82. A.D. 70 to 1076

A.D. 70 to 1076

Chapter VI

1. After the Roman armies were withdrawn from Jerusalem, many of the Jews returned to dwell among its ruins, though the Roman emperor, indignant at the late rebellion, had placed a garrison of 800 troops on Mount Zion, in order to prevent any attempt to rebuild the city. A portion of the country was yet, indeed, unscathed by the flames of war; the towns on the coast, submitting to the Romans, escaped the horrors of a siege and the penalties of rebellion, while the provinces beyond Jordan enjoyed tranquillity under the rule of the conquerors. But the Jews were discontented and rebellious under the yoke of Rome; they still fondly believed that an earthly Messiah was shortly to arise, to free them from bondage, and to give them the dominion of the whole earth. They accordingly listened to the tales of every impostor, and were easily seduced into rebellion by vain hopes of national glory, that were never realised. Hence their continual insurrections, which exposed them still farther to the vengeance of the conquerors, and accelerated the crisis of their fate, when they were to be driven altogether from their own land, and dispersed over the face of the earth. In the course of these commotions great cruelties were committed; but in the end. the Jews were everywhere borne down by the discipline of the Roman legions, and paid the penalty of their rebellion with their lives. By acts of mutual cruelty, the animosity of both parties was inflamed; the sword of persecution was let loose against the Jewish religion by their conquerors; the rite of circumcision, the reading of the law, and the observance of the Jewish Sabbath, and all the other memorials of the national faith, were forbidden. In the city of Jerusalem, which was to a certain extent repaired, and received the name of Aelia Capitolina, a colony of Greeks and Latins was established, in order to preclude the return of the Jews, and all further hopes of the restoration of their kingdom. But the policy of the Romans was of no avail against the deeprooted prejudices of this infatuated people; and no sooner had a new impostor arisen, of the name of Simon Barcocbab (son of a star), than the deluded Israelites hailed him as the light that was to dawn in the latter days, and usher in the day of their long-expected rest. They accordingly crowded to his standard; and in a short time he had mustered a powerful army of 200,000 devoted followers. Owing to the absence of the Roman legions, engaged at that time in distant service, important advantages were gained, and Jerusalem was again occupied by the insurgent Jews, besides about fifty castles, and numbers of open towns. But this career of success was speedily terminated by the arrival of Severus, afterwards emperor, with a large and well-appointed body of legionary troops; the Jews were overwhelmed by numbers, discipline, and military skill; their cities were taken and destroyed; and Bither, where the leader of the rebellion, Barcocbab, had made his last stand, was stormed with great slaughter, and himself slain. Of the Jews, it is estimated that 580,000 died on the field, and the remnant that escaped mostly perished by famine and disease, or amid the flames of their ruined cities. Under these ruthless devastations the country was at last converted into a desert; the inhabitants were either slain or driven into exile; and the divine denunciations were now fully accomplished against this misguided people, that they should be scattered among all the nations of the earth.

2. The victors having thus satiated their vengeance, began in due time to relax their stern and intolerant policy. Under the mild rule of Antoninus Pius, the Jews were restored to their ancient privileges, to the freedom of worship, and to all their other national rites. They were now mingled with the nations, and were found dwelling in all parts of the Roman empire; and their general condition under the Roman emperors was not unfavorable. The numerous remains of that people, though they were excluded from the precincts of Jerusalem, were permitted to form and to maintain considerable establishments both in Italy and in the provinces, to acquire the freedom of Rome, to enjoy municipal honors, and to obtain at the same time an exemption from burdensome and expensive offices. The moderation or indifference of the Romans gave a legal sanction to the form of ecclesiastical police which was instituted by the vanquished sect. Tho patriarch, who had fixed his residence at Tiberias, was empowered to appoint his subordinate ministers to exercise a domestic jurisdiction, and to receive from his dispersed brethren an annual contribution. New synagogues were frequently erected in the principal cities of the empire; and the sabbaths, the fasts, and the festivals, which were either commanded by the Mosaic law, or enjoined by the traditions of the rabbins, were celebrated in the most solemn and public manner. Such gentle treatment insensibly mollified the stern temper of the Jews, and, awakened from their dream of misinterpreted prophecy and conquest, they assumed the behaviour of peaceable and industrious subjects.

3. No great change appears to have taken place in the condition of Palestine, until Constantine ascended the imperial throne. He was, as is well known, the first Christian emperor; and under his powerful patronage, and that of his mother the Empress Helena, splendid structures were everywhere erected in the Holy Land, in honor of the Christian faith. The land was gradually overspread with memorials of Christianity; and chapels, altars, and houses of prayer marked every spot which was memorable for any of the sayings or doings of the Saviour. The Jews beheld with indignation the rise of these Christian monuments within the precincts of the holy city. They were as much opposed to the Christian worship as to the heathen idolatry, but their influence was now at an end. Scattered in distant parts, they could no longer act with consistency or vigor; yet, so attached were they to their peculiar rites, that, however faint the chance of success, they were ready in crowds to rally round the standard of their ancient faith, wherever it was displayed, and to follow any daring leader into the field. But the time was past. They were rejected by the divine decree, and were no longer to be assembled as a nation in their own land. Jerusalem was now filled with the emblems of a new faith, and crowds of pilgrims were attracted from the most distant countries, by the eager desire of contemplating the place of the Redeemer’s passion, and of all the previous incidents of his holy life. These visits were encouraged from various motives. They evinced, no doubt, the zeal of the new converts; and being at once an apparent proof of piety and a real source of profit, they were encouraged by the clergy at Jerusalem.

4. The reign of Julian was a new era in the history of Palestine, and the Jews anticipated, from his declared enmity to Christianity, his favor for their own faith. The policy of this heathen emperor countenanced them in this belief, when he endeavoured, by rebuilding the Temple of Jerusalem in its former splendor, to discredit the truth of those prophesies which declared the extinction of the ritual service. He chose the commanding eminence of Mount Moriah for the site of a new structure, which was to eclipse the splendor of the Christian church on the adjacent hill of Calvary; and he resolved to establish a Jewish order of priests, who might revive the observance of the Mosaic rites, together with as numerous a colony of Jews as could be collected, in the holy city. Such was still the ardor of the national faith, that the Jews crowded from all parts, and exasperated, by their insolent triumph, the hostility of the Christian inhabitants. All now joined with unwearied zeal in the sacred work of rebuilding the Temple. Liberal contributions poured in from all quarters; men and women joined in the pious labor; and the authority of the monarch was seconded by the enthusiasm of the people. But this last effort of expiring zeal was unsuccessful; no Temple ever arose on the ruins of the heathen edifices; and a Mohammedan mosque still stands on the ground of the Jewish Temple. The work, from whatever cause, was abandoned; and as it was only undertaken during the last six months of Julian’s reign, the fact seems sufficiently explained by the absence and death of the emperor, and by the new maxims that were adopted dining the Christian reign that succeeded, without the aid of the alleged miracle to which it has been usually ascribed.

5. After the death of Julian, it was the policy of the Christian emperors to depress the Jews in Palestine, though they were not ill-treated throughout the provinces, and were even granted considerable privileges and immunities. But it is astonishing how carefully fathers instilled into the minds of their children, along with their ancient faith, the fondly cherished delusion, that some new and happier era of freedom and independence was yet to dawn on Israel; and bow eagerly the children, imbibing this idea, became the prey of every impostor, and, under the blind impulse of enthusiasm, rashly entered into new conflicts with their enemies in the field, where they perished, the willing victims of a hopeless cause. About the beginning of the seventh century, the peace of Judea was seriously disturbed by the Persian invasion of Khosroes. The Greeks and the Persians were for a long period rivals for the dominion of the east; and Khosroes, the grandson of Nushirvan, now invading the Roman empire, stormed and sacked the city of Antioch. From Syria the flood of invasion rolled southward on Palestine, and the Persian army was joined by the Jews to the number of 24,000, still burning with the love of independence. The Christians and Jews were inflamed against each other by a long course of deep injuries given and received. Those of the former nation within the walls of Jerusalem were massacred without mercy by their Christian enemies, while the Jews on the outside were burning with the desire of revenge. The advance of the Persians secured the triumph. The city was stormed by the combined armies, and the Jews were satiated with a full measure of revenge. The Christians neither sought nor found mercy; it was estimated that 90,000 of them perished in the storming of the city. Some were sold for slaves, and others were bought for the purpose of being slaughtered. The city was sacked, and the magnificent monuments of the Christian faith were mostly consumed by fire. But this, like all the other triumphs of the Jews, was short-lived. The eastern emperor, Heraclius, was roused from inglorious sloth by the triumphs of the Persian arms, and by the approach of the victorious force to the walls of his own capital. He quickly assembled his veteran armies, by whose aid be defeated the troops of Khosroes; and in the course of a few successful campaigns recovered all the provinces that had been overrun. He visited Jerusalem after his victories in the lowly guise of a pilgrim, and prepared new triumphs for the Christians in the restoration of the magnificent churches which had been destroyed, and in the persecution of the Jews, and their banishment, as before, from the holy city, which they were now forbidden to approach within a nearer distance than three miles.

6. Palestine continued to own the sway of the Greek emperor till the rise of the Arabian power in the East. The followers of Mohammed, extending their doctrines and their dominion by fire and sword, rapidly subdued Arabia, Syria, and Egypt, when, about the year 637, the victorious Omar turned his arms against Jerusalem. After a siege of four months, during which the Arabs suffered extremely from the inclemency of the winter, a capitulation was proposed and agreed to, when the conqueror entered the city seated on a red camel, which carried a bag of corn and dates, and without guards, or any other precaution. Omar was assassinated at Medinah, in the year 644, after which, the East was for two hundred years distracted by the bloody wars that ensued among the Ommiades, the Abbassides, and the Fatimite caliphs; and Palestine having become an object of contest between them, was for a like period a scene of devastation and trouble. In the year 868, the capital was conquered by Achmet, a Turk; but was again recovered by the caliphs of Baghdad in the year 906. It was reduced by Mohammed Ikschid, of the Turkish race. Towards the end of the tenth century, the holy city was taken possession of by Ortok; and in 1076, by Meleschah, a Turk. It was retaken by the Ortokides, and finally by the Fatimites, who held possession of it when the Crusaders made their first appearance in the Holy Land.

Sages