CHAPTER XIV.
INNER LIFE
Inner Life of the Jews – Sphere of Action of the Synhedrion and the Patriarch – The Order of Members and Moral Condition of the Common People – Relation of Christianity towards Judaism – Sects – Jewish Christians – Pagan Christians – Ebionites – Nazarenes – The Gnostics – Regulations of the Synhedrion against Christianity – Proselytes at Rome – Aquilas and his translation of the Bible – Berenice and Titus – Domitian – Josephus and the Romans.
The Synhedrion of Jamnia had become the heart of the Jewish nation, whence life and activity streamed forth to the most distant communities. Thence proceeded all arrangements and decisions relating to religious matters, which were to become popular, and the observance of which was to be ensured. The nation regarded the Synhedrion as a remnant of the State, and paid to the Nasi (the President), a member of the house of Hillel and a descendant of David, an amount of reverence such as might be shown to royalty. The Greek title Ethnarch, which means Ruler of the People, and which approaches nearest to the description of a king, seems to show that with the Patriarchate was associated the princely dignity. Therefore the people were proud of the house of Hillel, because through its members the ruling power remained in the house of David, and thus the prediction of the patriarch Jacob was verified, "that the scepter should not depart from the tribe of Judah." After the Patriarch came his representative Ab-beth-din, and the Chacham (the Wise), whose special office is not known. The Patriarch had the right of appointing judges and the officers of the congregation, and probably supervised their actions. The Roman government had not yet interfered with the communal arrangements of the Jews so far as to cause the judicial offices to be performed by Romans. The authority of the Patriarch left the power of the teacher, however, undiminished in certain of the schools; they could confer on their disciples the dignities of judge or teacher of the people, and the assent of the Patriarch was not required. The master laid his hand on the head of the pupil, and this ordination was called Semicha, or Minui, and meant Nomination, Ordination, or Promotion. The ordained bore the title Zaken (Elder), which was almost equivalent to that of Senator, for through this ordination they obtained the right of membership of the Council when the choice should fall on them.
The chief activity of the Patriarch was felt at the public meetings of the Synhedrion. He occupied the highest place, supported by the chief members who were seated around in a half-circle. Behind these members, whose number at this time was probably seventy, there were several rows of the ordained, behind whom stood the pupils, and at the back the people seated on the ground witnessed the proceedings.
The Patriarch opened the meeting either by introducing some subject of discussion from the Laws, or by inviting the members to speak by the formula "Ask." If he himself spoke first, he uttered some sentences softly to the Meturgeman, who then developed and explained them in an oratorical manner. Any person had the right to put questions: while the discussion was being held the assembly would divide into groups and debate on the matter. The president had the right to close the discussion, and to bring about its conclusion by saying, "The subject has been sufficiently discussed." After the conclusion no one was permitted to return to theoretical discussions. It appears that the ordained members also had the right of voting. In voting on criminal cases all votes were taken, the youngest members beginning, so that they, by coming first, might not be guided by the most influential men; in other matters this method was reversed. Such was the procedure at meetings of the Synhedrion when questions were to be answered, disputed laws to be settled, new arrangements introduced, or old ones to be set aside.
The Patriarch also exercised an important function in fixing the dates of the festivals. The Jewish Calendar was not permanently fixed, but had to be regulated from time to time. The year was in fact partly solar, partly lunar, the festivals being dependent on the course of the moon, and on the influence of the sun on the harvests, and the varying course of the solar and lunar years had to be equalized. Thus, when the solar year exceeded the lunar by a month, which occurred every two or three years, a month was inserted, and this leap-year contained thirteen lunar months. The length of the months was also uncertain; a month, according to tradition, was to commence when the new moon became visible, and this period was decided partly by astronomical calculations and partly by the evidence of actual witnesses. As soon as the witnesses reported to the Synhedrion that the first streak of the young moon was visible, that day was fixed as the first day of the month, provided it concurred with calculations made. If no witnesses presented themselves, the doubtful day was counted in the current month. The month thus contained twenty-nine or thirty days. The new moon was celebrated in a solemn manner, and was announced in earlier times by means of bonfires, which could easily be used in a mountainous country throughout the land. Burning torches were seen on the Mount of Olives, as also on Mount Sartaba (Alexandrion), and on Mount Tabor, and so on, as far as Beth-Beltis, on the Babylonian frontier. On the doubtful day between the two months the Babylonian community looked out for the signal, and repeated it for the benefit of those who lived afar. The congregations in Egypt, in Asia Minor and in Greece, however, could not use bonfires, they were uncertain as to the day on which the new moon fell, and, therefore, they kept two days instead of one. The intercalary month was announced by the Patriarch in a circular letter to the community.
The Patriarch Gamaliel introduced the use of set prayers. Although some of the prayers were very ancient, and were used in the Temple at the time of the burnt-offerings, yet the chief prayers of those days were not formulated, but each man was left to pray in whatever words his feelings dictated to him. Gamaliel introduced the daily prayers, the eighteen Berachoth (blessings), which are used in the synagogues at the present day. It is not known by whom the prayers were introduced for the Sabbath and the Festivals. Prayers were universally considered as a substitute for offerings, and were called "the offerings of the heart." The public service was very simple; there were no official readers, any one who had attained a certain age and was of good repute could pray; the congregation called on him to do so, and he was named "the delegate of the community." He stood before the ark in which lay the scrolls of the Law, and, therefore, to pray was called "to go before the ark."
The Law, with the exception of the sacrificial system, was strictly enforced. The tithes were paid to the descendants of Aaron, the corners of the fields were left standing for the poor, and every three years the poor-tithes were paid. In remembrance of the Temple, for whose restoration the most earnest hopes were awakened, many observances were retained, which could only be of meaning there. All those who fulfilled strictly the requirements of the Law, giving up the tenth part of all the fruits which they possessed, formed a sort of order (Chaburah), the members of which were called fellows (Chaberim).
In contradistinction to this order were the peasants – the slaves of the soil. A striking picture is given of the neglected mental and moral state of these peasants, to which the frequent rebellions during the last years of the Jewish state no doubt contributed. They only observed such laws as appealed to their rude senses, and knew nothing of a higher life. The members of the order would not eat or live with them, and even kept aloof from them, that their clothes might not be made unclean by contact. It was said by contemporaries that the hatred between the two classes was stronger than that felt between Jews and heathens.
Thus left to themselves and cut off from the higher classes and from all share in communal life, without a leader or adviser, the peasants easily fell under the influence of young Christianity. Jesus and his disciples had especially turned towards the unprotected class, and had there found the greater number of their followers. How flattering it must have been to these neglected beings to hear that on their account the Messiah had come, that he had been executed so that they might have a share in the good things of which they had been deprived, more especially of happiness in a better world. The Law deprived them of their rights, while Christianity opened the kingdom of heaven to them!
The teachers of the Law, absorbed in the task of upholding the Law and Jewish life, overlooked the element from which a mighty foe to the Law would arise. Before they realized it they found an enemy on their own ground, who was desirous of obtaining the treasure which they had watched with such devotion. The development of Christianity as a branch of Judaism, drawing sustenance from its roots, constitutes, so long as its followers belonged to the Jewish people, a part of Jewish history.
Of the small group of a hundred and twenty persons, who, after the death of Jesus, had formed his sole followers, a Christian community had been formed, especially through the energy of Paul. He endeavored to win over the heathens by the belief in the resurrection of Christ, and the Jews by the belief that the actual appearance of the Messiah had proved the inefficacy of the Jewish Law. Christianity could no longer be contemptuously overlooked, but began to be a new element in history. But the doctrine of Paul that the Jewish Law was unnecessary, had sown the seed of dissension in primitive Christianity, and the followers of Jesus were divided into two great parties, which were again divided into smaller sects, with special views and modes of life. Sectarianism did not show itself for the first time in Christianity, as is supposed, in the second century, but was present at its very commencement, and was a necessary result of fundamental differences. The two great parties, which were arrayed in sharp opposition, were, on the one hand, the Jewish Christians, and, on the other, the Pagan Christians. The Jewish Christians, belonging to the original community, which was composed of Jews, were closely connected with Judaism. They observed the Jewish laws in all their details, and pointed to the example of Jesus, who himself had lived according to Jewish laws. They put these words into the mouth of the founder of the religion, "Sooner shall heaven and earth disappear, than that an iota or a grain of the Law shall not be fulfilled"; further, "I have not come to destroy the Law of Moses, but to fulfil it." They entertained a hostile spirit towards the Pagan Christians, and applied to them one of the sayings of Jesus, "He who alters any, even the most trivial of the laws, and teaches mankind accordingly, shall be the last in the kingdom of heaven; but he who obeys them, and teaches them, shall be considered great in the kingdom of heaven." Even the devotion of Jewish Christians to Jesus was not of a nature to separate them from Judaism. They considered him as a holy and morally great man, who was descended in the natural way from the race of David. This son of David had advanced the kingdom of heaven because he taught men to live modestly and in poverty, like the Essenes, from whose midst, in fact, Christianity had sprung. From their contempt of riches and preference for poverty they bore the name of Ebionites or Ebionim (poor), which was travestied by their Christian opponents into a nickname meaning "poor in spirit." Fearing to be eclipsed by the other party, the primitive Jewish Christian community sent out messengers to the foreign communities, in order to impress on them not only the Messianic character of Jesus, but also the duty which they owed to the Law. Thus they founded Judæo-Christian colonies, of which that at Rome in time became the chief.
In opposition to these were the heathen Christians. As the term "Son of God," as used in the language of the prophets, contained an idea entirely incomprehensible to them, they interpreted it according to their own mode of thought, as meaning God's actual Son, a conception which was as clear and acceptable to the heathen as it was strange and repulsive to the Jews. When once the idea of a Son of God was accepted, it became necessary to eliminate from the life of Jesus all those traits which appertained to him as a human being, such as his natural birth from parents, and thus the statement developed that this Son of God was born of a virgin through the Holy Ghost. The first great difference between the Ebionites and the heathen Christians lay in their views concerning the person of Jesus; the one honoring him as the son of David, the other worshiping him as the Son of God. The second point turned on the stress to be laid on the laws of Judaism. The heathen party paid but little attention to the laws relating to the community of property and contempt for riches, which were the chief ends of Ebionite Christianity. The heathen or Hellenic Christians had their chief seat in Asia Minor, namely, in seven cities, which, in the symbolical language of that time, were called the seven stars and the seven golden lamps. Ephesus was the chief of these heathen Christian congregations. Between the Ebionite and Hellenic congregations, which possessed in common only the name of the founder, there arose strained relations and a mutual dislike, which became more bitter with time. Paul and his disciples were fiercely hated by the Jewish Christians. They did not cease, even after his death, to use expressions of contempt against the circumcised apostle who only spread error. Admiring the unity and solidarity which prevailed in the Jamnian Synhedrion, in contrast to the dissensions which reigned in the Christian community, a Jewish Christian wrote: "Our fellow-tribesmen follow to the present day the same law concerning the unity of God and the proper mode of life, and cannot form a different opinion of the meaning of the Scriptures. It is only according to prescribed rules that they endeavor to bring into agreement the sayings of Scripture, but they do not permit a man to teach unless he has learnt beforehand how to explain the Holy Scriptures. They have but one God, one Law, one hope. If we do not follow the same course, our word of truth will, through the variety of opinion, be shattered. This I know, not as a prophet, but because I see the root of the evil; for some of the heathens have put aside with the Law the prophecies in agreement with it, and have adopted the unlawful and absurd teachings of an enemy (Paul)." These words are placed in the mouth of Peter, the second of the apostles. But the Ebionites not only called Paul's predictions and instructions, of which he thought so much, unlawful and absurd, but gave him a nickname, which was meant to brand him and his followers. They called him Simon Magus, a half-Jewish (Samaritan) wizard, who is said to have bewitched all the world with his words. He was said also to have been baptized, but it was asserted that he had not received his position as apostle through the Holy Ghost from Jesus' disciples, but had sought it through bribes to the Ebionite community. The honor was not only absolutely refused to him, but Simon Peter had threatened him with damnation, for his heart was full of deceit, bitterness, and injustice. The freedom from the Jewish Law inaugurated by Paul was characterized as unbridled license, as the teaching of Balaam, which brought in its train the worship of idols and the pursuit of vice. The leaders of the heathens did not hesitate to reply in a similar strain, and perhaps repaid their opponents with even greater hatred when, to religious opposition, there was added the dislike of the Romans and Greeks to the Jews, even after they had become followers of Jesus. In the larger Christian congregations the two sects often fell into distinct groups and became isolated from each other. In the circular letters, which the chiefs of the various Christian parties were accustomed to send to the communities, they made use of sharp or condemnatory observations against the opponents of the opinions which they held to be the only true ones. Even the stories of the birth of Jesus, his works, sufferings, death and resurrection, which were written down, under the title of the Evangels, only in the first quarter of the second century, were colored by the views of the two parties, who put teachings and sayings into the mouth of the Founder of Christianity, not as he had uttered them, but according to their own views. These narratives were favorable to the Law of the Jews and to the Jews themselves, when they emanated from the Ebionites, and inimical towards both in the accounts written by the followers of Paul, the heathen Christians. The evangelists were thus polemical writers.
The division between the Ebionites and the heathen Christians was by no means confined to religious belief, but had a political background. The Jewish Christians hated Rome, the Romans, the Emperor, and their officials as much as the Jews did. One of their prophets (said to be John, an imitator of the visions of Daniel), who had composed the first Christian Revelation or Apocalypse, was inspired with the deepest hatred towards the town of seven hills, the great Babylon. All the evil in the world, all the depredations and plagues, all the contempt and humiliation were announced and invoked in this first Christian Revelation against sinful Rome. They did not imagine that she would, at a future time, become the capital of Christianity. On the other hand, the followers of Paul not only recommended subjection to the Roman Empire, but even declared it to have been appointed by God. The Christian party, without any regard for those Jews who were imbued with a love of liberty, continually recommended that taxes and tithes should be handed to the Romans. This submission to the existing power, this coqueting with sinful Rome, which the Jewish Christians thought doomed to destruction, was another source of disunion amongst various sects of Christians.
Between the Jews and the Jewish Christians there existed at first tolerable relations. The former called the latter Sectaries (Minim, Minæans). Even the Tanaite and Ebionite teachers mixed freely with each other. The strict Rabbi Eliezer, who refused to the heathens their share and part in life everlasting, had had an interview with the Jewish Christian, Jacob of Kephar-Samia, and quietly listened to his version, as he had received it from Jesus. Once, Bendama, a nephew of Ishmael, having been bitten by a snake, determined to let himself be cured by means of an exorcism uttered by Jacob. The transition from Judaism to Christianity was not a striking one. It is probable that various members of Jewish families belonged to the Jewish-Christian belief without giving rise to dissensions or disturbing the domestic peace. It is related of Hanania, the nephew of Joshua, that he had joined the Christian congregation at Capernaum; but that his uncle, who disapproved, removed him from Christian influences, and sent him to Babylon.
But the Jewish Christians, also, did not remain content with the simple idea of Jesus as the Messiah. They gradually and unconsciously, like the heathen Christians, adorned him with God-like attributes, and endowed him with miraculous powers. The more the Jewish-Christian conception idealized Jesus, the more it became separated from Judaism, with which it still thought itself at one. There arose mixed sects from among the Ebionites and Hellenites, and one could perceive a gradual descent from the law-abiding Ebionites to the law-despising Antitaktes. The Nazarenes came next to the Ebionites. They also acknowledged the power of the Jewish law in its entirety; but they explained the birth of Jesus in a supernatural manner – from the Virgin and the Holy Ghost – and ascribed to him God-like attributes. Other Jewish Christians went further than the Nazarenes, and gave up the Law, either in part or altogether. After such proceedings, a total breach between Jews and Jewish Christians was inevitable. At length a time arrived when the latter themselves felt that they no longer belonged to the Jewish community, and therefore they entirely withdrew from it. The letter of separation which the Jewish community sent to the parent body is yet in existence. It calls on the Jewish followers of Jesus to separate wholly from their fellow-countrymen. In the Agadic method of that period, the Epistle to the Hebrews sets forth that the crucified Messiah is at the same time the expiatory sacrifice and the atoning priest. It proves from the Law that those sacrifices whose blood was sprinkled in the Holy of Holies, were considered the holiest, and the bodies were burnt outside the Temple. "Therefore" – thus continues the Jewish-Christian monitor – "Jesus, also, that he might sanctify the people through his own blood, suffered without the gate (of Jerusalem). Let us, therefore, go forth unto him without the camp (the Jewish community), bearing his reproach, for we have not here an abiding city (Jerusalem as the symbol of the Jewish religion), but we seek after the city which is to come." When once a decided step had been taken to divide the Nazarenes and the cognate sects from the Jewish community, a deadly hate arose against the Jews and Judaism. Like the heathen Christians, the Nazarenes reviled the Jews and their ways. As the written Law was holy to them also, they directed their shafts against the study of Halachas amongst the Tanaites, who in those days were the very life of Judaism. In Jewish-Christian, as in Jewish circles, men were accustomed to view all events from the point of view of Holy Writ, and to draw counsel from the explanations and references in the prophecies. The Nazarenes, therefore, applied to the Tanaites, whom they called Deuterotes, and more especially to the schools of Hillel and Shammai, a threatening verse of Isaiah (viii. 14): "It shall be a stone of stumbling and the downfall of both the houses of Israel." "By the two houses the prophet meant the two scholastic sects of Shammai and Hillel, from whose midst the Scribes and Pharisees had arisen, and whose successors were Akiba, Jochanan, the son of Zakkai, then Eliezer and Delphon (Tarphon), and then again Joseph the Galilean and Joshua. These are the two houses which do not recognize the Savior; and this shall, therefore, bring them to downfall and destruction." Yet another verse from the same prophet, which runs, "They mock the people through the word" (Is. xxix. 21), the Nazarenes applied to the teachers of the Mishna, "who contemn the nation through their bad traditions." They place taunts in the mouth of Jesus against the teachers of the Law, which might, perhaps, apply to one or another of them, but which as applied to the whole body were a calumnious libel. They make him say, "On the seat of Moses (the Synhedrion) sit the Scribes and Pharisees; all that they say you must follow and do; but their works ye shall not do, for they speak and do not act in accordance… All their works they do so that people may notice them. They use wide phylacteries and fringes on their garments. They love to have the chief place at meals and in the synagogues, to be greeted by other men in the public places, and to be called Rabbi, Rabbi… Woe to you, ye hypocritical Scribes and Pharisees, who devour the substance of the widow under the pretense that ye pray long; therefore shall ye receive punishment; … woe to you, that ye tithe the herbs of the ground – both dill and cummin, and that ye leave undone the weightier matters of the Law, judgment, mercy and faith. The one must be done, but the other should not be omitted. You blind souls who strain at gnats and swallow camels, … who cleanse the outside of the cups and platters and leave them within full to the brim with extortion and corruption."
Thus the leaders of the Jewish Christians were opposed to the Judaism of the Torah, and thus, without actually desiring it, they played into the hands of the Hellenes. The teaching of Paul thus gained more and more ground, and came at last to be considered as true Christianity, as the catholic, the universal religion. It was, therefore, natural that the various sects of Ebionites and Nazarenes should gradually disappear amongst the ever-increasing numbers of the heathen Christians, and that they should become few in numbers and miserable in condition – an object of contempt both to Jews and Christians. A peculiar phenomenon was offered in this contest of opinions, that the further the Jewish Christians departed from the Law, the nearer did the Hellenes approach to it. In the various epistles and letters which the Christian teachers sent to the congregations, or to their various representatives, they could not sufficiently denounce those who sought to make way for the Law and the Jewish teachings.
Meanwhile, Christianity developed a number of sects with most curious titles, and of the most eccentric tendency. Half a century after the destruction of the Temple, the two forms of religion in the Old World (Judaism and Paganism) underwent a transformation and partial union. Judaism being without a state or point of centralization, endeavored to consolidate itself, whilst the Pagan world, in the full flush of its power, became disintegrated, and a disturbance was caused in men's minds which led to the most extraordinary results.
To the two elements borrowed from Judaism and Christianity there were added others from the Judæan-Alexandrian system of Philo, from Grecian philosophy, and, in fact, from all corners of the earth, whose source can hardly be determined. It was a confusion of the most opposite modes of thought and teachings, Jewish and heathen, old and new, true and false, the lofty and the low, all in close juxtaposition and fusion. It seemed as though on the advent of Christianity into the world, all the most decided teachings of ancient times had bestowed a part of their contents on it, in order to obtain thereby importance and duration. The old question – whence did evil arise in this world – and how its existence could be reconciled with the idea of a good and just providence, occupied in the liveliest manner all minds which had been made acquainted with Jewish dogmas by means of the Christian apostles. It was only through a new conception of God that it seemed possible to solve this question, and this new belief was pieced together from the most varied religious systems. The higher knowledge of God, His relation to the world and to religious and moral life, was called Gnosis; those who thought that they possessed it called themselves Gnostics, and understood thereby highly gifted beings, who had penetrated the secrets of creation.
The Gnostics, or more correctly, the Theosophists, who hovered between Judaism, Christianity and Paganism, and who borrowed their views and forms of thought from these three circles, were drawn also from the adherents of these three religions. So powerful must have been the charm of the Gnostic teaching, that the authorities of the Synagogue and the Church enacted numberless rules and ordinances against it, and were yet powerless to prevent Gnostic teachings and formulæ from gaining ground amongst the Jews and the Christians. Gnosticism spread throughout Judæa, Egypt, Syria, Asia Minor, and flourished especially in Rome – the capital of the world – where all religious views and creeds found followers. The language of the Gnostics was of a mystic-allegorical character, often borrowed from Jewish and Christian confessions of creed, but treated in an entirely different manner. Some of the Gnostic sects exemplified the peculiarities of the tendency of those times. One sect called themselves Cainites, for no other reason than that its disciples, in defiance of the Biblical narrative, regarded the fratricide Cain as superior to Abel. The Cainites also honored the depraved Sodomites, Esau, in spite of his savagery, and the ambitious Korah. The Ophites and Naasites were filled with similar love of opposition to the Biblical accounts, but they assigned to it a better motive than that of the Cainites. They took their name from the Greek word Ophis and the Hebrew Nahash (Naas) serpent, and honored this animal very highly, because in the Bible the serpent is considered as the origin of evil, and, according to the ideas of those times, was looked upon as the symbol of evil, and as the form taken by Satan. The Ophites gave thanks to the serpent, by whose means the first human pair were led into disobedience against God, and thus to the recognition of good and evil and of consciousness in general.
Varied and contradictory as were the tendencies of the Gnostic sects, they yet had doctrines in common. The fundamental Gnostic doctrines concerned the actual knowledge of God, which its founders developed in opposition to the idea of God formulated by Judaism. The Gnostics pictured to themselves the Divine Being as divided into two principles of a God and a Creator, the one subordinate to the other. God they called Silence or Rest, and depicted him as enthroned in the empyrean heights, without relation to the world. His fundamental attributes were grace, love, mercy. From him proceeded emanations which revealed a portion of his essence; these emanations were called æons (worlds). Beneath this highest of all beings they set the Creator of the world (Demiurge), whom they also called Ruler. To him they assigned the work of creation; he directed the world, he had delivered the people of Israel, and given them the Law. As to the highest God appertain love and mercy, which harmonize with freedom, so to the fundamental character of the world's creator appertain justice and severity, which he causes to be felt through laws and obligations. According to the usual practice of the age, the Gnostics found a passage of Scripture to illustrate these relations between the God of justice and the God of grace. Isaiah vii. 6 reads: "We will go up to Judah, and instal another king, the son of the good God (Tab-El)." They depict the Creator as forming the world out of primeval matter by means of wisdom (Achamot). "Wisdom," as it is expressed in their allegorical language, "became allied with primeval matter which existed from eternity, and a variety of forms were brought forth; but wisdom became thereby bedimmed and darkened." According to this exposition, the Gnostics assumed that there were three original Beings – the highest God, the Creator, and Primeval Matter, and from these they developed the various conditions and stages in the spiritual and actual world. All that is good and noble is accounted an emanation from God; justice and law come from the Creator; but what is imperfect, bad, or crippled in this world is the result of the primeval matter.