Outlines of Jewish History from B.C. 586 to C.E. 1885. Lady Katie Magnus
driven away from the door of Shammai, another famous Rabbi. Shammai took impertinence as a personal affront. Hillel looked on it rather as a sign of disease or deficiency. ‘A sensible and well-bred man will not offend me, and no other can.’ That was the spirit in which Hillel received the rude jester. ‘Certainly,’ we may imagine him saying to the lad in his dignified way, ‘it is rather a short time for a lesson, and, possibly, standing before me in the usual attitude would be more comfortable for you. But I can teach you what you want to know whilst you stand on one leg. “Do not unto another what you would not that another should do unto you. That is the whole of the law; the rest is commentary.” ’ Often Hillel would robe his wisdom in wit, as is somewhat a Jewish trait. ‘I must hurry home to a guest I have been rather neglecting of late,’ he said one day as he finished his lecture at the school, ‘a guest who is here to-day and gone to-morrow.’ Some of his disciples wondered, but some were quick enough to divine their master’s meaning. Hillel meant his soul, the guest who has his ‘lordly dwelling-place’ in the body, but often has very little given beyond the lodging.
A great many of Hillel’s sayings have been preserved. Here are two helps against conceit and hasty judgment. ‘Do not believe in thyself till the day of thy death.’ ‘Do not judge thy neighbour until thou hast stood in his place.’ And Hillel had another charm which, perhaps, is not quite so universal as wit and wisdom amongst scholars. He was very particular as to personal appearance. ‘They wash the statues,’ he used to say, ‘and cleanse and beautify the temple. How much more attention ought we to give to the temple of the soul!’ His work, too, was as good as his talk. He plodded away at the traditional store-heap, and made some order and system out of the chaos. He set to work on the numerous injunctions, and made a beginning at their collection. He laid down certain rules—seven in number—for the interpretation of the Law. His labours were of great use to other workers in the same field, later on. His own life, however, was the very best of all his lessons.
CHAPTER IX.
JUDEA BEFORE THE WAR.
1. Herod’s Will.—So ill brought-up a family as Herod’s naturally took to quarrelling about his property after his death. His will was characteristic. It left much of his wealth to Rome, and divided his dominions. The crown, with Jerusalem and the greater part of the kingdom, was bequeathed to a son named Archelaus; another son, Herod Antipas, was to have Galilee and Petræa; and to a third son, Philip, was given the northern provinces. But as Herod himself was only a tributary king, the whole will had to receive the approval of Rome before it could be carried into effect. The Emperor Augustus did not decide quickly, and meanwhile the rivals indulged in endless rioting. The country endured all the miseries of civil war, with no motive to lend it dignity. Beside the regular rivals named in the will, impostors and pretenders to the crown arose, and each claimant had his own little set of adherents, and each behaved as if might were right. The only point on which there was any approach to agreement was the very general desire to share all round in Herod’s treasures. Of all the deputations which waited on him, the Emperor Augustus must have inclined to receive most favourably the one which brought to him a humble petition to abolish altogether kingly rule in Judea. At last the Roman Emperor gave his decision, and in all important points Herod’s will was confirmed.
2. Judea sinks into a Roman Province.—Under the title of ethnarch instead of king, Archelaus ruled Judea and Samaria for nine years. He imitated in a weak sort of way the vices of his father, and in the year 6 of the new era he was deposed and banished by Roman decree to Gaul. His dominions were declared forfeit to Rome, and Roman governors of Judea were appointed and given their head-quarters in Cæsarea. These procurators, as the Roman governors were called, were subject to the Syrian proconsuls, and these, in their turn, to the supreme power of Rome. Each procurator, during his term of office, was given the right of nominating all Jewish officials, including even the high priest. The responsibility of signing death-warrants was vested solely in the Roman governor for the time being, and the authority of the Sanhedrin was reduced to the limits of an active synagogue council. In view of a subsequent charge brought against the Jews of this period, it is well to bear in mind this fact concerning the strictly defined judicial power of the Sanhedrin. The Roman court alone could pronounce, or carry out, the sentence of death. The procurators followed each other in rapid succession. Their oppressions had a terrible sameness, and the many revolts and riots caused by their extortions differed but little in character.
3. Jesus of Nazareth.—In every direction Rome was tightening that iron grasp of hers, and each new tax and each fresh restriction was an occasion for revolt. The miserable, impatient people were longing for a leader, for another Judas Maccabeus to raise the standard and ‘break their bonds asunder.’ And if such a hero had arisen, and had dealt with the Romans as Judas Maccabeus had dealt with the Syrians, he would assuredly have been hailed by the Jews as Messiah, the anointed of the Lord. The restlessness and rioting, which had their centre in Jerusalem, prevailed throughout the whole of Palestine, and nowhere more strongly than in Galilee, the northern province, in which Jesus, the son of Joseph a carpenter, first attracted attention. When Jesus was a tiny child a certain Judas of Galilee, a very ordinary hero indeed, only just escaped the perilous distinction of being altogether believed in by his countrymen. Judas the Galilean had headed a frantic outburst of passionate patriotism. It had been locally successful. Led by him, the Galileans had revolted and the Romans had retreated, and, like his great namesake, this Judas conquered for a while. But it was for a very little while; and his followers had not time to turn this leader of theirs into Messiah before he was crucified by the Romans as a rebel. The enthusiastic reception which was given to this poor straw of a hero shows the tendency of the time and the temper of the people. The very stones seemed crying out for a Redeemer and Deliverer to come unto Zion. Under the circumstances a Messiah was almost bound to appear. And just in proportion to his pretensions and to their own wild hopes would be the rage of the populace if their Messiah disappointed them, which, if quite true and honest, he could scarcely fail to do. In all their dire need Jesus of Nazareth was never recognised as Messiah by the Jews. His title came to him in the Greek form. Christ means Messiah, or anointed; but it means it in Greek, and not in Hebrew. Jesus of Nazareth never got any real hold upon his own people. His followers in his lifetime were few, and of an unimportant and illiterate sort. The Jews of the time took little notice of his existence and his doings. He lived and worked just as many other Jewish teachers then lived and worked. He went about from place to place, healing, helping, and exhorting, and rousing in the hearts of those who heeded a sense of better things. But many of the Essenes preached and tended the sick, and the virtues of humility and charity, and contempt of worldliness, were virtues common to all honest Pharisees. It was chiefly in Galilee, among the heathen and among such Jews as had wilfully or heedlessly gone astray, that Jesus attracted attention. The bulk of the nation were not so much hostile as indifferent. Yet, though the sympathies of Jesus were avowedly with the ‘lost sheep of the house of Israel,’ the wholesale and indiscriminate denunciations reported in the New Testament as made by him against the Pharisees are the inventions of a later time, when Christians had begun to take up a hostile attitude towards their mother religion. There were, doubtless, shams and hypocrites among the Pharisees, who well deserved to be denounced; but also we know there was a whole class of them—they must have been pretty numerous to be classified—who ‘did the will of their Father which is in heaven, because they loved Him’ (Jerusalem Talmud, Berachoth, ix. 5). Jesus himself probably never denounced Pharisees nor Judaism. But of Jesus himself very little that is trustworthy is known. It was not till long after his death, perhaps fifty years, that even the first of his biographies, which are contained in the various books of the New Testament, came to be written.
The Jews readily admit that Jesus of Nazareth, an enthusiastic preacher of their own race, was good and virtuous. They regard the morality he preached as identical with the morality which forms the basis of Judaism. They look on it as pure to the point of unpracticality, on which point it differs from the Jewish ethics which were its inspiration. They consider ‘Love thy neighbour as thyself’ (Old Testament) a sufficient injunction. The command, ‘If he ask thy coat, give him thy cloak also’ (New Testament), they venture