Part 628

Herod died within the year (B. C. 4) which has been most generally agreed upon as that of the birth of Jesus. By ten wives he had had many children, and had slain not a few; but a large family survived, to quarrel over the heritage, disputing a will which Herod left. There was a hearing of the disputants at Rome, and also a hearing given to deputies of the Jewish people, who prayed to be delivered from the Herodian family, all and singly. The latter prayer, however, received small consideration. The imperial judgment established Archelaus, eldest son of Herod's sixth wife, Malthace, in the sovereignty of Judæa, Idumæa, and Samaria, with the title of Ethnarch. To Herod Antipas, second son of the same mother, it gave Galilee and Peræa. Philip, another son, by a seventh wife, was made tetrarch of a small principality. Archelaus governed so oppressively that, after some years (A. D. 6), he was deposed by the Romans and banished to Gaul. Judæa was then joined to the præfecture of Syria, under a succession of Roman governors, the fifth of whom was Pontius Pilate. "Judaea thus became in the year 6 A. D. a Roman province of the second rank, and, apart from the ephemeral restoration of the kingdom of Jerusalem under Claudius in the years 41-44, thenceforth remained a Roman province. Instead of the previous native princes holding office for life and, under reservation of their being confirmed by the Roman government, hereditary, came an official of the equestrian order, nominated and liable to recall by the emperor. The port of Caesarea rebuilt by Herod after a Hellenic model became, probably at once, the seat of Roman administration. The exemption of the land from Roman garrison, as a matter of course, ceased, but, as throughout in provinces of second rank, the Roman military force consisted only of a moderate number of cavalry and infantry divisions of the inferior class; subsequently one ala and five cohorts—about 3,000 men—were stationed there. These troops were perhaps taken over from the earlier government, at least in great part formed in the country itself, mostly, however, from Samaritans and Syrian Greeks. The province did not obtain a legionary garrison, and even in the territories adjoining Judaea there was stationed at the most one of the four Syrian legions. To Jerusalem there came a standing Roman commandant, who took up his abode in the royal castle, with a weak standing garrison; only during the time of the Passover, when the whole land and countless strangers flocked to the temple, a stronger division of Roman soldiers was stationed in a colonnade belonging to the temple. … For the native authorities in Judaea as everywhere the urban communities were, as far as possible, taken as a basis. Samaria, or as the town was now called, Sebaste, the newly laid out Caesarea, and the other urban communities contained in the former kingdom of Archelaus, were self-administering, under superintendence of the Roman authority. The government also of the capital with the large territory belonging to it was organised in a similar way. Already in the pre-Roman period under the Seleucids there was formed … in Jerusalem a council of the elders, the Synhedrion, or as Judaised, the Sanhedrin. The presidency in it was held by the high priest, whom each ruler of the land, if he was not possibly himself high priest, appointed for the time. To the college belonged the former high priests and esteemed experts in the law. This assembly, in which the aristocratic element preponderated, acted as the supreme spiritual representative of the whole body of Jews, and, so far as this was not to be separated from it, also as the secular representative in particular of the community of Jerusalem. It is only the later Rabbinism that has by a pious fiction transformed the Sanhedrion of Jerusalem into a spiritual institute of Mosaic appointment. It corresponded essentially to the council of the Greek urban constitution, but certainly bore, as respected its composition as well as its sphere of working, a more spiritual character than belonged to the Greek representations of the community. To this Synhedrion and its high priest, who was now nominated by the procurator as representative of the imperial suzerain, the Roman government left or committed that jurisdiction which in the Hellenic subject communities belonged to the urban authorities and the common councils. With indifferent short-sightedness it allowed to the transcendental Messianism of the Pharisees free course, and to the by no means transcendental land-consistory—acting until the Messiah should arrive—tolerably free sway in affairs of faith, of manners, and of law, where Roman interests were not directly affected thereby. This applied in particular to the administration of justice. It is true that, as far as Roman burgesses were concerned in the matter, justice in civil as in criminal affairs must have been reserved for the Roman tribunals even already before the annexation of the land. But civil justice over the Jews remained even after that annexation chiefly with the local authority. Criminal justice over them was exercised by the latter probably in general concurrently with the Roman procurator; only sentences of death could not be executed by it otherwise than after confirmation by the imperial magistrate. In the main those arrangements were the inevitable consequences of the abolition of the principality, and when the Jews had obtained this request of theirs, they in fact obtained those arrangements along with it. … The local coining of petty moneys, as formerly practised by the kings, now took place in the name of the Roman ruler; but on account of the Jewish abhorrence of images the head of the emperor was not even placed on the coins. Setting foot within the interior of the temple continued to be forbidden in the case of every non-Jew under penalty of death. … In the very beginning of the reign of Tiberius the Jews, like the Syrians, complained of the pressure of the taxes; especially the prolonged administration of Pontius Pilatus is charged with all the usual official crimes by a not unfair observer. But Tiberius, as the same Jew says, had during the twenty-three years of his reign maintained the time-hallowed holy customs, and in no part set them aside or violated them. This is the more to be recognised, seeing that the same emperor in the West interfered against the Jews more emphatically than any other, and thus the long-suffering and caution shown by him in Judaea cannot be traced back to personal favour for Judaism. In spite of all this both the opposition on principle to the Roman government and the violent efforts at self-help on the part of the faithful developed themselves even in this time of peace."

_T. Mommsen, History of Rome: The Provinces, from Caesar to Diocletian, book 8, chapter 11._

{1919}

In the year 41 A. D. the house of Herod rose to power again, in the person of his grandson, Herod Agrippa, descendant of the unfortunate Mariamne. Agrippa had lived long at Rome and won the favor of two successive emperors, Caligula and Claudius. Caligula deposed Herod Antipas from the tetrarchy of Galilee and conferred it on Agrippa. Claudius, in 41, added Judæa and Samaria to his dominions, establishing him in a kingdom even greater than that of his grandfather. He died suddenly in 44 A. D. and Judæa again relapsed to the state of a Roman province. His young son, also named Herod Agrippa, was provided, after a few years, with a small kingdom, that of Chalcis, exchanged later for one made up of other districts in Palestine. After the destruction of Jerusalem he retired to Rome, and the line of Herod ended with him.

_H. H. Milman, History of the Jews, book 12._

ALSO IN: _Josephus, Antiquity of the Jews, books 15-20._

_H. Ewald, History of Israel, book 5, section 2._

JEWS: B. C. 8-A. D. 1. Uncertainty of the date of the birth of Jesus.

"The reigning Christian computation of time, that sovereign authority in accordance with which we reckon our life, and which is surely above the assault of any critical doubts, goes, be it remembered, but a very little way towards the settlement of this question [as to the year of the birth of Jesus] in as much as its inventor, a Scythian by birth, Dionysius the Less, Abbot of a Roman monastery (died 556 A. D.) [see ERA, CHRISTIAN], … had certainly no entire immunity from human frailty. … The comparatively best assured and best supported account places the birth of Jesus in the reign of King Herod the Great. Matthew knows no other chronology: Luke gives the same, along with another, or, if we will, along with two others. Matthew more particularly, in his own account, puts the birth in the last years of that king. Jesus is a little child at the time of the coming of the Magi, and he is still a child at the return of Joseph from the flight into Egypt, after the death of Herod has taken place. We shall hit the sense of the writer most exactly if we assume that Jesus, at the time of the coming of the Magi, who gave King Herod ground for conjecturing a Messiah of about the age of two,—was about two years old; at the time of Herod's death, about four. … Now since Herod died … shortly before Easter of the year 750 A. U. C., i. e., 4 years before the Christian era, Jesus must have been born four years before. 746 A. U. C., or 8 years before the reputed Christian era, a view which is expressly espoused in the fifth Christian century; according to Apocrypha, 3 years before Herod's death, 747 A. U. C., 7 years B. C. If we are able in addition to build upon Kepler's Conjunction of Planets, which Bishop Münter, in his book, 'The Star of the Wise Men,' 1827, called to remembrance, we get with complete certainty 747 or 748, the latter, that is, if we attach any value to the fact that in that year Mars was added to Jupiter and Saturn. Desirable however as such certainty might be, it is nevertheless hard to abandon oneself to it with enthusiastic joy. … An actual reminiscence on the part of the Christian community of the approximate point of time at which the Lord was born, would be hard to call in question, even though it might have overlooked or forgotten every detail of the youth of Jesus besides. Finally, there is after all a trace of such reminiscence independent of all legendary formation. The introductory history of Luke without any appreciable historical connexion, rather in conflict with the world of legend represented in his Gospel, places the birth of John the Baptist and of Jesus in Herod's time. At the same time there is just as little, or even less, sign than elsewhere in Luke's preliminary story, of any dependence on the account in Matthew, or any world of legend like his. We should thus still be inclined to infer that Jesus, according to ancient Christian tradition, was born under King Herod, and more particularly, according to the legend of Matthew, which after all is the better guaranteed of the two, towards the close of his reign. … Luke appears … so far to give the most precise boundary line to the birth of Jesus, inasmuch as he brings it into immediate connexion with the first taxing of Judæa by the Romans, which admits of exact historical computation. The Roman taxing was indeed the occasion of Joseph and Mary's journey to Bethlehem, and of the birth of Jesus in the inn there. This taxing took place, as Luke quite rightly observes, for the first time in Judæa, under the Emperor Augustus, and more precisely, under Quirinius' Governorship of Syria, and moreover, … not only after the death of Herod, but also after his son Archelaos had been reigning about ten years, in consequence of the dethronement of Archelaos and the annexation of Judæa and Samaria by the Romans in the year 760 A. U. C. 7 A. D. But here too at once begins the difficulty. According to this statement Jesus would have been born from ten to fourteen years later than the Gospels otherwise assert, Luke himself included. This late birth would not only clash with the first statement of the Gospels themselves, but equally with all probability, inasmuch as Jesus would then not have been as much as thirty years old at his death, which in any case took place before the recall of the Procurator Pilate (781 A. U. C. 35 A. D.). We are here therefore compelled to acknowledge a simple error of the writer. … Once more … does Luke incidentally compute the time of the birth of Jesus. By describing the time of John the Baptist's appearance and speaking of Jesus at that period as about thirty years old, he favours the assumption, that Jesus was born about thirty years before the fifteenth year of the reign of the Emperor Tiberius. … We shall … see grounds for considering the commencement of the Baptist's ministry, as fixed far too early anywhere near the date 28 A. D. But if after all we assume the figure, as it stands, the fifteenth year of Tiberius, reckoning his reign from the 19th of August, 767, or 14 A. D., was the year 781-782, or 28-29 A. D. In that case Jesus must have been born, reckoning about 30 years backwards, towards the year 751-752, i. e., 2-3 years before our reputed era. … Of the later attempts to restore the year of Jesus' birth, those of antiquity and of modern times claim our attention in different ways. … {1920} Irenæus, followed by Tertullian, Hippolytus, Jerome, gives the forty-first year of the Emperor Augustus, Clement of Alexandria the twenty-eighth year of the same, as the year of birth: much the same in both cases, viz. (751-752), inasmuch as the former reckons from the first consulate of Augustus after the death of Cæsar (731 A. U. C.); Clement from his conquest of Egypt (724). Later authorities since Eusebius, the first Church historian, marked the forty-second year of Augustus, following a notice of their predecessors, that is 752-753, which date however Eusebius would make out to agree with the year of Clement, with the twenty-eighth year from the occupation of Egypt. But how many other years besides were possible! Here Sulpicius Severus (400 A. D.) pushed back beyond the limit set by Irenæus, naming at one time 746-747 as the time of Jesus' birth, at another the consuls of 750, and the later date has also been found … by the Arabic Gospel of the Infancy. Here again the date was shifted lower down than the figure of Eusebius to the forty-third year of Augustus, i. e., 753-754. This date is found already in Tertullian in one reading, though in conflict with the year 41; the Chronograph of the year 354 puts it down with the express mention of the Consuls Cæsar and Paulus at 754 A. U. C., the Egyptian monk Panodorus (400 A. D.) has so reckoned it; and the founder of the Christian reckoning, the Abbot Dionysius (Easter Table 525 A. D.) introduced it for all time. … What is certain is that this year 754 A. U. C. 1 A. D., this official Christian calendar, does not hit the tradition of the Gospels. In modern times, thanks to the efforts of great astronomers and chronologists, Kepler, Ideler, and Münter, the year 747 or 748 has found the greatest favour as the year of the Wise Men's star. But since people have come back from their enthusiasm for the discovery of this conjunction to a more faithful regard for the Gospels, it has always commended itself afresh, to place the birth of Jesus at latest in the first beginning of the year 750 (4 B. C.), i. e., before the death of King Herod, but if possible from two to four years earlier still 746-748, or 8-6 B. C. Thus Ewald inclines half to the year 748, and half to 749: Petavius, Usher, Lichtenstein to 749, Bengal, Anger, Winer, Wieseler to 750, Wurm indeed following Scaliger to 751, finally in latest times Rösch, attaching great weight to the statements of the Fathers, as well as to the Chinese star, actually gets by a multifariously laborious method, at 751-752, in which year, as he decides, even Herod must have been alive in spite of Josephus, and on the strength of an innocuous observation by a Jewish Rabbi. If it was hard enough to arrive at any certainty, or, at all events, probability with respect to the year of Jesus' birth, we must entirely waive all pretensions to tell the month or the day, however justifiable may be our curiosity on this head. Our traditional observance of the Day of Jesus on the 25th of December is not prescribed in any ancient calendar."

_Dr. T. Keim, History of Jesus of Nazara, volume 2, pages 109-126._

ALSO IN: _W. H. Anderdon, Fasti Apostolici, introd._

JEWS: A. D. 26. Political situation of Judæa at the time of the appearance of Jesus.

"Let us recall, in a few outlines, the political situation of Judæa at the exact moment when Jesus appeared before His countrymen. The shadow of independence, which had been left to it under the vassal kingdom of Herod the Great, had long vanished. Augustus had annexed Judæa to the Roman empire, not by making it one of those senatorial provinces governed by proconsuls, but as a direct dependant on his authority. He associated it with the government of Syria, the capital of which was Antioch, the residence of the imperial legate. In consequence, however, of its importance, and the difficulties presented by the complete subjection of such a people, the procurator of Judæa enjoyed a certain latitude in his administration; he at the same time managed the affairs of Samaria, but as a second department, distinct from the first. Faithful to the wise policy which it had pursued with so much success for centuries, Rome interfered as little as possible with the usages and institutions of the conquered province. The Sanhedrim was, therefore, allowed to continue side by side with the procurator, but its power was necessarily very limited. Its jurisdiction was confined to matters of religion and small civil causes: the procurator alone had the right of decreeing capital punishment. The high-priestly office had lost much of its importance. The Asmoneans and Herods had reduced it to a subordinate magistracy, of which they made a tool for their own purposes. Herod the Great had constituted himself guardian of the sacerdotal vestments, under pretext that he had had them restored to their first magnificence, on the Levitical model; he bestowed them only on the men of his choice. The Romans hastened to follow his example, and thus to keep in their hands an office which might become perilous to them. The procurator of Judæa resided at Cæsarea. He only came to Jerusalem for the solemn feasts, or in exceptional cases, to administer justice. His prætorium stood near the citadel of Antonia. The Roman garrison in the whole of Palestine did not exceed one legion. The levying of imposts on movable property, and on individuals, led to perpetual difficulties; no such objection was raised to the tribute of two drachms for the temple, which was levied by the Sanhedrim. The tax-gatherers in the service of the Romans were regarded as the representatives of a detested rule; thus the publicans—for the most part Jews by birth—were the objects of universal contempt. The first rebellion of any importance took place on the occasion of the census under Cyrenius. At the period at which we have arrived, Judæa was governed by Pilate, the third procurator since the annexation to the empire; he had found in the high-priestly office John, surnamed Caiaphas, son-in-law of Annas, the son of Seth, who had for a long time filled the same office under Valerius Gratus. Pilate had an ally rather than a rival in the Sadducee Caiaphas, who acted on no higher principle than the interest of his order, and the maintenance of his power. Pontius Pilate was wanting in the political tact which knows how to soften in form the severities of a foreign rule; he was a man of vulgar ambition, or rather, one of those men without patriotism, who think only of using their authority for their own advantage. He took no heed of the peculiar dispositions and aversions of the people whom he was to govern. Thus he sent to Jerusalem a Roman garrison with standards; the Jews regarded this as a horrible profanation, for the eagles were worshipped as gods. {1921} Assailed in his prætorium at Cæsarea by a suppliant crowd, which no violence could disperse, the procurator was compelled to yield to prayers, which might soon be changed into desperate resistance. From that moment his influence was gone in Judæa; he compromised it still further when he caused shields of gold, bearing his name engraved beside that of the emperor Tiberias, to be suspended from the outer walls of the citadel of Antonia. This flattery to the sovereign, which might have been unaccompanied with peril elsewhere, was received at Jerusalem as a gratuitous provocation, and he was obliged to recall a measure, persistence in which would have led to a terrible tumult. Having thus made himself an object of general aversion, he could not even do good without danger: his plan to build an aqueduct, a thing peculiarly needed on the burning soil of Judæa, created opposition so violent, that it could only be put down by force. Under such a governor, the national passions were in a perpetual state of agitation. This increase of patriotic fanaticism created great obstacles to a purely spiritual work like that of Jesus. Gaulonitis, Peræa, and Galilee still belonged, at this time, to the family of Herod. The tetrarch Philip governed the north-west of the country for thirty-seven years, and was distinguished for his moderation. … Galilee and Peræa were the portion of Herod Antipas, the murderer of John the Baptist. His divorce from the daughter of Aretas, after his marriage with Herodias, his brother's wife, had brought war upon the wide provinces which he governed. He was about soon to undergo a humiliating defeat. Like his brother, he was childless. Under the influence of such a prince, surrounded by a licentious court, evil propensities had free play, and the corruption of manners was a bad preparation for a religion of purity and self-denial. In the lowness of the times, the Herods, though of the family of the vile despots who had sold the independence of the Jews, were regarded as in some measure a national dynasty. They had a party which bore their name, and which, in religious matters, combined, after the example of Herod the Great, Pharisaism and Sadduceeism. Such were the political circumstances in the midst of which Jesus was placed."

_E. de Pressensé, Jesus Christ: His Times, Life, and Work, book 3, chapter 1._

JEWS: A. D. 33-100. The rise and diffusion of Christianity.

See CHRISTIANITY.

JEWS: A. D.66-70. The Great Revolt.