Page 62, note, distribute the strokes of abbreviation above the initials of the Tract ‘Aboda sara thus—'¡'y.

Page 69, note 1, line 2, read Tetrarchs, Herod, who, &c.

Page 145, note 1. The fragment referred to is probably that from the Codex Regina Suetia, of the ninth century, quoted and criticised by Hase in his Geschichte Jesu, 1876, p. 35, which Aberle produced in the Tübingen Quartalschrift, 1864, no. 1, as a direct testimony from Papias, of the Johannine authorship of the Fourth Gospel.

Page 179. The German word Werkmeister has been rendered by carpenter. Probably this more specific term represents Ewald's real interpretation of the more general Greek word TέKTWY (Matt. xiii. 55); but by the use of the German word Werkmeister he avoided fixing precisely the special character of Joseph's art and craft. In the Old Testament he translates the analogous Hebrew word by Werkmeister ('Isa.' xl. 19) and Künstler (Hos. viii. 6). Our word artificer fairly represents Werkmeister, though in both cases carpenter is most likely meant. On the question of Joseph's occupation, see Winer's Realwörterbuch, Part I. p. 567, and p. 607, note 5.

Note to p. 435, on the Palaces of the Herods in Jerusalem.-In the next volume of this work, on the Apostolic Age, the Author comes to deal more minutely with the topography of Jerusalem, in connection with the siege, and modifies the views expressed in this and the preceding volumes regarding the Palaces of Herod and their locality in Jerusalem. Vol. v. p. 435 (iv. p. 567 of the German), he had treated Herod's Palace in the Upper City as built upon the same site as the Palace of the Asmoneans; and in this volume, pp. 39 and 435 (vol. v. pp. 53 and 569 of the German), he supposes that when the Herods came to Jerusalem they resided in a part of the Prætorium or Herod's Palace in the Upper City; and again, p. 440 (576), he speaks of the Prætorium, or the Palace of Herod, as a good deal to the east of the city (Ziemlich weit östlich in der Stadt), which seems to imply that its site is regarded as identical with that of the Palace of the Asmoneans. In the volume on the Apostolic Age, pp. 638 and 769 sq., he expressly states that the Palace of the Asmoneans and that of Herod were distinct, and intimates that the reference in the present volume to the residence of the Herods when in Jerusalem, p. 435, must be corrected accordingly, which implies that it was rather in the Palace of the Asmoneans than in a wing of the Palace of Herod, or the Prætorium. In the next volume, pp. 769 sq., he fixes the site of Herod's Palace south of the three towers Hippicus, Phasael, and Mariamne, which again involves a modification of the descriptions given in vol. v. p. 435 (iv. p. 567), and in this volume p. 440.

VIRITY SCHOOL

LIBRARY

HARYARD UNIVERSITY

HISTORY OF ISRAEL.

BOOK VI.

CHRIST AND HIS TIME.

INTRODUCTION.

THE CONTACT OF ISRAEL WITH THE DIRECT ROMAN RULE IN PALESTINE.

THE THIRD AND LAST ADVANCE OF THE FINAL PHASE OF THE GENERAL HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL.

1. General View of the Situation and Time.

IT is true that after Herod's death, and still more after the short vassal-rule of his eldest son Archelaus over Jerusalem and Samaria, a great part of the ancient nation generally, as it continued to dwell thickly crowded together in Palestine, and a part deserving of consideration as regards rank and wealth, was for the moment glad to be placed immediately under the Roman rule. To the arbitrary rule of the Herods, who were notwithstanding always at the beck of Rome, this direct dependence on a distant government seemed preferable; and for these Roman times it seemed necessary either wholly to let go, or in any case to postpone to a distant and uncertain future, the hope of the continuance and prosperity of a national reigning family which should be in accord with the native Sacred Law. Moreover, it must be remembered that in those days Augustus had long reigned over many distant countries in most prosperous peace; his own and his family's power appeared to promise a long tranquil future; and those countries which were directly dependent on it were seen not to be less

flourishing, but in many respects far more so, than those which were still ruled over by vassal princes.

It is true that at that time the Roman rule in its direct form extended only over Jerusalem and Samaria with their surrounding territory, both of which, after the expulsion of Archelaus, remained almost without interruption under it. The other provinces remained for the time under the Roman vassals. But precisely at this time everything depended on the attitude of Jerusalem particularly, and the other provinces likewise submitted pretty soon to the same fate. The fate, too, of Judeans and Samaritans who were living elsewhere, dispersed through the Roman empire, depended, on many main points, on that of the two capitals, particularly of Jerusalem. Numerous as were the small inequalities which the secular position of all the members of the ancient community of the true religion thus temporarily involved, they all completely disappear in presence of the absolute power of Rome as it then prevailed.

But thus two nationalities and powers which could not be more unlike as regards inward and outward strength came into immediate contact, and were compelled to exert a friction upon each other which would be the more dangerous in proportion as the contact involved each other's characteristic peculiarities. Both claimed nothing less than a universal rule over the nations of the earth, although each in a very different way; and each claimed it with an earnestness and an unyielding decision such as has not been seen before in the history of the world. The pride of victory and desire to rule the whole world which characterised the Romans had then been scarcely at all weakened, and were also openly manifested without any consideration whenever decisive action seemed necessary or advantageous. But although they at one time cherished the most anxious fear of their own gods, and subsequently either added the gods of all the nations which they had conquered, or were about to conquer, to their own, lest they should be compelled to fear them as hostile, or else tolerated them and allowed the worship of them to be continued, they nevertheless remained, precisely as a ruling nation, without any inclination towards an independent and deeper examination of things and a purer religion. They were simply devoted to the arts of war and the government of nations, and cultivated external legalism simply in order by it also to maintain amongst so many nations the summit of life and government. The claim to universal empire which was able to stir a Judean heart to its very centre had at that time, after the painful destruction of the hopes which

THE COLLISION WITH ROME.

3

gathered around the Maccabees, been greatly thrown into the background and sadly beaten down. As it then continued to exist, it rested simply upon an inspiring memory from early times, upon a dim feeling of being destined for something better; indeed, of having been chosen by God for a high vocation of a unique kind amongst the nations of the earth, and upon a hope for the future, generally no less dim. But this fire, which was at that time so greatly suppressed, might, as in so many earlier periods, easily break out again with overpowering force under the solicitation of this wholly new age. And the individual Israelite was in this matter, which stirred his heart most profoundly, always conscious of his own existence simply as a member of a great, ancient, sacred and unique nation. For there were also a few peaks and summits on which this nation was able to prevent any easy intrusion on the part of even a Roman world-power; because exceedingly weak, divided, and helpless as the nation then was, it had at the same time attained a firm and definite national development. Moreover, the ultimate logical consequences of the claims, demands, and endeavours which were possible in this case, must call forth the strong hand of Rome precisely by virtue of their extreme development.

As a fact, a collision was here prepared for of such weighty significance as had never before been met with in Israel. As the people of the true God, Israel had contended often after the time of Moses with related and neighbouring nations; but it was able, difficult as it was found to be, during the period of its youthful vigour, to overcome them all successively and to render them harmless. Afterwards, when David and Solomon's illustrious times had passed by, and it felt somewhat the effects of age, so that it did not faithfully enough guard its best treasures, it contended variously and severely with the most dissimilar powerful and distant nations. If it was for a time conquered by them and seriously injured, it always obtained fresh victories again, though they might be but of its independence as the nation of the true God in the ancient sacred land. For all these great heathen nations, however powerful they might have been for a short time, had, after all, not been sufficiently intelligent and tenacious in the art of governing dissimilar conquered nations. So that the better elements which existed in Israel, as the hidden germ of an unending development, while they sought more perfect forms, found again and again favourable moments to collect themselves anew in the conflict, and to add to their growth. But precisely

these invincible, undying elements in Israel, which constantly form again and again the axis upon which all the decisive epochs of its history revolve, had for above the last five hundred years constantly afresh sought union and more decided development in a people which had been rejuvenated amid all its vicissitudes, straits, victories, and humiliation. And at last, as the fruit of such marvellously persistent endeavour, in the last instance of the Maccabean and Herodian times also, a people had arisen which boasted, not without reason, of its well-tested faithfulness in the true religion, and of its endless conflicts for the existence and perfection of a Kingdom of the true God amongst men, and which could in its Messianic hope already embrace the whole future of the human race. But though this more perfect and spiritual conception of the true religion, which had been gradually attained to during the last five centuries, had found the place of its operation in the imperfect and dubious form of the Hagiocracy, that imperfect form itself had after all been so necessarily and so firmly developed simply because that perfection, which was the logical outcome because it was the one true goal of this whole history of two thousand years, continued to delay its appearance. It was that perfection, strictly speaking, to procure the true and proper coming of which, again, was destined to constitute the profoundest and most trying task of the future, and the necessity of the coming of which was the strictly logical consequence of the growing perception of the defects of the Hagiocracy itself. But whether this perfection should at last appear, or the imperfect Hagiocracy only be longer perpetuated, the claim to universal empire was latently involved in both; and the Hagiocracy had not so poorly educated its children that they could wholly forget the duties of a true religion or the ultimate destination of Israel.

Thus the people of true religion and buoyant eternal hope was obliged, precisely at this time when all that had hitherto been potential in it had been developed to the highest possible degree, and when everything tended forcibly to its ultimate consummation, to come into direct collision, as a subject and absolutely obedient people, with that nation which had governed with a severity which down to that time no other nation had equalled, and which possessed the most crushing material force, though, on the other hand, it had no spiritual sympathy with Israel whatever. The nation which had long been greatly weakened as regards material power, greatly divided and broken into fragments, was necessitated to encounter the most powerful