First Jewish–Roman War

“ In the eye of the law they were heretics, to be compelled or converted into Christianity, but to stand distinctly outside of it meanwhile. War was the all but universal profession. Jews might not hold military rank. They might not even be civil guardians of the peace, since ‘no Jew in any cause could be witness against a Christian.’ They might neither aspire to be owners of land, nor leaders of men. ”

“ 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. ”

“ For they have a mind to demonstrate the greatness of the Romans, while they still diminish and lessen the actions of the Jews, as not discerning how it cannot be that those must appear to be great who have only conquered those that were little. Nor are they ashamed to overlook the length of the war, the multitude of the Roman forces who so greatly suffered in it, or the might of the commanders, whose great labors about Jerusalem will be deemed inglorious, if what they achieved be reckoned but a small matter. ”

“ Justice was administered in the name and by the laws of Rome, and taxes were paid immediately to the emperor. Several of the Roman governors severely oppressed and persecuted the Jews, and at length, in the reign of Nero they openly revolted from the Romans. Then began the Jewish war, which was terminated after an obstinate defence and unparalleled suffering, on the part of the Jews, by the total destruction of the city and temple of Jerusalem, by Titus son of Vespasian the Roman emperor. Since that time the Jews have no where subsisted as a nation. ”

“ Now these Jews, though they be very bold and great despisers of death, are but a disorderly body, and unskillful in war, and may rather be called a rout than an army; while I need say nothing of our skill and our good order; for this is the reason why we Romans alone are exercised for war in time of peace, that we may not think of number for number when we come to fight with our enemies: for what advantage should we reap by our continual sort of warfare, if we must still be equal in number to such as have not been used to war. ”

“ The commotions that shook the Roman empire did not affect the Jewish war; the revolutions that left it sometimes without a head did not cause a cessation of arms. Vespasian (unconsciously fulfilling the Divine decree) warred on till every city in Judea and Galilee was taken; and even when called to assume the imperial purple, he left Titus to complete the destruction of the Jews by laying siege to the guilty Jerusalem. ”

“ Alas for the Holy City, over which the Saviour of the world had stood and wept forty years before, knowing the suffering that lay before her!
'These Jews are dangerous. We must not allow them to rebuild their city, or to become a separate people again. As a nation they must cease to exist.'
So the Roman conquerors of Jerusalem agreed; and from that day onward the Jewish people have had no country of their own. They have, indeed, been 'led away captive into all nations' (Luke xxi. 24) exactly as the Lord foretold. ”

“ The little band of Jews was like a thorn in the side of the mighty potentate of the Church, who enthroned and dethroned kings, distributed crowns and countries, and who, through his army of papal legates, spies, Dominican and Franciscan monks, with their bloodthirsty piety, had subjugated the whole of Europe, from the Atlantic ocean to Constantinople, and from the Mediterranean to the Arctic regions. This handful of human beings, with their clear intellect, their purified faith, their moral force and their superior culture, was a silent protest against Roman arrogance. ”

“ The history of the Jews also shows that oppression and persecution are far more efficacious in binding a nation together than community of interest and national prosperity. Increase of wealth divides rather than unites a people; but suffering shared in common binds it together with hoops of steel.
The Jews were the only race whose spiritual independence was not crushed by the Roman steam-roller. It would be unfair to say that Rome destroyed nations ”

“ In this remarkable alternation of disappearance of nations and their formation, the conviction forced itself upon Jewish thinkers that the Jewish people was eternal: "A nation arises, another vanishes, but Israel alone remains forever." The barbaric tribes, the avengers of the long-enslaved nations, settled on the ruined sites of the Roman empire, wild plants only to be cultivated by the master-hand of history, uncouth savages, to be civilized by earnest teaching. ”

“ But this incautiousness in war, and this madness of zeal, is not a Roman maxim. While we perform all that we attempt by skill and good order, that procedure is the part of barbarians, and is what the Jews chiefly support themselves by. ”

“ For do not you ascribe the occasion of our present condition to yourselves, nor think the Romans are the true occasion that this war we have had with them is become so destructive to us all: these things have not come to pass by their power, but a more powerful cause hath intervened, and made us afford them an occasion of their appearing to be conquerors over us. What Roman weapons, I pray you, were those by which the Jews at Cesarea were slain? ”

“ So when the Jews were retreated, the Romans brought their engines, although they had all the while stones thrown at them from the tower of Antonia, and were assaulted by fire and sword, and by all sorts of darts, which necessity afforded the Jews to make use of; for although these had great dependence on their own wall, and a contempt of the Roman engines, yet did they endeavor to hinder the Romans from bringing them. ”

“ The Jews throughout the Persian dominions, despite recent differences, were loyal to their Persian masters, and helped them to fight and to conquer. Egypt and Syria were wrested from the Romans, and Jerusalem fell before the Persian arms. Throughout the war the Jews helped the Persians loyally as Persian subjects, but in Jerusalem it is to be feared that the Jews fought rather as personal, than as Persian, enemies of Rome. ”

“ Such gentle treatment insensibly assuaged the stern temper of the Jews. Awakened from their dream of prophecy and conquest, they assumed the behaviour of peaceable and industrious subjects. Their hatred of mankind, instead of flaming out in acts of blood and violence, evaporated in less dangerous gratifications. They embraced every opportunity of overreaching the idolaters in trade; and they pronounced secret and ambiguous imprecations against the haughty kingdom of Edom, the name under which they were pleased to denounce the Roman empire. ”

“ But the Jewish readiness to revolt against Roman supremacy was not lost upon him. He did not forget how quick the Jews had been to fight. East or west, it seemed to him that if but a breath of freedom were in the air, it was fanned among this Jewish race into a perfect whirlwind. Why should they not submit to Rome, and sink their own nationality? Greater nations than they had passed more or less peacefully under the Roman yoke, whilst to subdue this tiny troublesome dependency had tasked a Titus! To conquer Jews was not enough ”

“ And what nations are there, out of the limits of our dominion, that would choose to assist the Jews before the Romans? Are your bodies stronger than ours? nay, you know that the [strong] Germans themselves are our servants. Have you stronger walls than we have? Pray, what greater obstacle is there than the wall of the ocean, with which the Britons are encompassed, and yet do adore the arms of the Romans. Do you exceed us in courage of soul, and in the sagacity of your commanders? ”

“ Of all the people that have suffered deeply from the present war, none have borne a greater burden than the Jews—in physical and economic loss, in moral and spiritual torment.
Jews are today fighting each other in all the armies of Europe. Russia alone has over 350,000 Jewish soldiers; Austria has over 50,000; altogether there are probably one-half million Jews in the ranks of the fighting armies. ”

“ Before resuming the story of Judea under the procurators, let us take another survey of Jews and Judaism in lands outside of Palestine. The voluntary dispersion still went on. The Jews were now scattered over all the Roman Empire, which included Asiatic and European lands from Syria to Spain. We also find our ancestors, at the beginning of the Christian era, in Arabia and in Parthia, an Asiatic kingdom south of the Caspian Sea. But, however widely scattered, religion was the bond of union and Jerusalem the spiritual centre. ”

“ The Romans, with their new success elate,
Place batt’ring rams, and force each pond’rous gate;
A breach they make, then mount—the Jews oppose,
And pour destruction on their rising foes:
p. 54Whole legions fall, yet legions still appear,
And mount the breach, devoid of puny fear.
The rebel Jews dismay’d the wall forsake,
And Roman arms the second wall retake;
Soon mounted high the golden eagle shines,
And spreads new life, thro’ all the weary’d lines.
They shout aloud, their sun-burnt faces glow,
Heedless they pass their comrades now laid low ”

“ Records exist of what occurred in the Roman empire down to the time of its fall, which may be relied on with tolerable certainty. The kingdom of Persia also has its historians, who throw a fair amount of light upon what passed in that country during the centuries with which we have been dealing. But of what took place farther eastward we have no trustworthy knowledge at all. In Arabia, as we have seen, there existed numerous and flourishing Jewish communities—indeed, a Jewish kingdom had endured for many ages there, able to hold its own with neighbouring sovereignties. ”

“ The Romans, on their side, accustomed to the ready submission of all the peoples under their sway, could not understand or tolerate the Jews. To them this people with its dour manners, its refusal to participate in the religious ideas, the social life, and the pleasures of its neighbors, its eruptions of passion and violence on account of abstract ideas, and its rigid exclusion of the insignia of Roman majesty from the capital, seemed the enemies of the human race. ”

“ So that the Jew ever seems uncourteous, narrow, obstinate, and grotesque: even as others appeared to him to be pagan and unclean. Moses lays down laws best calculated to keep the nation separated and esoteric; but there is marvellous wisdom in those which were directed to the development of national resources and general prosperity in an isolated state. The nation was made strong for defence, not for aggression. It must depend upon its militia, and not on horses and chariots, which are designed for distant expeditions, for the pomp of kings, for offensive war, and military aggrandizement. ”

“ Yet did the Romans put off the attack at that time, because they had marched all the day, although they placed a double row of battalions round the city, with a third row beyond them round the whole, which consisted of cavalry, in order to stop up every way for an exit; which thing making the Jews despair of escaping, excited them to act more boldly; for nothing makes men fight so desperately in war as necessity. ”

“ Then the struggle with America, the horrors of the French Revolution, the excitement of Napoleon’s wars, the trade riots and domestic disturbances of the later years of the Regency engrossed men’s minds, and they had neither leisure nor inclination to attend to the grievances of the Jews. Even when, in George the Fourth’s reign, questions of internal policy again became the topic of the day, the disabilities of the Roman Catholics, a numerous and influential portion of the nation, naturally took precedence of those of the Jews. ”

“ At this sight the Romans were discouraged, and under consternation, when they saw them able to throw away in sport so much water, when they supposed them not to have enough to drink themselves. This made the Roman general despair of taking the city by their want of necessaries, and to betake himself again to arms, and to try to force them to surrender, which was what the Jews greatly desired; for as they despaired of either themselves or their city being able to escape, they preferred a death in battle before one by hunger and thirst. ”

“ Whereupon they prayed that the Romans would have compassion upon the [poor] remains of Judea, and not expose what was left of them to such as barbarously tore them to pieces, and that they would join their country to Syria, and administer the government by their own commanders, whereby it would [soon] be demonstrated that those who are now under the calumny of seditious persons, and lovers of war, know how to bear governors that are set over them, if they be but tolerable ones. So the Jews concluded their accusation with this request. ”

“ Nearly half of the Jewish population of the world lives in Russia, in the immediate area of active hostilities, congested in cities, which are the first point of attack. The dreadful position of the Jews of Russia in normal times is well known. ”

“ They looked on with scornful indifference while the Israelites plied their busy trade, aware though they might be that the wealth they accumulated was in a great measure drawn from their own coffers. They would spit in contempt as they passed a Jewish synagogue, but they would not raise a finger to cause its demolition or prevent any number of worshippers from crowding into it. All over Turkey, Arabia, and Persia, some Jews were to be found in every town, where they were allowed to live [Pg 309] and thrive, unless they broke some law or offended some faithful Islamite. ”