Heinrich Graetz - History of the Jews (Vol. 1-6)

Herod II., king of Chalcis, titular king of Judæa, died at this time (48), and with him the third generation of Herodians sank into the grave.

Table of Contents

Distribution of the Judæans in the Roman Empire and in Parthia​—​Relations of the various Judæan Colonies to the Synhedrion​—​Judæan Bandits in Naarda​—​Heathen Attacks upon Judaism​—​Counter Attacks upon Heathenism by Judæan Writers​—​The Judæan Sibyls​—​The Anti-heathen Literature​—​The Book of Wisdom​—​The Allegorists​—​Philo's Aims and Philosophical System​—​Proselytes​—​The Royal House of Adiabene​—​The Proselyte Queen Helen​—​The Apostle Paul​—​His Character​—​Change in his Attitude towards the Pharisees​—​His Activity as a Conversionist​—​His Treatment of the Law of Moses​—​The Doctrines of Peter​—​Judaic-Christians and Heathen-Christians.

40–49 C. E.

Round the very cradle of the Judæan race there had rung prophetic strains, telling of endless wanderings and dispersions. No other people had ever heard such alarming predictions, and they were being fulfilled in all their literal horror. There was hardly a corner in the two great predominant kingdoms of that time, the Roman and the Parthian, in which Judæans were not living, and where they had not formed themselves into a religious community. The shores of the great midland sea, and the outlets of all the principal rivers of the old world, of the Nile, the Euphrates, the Tigris, and the Danube, were peopled with Judæans. A cruel destiny seemed to be ever thrusting them away from their central home. Yet this dispersion was the work of Providence and was to prove a blessing. The continuance of the Judæan race was thus assured. Down-trodden and persecuted in one country, they fled to another, where the old faith, which became ever dearer to them, found a new home. Seeds were scattered here and there, destined to carry far and wide the knowledge of God and the teachings of pure morality. Just as the Greek colonies kindled in various nations the love of art and culture, and the Roman settlements gave rise in many lands to communities governed by law, so had the far wider dispersion of the oldest civilized people contributed to overthrow the errors and combat the sensual vices of the heathen world. In spite of being thus scattered, the members of the Judæan people were not completely divided from one another; they had a common center of union in the Temple of Jerusalem and in the Synhedrion which met in the hall of hewn stone, and to these the dispersed communities clung with loving hearts. Towards them their looks were ever fondly directed, and by sending their gifts to the Temple they continued to participate, at least by their contributions, in the sacrificial worship. From the Synhedrion they received their code of laws, which they followed the more willingly as it was not forced upon them. The Synhedrion, from time to time, sent deputations to the different communities, both far and near, to acquaint them with the most important decisions.

The visits paid to the Temple by the Judæans who lived out of Palestine, strengthened the bond of unity, and these visits must have been of frequent occurrence, for they necessitated the creation of many places of worship in Jerusalem where the various foreign Judæans met for prayer. The capital contained synagogues of the Alexandrians, Cyrenians, Libertines, Elymæans, and Asiatics. One can form some idea of the vast numbers of Judæans existing at that period if one considers that Egypt alone, from the Mediterranean to the Ethiopian boundary, contained nearly a million. In the neighboring country of Cyrenaica, there were likewise many Judæans, some having been forcibly transplanted thither from Egypt, whilst others were voluntary emigrants. In many parts of Syria, and especially in its capital, Antioch, the Judæans formed a considerable portion of the population. The kings of Syria who succeeded Antiochus Epiphanes had reinstated them in all their rights, of which the half-insane Epiphanes had robbed them. One of these kings had even given them some of the utensils taken from the Temple, and these were preserved in their synagogue. About ten thousand Judæans lived at Damascus, and one of their nobles was made ethnarch over them by the Nabathæan king, Aretas Philodemus, just as in Alexandria one of their most distinguished members was elected chief of the community. To the great capital of the world, Rome, the point of attraction for the ambitious and the grasping, the discontented and the visionaries, the Judæans returned in such masses after their expulsion by Tiberius, that when the Emperor Claudius determined, from some unknown cause, upon expelling them again, he was only deterred, by fear of their great numbers, from endeavoring to carry out his intention. Meanwhile he forbade their religious meetings. Towards the end of his reign, however, on account of some disturbances occasioned by a certain Christian apostle, Chrestus, they were probably, but only in part, banished from Rome.

Even greater than in Europe, Syria and Africa was the number of Judæans in the Parthian Empire. They were the descendants of former exiles, who owned large tracts of country in Mesopotamia and Babylonia. Two youths from Naarda (Nahardea on the Euphrates) called Asinaï (Chasinaï) and Anilaï (Chanilaï) founded in the vicinity of that town a robber settlement, which spread terror along the bordering countries. Just as Naarda and Nisibis became the central points for the countries of the Euphrates, there arose in every land a central nucleus from which Judæan colonies spread themselves out into neighboring lands, from Asia Minor on the one side, towards the Black Sea on the other, towards Greece and the Islands. Athens, Corinth, Thessalonica, and Philippi contained Judæan communities. There is no doubt that from Rome Judæan colonies went forth westward to the south of France and Spain.

The effect produced by the Judæans upon the heathens was at first repellent. Their peculiar mode of living, their dress and their religious views, caused them to be considered as strange, enigmatical, mysterious beings, who at one moment inspired awe, and at another derision and contempt. So thorough was the opposition between the Judæans and the heathens that it manifested itself in all their actions. Everything that was holy in the eyes of the heathens was looked upon with horror by the Judæans, whilst objects of indifference to the former were considered sacred by the latter. The withdrawal of the Judæans from the repasts enjoyed in common by their fellow-citizens, their repugnance to intermarriages with the heathens, their abhorrence of the flesh of swine, and their abstinence from warm food on the Sabbath, were considered as the outcome of a perverse nature, whilst their keeping aloof from intimate intercourse with any but their own coreligionists was deemed a proof of their enmity towards mankind in general. The serious nature of the Judæans, which prevented their participation in childish amusements and mimic combats, appeared to those around them the sign of a gloomy disposition, which could find no pleasure in the bright and the beautiful. Superficial persons, therefore, regarded Judaism only as a barbarous superstition, which instilled hatred towards the generality of men, whilst the more thoughtful and discerning were filled with admiration by the pure and spiritual worship of one God, by the affection and sympathy which bound the Judæans together, and by the virtues of chastity, temperance and fortitude which characterized them.

Paganism, with the immoral life which sprang from it, stood revealed in all its nakedness to the keen sight of the Judæans. The dreary idolatry of the heathen, with its fabulous mythology which made divine nature even lower than the human, the madness which allowed wicked emperors to be worshiped as gods, the sensuality which had prevailed since the fall of Greece and the closer connection of the Romans with demoralized nations, the daily spectacle of evil lives and broken marriage vows, the bacchanalian intoxication of superstition, unbelief, and bestialities, fostered the pride of the Judæans in their own spiritual and intellectual possessions, and urged them to make the superiority of Judaism over heathenism manifest. In places where the Grecian language facilitated exchange of thought, as in Egypt, Asia Minor and Greece, there was considerable mental friction between the Judæans and the heathens. Judaism, as it were, summoned paganism to appear before the tribunal of truth, and there placed its own sublime faith beside the low, degrading forms of belief of its adversary.