Part 11
“Yet, be sure, John, it is no disgrace to repent of misdeeds, even at the last; and, if you desire to save your country, you have a noble example set before you in Jeconiah, king of the Jews. He, when in the old days the Babylonian led out his army on his account, of his own free will left the city before it was taken, and with his family endured voluntary captivity, rather than deliver up these holy places to the enemy and suffer the house of God to be set on fire.[308] For this he is commemorated in sacred story by all Jews, and memory, flowing ever fresh from age to age, transmits his undying fame to after generations. A noble example, John, even were it dangerous to follow; but I can warrant you even pardon from the Romans. Remember, too, that I who exhort you am your compatriot, that I who make this promise am a Jew; and it is right that you should consider who is your counsellor and of what country he comes. For I pray that I may never live to be so abject a captive as to abjure my race or to forget the traditions of my forefathers.
“Once again you are indignant and shout your abuse at me; and indeed I deserve even harsher treatment for offering advice in fate’s despite and for struggling to save those whom God has condemned. Who is ignorant of the records of the ancient prophets and of that oracle which threatens this poor city and is now on the eve of fulfilment? They foretold that it would be taken when one should begin to slaughter his own countrymen. And is not the city and the whole Temple too filled with the corpses of your fellow-citizens? God it is then, God Himself, who with the Romans is bringing the fire to purge His Temple and desolation upon a city so laden with pollutions.”—_B.J._ VI. 2. 1 (93-110).
Footnote 300:
The tower or “castle” adjoining the Temple from the stairs of which St. Paul delivered the speech recorded in Acts xxii.
Footnote 301:
The daily, morning and evening, sacrifice (ἐνδελεχισμός: Heb. _Tamid_); cf. Numb. xxviii. 6.
Footnote 302:
John of Gischala.
Footnote 303:
Many MSS insert “standing” (“standing where he might be heard,” etc.).
Footnote 304:
_i.e._ Aramaic. Cf. Acts xxi. 40; xxii. 2.
Footnote 305:
Lit. “tasting.”
Footnote 306:
The Gr. word strictly means “offerings to the dead.”
Footnote 307:
John of Gischala.
Footnote 308:
Amplification of 2 K. xxiv. 12; cf. _Ant._ x. 7. 1 (100).
(49) Conflagration of the Temple
“There shall not be left here one stone upon another which shall not be thrown down.”
Titus, to protect his forces, had ordered the gates of the outer court to be set on fire, and from the gates the fire extended to the porticoes. But, after a council of war, it was decided that the main fabric—the Holy Place and the Holy of Holies—must be saved; Titus urging that “if it were burnt, the Romans would be the losers; if preserved, it would be an ornament of his Empire.” His attempts to check the spread of the conflagration proved, however, unavailing.
[Sidenote: August A.D. 70]
Throughout that day fatigue and consternation checked the Jews from attacking; but, on the following day, about the second hour, with recruited strength and renewed courage, they sallied out through the eastern gate and charged the guards of the outer court of the Temple.
The Romans stubbornly met their charge and, forming a screen in front with their shields, closed up their ranks like a wall. It was evident, however, that they would not long be able to hold together, overpowered as they were by the number and _élan_ of their assailants. Cæsar, who from the (tower of) Antonia was watching the scene, anticipating the breaking of the line, came to their rescue with his picked cavalry. The Jews could not withstand their onset; the foremost fell and the main body retreated. Yet whenever the Romans retired the Jews returned to the attack, only to fall back once more when the Romans wheeled round; until, about the fifth hour of the day, the Jews were overpowered and shut up in the inner court of the Temple.
Titus then withdrew to Antonia, with the determination on the following day, about dawn, to attack with his whole force and invest the Temple. But God, it seems, had long since sentenced that building to the flames; and now in the revolution of the years had come round the fated day, the tenth of the month Lous, [Sidenote: August] on which it had once before been burnt by the king of Babylon. Those flames, however, owed their origin and cause to God’s own people.[309] For, on the withdrawal of Titus, the insurgents, after a brief respite, again attacked the Romans, and an engagement ensued between the (Jewish) guards of the sanctuary and the (Romans) who were endeavouring to extinguish the fire in the inner court. The latter routed the Jews and pursued them right up to[310] the sanctuary.
At this moment, one of the soldiers, without waiting for orders and with no horror of so dread a deed, but moved by some supernatural impulse, snatched a brand from the burning timber[311] and, hoisted up by one of his comrades, flung the fiery missile through a golden window,[312] which gave access on the north side to the chambers surrounding the sanctuary. As the flame shot up, a cry, such as the calamity demanded, arose from the Jews, who rushed to the rescue, lost to all thought of self-preservation, all husbanding of strength, now that the object of all their past vigilance was gone.
* * * * *
Titus was resting in his tent after the engagement, when a messenger rushed in with the tidings. Starting up just as he was, he ran to the Temple to arrest the conflagration, followed by all his generals, while in their train came the excited legionaries, with the clamour and confused noise arising from the movement in irregular order of so large an army. Cæsar, both by word of mouth and by a wave of his hand, signalled to the combatants to extinguish the fire; but they neither heard his shouts, drowned in the louder din which filled their ears, nor, distracted as they were by the fever of battle or rage, did they heed his beckoning hand. The impetuosity of the legionaries, when they joined the fray, neither exhortation nor threat could restrain; passion was for all the one officer in command. Crushed together about the entrances, many were trampled down by their companions; while many, stumbling on the still hot and smouldering ruins of the porticoes, suffered the same fate as the vanquished.[313] As they came nearer the sanctuary they pretended not even to hear Cæsar’s orders and shouted to those in front of them to throw in the firebrands.
The (Jewish) insurgents were now powerless to rescue (the Temple). On all sides was carnage and flight. Most of the slain were civilians, a weak and unarmed mob, each butchered where he was caught. Around the altar a pile of corpses was accumulating; down the sanctuary steps flowed a stream of blood; and down the same decline slid the bodies of the victims killed above.
* * * * *
Cæsar, finding himself unable to restrain the impetuosity of his frenzied soldiers and that the fire was gaining the mastery, passed with his generals within the building and beheld the holy place of the sanctuary and all that it contained—things far exceeding the reports current among foreigners and not inferior to their proud reputation among our own nation. As the flames had nowhere yet penetrated to the interior, but were consuming the outbuildings of the sanctuary, Titus, rightly supposing that the structure might still be preserved, rushed out and endeavoured by personal appeals to induce the soldiers to quench the fire; at the same time directing Liberalius, a centurion of his bodyguard of lancers, to restrain, by resort to clubs, any who disobeyed orders. But their respect for Cæsar and their fear of the officer who was endeavouring to check them were overpowered by their rage, their hatred of the Jews and the lust of battle, an even mightier master. Most of them were further stimulated by the hope of plunder, believing that the interior was full of money and actually seeing that all the surroundings were made of gold.
Moreover, when Cæsar rushed out to restrain the soldiers, even one of those who had entered with him baulked his purpose by thrusting a firebrand, in the darkness,[314] into the sockets of the gate. At once a flame shot up from the interior, whereupon Cæsar and his generals withdrew, and there was none left to prevent those on the outside from kindling a blaze. Thus, then, against Cæsar’s wishes, was the sanctuary set on fire.
* * * * *
Deeply as one must mourn for the most marvellous edifice which we have ever seen or heard of, whether we consider its structure, its magnitude, the richness of every detail or the reputation of its Holy Places,[315] yet may we draw very great consolation from the thought that there is no escape from Fate, for works of art and places any more than for living beings. And one may well marvel at the exactness of the cycle of Destiny; for, as I said, she waited until the very month and the very day on which in bygone times the Temple had been burnt by the Babylonians.—_B.J._ VI. 4. 4-8 (244-268).
Footnote 309:
Or “to the people whose own the Temple was.”
Footnote 310:
Or “into.”
Footnote 311:
Text uncertain.
Footnote 312:
Or “a small golden door.”
Footnote 313:
Possibly there is an allusion to the burning of the porticoes in the riots at the time of the accession of Archelaus, when many Jews perished in the flames (_Ant._ XVII. 10. 2).
Footnote 314:
Text doubtful.
Footnote 315:
_i. e._ the Holy Place and the Holy of Holies.
(50) Portents and Oracles[316]
Thus it happened that the wretched people were deluded at that time by charlatans and pretended messengers of God;[317] while they paid no heed to or discredited the manifest portents that foretold the coming desolation, but, as if thunderstruck and bereft of eyes and mind, disregarded God’s plain proclamations (of disaster). So it was when a star, resembling a sword, stood over the city, and a comet which continued for a year. So again when, before the revolt and the outbreak of war, at the time when the people were assembling for the Feast of Unleavened Bread, on the eighth of the month Xanthicus,[318] at the ninth hour of the night, so brilliant a light shone round the altar and the sanctuary that it seemed to be broad daylight; and this continued for half an hour. By the inexperienced this was regarded as a good omen, but by the sacred scribes it was at once interpreted in accordance with after events.
At that same feast a cow that had been led by some one[319] to the sacrifice gave birth to a lamb in the midst of the Temple. Moreover, the eastern gate of the inner court, which it took twenty men to close with difficulty at even—it was of brass and very massive, and was secured by bars shod with iron, and had bolts which were sunk to a great depth into a threshold consisting of a solid block of stone—this gate was observed at the sixth hour of the night to have opened of its own accord. The watchmen of the Temple ran and reported the matter to the captain,[320] and he came up and with difficulty succeeded in shutting it. This again to the uninitiated seemed the best of omens, as they supposed that God had opened to them the gate of blessings; but the learned understood that the security of the Temple was dissolving of its own accord and that the opening of the gate indicated a present to the enemy, interpreting the portent in their own minds[321] as a symbol of desolation.
Again, not many days after the festival, on the twenty-first of the month Artemisium,[322] there appeared a phenomenon so miraculous as to surpass belief. Indeed, what I am about to relate might well, I suppose, be regarded as fictitious, were it not for the narratives of eyewitnesses and for the subsequent calamities which deserved to be so signalized. In all parts of the country before sunset chariots were observed in the air and armed battalions rushing through the clouds and closing in round the cities. Also, at the feast which is called Pentecost, the priests on entering the inner court of the Temple by night, as their custom was, for the discharge of their ministrations, reported that they first became aware of a movement and a resounding noise and afterwards heard a voice as of a crowd, “We are departing hence.”[323]
But a further portent was even more alarming. Four years before the war, when the city was enjoying profound peace and prosperity, there came to the feast at which it is the custom of all Jews to erect tabernacles to God,[324] one Jesus, son of Ananias, a rude peasant, who suddenly began to cry out in the Temple, “A voice from the east, a voice from the west, a voice from the four winds; a voice against Jerusalem and the sanctuary, a voice against bridegrooms and brides, a voice against all the people.” Day and night he went about all the alleys with this cry on his lips. Some of the leading citizens, incensed at the fellow’s ill-omened words, laid hands on him and severely chastised him. But he, without uttering a word on his own behalf or for the private ear of those who smote him, continued his cries as before. Thereupon, the rulers, supposing, as was indeed the case, that the man was under some supernatural impulse, brought him before the Roman governor, where, although flayed to the bone with scourges, he neither begged for mercy nor shed a tear, but, merely introducing the most mournful of variations into his ejaculation, responded to each stroke with “Woe to Jerusalem!” When Albinus, the governor, asked him who and whence he was and why he uttered these words, he made no reply whatever to his questions, but never ceased reiterating his dirge over the city, until Albinus pronounced him a maniac and let him go.
During all that period up to the outbreak of war he neither approached nor was seen talking to any of the citizens, but, as if it were a prayer on which he had pondered, daily repeated his lament, “Woe to Jerusalem!” He neither cursed any of those who beat him day after day nor blessed those who offered him food; to all that melancholy and ominous refrain was his one reply. At the festivals his cries were loudest. So for seven years and five months he continued his wail, his voice never flagging nor his strength exhausted, until during the siege, after witnessing the verification of his presage, he ceased. For, while going his round on the wall, shouting in piercing tones “Woe once more to the city and to the people and to the Temple,” as he added a last word, “And woe to myself also,” a stone shot from the military engine[325] struck and killed him instantaneously. So with those ominous words still on his lips he passed away.
* * * * *
If we reflect on these things, we shall find that God shows care for men, and by all kinds of premonitory signs indicates to His people the means of salvation, and that they owe their destruction to folly and calamities of their own choosing. For example, the Jews, after the demolition of the (tower of) Antonia, reduced the Temple to a square, although they had it recorded in their oracles that the city and the sanctuary would be taken when the Temple should become four-square. But what more than all else incited them to the war was an ambiguous oracle, likewise found in their sacred writings, to the effect that about that time some one from their country should become ruler of the world. This they understood to mean some one of their own race, and many of their wise men went astray in their interpretation of it. The oracle, however, in reality signified the sovereignty of Vespasian, who was proclaimed Emperor on Jewish soil.
For all that, it is impossible for men to avoid Fate, even though they foresee it. For some of these portents, then, the Jews found agreeable meanings, others they treated with contempt, until the ruin of their country and their own destruction convicted them of their folly.—_B.J._ VI. 5. 3 f. (288-315).
Footnote 316:
Cf. Appendix, Note VI.
Footnote 317:
The “tyrants” had encouraged optimistic false prophets in order to prevent desertion to the Romans.
Footnote 318:
March-April.
Footnote 319:
Eusebius (_H.E._ III. 8) reads “by the High Priest.”
Footnote 320:
Cf. Acts iv. 1; v. 24.
Footnote 321:
Or “among themselves.”
Footnote 322:
April-May.
Footnote 323:
So all the Gr. MSS (cf. Tac. _Hist._ v. 13, _maior humanâ vox excedere deos_). The Lat. version, with two other authorities, reads, “Let us depart hence.”
Footnote 324:
The Feast of Tabernacles (_Sukkoth_).
Footnote 325:
πετροβόλος, the Lat. _ballista_, a kind of large catapult.
(51) The Last Scene. Capture of the Upper City. Jerusalem in Flames
“Tum vero omne mihi visum considere in ignes....”
[Sidenote: September A.D. 70]
The Romans, now masters of the walls, planted their standards on the towers, and with clapping of hands and jubilation raised the song of triumph in honour of their victory. They had found the end of the war a much lighter task than the beginning; indeed, they could hardly believe that they had surmounted the last wall without bloodshed, and were truly[326] at a loss on finding no enemy in sight.
Pouring into the alleys, sword in hand, they massacred indiscriminately all whom they met and burnt over their heads the houses of those who had taken refuge within. Often in the course of their raids, on entering the houses for loot, they would find whole families of dead bodies and the rooms filled with the victims of the famine, and then, shuddering at the sight, would retire empty-handed. Yet, while they pitied those who had thus perished, they had no similar feelings for the living, but, running every one through that fell in their way, they choked the alleys with corpses and deluged the whole city with blood, insomuch that the flames of many of the burning buildings were extinguished by the gory stream. Towards evening they ceased slaughtering, but when night fell the fire gained the mastery, and the dawn of the eighth day of the month Gorpiæus [Sidenote: September] broke upon Jerusalem in flames; a city which had suffered such calamities in the siege, that, had she from her first foundation enjoyed an equal share of blessings, she would have been thought wholly enviable; and undeserving, moreover, of these great misfortunes on all other grounds, save that she produced so evil a generation as that which caused her overthrow.
* * * * *
Of all the strong defences of the city those which chiefly aroused the admiration of Titus, on his entry, were the towers, which the tyrants, in their infatuation, had abandoned. Indeed, when he beheld their solid lofty mass, the magnitude of each block of stone and the accuracy of the joinings, and saw how great was their breadth, how vast their height, “We have indeed,” he exclaimed, “had God on our side in the battle. God it was who ejected the Jews from these strongholds; for what power have human hands or engines against these towers?” He made many similar observations to his friends on that occasion, and also liberated all who had been imprisoned by the tyrants and left in the forts. And when, at a later period, he demolished the rest of the city and razed the walls, he left these towers as a memorial of his attendant fortune, to whose co-operation he owed his conquest of defences which defied assault.—_B.J._ VI. 8. 5-9. 1 (403-413).
Footnote 326:
Some MSS read “unusually” (ἀήθως for ἀληθῶς).
(52) The Spoils from the Temple in the Triumphal Procession in Rome
The Jewish spoils—the table of shew-bread, incense-cups and trumpets—as borne in the procession still figure on the Arch of Titus in Rome; a representation _e.g._ in Driver’s _Exodus_ (_Camb. Bible_), p. 273.
The rest of the spoils borne (in procession) were not systematically assorted; but conspicuous above all stood out those captured from the Temple at Jerusalem. These consisted of a golden table,[327] many talents in weight, and a lampstand,[328] likewise made of gold, constructed on a different pattern from those which we use in ordinary life. Affixed to a pedestal was a central shaft, from which there extended slender branches, arranged trident-fashion, a wrought lamp being attached to the extremity of each branch. There were seven of these lamps, indicating the honour paid to that number among the Jews. After these, and last of all the spoils, was carried a copy of the Jewish Law.—_B.J._ VII. 5. 5 (148-150).
Footnote 327:
The table of shew-bread.
Footnote 328:
Or “candlestick.”
VIII. THE JEWISH SECTS
(53) The Three Sects and their Views on Fate and Free-Will
This account occurs in the history of the Maccabæan period. The saying of R. Aqiba (_Pirqe Aboth_, III. 24) may be quoted in illustration of this passage: “Everything is foreseen; and free-will is given,” where Predestination and Free-will are set side by side, as if not irreconcilable.
At this time [Sidenote: _c._ 145 B.C.] there were three sects of Jews, holding different opinions about human actions; the first was called the sect of the Pharisees, the second that of the Sadducees, and the third that of the Essenes.
The Pharisees assert that some, but not all, events are the work of Fate, and some are under our own control, to be or not to be. The followers of the Essenes affirm that Fate is all-powerful, and that nothing befalls men except in accordance with her decree. The Sadducees abolish Fate, maintaining that there is no such thing, that the events of human life are not dependent upon her, and that all things fall within our own control; so that it is we who are responsible for our blessings and bring our misfortunes on ourselves by our own thoughtlessness.—_Ant._ XIII. 5. 9 (171-173).
(54) The Essenes, with a note on Pharisees and Sadducees
Jewish philosophy takes three forms. The followers of the first school are called Pharisees, of the second Sadducees, of the third Essenes.
The Essenes: their Asceticism, Simplicity of Life and Community of Goods
A studied gravity[329] is the distinguishing characteristic of the Essenes. Of Jewish birth, they show a greater attachment to each other than do the other sects. They shun pleasures as a vice and regard temperance and the control of the passions as a special virtue. Marriage they disdain, but they adopt other men’s children, while yet pliable and docile, and regard them as their kin and mould them in accordance with their own principles. They do not wholly condemn wedlock and the continuance thereby of the human race, but guard against women’s wantonness, being persuaded that none of the sex keeps her plighted troth to one man.
Riches they despise, and their community of goods is a wonderful arrangement; you will not find one among them distinguished by greater opulence than another. They have a law that new members on admission to the sect shall confiscate their property to the order, with the result that you will nowhere see either abject poverty or inordinate wealth; the individual’s possessions join the common stock and all the brotherhood enjoy a single patrimony.
Oil they consider defiling, and any one who accidentally comes in contact with it scours his person; for they make a point of keeping a dry skin and of always being dressed in white.
They elect overseers of the common property,[330] and all their officials for various purposes are chosen[331] by the whole body.