Maurice H. Harris

“ Was not this identically Israel's experience with that other creed to which its religion had given birth—Christianity? Its adherents likewise said to the Jews, "We accept your Scriptures, ethics and divinity. Accept only from us this individual Jesus, greatest of all prophets, the Messiah, in whom all your prophesies have been fulfilled, who represents God's new covenant with man." ”

“ Still he brought wealth and improvement to Judea and awakened in the Jews a greater confidence in themselves.
Certainly contact with the Greeks widened the horizon of the Jews, furthered their culture, and gave them a taste for the arts of architecture and sculpture. The Greeks also inculcated love of freedom, the dignity of man, and intellectual research in the realms of science and philosophy. But Greek civilization had perils as well as advantages. Nor was it transplanted to the East in its noblest form. The best of Greek thought was evolved in Athens, not in Alexandria. ”

“ The rule of this ill-balanced tyrant was to bring woe to Judea, for which their own internal troubles were in a measure responsible. Indeed, it was these discords that drew his attention to this particular province. The Hellenists, who had grown to quite a party, sought his interference in their behalf. Jason offered the king a bribe to make him High Priest and depose Onias, his own brother. What a blasphemy on the holy office to fight for its material powers! The pity was that material power should be vested in a spiritual office, so the system was wrong as well as the man. ”

“ Yet, with all his grandeur, he was but a subject king under the sway of the Roman emperor. He could not make treaties or war without the consent of the emperor, to whom he had to supply on demand troops and money.
The introduction of heathen games in theatres and race-courses, in which the lives of gladiators and runners were lightly sacrificed to gratify the brutal instincts of the spectators, deeply grieved the Jews, imbued with the sanctity of human life. It was in such violent antagonism to the ethics of Judaism. But what could they do? They were in the power of this pagan tyrant. ”

“ Hence Israel's record of martyrdom:
"Such is our reputation that there is hardly a nation in the world that does not conform in some respect to our example."
"How many there are of our captive countrymen at this day, struggling under exquisite torments because they will not renounce their laws nor blaspheme the God of their forefathers."
Like Philo, he regards Judaism as a universal religion that should be accepted by all mankind. ”

“ O sirs, do not men excel in strength, that bear rule over the sea and land and all things in them? But yet is the King stronger: and he is their lord and hath dominion over them; and in whatsoever he commandeth them they obey him. If he bid them make war one against the other, they do it: and if he send them out against the enemies, they go, and overcome mountains, walls and towers. They slay and are slain, and transgress not the King's commandment. If they get the victory they bring all to the King, as well the spoil as all things else. ”

“ O, sirs, is not the king great, and men are many, and wine is strong; who is it then that ruleth them or hath the lordship over them? Are they not women? Women have borne the king and all the people that bear rule by sea and land. ”

“ To follow their history after their dispersion by Rome, we shall have to turn to all the settled parts of the globe. What henceforth became the link to hold together their widely scattered members and preserve them from being absorbed by their surroundings? Their religion. Religions outlive states and spiritual bonds are stronger than temporal. But now that Judaism's centre, the Temple, was no more, now that the sacred capital, Jerusalem, the only sanctioned place for sacrificial worship, was lost—how could they maintain their continuity and what would become of their priesthood? ”

“ From Moses, the greatest teacher of mankind, the Greek philosophers derived their wisdom. From Mosaic Law comes the highest and truest religious revelation. Thus he endeavored to win Jews to an appreciation of Greek literature, and Greeks to an appreciation of Jewish Scripture.
Philo is the first Jew to present a complete system of philosophy, yet he weaves it out of the Bible. Just a word about it. It is hard to treat the philosophy of any one writer separately, for it is usually linked with a whole chain of theories of earlier schools. ”

“ Christianity claimed to be a universal Church and Rome had once claimed a universal Empire. This religious monopoly, the theory that this church offered the only saving creed, did sad mischief in the coming centuries. These Arian Ostrogoths were kinder to the Jews than were the catholics. The greater tolerance of the Arians may perhaps have been due to the fact that their idea of God was a little closer to that of the Jewish. But Arian Christians, always a small minority, soon disappeared, just as in the early days of the church, Jewish Christians were absorbed by pagan Christians. ”

“ In his teachings or rather preachings, he followed the models of the great prophets, laying stress upon the spirit of religion and minimizing the value of ceremonial. For there were formalists in those days as there were in the days before the Exile. Indeed, every age reveals the experience that the multitude is often more impressed by the ceremony than the idea it is intended to convey—and gives more attention to the outward, tangible form than to its inward, spiritual purpose, the exaltation of life. ”

“ The laws of ritual cleanliness, especially for the priests and of Sabbath observance, were very voluminous [21] and very minute. Perhaps too much importance was laid on minor detail; there was little room for voluntary and spontaneous action. On the other hand, too much freedom in religious observance has its dangers and pitfalls too. At its best the Jewish Law tended to sanctify every act of life and to bring the humblest obligation into relationship with God. But whenever a religion crystallizes into an institution, as it inevitably must, the spirit occasionally gets lost in the form. ”

“ Even if we sin, we are Thine. But we shall not sin, knowing that we have been accounted Thine; for to be acquainted with Thee is perfect righteousness.
Court not death in the error of thy life. God made not death, nor delighteth He when the living perish, for He created all things that they might have being. ”

“ Leaving the outlying provinces under the rule of tetrarchs, Rome now decided to govern Judea absolutely as a part of the province of Syria. It sent out governors or, as they were called, Procurators, to administer its affairs under the more immediate direction of Syria. The Jews were now to be ruled by strangers who had no understanding of their religion and no sympathy with their traditions or social needs; by men possessed in fact, for the most part, of an ill-concealed antagonism to the rites and obligations that entered into the lives of conscientious Jews. ”

“ The attitude of the heathen world was on the whole not unfriendly to the Jews. They were disliked for their rejection of the heathen gods, for their aloofness, their stern morality, their sobriety, and their material success; while their exclusiveness—partly but not wholly justifiable—led to the erroneous supposition that they were hostile to mankind. But the Jews of the Diaspora were less exclusive and more tolerant than those of Judea. This was particularly true of Alexandria, capital of Egypt, now part of the Roman Empire. ”

“ Having brought our story to the close of an epoch, we will pause and glance at the status of the Jew in other lands. The dispersion of Israel in a voluntary way had already begun, though Judea was still the centre of gravity. So the sway of the High Priest reached not only to the Palestinian provinces—Phœnicia, Samaria, Galilee, Gilead, Edom and Philistia—but extended through parts of Asia Minor and to lands on both banks of the Mediterranean Sea. These lands of Jewish settlement outside of Palestine are called the Diaspora. ”

“ But Josephus finds that the best and most dignified reply to all aspersions on Israel lies in giving an outline of their law and belief. This gives him an opportunity to testify to the faith that is in him still. He writes:
[178]
"There never was such a code of laws framed for the common good of mankind as those of Moses—for the advancement of piety, justice, charity, industry, regulation of society, patience, perseverence in well doing, even to the contempt of death itself."
"God is the source of joy and to Him they turn in all woe. This worship of the one God is combined with morals." ”

“ Next year his further attack on Egypt was checked by Rome, rapidly becoming a great power. Again he vented his rage on the Jews and determined to exterminate the Jewish religion by attacking their most revered institutions, as the most complete means of erasing their distinct individuality. The predecessors of Antiochus Epiphanes had encouraged the spread of paganism among the Jews; but he, less intelligent and more despotic, tried to force it upon them. He did not realize that where persuasion may succeed, tyranny often fails. ”

“ In no country outside of Greece itself was the Greek spirit so completely diffused as in Egypt. Alexandria, its new capital, displacing Athens as the intellectual centre of the world, was second in importance only to Rome. While the Greek civilization at its worst was tinctured with an enervated orientalism and had much in it debasing, yet the Greek spirit at its best also found its way to Alexandria, and its influence was intellectually broadening and elevating on the Jews resident there. ”

“ Next came his sons; then a tiny army growing instead of lessening with each conflict, from two thousand to six thousand, from six to ten, then victory crowned their efforts; and with the conquest on the field rose the faith in the hearts of the people in the same progressive way. The tiny embers became a flame, and the flame burst into a conflagration. This miracle is often found repeated in Israel's history.
The Feast of Lights is called a Minor Festival in our calendar, for reasons accidental rather than intrinsic. It is hard to institute a new observance after a religion is crystallized. ”

“ For one year the Jews bravely held out against the finest army of the age. At last some Romans found a way into Bethar through a subterranean passage which some Samaritans, it is said, betrayed. Then followed an awful carnage in which Roman horses "waded to the nostrils in Jewish blood." More than half a million souls were slain and thousands more perished by fire and hunger. Yet so great were also the Roman losses that Hadrian in his message of the campaign to the Roman senate, [213] significantly omitted the formula, "I and the army are well." ”

“ So we might quote nearly every prophet from Amos to Malachi, the last prophet, who said that the day of Judgment would be heralded by the undying Elijah. A Jewish poet in Alexandria voiced the same hope; heathendom would disappear and the kingdom of God would be established.
Alas, the outlook for either the spiritual or the temporal realization seemed farther removed than ever. Every now and then, more particularly under the disturbing rule of the procurators, a deluded enthusiast would appear upon the scene and claim that he was a Messiah. ”

“ Spiritual monotheism became for the Jew a passion.
The first act by which Christianity exercised its new power was to prohibit Jews from making converts to Judaism and to reward those who deserted it. Thus it conspired for the gradual elimination of the Jewish Faith.
As its ranks rapidly swelled, Christianity continued to make consciously and unconsciously more and more concessions to the heathen beliefs and customs that were deeply rooted in the hearts of people, who accepted the new creed more or less superficially. ”

“ They changed the logos into an actual human being. Unlike Philo they did not call it a child of divine intelligence in the Greek idiomatic sense, but a "son of God" in an actual and physical sense. It was then but a step for the Church to declare that Jesus, its Messiah, was the Logos! He was therefore a species of divinity too. It was not till Christianity's second stage that Jesus of Nazareth was in this way raised from a real man into an imaginary divinity. Thus the link with Judaism was broken in the rejection of its fundamental principle of monotheism—the belief in one indivisible God. ”

“ The Fourth Commandment makes rest conditional on work.
"God did not dwell in the midst of Israel till they had built a sanctuary."
"Work must not be neglected for study."
"He who says 'I have toiled and not found,' believe him not; he who says 'I have not toiled yet have I found,' believe him not."
"Who does not bring his son up to a trade teaches him to be a robber."
"It is well to add a trade to your studies to be free from sin."
"Position cannot honor the man; the man must honor the position."
"Famine passes by the workman's door." ”

“ It was the unhappy fate of Israel that the mischievous Domitian should have reigned so long and that the good Emperor Nerva, his successor, should have reigned so briefly. So although the injunctions against proselytes were removed during the sixteen months of Nerva's rule as soon as Trajan came to the throne many anti-Jewish laws were restored. Like Alexander the Greek, Trajan the Roman cherished the wild desire of conquering Asia. When he attacked Parthia, the Jews living in semi-independence there became his most vigorous opponents. ”

“ Hyrcanus, as High Priest, was once more given political authority, and Antipater was made Procurator of Judea. We have witnessed the thin entering of the wedge; behold the Idumean now head of Jewish affairs. Caesar now granted permission to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem, and concessions and privileges were also conferred on the Jews of Alexandria and Asia Minor, for Rome's sway reached far. Caesar's good will made the rulership of Antipater tolerable for a while and when the news of Caesar's death reached the Jews they mourned him as a lost friend. ”