CHAPTER VIII.
SPREAD OF THE JUDÆAN RACE, AND OF JUDAISM
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.
The Judæans were deeply anxious to impart the burning convictions that filled their hearts to the blind, deluded heathens, and to attain that object, their religion being hated by the latter, some of the most cultivated among the Judæans had recourse to a sort of pious fraud, by which heathen poets and soothsayers were made to bear witness to the beauty and grandeur of Judaism. Skilful imitations in verse, enunciating Judæan doctrines, were placed by Judæan-Grecian writers in the mouth of the mist-shrouded singer Orpheus, and introduced among the strains of Sophocles, the tragic poet who had celebrated the all-powerful gods. When Rome had extended her empire far and wide, and the legends of the prophetic Sibyls had become known through many lands, Judæan poets hastened to make the latter stand sponsors to tenets and views which they durst not proclaim themselves, or which, if given in their own name, would have obtained no hearing. In an oracular form the Sibyl was made to reveal the deep meaning of Judaism, to stir the hearts of the people by pictures of the awful result of infidelity to God, and to offer to nations engaged in bloody conflict the olive branch of peaceful amity, opening out to them bright prospects of the happier times, predicted by the Seers, to those who believed in the eternal God of Judaism; and the Sibyl spoke in prophetic strains of the glorious future, when all the nations of the earth would rejoice in the blessings of the Messianic kingdom.
"Unhappy Greece, cease proudly to exalt thyself; offer prayers for help to the immortal and lofty One, and take heed of thy ways. Serve the mighty God, so that thou also mayest find thy portion among the good when the end will have come and the day of judgment, according to the will of God, will rise up before man. Then will the teeming earth give abundantly to mortals the fairest fruits of the vine and the olive and choicest nourishing seeds. Also sweet honey dropping from heaven, and trees with their fruit, and fat sheep. Likewise oxen and lambs and the kids of the goat. For them rivers of milk will flow, sweet and white. The cities will be filled with merchandise, the earth will be rich, and there will be no more war or fearful sound of fighting. Nor will the earth, loud groaning, quake and be rent. War will cease, and there will be no drought upon the lands, no more famine or fruit-destroying hail. But great peace will reign over all the world, and to the end of time each king will be the other's friend, and under one law will the people of the whole world be governed by the Eternal God, enthroned in the starry heavens – one law for all weak, pitiable men; for He is one God, and there is no other, and the wicked He will cast into the flames."
The aim of a long series of prose writings of the Judæan-Grecian school was to set forth the futility and defects of paganism on the one hand, and on the other to display Judaism in its most favorable light, and thus to induce the heathen to become acquainted with the tenets of the latter. Heathen kings who had been convinced that idolatry was empty and vain, and that by Judaism, on the contrary, truth was revealed were pointed out as examples.
"The Book of Wisdom" was even more decided and vigorous in its denunciations of paganism than the Sibylline writings. Its unknown author gave with philosophical acumen, but in a poetical garb, a truthful exposition of idolatry, showed it to be the cause of vice and immorality, and then, in marked contrast to these dark shadows, made Judaism shine with increased purity and luster. It was the wisdom of Judaism, embodied, as it were, in the wise King Solomon, that presented these views, and in his name, turning to the monarchs of the earth (the Roman governors), rebukes their shameless self-deification. "Love righteousness, ye rulers of the earth," exclaims the Wisdom of Solomon, "recognize the Lord in goodness, and seek Him in simplicity of heart" (Book of Wisdom, i. 1). According to this author, the invention of idols was the cause of lasciviousness, and leads to the destruction of life. Idolatry did not exist from the beginning, neither will it last forever. It arose through the vanity and ignorance of man, and would endure but a short time. A father, suddenly plunged into deepest grief by the death of a child, perhaps made for himself an image of the latter; by degrees he worshiped the lifeless figure as a god, and insisted upon the observance by his dependants of mystical rites in its honor. In the course of time this godless practice became law, and images, by the order of despots, received the worship of the people. In the absence of the monarch, when he could not be personally adored by his subjects, the tyrant was flattered by the incense offered to his image. The ambition of the artist also fostered the growth of idolatry among the ignorant masses. To please the potentates of the earth he strove to make his images as beautiful as possible, and the public, dazzled by the splendor and grace of the work, worshiped as gods those whom they previously reverenced as men. Such beautiful productions of art became a snare to those whom misfortune or tyranny had enslaved, and induced them to deify carved stone and wood, and to bestow on them the uncommunicable name of God. Not alone do the people err in their religious creed, but they live in constant strife with one another and call it peace; infanticide is celebrated as a rite, they observe dark, mysterious ceremonies, and are guilty of unchastity. Each one plays the part of spy on the other, or wounds his friend in his dearest honor. All, without distinction, thirst for blood, love plunder, and practice cunning, perjury, deceit, ingratitude, and every description of impurity. For the worship of vain idols is the beginning, cause, and end of every evil thing. "For health he calleth upon that which is weak, for life prayeth to that which is dead, for aid humbly beseecheth that which hath least means to help" (Book of Wisdom, xiii. 18).
After the author has thus shown the vanity of idolatry, he attempts to describe the fundamental truths of Judaism:
"There is no God but Him whom the Jews adore. Divine wisdom preserved the first-born, saved the righteous (Noah) from the flood, upheld the righteous (Abraham) in innocence before God, delivered the holy seed (the Judæan people) from the oppression of the nations, filled the soul of the servant of God (Moses), who appeared before kings with terrible signs and wonders. Israel is the upright one whom God has chosen. He possesses the knowledge of the Divine Being, and may call himself the Son of God, who in His mercy sustains and upholds him."
These righteous ones will have eternal life. When Israel is persecuted by the rulers of the earth, because his path lies apart from theirs, and he condemns their godless ways, turns from them as unclean, and calls God his Father; when the nations of the earth torture him and put him to a shameful death – these are only trials imposed by God on His chosen one, to prove him and make him worthy of His grace. He tries him like gold in the furnace, and accepts him as a pure offering. Israel shall judge the nations, and have dominion over the people, and their God shall reign forever.
"Then will the upright one stand firmly before his oppressors. They will be troubled with great fear; they will be amazed at his glorious salvation, and repenting they will say, 'This was he whom we had in derision, and of whom we made a laughing-stock. Ignorantly we accounted his life madness, and his end to be without honor. And now he is numbered among the children of God and his lot is among the saints. We strayed from the way of truth, and the light of righteousness did not shine for us.' Israel was the instrument through which God gave the world the undying light of the law. In all things did the Lord magnify His people and glorify them; He abandoned them not, but assisted them in every time and place." (Book of Wisdom.)
Like the Babylonian Isaiah, the Alexandrian-Judæan sage contemplated his ideal in Israel, of whom a noble mission was required, and who would hereafter shine in glory.
Whilst the Alexandrian Judæans were absorbed in Grecian literature and philosophy, and were using that melodious language as a weapon against paganism and the immorality it fostered, they were carried beyond the object they had in view. Their desire was to make Judaism acceptable to the cultivated Greeks, but in following out that design it was, in some degree, lost to themselves. Greek conceptions had so completely taken possession of their thoughts that at last they came to find in the teachings of Judaism the current speculations of the Greeks. The faith that they had inherited was, however, still dear to them, and they managed, through sophistical means, to deceive themselves into a belief of the genuineness of their exposition. The Holy Scripture could not, indeed, always offer apposite passages to the prevailing philosophy, but the Judæan-Alexandrian authors knew how to help themselves out of that difficulty. They followed the example of Greek writers, who found their own views of the world in the poems of Homer, or put them there, and to accomplish that feat, employed a peculiar kind of sophistical word-pictures. Thus the Judæan thinkers of that period, in their interpretations of the Holy Scriptures, had recourse to allegory, and instead of the plain, natural meaning of a work, often gave it a different and seemingly higher import. Starting with the assumption that the Scriptures cannot always receive a literal explanation without the divine glory's being tarnished and many biblical characters being degraded, they resorted to the arts of allegory and metaphor. This method became so general that even the masses lost all pleasure in the simple stories of the Holy Scriptures, and took more delight in artificial explanations than in the plain lessons and sublime laws of their sacred books. The pious men, who were wont to explain the Scriptures on the Sabbath, were obliged, in compliance with the taste of the time, to allegorize both the history and the lessons contained in them. One result of this method was the indifference that manifested itself among the cultivated Judæans of Alexandria to the practice of the religion of their fathers. Allegory undermined the ramparts that fenced the Law. If the latter was only the garment in which philosophical ideas were robed, if the Sabbath was merely intended to record the power of uncreated divinity, and the rite of circumcision was only meant to show the necessity of placing a curb on the passions, it would be sufficient to understand and adopt the ideas underlying those forms. Of what use would be the practice of the latter? From indifference to the practice of the laws to the desertion of Judaism itself there was only one step, and thus can be explained the apostasy to paganism of some Judæans who were unable to withstand the difficulties and constant pressure they had to encounter. It was also among the Alexandrian Judæans that the conflict between science and faith first appeared.
The indifference towards Judaism was combated, indeed, by many who had not wholly given themselves up to Greek culture. Philo, the greatest genius which Alexandrian Judaism produced, opposed the lukewarm spirit and the feelings of contempt which had grown up against the practice of the Law. In his elevated and inspired diction he urged the obligation of adhering to the letter of the Law, and induced his co-religionists to regard it again with love and reverence. Philo indeed shared some of the errors and prejudices of his contemporaries, but with his clear intelligence, he soared above the mists which enthroned them. He likewise made exaggerated use of the allegorical method employed by his predecessors, and agreed with them in applying it to the entire Pentateuch, or at least to the greater part of its history and laws. To carry out this metaphorical line of scriptural interpretation he devised symbolic numbers, explained Hebrew by Greek words, and from one and the same sentence deduced different and opposite conclusions. To Philo allegorical exposition became almost a necessity. Had he not already found it in use, he would doubtless have invented it.
He wished to give the sanction of Holy Writ to the great thoughts which were partly the productions of his own rich mind, partly adopted from the philosophical schools of the Academy, the Stoics and the Neo-Pythagoreans. Sharing, and indeed, surpassing in perversity the allegorical explanations he found in vogue, he departed from them just in that essential point which told against the necessity of the practice of the Law, and in that lay his chief importance. He expresses himself with decision and force against those who, satisfied with the spiritual meaning contained in the Law, are indifferent to the Law itself. He calls them superficial and thoughtless, acting as though they lived in a desert, or as incorporeal beings who knew neither of town nor village nor dwelling, or who, in fact, entertained no intercourse with human beings, despising what is dear to mankind, and seeking only abstract spiritual truths. The holy word, however, while teaching us to seek out diligently the deepest spiritual meaning of the Law, does not cancel our obligation of adhering to customs introduced by inspired men who were in all things infinitely greater than ourselves. Shall we, because we know the spiritual meaning of the Sabbath, neglect its prescribed observance? "Shall we," he exclaims, "make use of fire on the Sabbath, till the ground, carry burdens, plead in courts of justice, enforce the payment of debts, and, in fact, transact all our usual daily business? Shall we, because a festival symbolizes the peace of the soul, and is intended as an expression of gratitude to God, cease to observe the festival itself? Or shall we give up the rite of circumcision now that we are acquainted with its symbolic significance? In that case we should likewise renounce our reverence for the sanctity of the Temple and abandon many religious observances. But, on the contrary, both the inner truth contained in the Law, and the Law itself, should be equally prized – the one as the soul, the other as the body. Just as we take care of the body, looking upon it as the habitation of the soul, so also should we value the letter of the Law. By strict observance of the Law we shall attain a clearer insight into its deepest meaning, and shall likewise escape the remarks and reproaches of the people."
It is in the Hebrew Scriptures, according to Philo, that the most profound wisdom is contained. All that is taught by the sublimest philosophy the Judæans found in their precepts and customs – the knowledge of the eternal God, the vanity of idols, and the universal laws of humanity and kindness. "Is not the highest honor due," he exclaims, "to those laws which teach the rich to share their wealth with the needy, which console the poor by enabling them to look forward to the time when they will no longer beg at the rich man's door, but will have recovered their alienated property; for, at the opening of the seventh year, prosperity would return again to the widow and the orphan, and would restore to well-being those whom fortune had disinherited?"
In opposition to the abuse hurled against Judaism by a Lysimachus and an Apion, Philo brings forward the spirit of humanity which breathes through the Judæan Law, and which affects even the treatment of animals and plants. "And yet, though Judaism is founded in truth on love, these miserable sycophants accuse it of misanthropy and egotism." In order to ensure a better comprehension of the Judæan ethics by the cynics and lawbreakers of his own race, as also by the Greeks, who had only a false conception of Judaism, Philo arranged his writings so that they should form a kind of philosophical commentary on the Pentateuch, with the further object that the truths of Judaism might be brought within the province of philosophy.
But if, on the one hand, Philo stood firmly on Judæan ground, on the other he was no less imbued with the dogmas of the Grecian schools, which ran counter to the former, and he seems to have been equally swayed by the spirit of Judaism and that of Greece. Vainly he attempted to bring the contradictory ideas into harmony. They were so completely opposed from their very inception that they could not be reconciled. To solve the difficulty between the conflicting views of a creating God and a perfect deity who does not come into contact with matter, Philo's system takes a middle course. God created first the spiritual world of ideas, which were not merely the archetypes of all future creations, but at the same time active powers which formed the latter. Through these spiritual powers which surround God like a train of servitors, He works indirectly in the world. Spiritual power acting, as it were, intermediately between God and the world is, according to Philo, the Logos, or creative reason, the divine wisdom, the spirit of God, the source of all strength. In Philo's more mystical than philosophical description, the Logos is the first-born son of God, who, standing on the border-land of the finite and infinite, links both together. He is neither uncreated like God, nor created like the things that are finite. The Logos is the prototype of the universe, the delegate of God, whose behests it communicates to the world, the interpreter who reveals His will and constantly accomplishes it, the archangel who shows forth his works, the high priest and intercessor between the world and God. Early Christianity made use of this doctrine of the Logos in order to assume a philosophic aspect.
The princely philosopher of the house of the Alabarchs combated the Greek and Roman paganism, steeped in vice and bestiality. His exposition of the Judæan Law was designed to darken still more, by comparison with the pure light of Judaism, the shadows of idolatry, the sexual looseness, frivolity, vanity and corruption which existed in the Grecian-Roman world. He tried to show how false were the accusations hurled against Judaism, and to make known the sublime grandeur and beauty of its tenets. His principal works were written for his own people and co-religionists, though he frequently addressed those who stood outside that circle. Against the few laws of humanity which the Greeks boasted to have possessed from ancient times, as, for example that of granting fuel to any one requiring it, or of showing a wayfarer the right path, Philo could have no difficulty in enumerating a long array of benevolent duties contained in Scripture or transmitted by word of mouth. At the head of unwritten laws he placed Hillel's golden saying, "What is hateful to yourself do not unto others." Judaism does not merely forbid any one to refuse fire or water, but commands that what the poor and feeble require shall be given to them. It prohibits the use of false weights and measures, the coinage of false money. It does not allow children to be taken from their parents, or wives to be separated from their husbands, even when they have been legally acquired as slaves. Even towards animals the duty of mercy is impressed upon man. "What, in comparison to these," he cries to the Greeks, "are the few laws descending from primeval times, of which you boast so much?"
In the following tone of mockery Philo answered malicious accusations against the Lawgiver:
"Yes, verily, Moses must have been a sorcerer, not only to have preserved a whole people, and supplied them abundantly whilst they were journeying through many nations, exposed to the danger of hunger and thirst, and ignorant of the way they were pursuing, but likewise to have made them, in spite of their mutinous spirit, which often broke out against himself, docile and pliant."
Of the three great moralists who followed each other within a century, Hillel the Babylonian, Jesus of Nazareth, and Philo the Alexandrian, it was the last who in all things, great and small, upheld most strenuously the glory of Judaism. He was superior to them likewise in beauty of style and in depth of thought, whilst he was animated with equally fervent convictions. The first two simply created an impulse, but it was through their disciples that their ideas, variously transformed, were introduced into a larger circle; whereas Philo, by his own eloquent writings, made an important and lasting effect. His works were perhaps read by cultivated heathens even more than by Judæans, though all were affected by the warmth and glow which pervaded everything he wrote about God, Moses, and the spirit of the Law.
Philo and the Alexandrian sages continued to promote the great work of the prophets Isaiah, Habakkuk and Jeremiah, and laid bare all the unreasonableness, the instability, the perversion and immorality of the heathen religions. The transparent, shimmering ether with which the Greeks invested Olympus, these writers resolved into mists and vapors. Greeks and Romans, who felt deeply on the subject, were moved to turn with contempt from a religion which not only gave so unworthy a representation of the Divinity, but actually seemed to sanctify immorality by the example set before them in the history of their deities. Like most oriental people, the heathens felt the need of religion, and those who were searching for true and elevated teaching embraced Judaism, which was daily being brought more and more home to them in the Greek translations of Judæan writings through Greek-Alexandrine literature, and also through intercourse with cultivated Judæans.