Judea

“ To see the Jews scattered over the whole world, according to the word of God, must doubtless excite surprise. But to be struck with supernatural astonishment, you must view them at Jerusalem; you must behold these rightful masters of Judea living as slaves and strangers in their own country; you must behold them expecting, under all oppressions, a king who is to deliver them. Crushed by the cross that condemns them, skulking near the temple, of which not one stone is left upon another, they continue in their deplorable infatuation. The Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, are swept from the earth ”

“ Their learning goes not out into forbidden paths; those who sit at their feet arise enriched simply with knowledge of God, the law, and Israel; and the effect is love and reverence for everything that pertains to them. Attendance at the Great College, and study of what I heard there, have taught me that Judea is not as she used to be. I know the space that lies between an independent kingdom and the petty province Judea is. ”

“ The country over which they spread, and which is known as Judea, is not more than four hundred miles long by two hundred and fifty in breadth, situated between two populous and powerful empires, the Assyrian and Egyptian, who, waging war too frequently, made the land of Judea their battle-field, and its people the objects of persecution and oppression. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Judea had been a Roman province eighty years and more—ample time for the Cæsars to study the idiosyncrasies of the people—time enough, at least, to learn that the Jew, with all his pride, could be quietly governed if his religion were respected. ”

“ A very few years more, the Assyrians were back again, and overran Judea itself, laying the country waste with fire and sword, till nothing was left to them, but the mere city of Jerusalem. And so they, too, were filled with the fruit of their own devices. ”

“ Nor were these expectations peculiar to the Jews. By their dispersion among so many nations, by their conversation with the learned men among the heathens, and by the translations of their inspired writings into a language almost universal, the principles of their religion were spread all over the east. It became the common belief that a Prince would arise at that time in Judea, who would change the face of the world, and extend his empire from one end of the earth to the other. ”

“ Wherefore an immense multitude ran together, out of Galilee, and Idumea, and Jericho, and Perea, that was beyond Jordan; but the people that naturally belonged to Judea itself were above the rest, both in number, and in the alacrity of the men. So they distributed themselves into three parts, and pitched their camps in three places; one at the north side of the temple, another at the south side, by the Hippodrome, and the third part were at the palace on the west. So they lay round about the Romans on every side, and besieged them. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This century of valiant achievement, colossal errors, and overwhelming failure left its deep impression upon the Jewish race. It witnessed the return of many Jews of the dispersion to Jerusalem and Judea and the development of a strong sense of racial unity. Henceforth the Jews throughout the world looked to Jerusalem as their true political and religious capital. The events of this period intensified the ancient feud between Jew and Samaritan and gave the latter ample reason for that hostility toward their southern kinsmen which appears in the Gospel narratives. ”

“ Judea is become ‘a waste howling wilderness,’ and ‘our holy, our beautiful house, where our forefathers worshipped, is burnt up with fire.’ The sacred vessels and the book of the law have become the spoil of the Gentile conqueror, to whom the people of God have fallen into a second and more terrible captivity. ”

“ I give them leave also to use the laws of their forefathers, and to observe them; and I will that they have power over the three toparchies that are added to Judea; and it shall be in the power of the high priest to take care that no one Jew shall have any other temple for worship but only that at Jerusalem. I bequeath also, out of my own revenues, yearly, for the expenses about the sacrifices, one hundred and fifty thousand [drachmae] ”

“ In a former age, when devotional feelings were wont to assume a more poetical form than suits the taste of the present times, an undue importance, perhaps, was placed on the mere localities of Judea, viewed as the theatre on which the great events of Christianity were realized, and more especially on those relics which were considered as identifying particular spots, honoured by the sufferings or triumph of its Divine author. ”

“ When Judea became independent there were probably as many Jews outside of it as within it.
With the Hasmonean princes—“high priest” is the title which the Hebrew legend on their coins gives them [65] —the country entered upon a career of conquest. Galilee, Idumaea, the coast cities of Philistia, portions of Gilead were seized by John, or Aristobulus, or Alexander, so that Judea rapidly became one of the important kingdoms of the East, with which no one could fail to reckon who became active in the affairs of that region. ”

“ It is here worth our while to remark, that none could be put to death in Judea but by the approbation of the Jewish Sanhedrim, there being an excellent provision in the law of Moses, that even in criminal causes, and particularly where life was concerned, an appeal should lie from the lesser councils of seven in the other cities to the supreme council of seventy-one at Jerusalem ”

“ In the conformation of the Judean hills the secret of the immense vitality of the Jewish nationality is probably to be found. Had the capital of Judea been placed at Cæsarea, on the high-road from Greece to Egypt—had it even been permanently fixed at Shechem, accessible through the open valley of Samaria, it cannot be doubted that Greek or Egyptian influence would have affected far more the manners and religion of the Jews. Remote and inaccessible in its rugged mountains, Jerusalem was removed from the highway by which the hosts of the Pharaohs advanced on Assyria. ”

“ There is a striking difference between the appearance of these people and that of the other inhabitants of Judea; a difference not only in dress, but in feature. The men wear large yellow turbans, and have full lips, long noses, and high, sloping foreheads, so that they fit in very closely with our common idea of [Pg 135] the Hebrew type. They are not Jews, however, but Christians, and it is said that in the veins of many of them flows the blood of the Crusaders. ”

“ At its best Judea had been a Theocracy, i.e., a kingdom in which religion, represented by the priesthood and the Sanhedrin, directed the affairs of the nation. Roman rule, therefore, would be revolutionary, even had the procurators been good men and had sought to administer the province in kindness and equity. As a matter of fact, they were nearly all tyrants, lustful for gain at any [120] price and absolutely indifferent to the welfare of the people under their charge; even as we shall see, in many instances wantonly wounding Judea's sensibilities to gratify their cruel pleasure. ”

“ The people of Seʻîr had heard about the warlike preparations made by those in Judea and therefore marched to meet the latter, encountering them on the frontiers of their country, south of the Dead Sea. As the men of Judea marched from the northwest, it must be supposed that the men of Seʻîr arrived from the east or southeast. ”

“ A short time before the Christian era, Judea had been made tributary to Rome by the victories of Pompey, and many thousands of Jews were transferred to Rome, where a particular district was assigned to them on the right bank of the Tiber. We know how tenaciously Jews clung to their religion and to their traditional practices, and they sought to lay their departed members in rocky sepulchres, such as those of their distant country. ”

“ Familiar modern illustrations are the Mahdist insurrections that have from time to time taxed the resources of the English in northern Africa. In the third place the land of Judea, with its narrow western passes rapidly ascending to the heights above, enabled Judas to choose his battle-field at a point where only a few of the enemy could be brought into action and where a handful of valiant men could keep an army at bay. ”

“ OF THE JEWISH FACTION.
But presently came tidings that the legions were gathered together against Judea, and then that they were encompassing Jerusalem round about, and afterwards that the Holy City was closely beset, and that the brethren had fled forth, but that the Jews that stayed therein were at discord among themselves, and in great straits, insomuch that they were driven to feed one on the other for lack of food. But still not many of the Jews among the faithful believed that the Holy City would be taken ”

“ But those sayings which were uttered or not uttered in Judea, after the manner of that country, as indeed they are still delivered among the people of Phœnicia and Palestine—these they look upon as marvellous sayings, and unchangeably true. ”

“ God, therefore, incensed at the sins and idolatry of the ten tribes, abandoned those tribes to the kings of Assyria and Chaldea, who transplanted them beyond the Euphrates, from whence they never returned. The people of Judah were no less corrupted. The prophets give an awful description of their idolatrous practices. They were punished after the same manner, though not so severely, as the ten tribes; being led into captivity several times, from which at last they returned, and were settled in the land of Judea, after which we hear no more of their idolatry. ”

“ At that time the gospel of Jesus Christ had been preached in all the principal cities and countries of the known world. Numerous branches of the primitive church had been planted in Palestine, Syria, Egypt, Asia Minor, Greece and Italy.
In the meantime the awful doom which the Savior predicted against Jerusalem had been literally fulfilled. Shortly after the crucifixion and ascension of the Savior, Judea became the theatre of many cruelties and oppressions arising from contentions between the Jewish priests, the depredations of numerous bands of robbers, which infested the country ”

“ JEWS, the appropriate denomination of the descendants of Judah, which soon included under it the Benjamites, who joined themselves to the tribe of Judah, on the revolt of the other ten tribes from the house of David. After the Babylonish captivity, when many individuals of these ten tribes returned with the men of Judah and Benjamin to rebuild Jerusalem, the term Jews included them also, or rather was then extended to all the descendants of Israel who retained the Jewish religion, whether they belonged to the two or to the ten tribes, whether they returned into Judea or not. ”

“ Hence an immense multitude of Jews might be found in almost all the dominions of the Persians, Greeks, Romans and Parthians; as alluded to in Acts ii. 9, 10. But there were also other occasions and causes for the dispersion of the Jews. Ptolemy, the Macedonian king of Egypt, having taken Jerusalem from the Syro-Macedonians, led away many from the hill-country of Judea, from Samaria and Mount Gerizim, into Egypt, where he made them settle ”

“ Such were the shepherds of Judea! In appearance, rough and savage as the gaunt dogs sitting with them around the blaze; in fact, simple-minded, tender-hearted; effects due, in part, to the primitive life they led, but chiefly to their constant care of things lovable and helpless. ”

“ The priestly laws which were formulated to meet the new needs of the Judean community appear to have been written in Palestine and by those closely connected with the temple service, but in the emphasis upon the sabbath and in their endeavor to prevent marriage with foreigners they suggest the presence and influence of Jews who had returned from the land of the dispersion. ”

“ V. Apostasy of the Jews and the Perfidy of the High Priests. At the beginning of the second century B.C. the Judean state was closely encircled by a ring of Hellenic cities and subjected on every side to the seductions of that debased Greek culture which had taken firm root in the soil of Palestine. As was almost inevitable, many of the Jewish youth yielded to its attractions. Distaste for the narrowness and austere customs of their fathers begat in their minds a growing contempt for their race and its religion. ”