II. CHAP. history*, that although there was no settled or established creed upon the subject, yet there was a certain conventional language: particular texts of the sacred writings were universally recognised, as bearing reference to the Messiah; and there were some few characteristic credentials of his title and office, which would have commanded universal assent. Foreign connections There are two quarters from which the Jews, as of the Jews. they ceased to be an insulated people, confined in the narrow tract of Palestine, and by their captivity and migrations became more mingled with other races, might insensibly contract new religious notions, the East and the West, Babylonia and Alexandria. The latter would be the chief, though not perhaps the only channel, through which the influence of Grecian opinions would penetrate into Palestinet; * The brief intimations in the Gospels are almost the only absolutely certain authorities for the nature of this belief, at that particular period, except, perhaps, the more genuine part of the Apocrypha. Josephus, though he acknowledges the existence and the influence of this remarkable feature in the national character, is either inclined to treat it as a popular delusion, or to warp it to his own purposes, its fulfilment in the person of Vespasian. For his own school, Philo is a valuable witness; but among the Alexandrian Jews, the belief in a personal Messiah was much more faint and indistinct than in Palestine. The Rabbinical books, even the oldest Targumin or comments on the Sacred Writings, are somewhat suspicious, from the uncertainty of their date : still, in this as in other points of coincidence, where their expressions are similar to those of the Christian records, there seems so manifest an improbability that these should have been adopted after the two religions had assumed an hostile position towards each other, that they may be fairly considered as vestiges of an earlier system of opinions, retained from ancient reverence, and indelible even by implacable animosity. It is far more likely that Christianity should speak the current language of the time, than that the Synagogue should interpolate their own traditionary records, with terms or notions borrowed from the Church. Even as early as the reign of Antiochus the Great, certain Jews CHAP. II. and of the Alexandrian notions of the Messiah, we shall hereafter adduce two competent representatives, the author of the Book of Wisdom and Philo. But the East no doubt made a more early, profound, and lasting impression on the popular mind of the Jews. Unfortunately in no part does history present us with so melancholy a blank, as in that of the great Babylonian settlement of the people of Israel. Babylonia. Yet its importance in the religious, and even in the civil, affairs of the nation cannot but have been very considerable. It was only a small part of the nation which returned with the successive remigrations under Ezra and Nehemiah to their native land; and, though probably many of the poorer classes had remained behind at the period of the Captivity, and many more returned singly or in small bodies, yet on the other hand it is probable, that the tide of emigration, which at a later time was perpetually flowing from the valleys of Palestine into Egypt, Syria, Asia Minor, and even more remote regions, would often take the course of the Euphrates, and swell the numbers of the Mesopotamian colony. In the great contest between Alexander and the Persian monarchy, excepting from some rather suspicious stories in Josephus, we hear less than we might expect of this race of Jews. But as we had attempted to introduce Grecian manners, and had built a Grecian school or gymnasium at Jerusalem. 1 Macc. i. 11. 16. 2 Macc. ii. 4. 11, 12. There may be truth in the observation of St. Croix: "Les Grecs et les Romains avoient tant de haine et de mépris pour le peu- II. CHAP. approach the era of Christianity, and somewhat later, they emerge rather more into notice. While the Jews were spreading in the West, and no doubt successfully disseminating their Monotheism in many quarters, in Babylonia their proselytes were kings; and the later Jewish Temple beheld an Eastern queen (by a singular coincidence, of the same name with the celebrated mother of Constantine, the patroness of Christian Jerusalem) lavishing her wealth on the structure on Mount Moriah, and in the most munificent charity to the poorer inhabitants of the city. The name of Helena, queen of the Adiabeni, was long dear to the memory of the Jews; and her tomb was one of the most remarkable monuments near the walls of the city. Philo not only asserts that Babylon and other Eastern satrapies were full of his countrymen*, but intimates that the apprehension of their taking up arms in behalf of their outraged religion and marching upon Palestine, weighed upon the mind of Petronius, when commanded, at all hazards, to place the statue of Caligula in the Temple.t It appears from some more, it would probably, at least See on the numbers of the on the History of the Birth and Death of Jesus Christ, which was to contain circumstantial accounts of the Jews beyond the Euphrates. Of the different races of Jews mentioned in the Acts, as present in Jerusalem, four are from this quarter:-Parthians, Medes, Elamites, dwellers in Mesopotamia. + Leg. ad Caium, vol. ii. p. 578. Edit. Mang. hints of Josephus, that during the last war, the revolted party entertained great hopes of succour from that quarter *; and there is good ground for supposing that the final insurrection in the time of Hadrian was connected with a rising in Mesopotamia.t At the same period the influence of this race of Jews on the religious character of the people is no less manifest. Here was a chief scene of the preaching of the great apostle‡: and we cannot but think, that its importance in early Christian history, which has usually been traced almost exclusively in the West, has been much underrated. Hence came the mystic Cabala§ of the Jews, the chief parent of those gnostic opinions, out of which grew the heresies of the early Church: here the Jews, under the Prince of the captivity, held their most famous schools, where learning was embodied in the Babylonian Talmud; and here the * Dio (or Xiphilin) asserts that they received considerable succours from the East. L. lxvi. c. 4. Hist. of Jews, iii. 108. &c. Nothing but the stubborn obstinacy of controversy could have thrown a doubt on the plain date in the first Epistle of St. Peter (v. 13.). Philo, in two places (ii. p. 578. 587.), Josephus in one (Ant. xviii. 9. 8.), expressly name Babylon as the habitation of the great Eastern settlement. It is not certain whether the city was then entirely destroyed (Gesenius on Isaiah, xiii. 22.), but in fact the name was extended to the province or satrapy. But it was equally the object of the two great conflicting parties in Christianity to identify Rome with Babylon. This fact established, the Roman Catholic Lucan's "Cumque superba foret § Cabala is used here in its most extensive sense. See Chiarini, p. 97. II. II. CHAP. most influential heresiarch, Manes, attempted to fuse into one system the elements of Magianism, Cabalism, and Christianity. Having thus rapidly traced the fortunes of this great Jewish colony, we must reascend to the time of its first establishment. Cabala. From a very early period the Jews seem to have possessed a Cabala, a traditionary comment or interpretation of the sacred writings. Whether it existed before the Captivity, it is impossible to ascertain; it is certain that many of their books, even those written by distinguished prophets, Gad and Iddo, were lost at that disastrous time. But whether they carried any accredited tradition to Babylonia, it seems evident, from the Oriental cast which it assumed, that they either brought it from thence on their return to their native land, or received it subsequently during their intercourse with their Eastern brethren.* Down to the Captivity the Jews of Palestine had been in contact only with the religions of the neighbouring nations, which, however differently modified, appear to have been essentially the same, a sort of Natureworship, in which the host of Heaven, especially the sun and moon, under different names, Baal and Moloch, Astarte and Mylitta, and probably as Religions. symbols or representatives of the active and passive powers of nature, no doubt with some distinction of their attributes, were the predominant objects. These religions had long degenerated into cruel or licentious superstitions; and the Jews, in falling Syrian * Mosheim, De Rebus Christ. ii. 18. |
