Or the three nations whose representatives stood around the cross of "Jesus of Nazareth, king of the Jews," one alone still remains in its integrity a distinct people. The Roman soldier, the Greek traveller from philosophic Cyrene, and the Jewish priest, there met together as deputies from the civilized world. And when that closing scene was over, and with it the old economy was finished, they parted to tell (though often as unwilling messengers) of the commencement of a new era in world-history; of an era pregnant with "wars and rumours of wars, distress of nations with perplexity"; with the dissolution of the whole fabric of then existing empire and society; with the fall of Jerusalem and extinction of the independence of the Jewish nation, in order to the rise and spread of the new kingdom of peace upon earth, and the establishment of His government which shall have no end. Through the partial fulfilment of these great oracles of God, the world has since then witnessed greater changes on its surface, in not quite two thousand years, than in the four milleniums which preceded. Ere long Rome had ceased to be earth's imperial city; Greece was no longer learned; and the Jews were found scattered as dwellers in all lands but their own. The conquering and the conquered alike became enslaved to the nations of the north, who had with one accord precipitated themselves on the south. Society, government, laws, literature, the wonders of science, and the arts of peace, disappeared on this return of Chaos and ancient night. Nationalities were extinguished, languages became fused, and the world was turned upside down. But amidst all this war of the elements in the moral and Vol. 61.-No. 289. B political firmament, one race continued unchanging and unchangeable. The same sure word of prophecy, which had sealed the fate of the Jewish nation, had with equal certainty predicted the preservation and return from exile of the Jewish people. That people, as of old, was still to "dwell alone and not be reckoned among the nations." Though Judah was to "go into captivity," to "dwell among the heathen," and "find no rest" in a worse than Chaldean exile; though her annals, like her prophet's roll, were to be "written within and without with lamentation, and mourning, and woe," forming the saddest of all the sad chronicles of the middle ages; and though she was no longer to stand like the cedar on Lebanon, but to bend like the bulrush in Jordan before the blasts of the cold winds of adversity and persecution; yet her children were to have this solace in their banishment, that they were still unchanged. The same physical characteristics belong to the Hebrew now, which marked the children of the "Syrian ready to perish" who "went down into Egypt to sojourn there," and from the head of a small clan became the father of a mighty people. The oval outline, high pale forehead, dark protuberant flashing eye, raven hair, and bushy beard, identify the Jewish countenance of our own day with that of the alien race sculptured and painted at Nineveh and in Egypt. They not only furnish a striking example of the permanence, in all ages and in spite of all climates, of the Caucasian type, but also seem to preserve some lingering traces of past glory, though debased by a sense of humiliation, and scarred by the hatred and contempt which have been their peculiar inheritance in that world in which the Jews have been sojourners every where, rarely citizens, and with which they have continually mingled, but have never amalgamated. Indeed, this indelible type of countenance is an apt emblem of their national immortality; of their distinct existence, which is a perpetual miracle; of the marked identity every where of their mental character in their customs, laws, language, and literature, in spite of the marvellous pliancy with which they have accommodated themselves to the most diverse *"Spurzheim, speculating on the influence of climate upon the organization, concludes that man, by his intellectual faculties, opposes its influence. He illustrates his position by appealing to the Jewish people, who, dispersed over the whole world, preserve their primitive and characteristic organization in all countries. . . . . As a moral historian, I must assign other causes why the Jew has preserved, in all climates, his primitive characteristic." (Disraeli, Genius of Judaism, chap. vii.) + Wordsworth's true perception of beauty thus expresses itself in a poem Of poverty and wrong, From Hebrew fountains sprung; countries, civilizations, and forms of government; and may perhaps result in part from that cohesiveness with which they have clung together while tossed on the ocean of humanity like foam upon the waters.* It does not belong to our present subject to go through the history of the Jews immediately from the time when their independent nationality, religious establishment, and political constitution were annihilated at the fall of Jerusalem. We cannot do more than glance at the chief points in their annals before the Teutonic and Mongol invaders gradually dismembered the Roman provincial system, finally swept away the Roman state, confounded at once in a general community of suffering the Jew and his oppressor, and, by closing the book of ancient history, opened the page of that of the middle ages.† Under the Flavian house, which in the person of Titus had ruined their fortunes, the Jews, who had so long, by the evil element in the national character of exclusive patriotism, outlawed the rest of mankind, were themselves condemned to a more fatal outlawry; lost their centre of unity; and endured the accumulated evils of expatriation, extortion, and persecution: nor were they released from the capitation tax, imposed on them by Vespasian, till the time of Origen. The Cretan Nerva relieved them from spoliation and personal injury; favours which they ill repaid by raising the standard of rebellion in Cyprus, Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Cyrene, against his adopted son Trajan, whilst engaged in the Parthian war. For this they suffered by an edict (of Trajan's nephew, Adrian) of perpetual exile from Cyprus, an island long endeared to them by its proximity to Palestine, and by the loss of 600,000 of their nation; as well as by his further enactments interdicting circumcision, reading of the law, and observance of the Sabbath. The foundation, by the same prince, of the colony of Elia Capitolina and the shrine of Jupiter on the site of "Jerusalem the holy" and the temple of Solomon, provoked them to further revolts under the false Messiah, Barcochab, supported by Akibah, the greatest of the literary noblesse‡ of the Rabbins; and Dio Cassius reckons that 580,000 Jews perished by the sword alone before the rebellion ended in the fall of Bither. They were forbidden to enter the new colony on pain of death, or even to approach so near as to see its heights and towers. (a desultory and by no means trustworthy work). Causas, cur Judæi post tot acceptas clades adhuc superstites sunt, investigant Guisbertus Voetius, in disput. select. P. ii. p. 90; Hottinger, in Thesaur. Philolog. p. 122; Schudt, in Compend. Jud. Hist. p. 477; Schudt, in Jud. Christicidâ, p. 275. Jost," Geschichte der Israeliten seit der Zeit der Maccabäer;" Schudt, passim; Basnage, "Histoire des Juifs," So Michaelis (Comment. on Laws of Moses, Vol. i. Art. 52) represents the Levitical Order; and when, in Christian times, "Distinctio tribuum Judaicarum periit, fatentibus ipsis Judæis," (Wolfius, Observat. Miscell. de Jud. Bib. ii. p. 1101), the Rabbins seem to have filled much the same position. Under the mild Antoninus Pius, though forbidden to proselytize, they recovered all their lost privileges, except that of dwelling in Jerusalem and its environs; and for a long period after they flourished in peace. The Rabbinical school established at Jamnia, toward the close of the first century, had become developed into the Sanhedrim and Patriarchate of Tiberias, which served as a bond of union, partly spiritual and partly political, for the western Jews till near the beginning of the sixth century; while those to the east of the Euphrates recognized for a time the supremacy of the Prince of the Captivity at Babylon. These chiefs, by their legates, communicated with the scattered congregations of Jews everywhere; who, with a firm attachment and voluntary submission, paid them tribute, and often received their officers from them. The children of Jacob long seem to have found more favour in the eyes of the Roman government than the Gentile Christians. They were allowed to demonstrate their hatred of Christianity, as at the martyrdom of Polycarp,† and to maintain and defend the faith of their fathers in conferences like that of Trypho with Justin Martyr. Even where popular feeling was against them, its manifestation was repressed by the strong hand of authority. Zenobia might delight to honour her kindred at Palmyra, in grateful remembrance of her supposed Hebrew ancestry; but her conqueror Aurelian could only be influenced by the accustomed spirit of Roman tolerance to all forms of religion not supposed to be hostile to the unity of the empire and the dignity of the emperor. In the troubled days which followed, till Constantine planted the banner of the Cross on the seven hills by the side of the Tiber, and by the shores of the Bosphorus, it was the policy of the rival emperors to secure the allegiance of so energetic, intelligent, and wealthy a community. The pagan Maximus ordered a synagogue at Rome, which had been wantonly burnt by the populace, to be rebuilt at the public expense; an example afterwards followed by the Christian Theodosius (the Great), who also, on his death-bed, issued an edict for full toleration and imperial protection to the persecuted Hebrews. And before this latter emperor stereotyped their privileges, Constantine had allowed them to hold the rank of Roman citizens, and put their Rabbins on an equality with the Christian clergy, so far as regarded exemption from civil and military offices; and Julian, in his crusade against Christianity, had only been prevented, it is said, by eruptive fires from reinstating the ceremonial of the Mosaic law, and rebuilding the Temple in the capital of Palestine, "The Jewish writers... have ventured to inform us that Rabbin Judah Hakkadosh converted the imperial polytheist to Judaism, and that it was for this philosopher on the throne he collected in writing the oral law of his nation."— (Disraeli, Genius of Judaism, chap. vi.) + Eusebius, Eccl. Hist. Book iv. c. 15. After the failure of this imperial apostate to re-establish the religions of the past on the ruins of the religion of the present -Paganism and Judaism on the prostrate fabric of Christianity -we know little of the shifting fortunes of the forlorn people, till Justinian ascended the throne of Byzantium. Justin I. had recognised their value as citizens, when the freedom of the Empire had become a burden instead of an honour; and had protected them by imperial edicts in the legal enjoyment of the rights, while he compelled them to fulfil the duties, of citizenship. But the testimony of an Israelite was still inadmissible in a lawsuit, unless both parties were Jews; and he was disqualified in that orthodox court (in the same manner as a heretic) from holding high civil and military offices. The milder character of the legislation of Justinian moderated the rigour of their civil disabilities. While we find him in the Digest forbidding a Christian to turn Jew, we also learn from Procopius* that his efforts to enlist these rebellious recusants under the banner of the Cross were rewarded by the conversion of many Jews. Great numbers of them had before (in the fifth century) become professedly Christians in Minorca and Crete : but it may be doubted whether most, if not all, of these last were not cases of forcible conversion; like those effected through such means in Gaul by Childeric, king of Paris and Soissons, and in Spain by the Visigoth monarchs; who hoped, apparently, to obtain remission for impious violation of the Christian virtues by savage zeal for the Christian faith. And that such was in that age the prevailing character of attempts to induce Jews to embrace Christianity seems clear from the conduct towards them of Gregory the Great; who, though he acted with all the severity of a pontiff against heretics, yet disapproved of compulsory conversion or injurious treatment of the children of Abraham, as we see from his letters still extant to some of his suffragan bishops, Vigilius of Arles, Theodore of Marseilles, and Peter of Terracina. ‡ The names of Justinian and Gregory remind us that the world is again on the point of becoming barbaric; and that the prayers and bribes of the church, and the victories and legislative bulwarks of Belisarius and Narses, cannot avail for long to roll back the flood of northern invasions. And when the deluge which had already overwhelmed Belgium and the Rhine land (even as the Zuyder Zee has in later times flooded so large a portion of the coast) swept over the west of civilized Germany, Gaul, Italy, and Spain, the Jews were for a time lost to sight amidst the debris of the Old World. But • De ædificiis Justiniani, lib. vi. c. 2. Greg. Turon. Hist. Franc. lib. vi. c. 17. Launaius, "de vet. more baptizandi Judæos, et infideles." C. i. pp. 700-704. "Pontifices quosdam Romanos Patronos habuerunt Judæi."-Vid. Schudt. in Memorab. Jud. P. i. lib. iv. p 236, &c. Wolfius ii. p. 1106. |