublous times to obtain the mastery for shorter or longer periods, either through the necessity of an undi- vided government or through Eoman influence.^ Judffia in the south was separated from Egypt and Arabia by Idum^a, the only conquest of John Hyrcanus which Pompeius did not object to, on the ground that the isolation of Iduma^a must of necessity be of advantage to the court of Alexandria or of Petra. During the exile, the sons of Edom liad advanced beyond Hebron ; but as the Jewish state again acquired strength, it drove them back once more to the south, until Hyrcanus totally defeated them and compelled them to be circumcised ; while the southern district of the Edomites had been even pre- viously incorporated with the kingdom of tlie Nabateans. A prefect was appointed over Jewish Idum?ea, who had his seat in Gaza, and from his position on the caravan-road that ran from Gaza to ^lana was very powerful. Thus the father of Anti- pater had, as commercial agent between the Arabs and the corporations of Gaza and Ascalon, made himself, under Alex- andra, the wealthiest man in the kingdom ; his son was able to elevate himself to be even administrator of the state, and lay the foundations of the Idumsean dynasty. Another, Costobar, dared to contemplate even the creation of an independent prin- cipality.^ Great authority was absolutely necessary for the Jewish governor, in order to keep these indomitable half- Arabs and their haughty sheikhs in order. Josephus has vi^ddly described how, at times, like a whirlwind war broke out among these wild hordes, when either vengeance called these men into the field, or hunger drove them forth out of their parclicd mea- 1 Autiq. xiv. 3, 2, 12, 1. - Anti<]. xiv. 1, 3, xv. 7, 9. F 2 68 THE HOLY LAND AT THE TIME OF JESUS. dows, or a powerful ally soinided the alarm in their camp. Among the Jews they were considered as savages, whose sheikhs could be persuaded into any undertaking by flattery and pro- mises of adventure. Were they won over, then the chiefs ran from the council among the tents as though they were mad, in order to incite the sons of the desert to war by their bombastic speeches and the waving of their spears. An expedition was to them a festival, and when once set free, they developed a blood- thirstiness which found a horrible delight in carnage and butchery, and only when completely worn out did their lust for blood usually abate.^ In addition there was the characteristic charge which the Jews made against them, of a faithlessness tliat no treaty could restrain. Even their tribal-father Esan is represented by the writer of the Jubilees, with his sons, as not keeping the oath of peace which he swore nnto Israel ; " but they run on their horses like game on the spear about to impale them." Israel conceals himself behind the walls of his fortress, and shoots at the riders with his arrows ; but Esau, reminded of the oath of peace which he has sworn, breaks out into the following words : " When I can change the skin and bristles of a pig so that they become wool, and when horns sprout forth from its head like the horns of a ram, then will I regard thee with brotherly love ; and when wolves make peace with the lambs, then shall there be peace towards thee in my heart." 2 Let us conclude our review of the neighljouring countries with Egypt, where affairs were similar to those in the Syrian towns. Neither the Greek inhabitants of the towns, nor the Egyptian country people, were inclined to be friendly with their Jewish neighbours, who liad forced themselves into their midst by the hundred tliousand, and levied their contributions on the fertile valley of the Nile. Somewliat of the ancient hatred between the land of Mizraim and the children of Israel yet remained, and indeed upon both sides. Even the Jews of these 1 liell. iv. 4, 1, 2. 2 jnijii_ g^^p 37. (3i3ttg. Jarb. 1851, p. 52. THE NEIGHBOURING NATIONS. 69 latter times, as formerly the proj)hets, in- the consciousness of their purer knowledge hated the imposing Egyptian priesthood, with its empty secrets and hierarchical symbols. They beheld in Egypt the incarnation of tlie most abominable heathenism. The command, Thou shalt not make thee any image or likeness, was nowhere more violated than on the banks of the Nile. Even Philo ventures the remark that the Egyptian religion was the grossest, in that it did not pay divine honour to heaven, but remained grovelling on the earth and in the mud of the Nile and its inhabitants.^ Josephus declares in utmost scorn, that the Egyptians pray to crocodiles and apes, asps and cats f and the description which the Apostle Paul gives of the abominations of heathenism, that it changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things,^ had evidently Egyptian heathenism in his mind's eye also. The Jews themselves attributed the aversion, too, which they experienced in Alex- andria to a reaction of the ancestral tribal enmity ; and although the delight of the Hellenists in scandal and defamation gave the Jews most trouble, yet Josephus considers that the old Egyptian hatred of the children of Pharaoh was the true cause of all their calumniation. " As long," he says, " as Alexandria was in the hands of the Greeks and Macedonians, these raised no sedition against us, but permitted the ancient solemnities of worship to be observed. But when the number of Egyptians in Alexandria was increased, then discontent likewise sprang up." * They revived the ancient scandal that the children of Israel that Moses had led out of Egypt had been lepers, whom Pharaoh Amenophis desired to banish from the land.^ And now Greeks and natives outbid each other in calumniating their Je.vish ■ 1 Philo, Mos. lib. iii., Frankfurt edition, 682; Mang. 164; Leg. ad Caj. M. 569. Compare, too, Wisdom of Solomon, xi. 15, xii. 24, 27, xiii. 1 ; also the passionate pas- sage, Jubil. 48, 49. 2 Jos. c. Apion, ii. 7, 13; Sib. Fragment, ii. verse 21, &c., Friedlieb. page 5. ^ Romans i. 2-3. ^ Jos. c. Apion, ii. 6, ' Jos. c. Apion, i. 26. 70 THE HOLY LAND AT THE TIME OF JESUS. . fellow-citizens, wlio, as favourites of the Eomans and as com- petitors in trade, were everywliere in their way. The most passionate contests between both parties were continued through- out the entire New Testament period, and could finally only come to an end with the defeat of the Alexandrian Judaism. SeriJixb- gibbioii. THE STATE OF PUBLIC AFFAIKS. THE STATE OF PUBLIC AEFAIES. 1. The Civil and Ecclesiastical Powers. The destruction of the kingdom of the Seleucidae, which had enabled so many robber-princes between the Mediterranean and the Euphrates to gain a territorial independence, had been of advantage to the Maccabean dynasty also in their labours for their nation.^ In the brilliant successes of their kings, the Jewish people had willingly forgotten that a monarchical form of government was essentially opposed to the Law, and their religious scruples were easily quieted by the plea that the king- ship was only " until there should arise a faithful prophet."^ The tables of the constitution set up on Mount Zion charged the prince [i^'^W^ )7yov/xevos], in the person of the Maccaljean Simon, to take care of the sanctuary, and command of the army and the fortresses, and execution of public documents in the king's name and commission. " He alone should be clothed in purple and wear gold, and that it should be lawful for none of the people or priests to break any of his commands, or to gather an assembly without him." ^ At the time when the first book of the Maccabees was com- ^ Tacitus, Hist. v. 5. ' The bitter condemnation of the Maccabean friendship with the Romana in the prophecy of Moses belongs to a much later period. ^ 1 Maccabees xiv. 41 — 4.5. 74 THE STATE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS. posed, those at the court of Hyi'canus regarded their recovered sovereignty with pride, and recounted how foreign ambassadors had with astonishment beheld the glory of Simon and the cup- board of gold and silver plate, and his great attendance.^ Gladly did their thoughts revert to that first period of the Maccabees, which now they saw in the light of idealism. " Then," declares the writer of the first book of the Maccabees, •' did they till their ground in peace, and the earth gave her increase and the trees of the field their fruit. The ancient men sat all in the streets communing together of good things, and the young men clothed themselves with the honours of war. The king provided victuals for the cities, and set in them all manner of munition, so that his honourable name was renowned unto the end of the earth. He made peace in the land, and Israel rejoiced with great joy : for every man sat under his vine and his fig-tree, and there was none to fray them : neither was there any left in the land to fight against them. And Simon strengthened all those of his people that were brought low : the law he searched out: and every contemner of the law and wicked person he took away. He beautified the sanctuary and multiplied the vessels of the temple." ^ The more complete in every respect was the contrast under the dominion of the Herods. The Idumseans, certainly, had received the sceptre from the hands of the Eomans invested with the same authority as that which Cajsar, in the year 48 B.C., had through various orders conferred upon the last of the Maccabees;^ yet not, as the Maccabees, with the trophies of the battles they had won in their hands, but by the favour of the nation's ene- mies had they mounted the throne upon Mount Zion. They were neither the guardians of the theocratic life nor the repre- sentatives of the national power, but the deputies of the Gentile emperor, who had raised their path to sovereignty over the corpses of the bravest of patriots and an illustrious royal house. Instead of enjoying an honourable peace, Israel had now to ^ 1 Maccabees xv. 32. ^ \ Maccabees xiv. 8—15. ^ Antiq. xiv. 10. THE CIVIL AND ECCLESIASTIOAL POWERS. 75 figlit the battles of the Eomans, but no one in consequence longed " to wear the garments" of the Herods, or adorn them- selves with " the honours of war." Even abroad, the Jewish name had, with the exception of that of the first Herod, no longer the same sound as in the time of the Maccabean Simon.^ The tyrant of Jerusalem or the tetrarch of Galilee was hardly as highly estimated by the Eomans as any other rex socius of the East, whose " barefooted kings" ^ were at the most treated by the citizens of the imperial city with a sovereign disdain. But the Herods especially, from theu- exceptional devotion and oriental self-surrender, were the object of Roman scorn, although at the same time they appear to have been not entirely incon- siderable as teachers of oriental despotism to the princes, and as servile courtiers to the Ca3sars.^ Within their own borders, however, these devoted courtiers of the imperial court were unconditional lords of life and death, except that at times a quos ego of the Syrian proconsul or a hint of the emperor reminded them that a lord was placed over them, who without much scrapie could dispose of their crown, even of their liberty and Hfe.^ A kingship thus constituted was little capable of rallying the nation around it. The more, therefore, did all the national sympathies cluster around the temple, the life of which was the people's joy and pride. In it the nation found its centre, and gladly would have again recognized in the high-priest the head of the country. The kingship was now perceived to be an in- stitution thoroughly inconsistent with the theocracy, and it was openly made a subject of special lamentation that it had ever been tolerated.^ Under such circumstances, the dignity of the high-priest was of itself raised in popular estimation, and the interest which the whole people took in the services of the ^ 1 Maccabees xv. 15. * Juvenal, Satires, vi. 159. 3 Strabo, xvi. 2 ; Cass. Dio. 59, 24. * Bell. iii. 10, 10, i. 27, 4; Autiq. xvi. 9, 3, xix. 8, 1. ^ Antiq. xiv. 3, 2, xvii. 11, 1. 76 THE STATE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS. temple, gave to the bearer of the highest office in the temple an ideal importance, which stood in all the greater contrast to its practical insignificance. The son of Sirach, who wrote at the commencement of the subjection to Syria, has described for us, under similar conditions, the grounds on which this secret of the high-priest's authority rested. He celebrates it as the reflection of the sacred functions, of which the brightness beamed back upon the bearer of the office, and invested him with the glory of a genuine majesty. " When Simon, the son of Onias," he declares in a retrospect of the past, " came forth from behind the curtain of the sanctuary, he was as the morning star in the midst of a cloud, and as the moon at the full : and as the sun shining upon the temple of the JNIost High, and as the rainbow giving li^ht in the bricfht clouds : as fire and incense in the censer, and as a vessel of beaten gold set with all manner of precious stones. When he put on the robe of honour, and was clothed with the perfection of glory, when he went up to the holy altar, he enlightened tlie whole sanctuary. When he took the portions out of the priests' hands, he himself stood by the hearth of the altar, compassed with his brethren round about, as a young cedar in Lebanon ; and they as palm-trees compassed they him round about. So were all the sons of Aaron in their glory, and had the oblations of the Lord in their hands, before all the congregation of Israel. And finishing the service at tlie altar, that he might adorn the offering of the Most High Al- mighty, he stretched out his hand to the cup, and poured of the blood of the grape ; he poured it out at the foot of the altar, a sweet-smelling savour unto the Most High King of all. Then shouted the sons of Aaron, and sounded the silver trumpets, and made a great noise, to be heard for a remembrance before the Most High. Then all the people together hasted, and fell down to the earth upon their faces to worsliip their Lord God Al- mighty the Most High. The singers also sang praises with their voices ; with great variety of sounds was there made sweet melody. And the people besought the Lord the Most High, by THE CIVIL AJ\B ECCLESIASTICAL POJVERS. 77 prayer before him that is merciful, till the solemnity of the Lord was ended and they had finished his service. Then he went down, and lifted up his hands over the ^vhole congregation of the children of Israel, to give the blessing of the Lord with his lips and to rejoice in his name. And they bowed themselves down to worship the second time, that they might receive a blessing from the Most High." ^ What the son of Sirach had felt under the Syrians was now the experience of the whole people, and witnesses enough can be found to testify to the impression that the temple service made at each period upon the mass of the population, and to the rever- . ence with which they bowed down before their priests.^ When at the feast of Tabernacles, in the year 35 B.C., there was again a Maccabee ofiiciating as high-priest — the youthful Aristobulus — and having most punctiliously performed all the ceremonies, and the beauty of his person being heightened by his splendid adornments, he stepped forth from the temple, the people dis- played so much turbulence in their rejoicings, and greeted him with such unbounded cheers, that Herod felt compelled to put the high-priest, although he had himself elected him and he was brother to his wife, out of the way, in order that a further- going tumult should not arise at some future feast.^ Here was the reason, too, why the Eomans retained the robes of the high- priest in the castle of Antonia, as though they were a talisman which conferred magic powers upon their wearer, and exerted a dangerous influence upon the feelings. These robes were only brought forth from time to time for use at the feasts, and then were immediately taken into safe keeping again. But the very splendour of this highest office in the temple, which the king or the procurator had it in his power to bestow, was, on the other hand, a most potent instrument for corrupting the temple aristocracy, and keeping the first families of the theocracy, through their hopes of higher preferment, in due subjection. ^ Ecclesiasticus 1., comp. xlv. 7, &c. ^ Compare Bell. ii. 15, 24, 17, 4. =* Aiiliq. XV. 3, 3. 78 THE STATE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS. The national hope, consequently, nowhere found less ardent suit- port than among the highest priestly classes, who, more than any others, ought to have* been its representatives. This, however, had been the state of affairs ever since Herod had nominated to the high-priesthood ^ Simon, son of Boiithus, whose daughter he wanted for his wife, and out of whose relatives he created a new aristocracy, which, from its relationship to the royal house, pos- sessed itself, in common with the ancient priestly classes, of the highest posts. An especially hated and unworthy branch of this latter party were the sons of Simon Cantheras, who in the last years of the state contested the high-priesthood with the family of Annas.^ Besides this house of Annas, whose five sons enjoyed the highest office of the theocracy in succession,^ and that neither in Josephus, nor in the Gospels, nor in the Talmud bear a good reputation, the sons of Phabi and Kamhith play a prominent part in the annals of the high-priesthood;* conse- quently there were four families especially between whose sons the sacred frontlet circulated. Whether they were Herodians or not, yet they were all high-priests, through the favour either of the procurators or of the Herods. Herod elevated and deposed five high-priests, Archelaus three, Valerius Gratus again five, and so it proceeded, certainly not to the advantage of the high office. The unanimity also was not of the best, since the deposed priests retained certain qualifications, and in certain cases had to officiate in place of the actual high-priest. Seldom has an aristocracy endured permanently a foreign sovereign without injury to its patriotism and its true nobility of character. Thus did it come about here, that the people often hated the very persons whom, as representatives of the sanctuary and the nation, they would most gladly have revered ; and although even at the time of Herod the deposition of a high-priest was felt as an insult to tlie temple,^ in that according to the law 1 Antiq. xv. 9, 3. " Antiq. xix. 6, 2, 4, 8, 1. =» Antiq. xx. 9, 1. ■* Antiq. XX. 8, 8, xv. 9, 3, xviii. 2, 2, xx. 1, 3, 5, 2; compare Schiirer, the dpx'^' pur in New Test. Stuil. und Grit. 1872, 4, p. 642. •' Auti(i. XV. 3, 1. THE CIVIL AND ECCLESIASTICAL POWERS. 79 the office was for life, yet not seldom were the people now in the position of themselves begging their foreign lords to depose some unpopular bearer of this highest office.^ With bitter re- proaches does the Talmud mention the names of the high-priests of this latter period, and by its means is a lamentation over the high-priestly families preserved, an echo of which is found even in Joseplms.^ " Woe is me," cries a Jerusalemite of the last days — " Woe is me on account of the house of Boiithus, woe is me on account of its spear ! Woe is me on account of the house of Cantheras, woe is me on account of its pen ! Woe is me on account of the house of Annas, woe is me on account of its venomous hiss ! Woe is me on account of the house of Ismael ben Phabi, woe is me on account of its fist ! They are high- priests, their sons are keepers of the treasury, their sons-in-law are guardians of the temple, and their servants beat the people with staves I"^ On the other hand, the relations with the inferior classes of the priests were of a better character, as they stood in inti- mate connection with the people. The sons of Aaron still received, as in the time of the ancient temple, the gifts of the poor man, and shared the sacrifice witli him. Tliey participated in the family festivals, purified at the altar the young mother, and by their barbaric agencies assisted jealous husbands in dragging into light the guilt of their faithless wives. Neverthe- less, the heart of Israel was no longer in the temple, but in the synagogue. The true spirit of Judaism withdrew more and more from the priesthood into the schools of the Eabbis, as the highest of which the Sanhedrin itself can be counted, while at the same time it represented as a public court all that was left the people of executive power and self-government. ^ Antiq. xviii. 2, 1, xx. 9, 1. - Especially in Antiq. xx. 10. ' Thosseftha Menachotli in Pessacliim, 57 a. 80 THE STATE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS. 2. The Sanhedein. The high court at Jerusalem — which had been instituted,^ as it appears, in imitation of the earlier assemhly of elders under tlie Maccal)ees — remained in force, with functions somewhat contracted under Herod, and somewhat more enlarged under the procurators. It consisted of seventy-one members, at whose head stood the chief of the Sanhedrin (the Nassi W'^iE'an) and a president (Ab-bet-diu "J"^"? rr^S ^S). This assembly was com- posed of the chief- priests, the elders of the people, and the most renowned of the Eabbis.^ Their sittings were held in the so- called temple -synagogue, which until the year 30 B. C. was situated on the confines of the inner courts, with one door leading into the court of the priests, and another into that of the Israelites, when the scribes discovered that the judicial office, as a secular one, belonged to the outer court ; whereupon it is reported that a new basilica was built there, in the immediate neighbourhood of the eastern gate.^ Tlie sittings were held daily, after the morning sacrifice, the festivals of course being excepted. If twenty-three members were present, the assembly was qualified to act, and the business began. The members sat in a half- circle, the Nassi in the centre. Opposite were three rows of benches for the scholars of the Sanhedrists, who were intended in this manner to make themselves acquainted with the law. At times the high-priest acted as president.* As to tlie authority of the Sanhedrin we have no definite information. Certain is it that it was the legitimate court for deciding questions of public worsliip, for the authentic interpretation of controverted passages of Scripture, for appointing the festivals, the new moons, and similar theocratic matters. Difficult points of law 1 Compare Gratz, Geschichte der Juden, iii. 88 ff. " Mark viii. 31, &c. ; Matthew xxvi. 3, 57, 69, xxvii. 41; Acts v. 21, vi. 12, xxii. 30, &c. ^ Hcizfcld, Gescliicbtc Israel, ii. 394. " Antiq. xx. 9, 1 ; Acts iv. 23, &c. THE SANHEDRIN. 81 in questions of marriage and inheritance, the determination of the formularies of contracts, deeds of gift, betrothals and divorce, which were valid according to the law, formed the object of their trans- actions.^ The Sanhedrin, consequently, was a theological court, to whose jurisdiction belonged all offences against the theocratic principles of the state. For the ordinary civil affairs there were the Sanhedrin, composed of seven members, of the separate toAvns. But from the way in which the entire life of the citizen had been cast in the mould of the theocracy, had it become possible for this court to adjudge nearly everything, when it so chose, to be within its jurisdiction. Josephus incidentally makes the San- hedrin lay down the principle, that without its assent no criminal may be executed, and call the young Herod to account for a violation of this principle.^ Jesus is summoned on a charge of assuming the title of Messiah ; Peter and John stand before the high council on a charge of promoting heresy;^ Stephen on a charge of blasphemy;* Paul on a charge of violating a temple by-law.^ In these religious matters the court exercised an authority which was recognized even abroad, as Paul's journey to Damascus proves. The court must have had a pretty fre- quent intercourse with the country synagogues, on account of settling the festivals. The astronomical reckoning of the festi- vals especially, could not be everywhere determined, but were published at Jerusalem, where the Sanhedrin had to take in charge the calculating of the phases of the moon, and the settling when the new moon began. Incidentally also do we learn that foreign Jews sent their genealogical registers to the Sanhedrin for investigation and confirmation.** If we may believe the supplementary descriptions of the Eabbis, then the practice of the court in judicial cases was very humane. The voting began with the youngest member, in order 1 References in Jost, Geschichte des Judenthums und seiner Sectcn, i. p. 127; Gratz, Geschichte der Juden, iii. p. 91. * Antiq. xiv. 9, 3. ^ _^cts iv. 1, v. 27. * Acts vi. 13. ' Acts xxi. 28. ^ Contr. Apion, i. 7. 82 THE STATE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS. that the opinion of the IsTassi might not prejudice even the least firm of the members. Even the audience miglit take part in their debates, if any one had something to say in favour of the accused. Mercy especially, should raise her voice louder than strict law ; for while for an acquittal a bare majority was suffi- cient, for condemnation a vote more than the majority was demanded. " Let every one judge according to the balance of equity," " Condemn not thy neighbour until thou stand in his place," are maxims which influential Pharisees had as members of the Sanhedrin impressed upon it. The usual punishments were fines of money and corporal punishments, such as were generally inflicted in Israel. " Whosoever will not do the law of thy God and the law of the king, let judgment be executed speedily upon him, whether it be unto death, or to banishment, or to confiscation of goods or to imprisonment." ^ The capital punishments were stoning,^ burning,^ beheading^ and strangu- lation.^ The Sanhedrin, however, had no power, either under Herod or under the Roman procurators, of carrying its punish- ment of death into execution, but could only pass sentence in such cases ; and the Roman authorities were seldom inclined to confirm the sentence of death for violations of Jewish customs that were so hateful to them.^ The Jews, on the other hand, maintained that, as their law had been guaranteed, the infliction of the penalty of death in the cases prescribed by the law was acknowledged by the emperor, so that it was the duty of the procurator simply to carry out their sentence of death when thus contained in the law, and on his failing to do so they were bound to appeal to the emperor, as this was a breach of their privileges. Many of the procurators, consequently, had executed the law in all its .strictness, although no crime had been com- mitted according to the Roman code.'^ 1 Ezra vii. 26. * Acts vii. 59. ^ 1 Maccabees iii. 5; Bell. i. 33, 4. * Mark vi. 27. ^ Bell. i. 27, 6. ^ Mark xv. 10; Acts xxiv. 22 ; Antiq. xx. 9, 1. ' Bell. ii. 12, 2, for the case of Cumanus, and Mark xv. 15 for the case of Pilate. THE SANEEDRIN. 83 Besides tliis highest court of justice, there existed in every town in Palestine a local Sanhedrin composed of seven judges, whom the people treated with the reverence wliich orientals display" to their rulers.^ At the time of the restoration under Ezra, these Sanhedrin were formed of Levites, but gradually a separate rank of scribes had grown up, whose knowledge of the law surpassed that of the priestly rank, and in time only two Levitical members were required.^ To these local Sanhedrin all civil and criminal matters were carried. Such cases were only referred to the Sanhedrin at Jerusalem, when the judges were unable to give an unanimous opinion as to the interpretation of the law, and when it was necessary to decide before all what in this case was the meaning of the law.^ Sittings were held on the market-days, that is on the second and fifth day of the week (Monday and Thursday), in order that the country people might have an opportunity of appealing to the law when they came to market. The transactions took place in the synagogue,* and those convicted by the testimony of two witnesses^ were, according to oriental custom, immediately punished under the eyes of the judges, in those cases in which corporal punishment had been awarded.^ " Beware of men," says Jesus, " for they will deliver you up to Sanhedrin, and they will scourge you in their synagogues."^ More than forty stripes were not, according to Deuteronomy xxv. 3, to be given to any criminal. But since the Eabbis supposed that it might be possible for the execu- tioner to make a mistake in the counting, and thus the law be unwittingly exceeded, only thirty-nine stripes might be inflicted. " Of the Jews five times received I forty stripes save one," says Paul.^ That the executioner should strike so heavily that even the twentieth blow should be mortal, was forbidden by no clause, and thus, in spite of this provision, the punishment at times 1 Antiq. iv. 8, 14; Ecclesiasticus x. 5. ^ Antiq. iv. 8, 14. ^ Ibid. * Vita, Jos. 54; Mark xiii. 9; Luke xii. 11, xxi. 12; Acts xxvi. 11. 5 Vita, Jos. 49. ^ Matt. x. 17, xxiii. 34. ^ Matt. X. 17. ^ 2 Cor. xi. 24; Sanhedr. 1, 2. G 2 84 THE STATE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS. caused the death of the delinquent. In civil cases imj)rison- nient was permitted, in order that the creditor might obtain his due. "Agree with thy creditor on the way to the judgment, in order that thou mayest be set free," does it say in the parable, " lest the creditor deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and the officer cast thee into prison. Verily I say unto thee, thou shalt by no means come out thence till thou hast paid the uttermost farthing." In such cases a single judge, presumably with two assistants,^ seems to have formed the bench ; for in other passages also in the New Testament, " the judge" is mentioned, as in the case of the rest- loving cadi who gives the widow her right, " lest at the last she come and smite him." ^ In general, these Jewish courts of justice, especially the High Council, were more powerful under direct Eoman jurisdiction than under the Herods ; for the Eomans contented themselves with the political power, and on principle left the special customs and arrangements to the self-government of the people. 3. The Synagogue. When the synagogue, in spite of its more favourable position under the Eoman dominion, was nevertheless its sworn enemy, this was in accordance with its general policy as the nursery of the Mosaic life. The school had in course of time become the asylum where the theocratic ideal, which had no political ex- istence, had been preserved. This position of the synagogue extended back into the times when the temple officials had been apostate priests, the chief authorities half-Gentile tyrants, and the public life overshadowed by the influence of Egyptian or Syrian dominion ; nay, even further back than this did it extend to the Persian times. Abroad the synagogue formed the 1 Sanh. 1, 1—3 ; Exodus xxi. 22. ^ Luke xviii. 5, THE SYNAGOGUE. 85 centre, which united the Diaspora around the Law of the Fathers. " Our liouses of prayer in the several towns are none other than institutions for teaching prudence and hravery, tem- perance and justice, piety and holiness ; in short, every virtue which the human and the divine recognizes and enjoins," declares the great scribe of Alexandria.^ For Israel in the dis- persion, as well as for the inhabitants of the provincial towns in Palestine, the divine service in the synagogue was intended to serve instead of particijjation in the worship in the temple at Jerusalem, and was on that account held at the hour of sacrifice at the temple. The sacrifice brought to God in the synagogue was prayer, and as in the temple on the feast days the number of sacrifices was increased, so also was the number of prayers in tlie synagogue on festive occasions.^ As it was the duty of every Israelite to take a part at the hour of sacrifice in this symbolical manner in the temple life,^ so, in time, synagogues had arisen everywhere, in order that the faithful might together fulfil this duty. At the time of Jesus, every small town in Palestine, as Naza- reth or Capernaum, had at least one synagogue and several places of prayer (proseucha), which were enclosed with walls, and in order to facilitate the purifications required by law, were, when possible, by the side of running water, or even on the lake-side or sea-shore f whilst the synagogues were placed upon some eminence, from which they overlooked the liouses of the town, or at the corners of the streets and gateways, in remembrance of the words of the Proverbs : " At the corner of busy streets does Wisdom call, at the entrance of the gates of the city she uttereth her words." ^ Tiie synagogue buildings of this period were for 1 Philo, Mos. ed. Mang. p. 168, Frankfurt edition, 685. ^ Compare Jest, Geschichte der Juden und seiner Sekten, i. 168. ' Compare Daniel vi. 10. * Acts xvi. 13; Antiq. xiv. 10, 23; Philo in Flacc. Mang. p. 535, Frankfurt edi- tion, 982; Juvenal, Satires, xiv. 104. 5 Proverbs i. 21 ; Luke iv. 28, 29. 86 THE STATE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS. the most part simple rectangular halls with a portico, and deco- rated with the tasteless spiral ornamentation of Jewish art.^ Especially on the Sabbath and feast-days, but also on Mon- days and Thursdays, the two market-days, when the country people brought their fruit to the market and their disputes to the judges, did the people assemble here for prayer and for hearing the proper lessons from the Scriptures.^ The women sat in seats set apart for them.^ The foremost benches were occupied by the heads of the synagogue and the most reputed scribes, in order that "when the chief of the synagogue summoned them to read the Thorah (Pentateuch), they could at once mount the reader's platform.* Pious ambition often elbowed its way to these benches, or the richer garments of the respectable won them from the indigent.^ Each of these synagogues had a special president, the chief of the synagogue (archisynagogos), who conducted all the affairs of the synagogue and preserved order at the meetings.^ To assist him was a body of presbyters, who made themselves of service partly in the regular devotions of the congregation, and partly in the financial affairs of the syna- gogue.'^ The other of&cials were the reciter of the prayers, who at the same time acted as secretary and messenger (apostle) of the synagogue in its external affairs,^ the attendant (synagogue mi- nister),^ and the collectors of alms (deacons). It seems that at times certain sections of the people united in building a syna- gogue, whose support then rested upon them. Thus we learn that in Jerusalem there were not less than 480 synagogues,^*^ 1 Kenan, Vie de Jesus, c. viii. 2 Hier. Meg. f. 75, 1 ; Gratz, Geschichte der Juden, 4, 97. 3 Philo, De Vita Contempl. ii. 476, Frankfurt edition, 894. * The pulpit occurs as early as Nehemiah viii. 4 and ix. 4 ; the irputTOKaOtSQiai, Matt, xxiii. 6. » Compare Matt. vi. 2, 5, xxiii. 6. « Matt. ix. 18 ; Luke xiii. 14 ; Acts xviii. 17. "> Acts xiii. 15 ; Mark v. 22 ; 1 Tim. v. 17 ; Jarchi ad Sot. 7, 7. * Rev. ji. 1 ; Acts xiii. 2, 15; 2 Cor. viii. 23. » Luke iv. 20. i» Megill. f. 73, 4. THE tSYKAGOGUE. 87 synagogues of the Cyrenians, Alexandrians, Cilicians, and of the inhabitants of other districts. It seems that at the feasts they proved, of assistance to the guests coming from their own native country, and, moreover, attached the scholars of the Eabbis, at their first arrival, to themselves.^ That rich private individuals, too, built synagogues for poor communities, we learn from the incident of the centurion of Capernaum.^ The religious service of the synagogue was an unusually protracted one. It began with prayers, which were offered standing ; their number being increased on feast-days, as on these occasions a richer sacrifice of prayer was deemed becoming. Hence arose the " vain repetitions" which Jesus condemned in his contemporaries.^ Eabbi Chanina, on the other hand, how- ever, declared that " he who makes long his prayers cometh not empty away."* After the reader had recited the prayers enjoined by the law, the congregation joining in, the sacred rolls were taken by the minister of the synagogue out of the ark, and then those appointed read a section from the Thorah (Pentateuch), which was divided for this purpose into 154 Parashoth. These ought to be quite read through in the course of three years ; they still always occupy the first place in the service, since the main object of the whole was to instruct the people in the law.^ Verse for verse, alternating with the translator appointed, did the person selected read the text and the translator declared the Targum, as the Aramaic paraphrase is termed.'' Thus had it been introduced by Ezra himself, with the exception that then the Levite who was reading added the translation. " They read in the book of the law of God clearly, and gave the sense, and explained the meaning whilst reading. And the people w^ere glad, because they had understood the words that were declared unto them." ''' In several synagogues the paraphrase appears ^ Acts vi. 9. ' Liike vii. 5. ' Matt. vi. 7. * Berach. Bab. p. 32 b. * Apion, 2, 17 ; 2 Cor. iii. 15 ; Acts xr. 21. ' Meg. 4, 10 ; Sot. f. 39, 2 ; Zunz, die gottesdienstlichen Yoitriige der Judcn, p. 3, C2. ^ Nehemiah viii. 8. 88 THE STATE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS. even at this time to have been in Greek/ as the people, gene- rally, everywhere understood this language.^ Eesponses with the congregation followed the reading and paraphrase of the Thorah, after which they turned to the prophets.^ They, also, were separated into sections, called Haphtaroth, for the same purpose. When the prophets had been read and trans- lated, the person who had been called upon, after returning the roll to the minister, gave a practical application in the Midrash.* " In his discourse," says Jesus, " does the true scribe, like an householder, bring forth from his treasures things new and old ;" just as he himself in the synagogue at Nazareth had referred to the well-known stories of Naaman the Syrian and the widow of Sarepta.^ In like manner does the book of Eccle- siasticus, xxxix. 1, describe the utterance of the scribe. " He seeks out the wisdom of the ancients, and is occupied in their prophecies. The sayings of renowned men does he observe, and to the deep meaning of their proverbs does he penetrate. Obscure parables does he seek out, and with sayings is he con- versant." The Son of Sirach has bequeathed us a series of such sayings in the style of the Midrash, in the section which begins with the words, " Yet have I more to say which I have thought upon : for I am filled as the moon at the full." '^ In the same manner in the writings of Philo, as, for example, in his devotional account of the history of Moses, or in the paraphrase of Genesis in the book of Jubilees, the application of the sacred history, as was usual in the Midrash, can be recognized. Of the manner in which the scribe of medium rank at this time penetrated to the deep meaning of the proverbs and sought out obscure parables, it will be necessary to speak hereafter. ^ Acts vi. 9. ^ Acts xxii. 2; Bell. Jud. ii. 13, 7; compare, for the contest of Rabbis against the practice, GfriJrer, Jahrhundert des Heils, 115. ^ Acta xiii. 15. * Luke iv. 17; Philo, Mangold, ii. 458, 630. Compare the article Synagoge, by Leyer, in Herzog's Encyklopiidie. ^ Matthew xiii. 52; Luke iv. 20. « Ecclesiasticus xx.xix. 12. THE SYNAOOOUE. 89 Those were, according to our judgment, long services, which continued until the evening, and kept young and old togetlier speechless while the law was read, and then again during an excited debate, which was often broken by stormy calls to order ; while outside before the synagogue, with all the publicity and talkativeness of oriental life, there was a farther discussion of the question which within was treated in a more solemn and scholastic manner.^ Thus the synagogue was a true school for the nation, and Josephus boasts with justice, that by its means the law was made the common possession of all ; and that while among the Eomans even procurators and proconsuls had to take tliose skilled in law with them into their provinces, in the Jewish household every servant-maid knew from the religious service what Moses had ordained in the law in every single instance.^ Had the character of the synagogue, consequently, cherished a certain average skill in the law among the common people, yet from itself had it also developed a class of zealous scholars who made the study of the law their profession. For some long time past had there existed, in addition to the Levites, who originally, according to Ezra's plan, were to have been instructors of the people, a class of lawyers who excelled the Levites in the reading of the Hebrew text, in the Targum and Mid- rash, and from them did the synagogues usually select tlieir preachers, and the Sanhedrin their members. They were still always called " Sopherim," D'^^DD, the scribes or writers, be- cause they had been the first who possessed the power of writing exact and proper copies of the law for newly-erected synagogues ; but at our time under this name were compre- hended all the men whose hearts were prepared, as had formerly been Ezra's, to seek the law of the Lord, and to do it, and to teach in Israel statutes and judgments.^ These men had formed ^ Luke iv. 16, 20; Acts xiii. 15; Philo, i^rjytliTai /(exP' <^X^^°''' ^f'^'/C oi^''<^C- Philo, (1. sept, et fest, Frankfurt edition, 1178; compare 877. Mangokl, ii. 458, 0:30; compare Keim, Der gescliichtliche Christus, p. 72 ; Jesus of Nazara, Theological Trans- lation Fund Library, i. 433. "^ Josephus, c. Apion, ii. 17, 18, 19. ^ Ezra vii. 10. 90 THE STATE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS. themselves into a special class, since the study of the law demanded the entire man, and could not be pursued merely as an accessory occujDation. " The wisdom of the scribe cometh by opportunity of leisure," says the Son of Sirach,^ " and he that hath little business shall become wise. How can he get wisdom that holdeth the plough and that glorieth in the goad, that driveth oxen and is occupied in their labours, and whose talk is of bullocks ? He giveth his mind to make furrows, and is dili- gent to give the kine fodder. So every carpenter and work- master, that laboureth night and day, and they that cut and grave seals, the smith also sitting by the anvU, so doth the potter turning the wheel about with his feet ; all these trust to their hands, and every one is wise in his work. Without them can no city be built, nor any dwell therein, nor go up and down. But in the council shall they not excel, nor sit upon the judge's seat, nor search in the book of the law : they cannot declare justice and judgment; and where parables are spoken they shall not be found." These circumstances, arising from the nature of the thing itself, had caused the scribes to become organized into a special class, which charged itself with the care of the study of the law, as to the Levites was relegated the charge of the sanctuary. Celebrated masters of the law collected disciples around them- selves, among whom were found men of every age, married" and unmarried. The master imparted his instruction in the syna- gogue or in his own house. In Jerusalem, where the most numerous schools were found,^ several of the chambers in the fore-courts of the temple were set aside for this purpose.^ The teacher sat upon a raised seat, while the scholars were at his feet.^ The method of instruction was at once disputatory and catechetical, whUe the auditors and scholars in turn propounded questions to the teacher.^ Had a scholar, after several years' instruction, advanced so far that the teacher considered him 1 Ecclesiasticus xxxviii. 24 — 3i. ^ So Hillel, according to b. Sota, 21 a. » Antiq. xvii. 6, 2 ; Bell. i. 33, 2. * Sanh. 2, 2 ; Luke ii. 46. « Acts xxii. 3. ^ Luke ii. 46. THE SYNAGOGUE. 91 competent to take a part, he consecrated him as a Chaber, a companion. As such, he sat to the right of his master, and had a share in the instruction. Did he desire to found a scJiool of his own, or to settle in the country on his own account, he had to be first consecrated as Eabbi by the Semichah. This conse- cration took place with all solemnity in the synagogue. The candidate for ordination was seated upon the bench of the teachers ; the key, the symbol of the exposition of the Scripture, was handed to him ■} and by the solemn imposition of hands was the dignity of Eabbi conferred upon him. Then he was com- petent to discharge all the duties for which a Eabbi was needed. Although the education of the professional classes was at this time entirely scholastic, yet the Eabbi could raise himself by his own force of character from the ranks of the people ; for there was but one kind of learning, that of the law, whose elements were the common property of all. The result was, that many an Israelite could only turn to this profession in the riper years of life, and thus not seldom were married men the scholars of the Eabbis.^ There was nothing unusual, therefore, in Jesus calling Matthew from the receipt of custom, or Simon and Andrew from their nets, to become disciples ; just as he himself had at a pretty advanced age laid aside his carpenter's axe in order to preach for the first time in the synagogue the tidings of the kingdom of God. To at least have learned some handicraft was an absolute necessity for the Eabbi, in order that whenever he had no other means of support, he might be able to pro- vide for himself by his own labour. For the teaching of the law for money was repugnant to the idea which was enter- tained of the dignity of the law. " Freely ye received, freely give," declares Jesus ; and still more beautifully do the teachers express the same thought in the words of Eabbi Zadok : " Do ^ Matt, xxiii. 2, 13; Luke xi. 52. Compare the commentators on the passage and Jost; also Schiittgen, Horae Hebraicoe, ii. 894; Gfrorer, GeschicLte des Urchristen- thum, i. 155. ^ Herzfeld, GeschicLte des Volkes Israel, p. 266. 92 THE STATE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS. not make of the law a crown to glory in it, nor an axe to live by it/'^ Thus every Eabbi had to provide for himself by the work of his o-wn hands. Eabbi Hillel was a day- labourer, a Eabbi Joshua was a needle-maker, Eabbi Isaac a smith, Eabbi Judah a baker, Eabbi Simeon a carpet-maker, Eabbi Jochanan a shoemaker, and Paul a weaver of goats' hair, and so forth. ^ This inflicted no injury upon their authority ; on the contrary, the people readily transferred the reverence which they felt for their national law to the teachers of the law, in a most evident manner. They greeted these teachers in the streets, called them reverently, Eabbi,^ or even, when one met a teacher who was recognized by all as a master, Eabban.* They were allotted the first seat in the synagogues f and as it was a part of good manners to talk about the Thorah at table,*^ the Eabbi was absent at no festive table, where the upper place at the table was reserved for him.^ A certain solemnity marked the appearance of the scribe of this period, in whom the marks of the orthodox Jews, the shew-threads and the Tephillin, were not wanting. Even the Son of Sirach had made the remark, that God has distributed the gifts of fortune variously, but upon the scribe had he laid dignity.^ Jesus, who forbids his own disciples to be called Masters in the Eabbinical manner, has also ridiculed the pompous bearing of the Sopherim, and his utterances pre- sent us with an insurpassable description of the solemnity with which this class paraded itself in public. In general, however, the people were exceedingly proud of their teachers, and de- clared that they were the crown of Israel, which gave the chosen people a pre-eminence above all nations. " Learn," says the ^ Pirqe Aboth, iv. 9 ; compare i. 2. " Compare the passages in Gfrorer, Gescliiclite des Urchristenthuras, i, 161. ^ Matthew xxiii. 7, 8. * Mark x. 51 ; John xx. 16. ^ Matthew xxiii. 6 ; Luke xx. 46. * Pirqe Aboth, iii. 3 — 6 ; compare also i. 4. Rabbi Jose ben Joezer : Let thine house be a meeting-house for the wise ; and powder thyself in the dust of their feet, and drink their words with thirstiness. ^ Matt, xxiii. 6. ^ Ecclesiasticus x. 5. TENDENCIES OF RABBINISM. 93 Book of Baruch, " where is wisdom, where is strength, where is understanding. It hath not been heard of in Canaan, neither hath it been seen in Theman. The children of Hagar seek wisdom upon earth, so also the merchants of Meran and of The- man, and the authors of fables and searchers-out of understand- ing ; none of these have known the way of wisdom, or remember her paths. God hath found out all the way of knowledge and hath given it unto Jacob his servant, and to Israel his beloved."^ The proper seat of the learning of the Sopherim was naturally Jerusalem, where the Sanhedrin gave them an opportunity of bringing their theories to a practical result. Yet they were not entirely wanting in the provinces,^ although they there generally appeared as priests from Jerusalem, who visited the country schools in order to encourage them by their teaching and ex- hortation.^ So occupied does the Targum on Judges v. 9 describe them, when it makes Deborah in her song say, " I have been sent to praise the scribe of Israel, who so long as persecution endured did not cease to expound the law. Lovely was it, as they then sat in the synagogues and taught the people the words of the law, when they pronounced the blessing, and professed the truth before God. Their own business did they make no less account, and rode upon asses through the wdiole land, and sat upon the seat of judgment." Little as the paraphrase agrees with the time of the Judges, yet most acciu'ately does it describe the activity of the Eabbis at our time. 4 Tendencies of Eabbinism. In spite of all excrescences of practice, it was a grand thought, undeniably, upon w:hich the Eabbis dw^elt and for which they worked. The preservation of the Mosaic religion in all its 1 Baruch iii. 14, 22, 23, 36. 2 Antiq. xx. 2, 4; Matt. iii. 5—7, ix. 3, 14, 34, xii. 1, &c., 14, &c. 3 Mark iii, 22. 94 THE STATE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS. integrity was the aim of their labours, to which they applied themselves with admirable vigour under most difficult circum- stances. A powerful preaching of the law was consequently the first of the duties of the Eabbi. How this task was dis- charged towards the people we learn from the book of Jubilees, which calls to aid every art of rhetoric in order to found in the reader's heart an obedience to the law. For the whole of life, from the cradle to the bier, does the author urge with like pathos the precepts of the Thorah. "On the eighth day shalt thou circumcise thy boy, for on this day was Abraham circumcised, and the people of his house. Neither may the days be changed, nor one of the eight days passed over, for it is an eternal precept, ordained and inscribed in the decrees of Heaven. And he who observes it not, belongs not to the children of the covenant, but to the children of per- dition. The sons of Belial will not do it." The mother of the child shall be unclean seven days in the one case, or twice seven in the other : " for in the first seven days was Adam created, and in the second Eve. Therefore was the command given to observe seven days for a male child, and twice seven for a maid." ^ The Israelite shall not marry his son to a Samaritan woman, nor his daughter to a Gentile. " Should he do so, then let him die the death, and let him be stoned with stones." ^ Each one is to give his tithe — " for it is established as a law in heaven, that the second tithe be given in order that it may be eaten before the Lord on the place which is chosen. And for this law there is no end of days." ^ " When thou killest thy beast, kill for a peace-offering one that is well-pleasing : kill it, and the blood thereof pour upon the altar, with flour and fruit-offerings, mingled with oil, and besides a drink-offering." * " And there shall nothing remain over until the third day, for it is not acceptable and well-pleas- ing, and it shall not be eaten any more. All who do so bring 1 Jubilees (Gottinger Jahrbiicher, 1850), cap. 3 (paragraph 237). ^ Cap. 30 (p. 37). 3 Jubilees, cap. 32 (p. 42). * Cap. 31 (p. 18). TENDENCIES OF RABBIN ISM. 95 sin upon themselves Upon thy fruit-offerings shalt thou lay salt, and the bond of salt shall not be despised And in regard to the wood for the sacrifice, thou shalt take heed to thyself that thou bringest no wood for sacrifice which is not from choice trees, likewise no torn wood, nor hard, nor old, whose fragrance is gone." " And every time let thy body be clean, and wash thyself with water, before thou goest to sacrifice upon the altar ; wash hands and feet before thou approachest to the altar. And when thou hast finished bringing the sacrifice, wash thy hands and feet again, in order that there may appear no spot of blood on thee or on thy clothes. Take heed, my son, take heed especially of blood ; bury it in the earth, and eat no blood, for it is the life. Eat no blood on any reason whatever." The most important of all, however, is the observance of the Sabbath: " Every one who desecrates this day, or declares that he intends to make a journey on it, or speaks either of buying or selling, and he who draws water, and has not provided it upon the sixth day, and he who lifts a burden in order to take it out of his dwelling-place or out of his house, shall die. Ye shall do no manner of work on the Sabbath-day which ye have not prepared on the sixth day, in order that ye may eat and drink and rest, and keep Sabbath from every kind of work on this day .... except to burn incense and to offer gifts and sacrifices before the Lord on the Sabbath-day. This work alone shalt thou do on the Sabbath-day. But every man who transacts business, makes a journey, or attends to his cattle, either at his own house or elsewhere, and he who kindles a fire, or rides upon any beast, or sails upon a ship upon the sea, and he who either slays or kills anything, or who slaughters beast or bird, or who catches any beast or bird or fish, and he who feasts, and he who wages war upon the Sabbath-day, every one who doeth any of these things shall die." ^ If these extracts give any notion of the oratory of the scribes in the schools, then the direction of their labours, as expounders 1 Jubil. 50 J Gottinger Jahrbiicher, 1850, p. 70. 96 TEE STATE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS. of the law and as judges, will be most accurately expressed in the oft-repeated maxim of Simeon the Just (at the time of Alex- ander the Great) : " Be deliberate in judgment, and raise up many disciples ; and make a fence to the Thorah." ^ Even the Pirqe Aboth puts this maxim at the beginning of the collection as the guiding one. In the correct belief that arbitrariness is the mother of error, the school attempted to exclude all action according to private judgment, "in order that the people should not go farther." This was the fence which was set around the law. Every action must be either legal or illegal, and only one course could be permissible. ^' All actions, studies and words," says Josephus, " have with us a reference to piety towards God ; for the giver of the law has left nothing in suspense, or undetermined .... beginning immediately from the earliest infancy and the details of the domestic life of every one, he left nothing, even of the very smallest consequence, to the disposal and arbitration of those for whom he gave laws. Accordingly, he made a fixed rule of law, what sorts of food they should abstain from, and what sorts they should use ; which were the persons with whom they should maintain intercourse, what diligence they should use in their occupations, and what times of rest should be inter- posed, in order that we living under it, as under a father and guardian, might neither voluntarily nor out of ignorance be guilty of any sin." ^ From these words it is evident with what results Eabbinism had already laboured, when Josephus finds in the Mosaic law a complexus of precepts embracing the whole of life, a net, as it were, which drew its meshes without a break around the entire existence. In fact, this completeness had been first obtained by supplementary laws and the frequently artificial interpretation of the Scripture. For the fence at which the Eabbis worked so energetically, consisted essentially of more precise explanations and traditional completions of the law, which were intended to 1 Pirqe Aboth, i. * Apion, ii. 17. TEXDEXCIEU OF MABBINISM. 07 prevent any domain of life being considered as independent of it, and thus coining in course of time to be a source of danger to tlie law itself The varied complexities of life were thus ever more particularly defined by the law, and where precepts were wanting, new commands were evolved from some analogy, either real or imaginary. This pedantic task, which arranged every separate occupation under the categories of the Allowed or the Forl)idden, was termed in the language of the schools lincling and loosing. Binding and loosing was no simple matter, owing to the varied complexity of life, and the prosecution of this work had necessarily given rise to a casuistry which bordered upon utter foolishness. Even Jesus ironically refers to the disputed question which had been raised, as to the proper course of action when a sheep fell into a water-tank on the Sabbath-day ; some deciding that the animal ought to be left in the tank, but sup- plied with food until the evening, while others thought it should be drawn out. In like manner was the question raised, as to whether a farmer might render help to a cow which calved on the Sabbath-day, and whether he ought on the Sabbath to carry water to the beast, or lead the beast to water. Even such a question as the following seems worthy of decision to a Kabbi Hillel : Wliat ought to be done in case that, when the Passover had begun, the sacrificial knife had not been properly placed for use ?^ As the fence around the law consisted on this side of decisions of casuistical problems, whose occurrence in actual life might have occasioned a breach of the law, so it consisted in other cases of the heightening of the legal commands, since it was safer to do too much than too little, in order that here too " the people might not go too far." The malefactor, as we saw, might only receive thirty-nine stripes, in order that the executioner might not give him forty-one in mistake.^ The pronunciation of the name of God was altogetlier forbidden, in order to be more certain in avoiding the misuse of the name forbidden in Exodus ^ Compare Jost. Judeuthum, i. 256. - Deuteronomy xxv. 3; 2 Cor. xi. 24. H 98 THE STATE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS. XX. 7. Even where the name Jeliovah occurs in the Scriptures, Adonai was always read in its place.^ The legal tithe was, from a literal interpretation of Deuteronomy xiv. 22 — 29, trebled, so that the three cases there placed one after the other were made binding collectively. " The first tenth part of all increase I gave to the sons of Levi who ministered at Jerusalem ; and the second tenth part I sold, and went and spent it every year at Jeru- salem ; and the third tenth part did I give unto them to whom it was meet." ^ Thus the more pious even tithed themselves in the little grains of mint, anise and cummin which came into their kitchens f and yet more particular persons still deemed it desirable to tithe all the food which they bought when it was purchased, and then again when it had been dressed, to guard against even the suspicion of an exchange. " Tithe not over- much from mere conjecture," is a wise saying recorded of Gamaliel. Even the already strict laws with regard to food seemed to the scribes to need yet greater stringency. The violation of such commands about eating, which entailed in the law only uncleanness until the evening, were now visited by heavy penal- ties.* Not less the introduction of the forbidden beasts, or breeding them,^ or trading in their hides was forbidden.^ All the provisions belonging to Gentiles, even their oil and wine, was held to be unclean; so also all which had not been tithed.'^ A further stringency was given by insisting that those who had become unclean ought not to take food before the legal puri- fication, since in that case the food itself was made unclean by him, and consequently the uncleanness was extended in an in- creasing circle. The commandment of the law, founded upon a natural sentiment that the kid ought not to be cooked in its mother's milk,^ revealing a pleasing feature of the feeling of ^ As the LXX. shows, which always translates mn'' by icvpiog. 2 Tobit i. 7 ; compare Jubilees, cap. 32 (p. 42). ^ ]\ij^tt xxiii. 23. * Antiq. xi. 8, 7. ^ Antiq. xii. 3, 4. « Ibid. ' Daniel i. 8, &c. ; Judith xii. 1; Vita, Jos. 3, 18. ^ Exodus xxiii. 19. TENDEXCIES OF RABBINISM. 99 Israel at the patriarchal age, when nomadic and living in close contact with the flocks, was expanded by the scribes into a general prohibition against eating flesh and milk at the same time, inasmuch as it was possible for the two to stand in the prohibited relations to each other, and then the kid would be cooked in its mother's milk in the stomach of the eater.^ Founded on the same possibility was the further precept, that separate vessels should be used for cooking milk and dishes of meat.^ Since by these more or less arbitrary expansions of the laws regarding food, the customs of the several classes of society and scliool had of necessity become very various, a great source of anxiety was introduced in the intercourse of Jews even with one another. " Eat such things as are set before you," does Jesus say, therefore, to the disciples he Avas sending forth.^ " Whatever is sold in the shambles, eat, asking no question," ^ does Paul advise his converts at Corinth, who had been troubled by the Jewish Christians. But although Jesus had so uncon- ditionally declared, that not that which goeth into the mouth defileth the man, but that which cometh out of the mouth,^ yet it needed many intermediate steps before the Jewish-Christian communities could rise to this standpoint, since there was hardly another prejudice so deeply implanted in Judaism as this horror of unclean food.^ With the increased stringency of the laws regarding food, went hand in hand the multiplication of purifications. " When the scribes which came from Jerusalem saw some of the disciples of Jesus eat their bread with unclean, that is to say with unwashen hands, they asked of him the reason. For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, except they wash their hands up to the wrist, eat not, holding the tradition of the elders. And when they come from the market, except they bathe, they eat not. And many other things there be, which they have received to hold, washing of 1 Philo, De curit, Frankfurt edition, § 711. ^ Cholin, 8. 3 Luke X. 8. ^1 Cor. x. 2.5. ^ Matt. xv. 11. 8 Acts XV. 20, 29; Romans xiv. 1, 2 ; 1 Cor. vi. 12, viii. 1, x. 25. II 2 100 THE STATE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS. cups, and of pots, and of brazen vessels, and of couches," does the Gospel according to Mark declare.^ Not only were there different precepts for the purification of earthen pots and copper vessels, either in well-water or in river- water, as the case might be, but even the very pillows used at table were subjected to the same process, in order that the eaters might not be defiled.^ " Woe unto you. Scribes and Pharisees," declares Jesus in his indignation, " hypocrites ! because ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess." ^ For the personal purifications, the precepts had become even more manifold, and the schools contended as to the cases in which the hands ought to be immersed, held upwards or down- wards, and washed as far as the wrists, or only the finger-tips.* The purifications after contact with a corpse or a grave became so minute, that the gravestones were yearly whitened in order that the passers-by might be warned.^ But contact with living persons also could entail evil consequences, as we learn even from the case of the Jewish Christians, who plunged into water, clothes and all, when they had come in contact with a strange man.*^ The separateness of the Pharisees rested upon this fear of contamination from contact with common people : on this point, however, it will be necessary to speak hereafter. But the most intense interest, by far, which occupied the schools, was that attaching to the Sabbath laws, the observation of which seemed to them to form the essential contents of religion.^ It is no exceptional instance, that at the commencement of the IVTaccabean war the garrisons of the caves allowed themselves to be slaughtered without their weapons, ratlier than draw a sword upon the Sabbath.^ Prom a similar reason did Jerusalem fall 1 Mark vii. 1—4. ^ jj^rk vii. 4 ; Berachot viii. 3. ^ Matt, xxiii. 25. * Passages in Sepp, Thaten und Lehren Jesii. Scliaffhausen, 1864, p. 168. 6 Matt, xxiii. 27. « Epipli. Hter. 30, 2. '' Compare Buch der Jubiliien, cap. 2; Gcittinger Jabrbucli, 1849, p. 235. » 1 Maccab. ii. 34. TENDENCIES OF RABBIN ISM. 101 into the hands of Pompeius ;^ and during the last war, Joseyjhus, the commander- in-chief of Galilee, ev^n allowed his troops to go home regularly upon the Sabbath, in order that the inhabitants might not be compelled to do unlawful work by having the soldiers billeted upon them.^ Even the Christian community could still make it a subject of prayer, to " pray that their flight be not in the winter, neither on the Sabbath-day."^ For the distance that any one might walk upon the Sabbath was limited to two thousand paces, the distance of the ark of the covenant from the Israelites' camp in the desert,* which was a so-called Sabbath-day's journey.^ And in Jerusalem there were special saints who did not move from the spot where the trumpet-signal had surprised them, from the moment that signal was given from the temj)le that the Sabbath had commenced.® The fol- lowing kinds of work were forbidden upon the Sabbath : — sowing, ploughing, reaping, binding the sheaves, threshing, win- nowing, cleaning fruit, grinding, sifting, kneading, baking, shear- ing, washing, hammering, painting, spinning, weaving, plaiting, tying, sawing, making and unmaking knots, sewing and rip- ping, hunting, killing, skinning, cutting wood, tanning, writing, obliterating in order to write, building or pulling down, kindling or extinguishing a fire, carrying about, and so forthJ Moreover, the sophisti-y of the Eabbis had been much exercised in finding out new unlawful kinds of work, after there had been a general agreement as to thirty-nine.^ In order to confirm the sanctity of the Sabbath, most extraordinary speculations were indulged in. Philo often calls the day " the birthday of the world." ^ It was believed that it was observed in heaven and in hell, and that even the poor souls in Gehenna had rest.^*^ Nature, too, was thought to be subject to the observance of the Sabbath, and 1 Bell. Jud. i. 7, 3. - Vita, Jos. 32. ' Matt. xxiv. 20. * Targ. Ruth i. 10; Jarclii ad Jos. 3, 4; Antiq. xiii. 8, 4. '" Acts i. 12. ^ So Oi-igines of Dositheus, De prira. iv. 17, p. 176. 7 Jost. Judeuthum mid seine Sekten, i. 178. * ]\lisclma. Sabb. 7, 2. ^ Mos. i., Maug. 113, 114, iii. 1G7. ^^ See Gtiorer, as before. 102 THE STATE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS. pious streams were known which only flowed on the seventh day,^ and yet more pious bnes which stopped on the Sabbath, and only on the following day began to continue their course.^ The spirit of the scribes has been indicated with sufficient clearness from the examples given, so that it is not necessary to give separate examples of the mass of definitions, distinctions and regulations. From the cleaning of the teeth and washing tlie hands, to the last prayer in which the dying commended the soul to God, had all been thought of l)y the schools. They prescribed prayers and alms, and regulated the breadth of phy- lacteries and the thickness of veils. But they also laid down the precepts regarding the sacrifices, the expenditure and income of the temple, the festivals, questions of inheritance, court decrees and legal procedure. If, on the one hand, respect must be yielded to this holding fast by traditions, which appeared to be at the same time a holding fast of the real theocracy, yet, on the other hand, it cannot be denied that an injury was introduced by this ecclesias- ticism which was especially devoted to the external presentation of the religious life. In proportion as attention was directed to the observation of the objective legalities, was the subjective emotion overlooked. Ever since the number of purifications, tithes, laws for fast and feast days, to which the faithful Israelite should feel himself bound, had become the only object of theo- logical controversy, had the essential requirements of a religious and moral life, whicli ought to have been the chief distinction of the true Israel, been more and more forgotten.^ With rebuke, therefore, does Jesus point to the purified vessels, the levitically pure wine of which had perhaps been paid for by extorted money, or else, though all the precepts of purification had been kept, was nevertheless made an instrument of excess.* It had been 1 Bell. vii. 5, 1. - Plin. Hist. Nat. 31, 18. ' The Psftlms of Solomon (De la Cerda, ailversa sacra, p. 8). Ps. viii. 9 — 11 give indications of the bad coudition of morality iu Jerusalem. So iv. 3, 4. •* Matthew xxiii. 25. TENDENCIES OF RABBIN ISM. 103 sought to make holiness firm and secure by establishing it in precepts entirely objective ; but whilst pains were taken to fix it in rigid forms, that which was really holy in it escaped, and only the garment, tlie appearance of holiness, remained. Hence arose the strong reaction against the law in deeper minds, of whom it became the conviction that justification could not pro- ceed from such works, but from the inner world of faith and emotion. By Jesus, therefore, just as much as by Paul, was this whole result of Eabbinical scholasticism declared to be a heavy burden. As the Talmud curtly speaks of the plagues of the Pharisees,^ so does Jesus discourse of the burdens, which the Eabbi, in his secluded sphere of action devoted solely to the schools, never touched personally with his finger, but that sen- sibly hindered the people in the market of life, and confused the individual mind, which did not, as the scribe, regard these precepts as mere objects of controversy, but as earnest questions of eternal salvation. The Eabbis themselves compared the mass of precepts regarding the Sabbath, for example, to a mountain suspended by a hair ; for these precepts were deduced from the* Scripture through an endless series of consequences, often only connected with them by the slightest of threads. But this mountain, which they regarded with the delight of the profes- sional, pressed like an Alp upon the actual life of the people. For the activity of the Eabbinical schools was in nowise con- cerned with the presentation of a right theory of the law, but treated of the practical precepts of a life righteous in the sight of Jehovah. And herein consisted the power of the teachers in the Jewish state, that they alone decided what were the duties of a righteous life for every one. Upon every Jew rested the obligation of directing his life and household according to the properly understood commands of the Thorah. But this thorougli Judaism was found so complicated, that the pious were com- pelled every moment to seek for the scribes' advice, and where the scribes saw any one not inclined to ask them, they considered 1 Sota, f. 20. 104: THE STATE OF FUBLIC AFFAIRS. themselves authorized, by means of exhortation, warning, legal prosecution or instigation of the people, to compel the adoption of their interpretations. The Gospels show us the scribes fre- quently in this position, which is explained by the fact, that not only the salvation of individuals, but also the fulfilment of the Messianic promises, were considered to be dependent upon faithfulness towards the law. Thus no individual, even if he had desired, was able to emancipate himself from their power. They had, according to the meaning which Jesus gives to the key bestowed upon them at the Semichah, the key of the king- dom of heaven, and the power of binding and loosing for this world and the next •} for they alone knew the conditions of the righteousness demanded by God, they alone understood how to treat everything according to the measure of the law. Thus the Eabbi was far more indispensable to the people than the priest. Was one born into the world, the Eabbi circumcised him ; did one come to school, the Eabbi instructed him; did he take a wife, the Eabbi wrote the settlements ; did he put away one with •whom he could not agree or who was faitliless, the Eabbi proved the bill of divorcement. He was the recorder of all purchases and sales, of loans, of agreements and public transactions. Thus tlie individual teacher was regarded exactly as a judge, and of Jesus was the demand made to take upon himself the duty of adjusting the division of an inheritance between the heirs,'-^ or as a criminal judge to pronounce sentence on the woman taken in adultery.^ The Talmud is cognizant of many cases of this kind, in which individual Eabbis without further ceremony take upon themselves the functions of regular judges,* and it was only the logical application of the theocratic doctrine, that he who had a proper understanding of the Scripture, as being an interpreter of the Divine will, was the proper judge. The personal claims of the Eabbis consequently were only proportionate to their im- portance. That was not the briefest part of their expositions in ^ Matt. xvi. 19; Bell. Jud. i. 5, 2. ^ Luke xii. 13. 3 John viii. 3. ■> Jost. Judenthura, ii. 243. - TENDENCIES OF RABBINISM. 105 which the Eabbis treated of themselves and the reverence which the world owed them. To speak witli the teacher, to invite him to be the guest, to marry his daughter, Israel was taught to consider the highest honour. The young men were expected to count it their glory to carry the Eabbi's burdens, to bring his water, to load his ass. If one's own father and the Eabbi were both destitute, the son ought to provide for the Rabbi first ; were they both naked, then he ought to clotlie the Eabbi with his own cloak ; were they taken prisoners, then ought he to ransom the Eabbi first. These were the claims which the scribes who had been converted- afterwards brought with them into the Christian communities, and Paul often saw with wrath how the laity suffered wlien these men sought to bring tliem into bondage, to devour them, to catch them as in a snare, to exalt themselves, and to smite them in the face.^ The whole of the decisions, explanations, comments and defi- nitions of the Eabbis were collected together under the name of the Halacha, which word signifies result as much as practice. The passages of the Halacha, in order to keep the tradition uncorrupted, were to be communicated in the very same words in which the teacher had first taught them. A retentive memory was therefore the first requirement of a good Eabbi. Thus the scribe Eliezer, who was a Pharisee of the time of the second insurrection, was celebrated as " a well-pitched trough that loses not a drop of water." Individual mental capacity was of far less importance. To any new conjectures, the Eabbi just men- tioned used simply to reply, " That I have never heard," and this settled the question for him. But even Josephus boasts espe- cially of his memory, in order to show his qualification for a scribe.^ The great Hillel, moreover, was made tlie chief of the Sanhedrin only because of a happy citation. " The teachers say," is consequently the standing form of the Mishnah, and even in the Gos^iels an echo of this can be found in the question, 1 2 Cor. xi. 20. = Vita, 2. 106 TUE STATE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS. " Wliy say the scribes that Elias must first come ? " ^ In this pm-ely oral procedure it is self-evident that those must have been the most important who were most practised and ready in citations. To overwhelm one's opponent by an unexpected citation was the Eabbi's highest art. Thus it seemed to these teachers to be an admirable answer which a Eabbi, a Pharisee, gave to a Sadducee, who asked why the Scriptures ought always to be written upon parchment made of the skins of clean animals — when he replied, "Because it is written: Thy word shall be continually in my mouth;"- or when another replied to the question, when the children ought to learn Greek, " In the time which is not day and not night ; for it is written, In the law shalt thou meditate day and night." Similar scenes are recounted also by the Gospels. The Sadducees attempted to cast contempt upon Jesus' teaching of the resurrection of the dead by an imaginary story. Jesus replied to them, " Is it not written : I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob ? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living" ^ — and utterly disconcerted them by this unexpected application of the words of the Scripture. Paul, too, corrected his outbm-st against the high-priest Ananias in the Sanhedrin by the apt quotation, " Thou shalt not speak evil of the ruler of thy people"^ (Exodus xxii. 28). Thus in every circumstance of life recourse to the Scriptures was the consolation and refu'^e of the Jew skilled in Kabbinical learnins. This custom of adducing proof by citation of some short em- phatic word, and the adaptation of language not for written communications but oral transmission, gave the language its well-known sententious character. In this oral tradition such epigrammatic phrases were constantly rendered sharper and more easily comprehended, so that the Pirqe Aboth, just like 1 Mark ix. 11. Also, the "Ye have heard that it was said to them of old time," Matt. V. 21, 33. 2 Herzfeld, iii. 386; Griitz, Th. iii. 79, 455, &c. 3 Matt. xxii. 32. 4 Acts xxiii. 5. TENDENCIES OF EABBINISM. 107 the Sermon on the INIouut, gives of the speeches of the teachers only the " Logia ;" that is, an abundance of proverb-like sen- tences, such as could never have been heard at one time in a single collection, although the teachers were certainly fond of the sententious form. Tlie preference for the parable, also, corresponds to this purely oral method of instruction, since the parable catches the attention of hearers Avhich is difficult to seize, and thus the hearer becomes master of the doctrine with the easily comprehended narrative. This method of instruction had been usual in Israel from ancient times, and so Jotham, the son of Jerubbaal, mocks the men of Shechem for making his brother Abimelech their king, in the parable of the trees who asked the bramble to rule over them.^ In a similar manner does Isaiah tell of the vineyard of God, and Ezekiel of the valley of dry bones. The parable of the Sadducees of the W'Onian who married seven brothers, is a proof how frequent and how preferred this form of instruction was at this time. Striking examples of this instruction by parables are preserved, which appear, however, to have been formed on those in the Gospels, and proceed from a later period.^ " To whom was Moses our teacher like ?" asks the Midrash Qoheleth.^ " He was like the son of a woman a prisoner, who gave birth to her son in prison, and nursed him and died. Once the king passed by the door of the prison-house ; then the boy began to cry out and to call, ' Lord ! I have been born here and bred here, and know not for what crime I am kept imprisoned.' The king answered, ' On account of the crimes of thy mother.' " The parable is to explain that Moses' death was not punishment for his sins, but for the sins of the ancestors. This, too, proves how common the parable was to the Eabbis, when the Rabbinical interpreta- ^ Judges ix. 7 ; Isaiah v. 1 ; Ezekiel xxxvii. 1 — 1 4. 2 So, for example, the parable of Kabbi Eliezer. To whom-ehall I liken him who repents not before the hour of his death ? To a man who, going on a long sea voyaL'e, takes no provisions with him. Pirqe K. Eliezer, c. 43. Dut this was in part tirst composed in the Sth century. ^ Ecclesiastes vii. 15. 108 THE STATE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS. tion found parables in the text where none were to be found. The Eabbi who taught Jerome Hebrew, interpreted Ecclesiastes ix. 14, 15, in the following manner. The text runs, "I saw that there was a little city and few men within it, and there came a great king against it and besieged it ... . and in it was a wise man that no man remembered." The little city is mankind, whom the philosophers name, indeed, the microcosmos ; the enemy who besieges the city is the devil ; the wise man whom no one remembers is conscience.^ The popular method of instruction re-echoed here, was cer- tainly still more used at the time when the teacher's discourse was addressed to the whole of the people. This is shown, too, by the fact that Jesus so much prefers it. 5. The Learning of the Scribes, Compared with the very prominent position taken by the Rabbis in public life, the result of their learning, considered in its more restricted meaning, is for the proper understanding of our period a point of comparatively secondary consideration. From this very extensive domain, therefore, we only single out that which will in any way explain the literature of the New Testament. The treatises of Philo, the Antiquities of Josephus, and the Jubilees prove, that even at that time the results of the study and interpretation of the Scriptures, a work which extended back into the earlier centuries, had become an inheritance in the schools. Many difficulties and many gaps in the narratives of the sacred histories had been discovered, jvnd had either been removed or filled up by ingenious expositions, or by fables either newly composed or else learned from otlier nations. Many dogmatic stumbling-blocks were by these means explained away. Thus there were already a certain traditional method of interpre- 1 Ilierou. Qolieleth, 0, 141. THE LEARNING OF THE SCRIBES. tation, and a number of sayings of former times in existence, which were in part as readily believed as the canonical narrative itself. Thus, as the Jubilees prove, the question had been raised as to whether any one had been present when God had created the world, since every day's work could be enumerated, and it was confidently asserted that there had been a revelation in which the angel which appeared to Moses had communicated the history of creation. The same authority could state the day since which the mouths of beasts had been closed, so that they could no longer speak like the serpent had spoken. He knew also how the devil shared tlie world with God. He could tell exactly whence the sons of Adam had obtained their wives ; who it was that helped Noah bring the animals into the ark ; how the Hamitic tribe of the Canaanites, and the Japhetic of the Medes, found their way into a Semitic territory ; why Ee- becca had such a great predilection for Jacob ; why Esau, in his hunger, sold his birthright so cheaply ; why Onan refused to marry Taniar ; why the child IMoses could remain alive in the ark so long ; and indeed whatever else seemed of importance to the curious Eabbi. To him, too, were known the names of the wives of all the generations from Adam to Terah, and the wives of the sons of Jacob ; and not less so, the land into which Adam went when he left Paradise. The name of the peak of Ararat upon which the ark of Noah rested was in like manner known to him. He could narrate, too, the deeds done by Abraham in his youth ; how he separated from his father in his second week of years in order to avoid idols ; how when he was a lad of fourteen he forbad the flights of crows to light on a field which had been newly sojvn ; how he invented ploughs and harrows for the Chaldeans, and like Hercules proved himself a hero by ten labours.^ The description of the final contest of Esau with Jacob is presented in an especially romantic picture in the book ^ So the Targum. Ilieros ou Geu. xxii. 1. Compare also the first books of the Antiquities of Josephus. 110 THE STATE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS. of the Jubilees ; and in the form of 'a family history, the rela- tions of the patriarchs to their grand-children and grand-parents, their children and parents-in-law, are given ; in short, all their connections are drawn out of the past, the future and their contemporaries. A peculiarly rich cycle of myths has been interwoven around the life of Moses, which we find related with tolerable unanimity in Philo and Josephus. Philo, for example, is able to inform us why God decreed exactly ten plagues against the Egyptians ; he knows which Jehovah accomplished by means of Aaron, which by means of Moses, and which He reserved for Himself ; and he can also explain the grounds for this distribution.! These interpretative adornments, which owed their origin at first to the descriptive homiletic explanations of the synagogues, had become so real to all these writers, that they give them without any hesitation as part of the sacred narratives. Excusable errors of the daughters of Lot, the youth- ful adventures of the great Lawgiver, prophecies concerning him by the wise men of Egypt, are narrated with the same assurance as any of the statements of the Thorah itself ^ And thus these Eabbinical doctrines were, it seems, universally discussed in the schools. Even Paul has no doubt but that the rock which gave water to the thirsting children of Israel in the desert was the Messiah, who followed the wandering people in the form of a rock.^ In like manner, John is confident that the ark of the covenant, as well as the pot of manna* which stood in the holy of holies of the ancient temple, had been taken up into heaven when the temple had been destroyed by the Chaldeans, in order that they might again appear in the Messianic kingdom. And other similar examples of how tradition had in time at- tained the value of actual Scripture could easily be found. By the side of this bold exercise of the imagination must be ranked at the same time, however, a most narrow-minded reve- rence for the letter, which was the necessary consequence of the 1 Philo, Mos. i. Mang. 9, 6. " Antiq. ii. 9, 2. 3 1 Cor. X. 4. * Rev. ii. 17, xi. 19. THE LEARNING OF TEE SCRIBES. Ill meclmnical theory of inspiration among the Eabbis. This en- tailed tliat in every accident of the text or of the manner of writing, a special secret was to be discovered, since even the external formation of the Scripture might not be ascribed to any mere chance, but must be believed to be from a well-con- sidered divine will. Erom the rhetorical repetition in Isaiah xl. 1, " Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people," the Midrash concludes that at this point two-fold and very weighty prophecies begin. The word i^'*'^") in Genesis ii. 7, has two ''\ because God created men with two "i!i"', a good and an evil inclination.^ Thus nothing that was remarkable was passed over, or explained as in any way due to the imperfection attaching to all human writings ; but in every unusual term, in each unnecessary repetition, even in every omission, was that more exact definition of the law sought for, which it was the work of the learned to find out. Hence arose a habit of pressing upon the letter, from which no scribe at this period escaped. Even Paul proves that the promise to Abraham in Genesis xxii. 18, "In thy seed shall all the nations of the earth bless themselves," was spoken not of Israel but of Jesus, on the ground tliat because in his Septuagint he reads kv tw