i 
 
^\)e SabbatI; i^ |^i5to^y 
 
 Dr. ISAAC SCHWAB, 
 
 i 
 ! 
 
 ST. JOSEPH, MO. 
 
 p^j?^:r.t I. 
 
 ST. JOSEPH, MO. 
 ST. JOSEPH STEAM PRINTING CO. 
 
Copyright, December, 1888, 
 
 by 
 
 Dr. Isaac Schwab. 
 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The present work has grown out of the nucleus of a few 
 articles contributed to a Jewish Weekly. It has now 
 assumed the dimension of a book, in which form it is and 
 will further be given to the world. The author has, for 
 several reasons, seen fit to publish the first part separately 
 at present, and let the remainder follow in a short time. 
 Whether this will be divided into two more parts, or appear 
 at once in one volume, will be decided hereafter. In the 
 sequel of the present publication the author deals with the 
 following subjects : The Sabbath with Jesus, as to doctrine 
 and practice ; the Sabbath in the Apostolic age ; the Sab- 
 bath with the Jewish Christian sects, the Nazarenes and 
 Ebionites ; the Sabbath in Pauline and Gentile Christianity. 
 
 The object he has in view in putting his work before a 
 larger public is twofold, religious and scientific. The Sab- 
 bath, most sacred as it is in its significance, and as yet 
 theoretically planted hard and fast in the consciousness of 
 the generality of Israel as the '* perpetual sign between 
 them and God," has yet practically lost in modern days 
 much of its pristine awfulness, and even of the fervid rev- 
 erence paid to it in ages not so long gone by. Notwith- 
 standing that it is yet generally exalted as a prominently 
 distinctive mark of Judaism, and valued as one of the few 
 remaining bonds of Israel's union, it is alas! too often made 
 to yield to the so-called pressure of modern business rela- 
 tions, and thus compromised as to its sanctity and validity; 
 or it is paltered with and bartered away on various grounds 
 of expediency. On these painful issues of modern Judaism 
 
 385162 
 
6 ' . "PREFACE. 
 
 we cannot here dwell. It lies moreover beyond the purpose 
 of these prefatory lines to find fault and point out the dif- 
 ferent manifest decrease of true attachment for the Sabbath 
 in our day. 
 
 The writer is, on the whole, aiming at and inspired by 
 the hope of quickening again, by the light of historical 
 data witnessing to an incomparable self-devotion and 
 loyalty of Israel in the past to the royal bride Sabbath, that 
 sense of superior estimation of this sacred day, which should 
 be the pride and glory of our people at the present, no less 
 than it was in previous times. He aims to rekindle, by the 
 various illustrations put forth in his work, a zealous concern 
 for the Sabbath of the Decalogue in the minds of those, 
 with whom it has slacked through an undue addiction to 
 worldly things and business advantages, and to possibly 
 arrest the Neshamah yetherah "additional soul," formerly 
 so closely attending the Israelite on the Sabbath, on its 
 sorrowful flight from those too deeply immersed in their 
 temporal pursuits and the material strifes of our racing age, 
 or those too flightily temporizing in their attitude towards 
 the "sign" that is to be "perpetual," and on the perpetuity 
 of which our forefathers, as well of the middle ages as of 
 antiquity (Jewish new-Christians of Spain, who would con- 
 tinue to observe the Sabbath secretly despite the baptism 
 forced on them, were by the inquisitors singled out by the 
 observation, from elevated places, that no smoke came out 
 of their houses on the Sabbath, even in rigorous winter ; 
 see 'Shebhet Jehudah,' p. 96), staked their lives from their 
 spontaneous piety and faithfulness to the Law. 
 
 On his scientific purpose the author need not spend many 
 words. No production in any department of science, 
 resulting from an aspiration to enrich, in some way and 
 measure, the extant stores of knowledge, requires an apology 
 for itself. In the domain of the intellect every original 
 literary creation, or only newly arranged and explained 
 subject-matter, justifies itself, even without the grounded 
 prospect of its meeting a certain desideratum. How much 
 more warranted is an attempt, like our own, by which a real 
 want, however moderately, is to be supplied ! 
 
PREFACE. 7 
 
 For it will be allowed by all, that a thorough-going 
 research into the observance of the Sabbath by our ances- 
 tors in the historical ages of the second Commonwealth ; 
 also into the opinions which prevailed in antiquity among 
 non-Jews upon the Jewish religion, and the Sabbath in par- 
 ticular ; furthermore, into the mode of the Sabbatic rest 
 and the theories held on it by the chief persons of primitive 
 Christianity, and, in general, by the various parties of the 
 ancient Jewish Christian Church ; and, lastly, into the 
 position which the earlier and later Gentile Christians of 
 those remote ages held towards the Sabbath, has thus far 
 not been brought to light in any comprehensive literary 
 effort. The author's relative investigations and his resolve to 
 step before the world with their result, will therefore, he 
 expects, be acknowledged as a timely attempt. 
 
 As to the historical merits of his work, also its tone and 
 diction, he trusts that critics will pass on them with fairness 
 and forbearance. The shortcomings that may strike them 
 at its perusal, may be manifold, but they will not likely be 
 found as originating from any haste or forwardness in form- 
 ing or proposing his arguments, for he presumes to rank 
 himself among the very cautious reasoners, which circum- 
 stance, too, accounts for his rare literary appearance before 
 the public. 
 
 May Providence speed his work, and vouchsafe that it 
 accomplish its combined instructive and religiously restor- 
 ative purpose. 
 
 May the Sabbath, that priceless gem in the crown of the 
 Torah, again become as bright with the lustre of Israel's 
 spontaneous devotion to it, as it was of yore. May the 
 reverence for it, blended with the reverence for the memo- 
 ries of our martyrs of the past, who endured tortures or 
 offered up life in its honor and for the "sanctification of 
 God," be profoundly reanimated in us, and help promoting 
 in our midst an untarnished life of holiness. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE. 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 From Nehemiah to the Age of the Antonines ii 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 Pag^an Writers on the Jewish Religion atTd the Sabbath 22 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Pagan Writers on the Jewish Religion and the Sabbath 31 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Roman Writers on the Jewish Sabbath 72 
 
 Notes to these Chapters 85-132 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 FROM NEHEMIAH TO THE AGE OF THE ANTONINES. 
 
 The stern and striking reproof which Nehemiah, the 
 governor appointed by Artaxerxes Longimanus over 
 Judea, dealt, on his second return from Persia, about 425 B. 
 C, to the municipal authorities of the province for the 
 violation of the Sabbath, with which he met not only in 
 the city of Jerusalem, but in various towns of Judea, and 
 in especial, his vigilant measure of closing the gates of the 
 capital against any traffic on the sacred day of rest, seem 
 to have been fraught with the best results. Ezra, his great 
 co-laborer in the restoration of the ancient theocratic forms 
 and'regulations of national religious life, had, it is supposed, 
 died during the years of his absence. The lack of an 
 energetic guide standing at the helm of religious affairs, 
 seems to have caused several grave abuses and infractions 
 of Law to creep in and go unavenged. Among them 
 Nehemiah had discovered a scandalous dereliction of the 
 Sabbatic rest. Some of the Jews were found by him treading 
 wine-presses, and others loading provisions on their wagons 
 to bring them to Jerusalem (though they would probably not 
 sell any before the Sabbath was over), and others buying 
 articles of food and other commodities of Tyrian traders 
 on the Sabbath. His authoritative remonstrance and decided 
 interference against such profanation of the Sabbath, are 
 recorded in Neh. ch. xiii. Thenceforth, we justly suppose, 
 the persuasive authority of the Sopherim " Scribes " will 
 
 have sufficed to ward off such flagrant lawlessness, 
 
 (2; 
 
12 TA'E BABBiVTH, IN HISTORY. 
 
 These, composed of Temple functionaries as well as 
 learned persons from the lay classes of Israel, who are 
 assumed to have begun their activity with Ezra, venerated 
 in tradition as the restorer of Judaism, have made it their 
 noble task to infuse a zealous spirit of religious life into the 
 masses, and will doubtless also have largely contributed 
 towards strengthening in their minds more and more the 
 sense of the sacred significance of the Sabbath, by 
 expounding the Mosaic Sabbath ordinances in the public 
 devotional gatherings, at first held occasionally and later 
 regularly on Sabbaths and holy days, to which were added 
 even the Mondays and Thursdays, these days being im- 
 proved by reading and commenting on the Law before the 
 people. (See B. Baba Kamma f. 82, and comp. Herzfeld, 
 History of Israel i. 28).^ The work of propagating a 
 due understanding of the Mosaic enactments was carried 
 on by those Scribes, either as members of an organized 
 body comprised in the " Men of the Great Assembly," or 
 severally in their capacity as copyists, teachers and expos- 
 itors of Scripture. 
 
 The Sabbath law formed with them undoubtedly a 
 prominent subject of interpretation, for the paramount 
 sacredness and inviolability with which it is invested in the 
 Pentateuch. The definition of common labor prohibited 
 on the Sabbath, and its classification into chief and minor 
 operations, was without doubt the task those men had 
 undertaken in their noble zeal for the advancement of 
 practical reverence to the ancestral trust. Little by little 
 new restrictions were passed by councils of the learned, to 
 serve as fences of protection to the main ordinances of the 
 Sabbath of the Decalogue. And they, too, coming from 
 the representative 'Wise,' were reverently heeded by the 
 bulk of the Jewish people. 
 
 An awful austerity was thus, as time progressed, woven 
 around the Sabbath, to violate which was deemed a mark 
 of utter religious debasement and degeneracy. 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 1 3 
 
 For this austerity there is historical evidence even out- 
 side of the Rabbinical works, and for a period as early as 
 the first quarter of the fourth century B. C. Josephus 
 reports, from Grecian histories that lay before him, particu- 
 larly, it seems, the work of Agatharchides that, when 
 Ptolemy Lagi came with his army to take possession of 
 Jerusalem, but met with determined resistance from the 
 inhabitants, he purposely approached the city on a Sabbath 
 day, on which he knew the Jews would not make use of 
 arms, nor do any other common work, and easily succeeded 
 to take it (Ant. xii. i, i ; Against Apion i. 22; see-also 
 Herzfeld, 1. c. p. 210). Agatharchides, like most other Gre- 
 cian and Roman writers on Jewish religious institutions, 
 could only scoff at this conscientious adherence of the Jews 
 to their religious precepts, which they maintained even at 
 the risk of losing their possessions and lives. To him this 
 custom of avoiding armed engagements on a Sabbath was 
 another of the superstitions for which he had only scathing 
 taunt. The Sabbath observance of the Jews he pronounced 
 a "mad custom," a "foolish practice." It is likely that 
 Plutarch,- a Grecian writer of the first and second cen- 
 turies C. E., in his treatise on the " Fear of the gods," or, as 
 it is usually designated, on " Superstition," alluded in ch. 
 viii. to that fact, when he, criticising a bootless piety, con- 
 sisting in mere trust in Divine aid without that human 
 efforts to attain the objects prayed for accompany it, puts 
 forth as an example of it " the Jews, sitting still, in 
 unbleached clothes, because it was the Sabbath, and suffer- 
 ing the enemy to plant ladders and seize upon the walls, 
 they themselves not rising, but remaining inactive, like 
 (fishes) in a net, (though) fettered only by their super- 
 stition." 
 
 In the Hibbert edition of that treatise the translator sug- 
 gests in a note, that Plutarch had in his mind another 
 event, that, namely, of the time of the religious persecution 
 of Antiochus Epiphanes, when the Jews hidden in caverns 
 of the Judean desert to escape the miseries of the persecu- 
 tion ( the author of 2 Mace, construes their object of hiding 
 there to have been, that they might "keep the Sabbath 
 
14 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 secretly"), were assaulted by the troops of the Syrian 
 commander ( Philippus, 2 Mace. ) on a Sabbath, and per- 
 ished together at the hands of the enemy ( I Mace. ii. 37 ; 
 Jos. Ant. xii. 6, 2 ). 
 
 He might also have observed, as belonging to the same 
 period, the like instance of the resolute refusal of the Jews 
 to fight on the Sabbath, when ApoUonius, turning this day, 
 on which he found the Jews at religious rest, to his account, 
 had a large number of them massacred — an event that 
 happened already before the publication of Antiochus' 
 edict (2 Mace. v. 24 sq.) ; compare the case narrated there, 
 ch. XV., 2-6. 
 
 But we have to object, that the tenor of Plutarch's 
 description comports decidedly more with the capture of 
 the Temple and its fortifications by Pompey, 63 B. C, when 
 he took advantage of the Sabbath days for laying siege to 
 it, and raising and completing the bank, from which he 
 would batter those strongholds, the Jews making no armed 
 opposition, but allowing him to proceed with his hostile 
 preparations, rather than desecrate the day by active 
 attempts of repulsion (Ant. xiv. 4, 2 ; see also Wars ii. 16, 
 4). This occurrence was doubtless matter of record in 
 various works of history, alongside the successful conquest 
 accomplished by Pompey, of which an historian of his acts 
 naturally took note. 
 
 Be that as it may, and whether or not Plutarch adverted 
 in his treatise to the last-named occurrence, we have at all 
 events thus far adduced reliable historical attestation, that 
 the Jews exhibited from the beginning of the Greek period 
 to that of the Roman rule over Judea, an exemplary pious 
 fortitude, a true simplicity of faith (comp. i Mace. ii. 37), 
 in obeying what they were convinced to be the law of God 
 rather than the dictate of self-preservation, otherwise so 
 natural and justifiable, when it conflicted in their conscience 
 with the allegiance they felt themselves owing to their God. 
 
 It is true, that the extreme rigor with regard to military 
 actions on the Sabbath was, since the above-mentioned 
 calamity in the Syrian epoch, somewhat relaxed through 
 the intervention of Mattathias and his friends, in so far that 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. I 5 
 
 they concluded that armed defence against hostile attacks 
 did not come under the head of forbidden work (i Mace. ii. 
 39 sq ), and that, judging from Jonathan, his brave son's 
 proceeding against Bacchides.(ib. ix. 43), and from Jose- 
 phus' statement in Ant. xii. 6, 2 ; xiv. 4, 2, the rule seems 
 to have prevailed up to the latter's time, that the Sabbath 
 law had to give way before such "necessity," as this historian 
 denotes such cases of critical extremity. But, let us reply, 
 was there nevertheless not enough of the former rigor left 
 even in Josephus' time .'' He reflects in Ant. xii. 6, 2, upon 
 the inactivity on Sabbaths during Pompey's invasion as not 
 only observed at that juncture, but as still obtaining as a 
 rule in his own day, in the following : "The law does not 
 permit us to meddle with our enemies while they do any- 
 thing else" (than make a direct assault). Offensive 
 warfare against pagan enemies was then practically shunned 
 on the Sabbath. This shows conclusively the religious 
 anxiety holding sway all along over the consciences of the 
 Jews, lest they might transgress the Sabbath law by mili- 
 tary operations, although such inactivity might be fraught 
 with serious disadvantages and even losses to them.^ 
 
 That this anxietj' was not lessened during the centuries 
 of the Roman dominion subsequent to Josephus' time, may 
 be gathered from ancient Rabbinical sourzes. 
 
 It is known that the Syro-Greek inhabitants of many 
 cities of Palestme and Syria cherished an intense hatred 
 and bitter prejudice against the Jews. Cases of mob 
 violence by the spiteful Grecians, were specially frequent 
 under Nero and Titus, (see Josephus, Wars ii, 14, 4 sq ; 20, 
 2; 18, I, 2, 5; Life § 5). That such tumults were not only 
 fomented and enacted in larger cities having a preponderant 
 heathen population, but spread also among the smaller 
 places of the surrounding districts, we may conclude with 
 sufficient assurance. The relations of the Jews to the 
 Syro-Greeks in cities of mixed population grew doubtless 
 yet more strained, causing occasional outbreaks, since the 
 last deadly thrust was given to the Jewish State by the 
 Roman colossus, and the disasters of the Jews attendant 
 
l6 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 upon it. To the envy and hatred already before nourished 
 by those fanatical pagans, there was now joined a vile 
 contempt for the humiliated down-trodden matron, Judea. 
 
 As instances in point may be mentioned the request of 
 the heathens of Antioch, the capital of Syria, to Titus, when 
 he bad come there after the fall of Jerusalem, to eject the 
 Jewish people from the city (Wars vii. 5, 2), where they 
 had lived in large numbers, enjoying since early days equal 
 rights with the Greeks (ib. 3, 3) ; also the prayer of the 
 Alexandrians to Vespasian and Titus to take away the 
 citizenship from the Jews of that city (Ant. xii, 3, i). 
 
 The Jews had through the loss of their State to the 
 Romans in that fatal revolutionary struggle become strang- 
 ers in their native land. All that reminded them that they 
 had some sort of citizenship left, was the exorbitant taxa- 
 tion levied on them by the Roman authorities. The inso- 
 lent Roman soldiers and officers, and the malicious heathen 
 inhabitants of Palestine and' Syria could now with greater 
 impunity than ever before offer any affront to the Jews, as 
 they were prostrite and discouraged by the disasters 
 through which they had passed. That those heathens would 
 under such circumstances often attack the more defence- 
 less Jews on the Sabbatli, coming on them unawares for 
 objects of molestation, spoliation or murder, may be 
 derived by way of induction from some passages of the old 
 Rabbinical literature, which we can safely set down as 
 bearing on the Jewish affairs of the Roman period, at least 
 to the latter part of the second century C. E. 
 
 The fact that Rabbinical authorities of the first century 
 C. E. had to legislate regarding those Jews " going out to 
 rescue brethren from the assaults of ( heathen ) hordes " on 
 the Sabbath ( see Mishnah Rosh Hashanah ii. 5 and comp. 
 Erubin iv. 3), and that sundry regulations concerning 
 warfare to repulse heathen attacks on the Sabbath occur in 
 another Rabbinical code ( Tosifta Erubin iii. 5 sq.; comp. 
 B. Erubin f. 45 ), shows evidently the practical occurrence, 
 from time to time, of such hostile irruptions during the 
 Roman rule. 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. I7 
 
 And yet for all the sympathy for the oppressed and 
 distressed brethren that moved and actuated those Rab- 
 binical legislators, and for all their pious jealousy for the 
 integrity of Jewish territory and its freedom from the 
 pollutions of godless heathens, the scruple of violating the 
 Sabbath by exceeding the line o( lawfulness, already 
 extended by way of dispensation for cases of inevitable 
 necessity, would not vanish from their minds, and we may 
 safely presume from the minds of the pious lay people, 
 either. 
 
 Armed movements and acts on the Sabbath were held 
 unlawful for various reasons, chief among them seems to 
 have been, first, the need of journeying beyond the Sabbath 
 limit from one's habitation (see Ant. xiii. 8, 4), which was 
 traditionally set at 2,000 cubits (B. Erubin f. 51 ; comp. 
 Acts i. 12 ), and secondly, the carrying of arms from private 
 precincts to public thoroughfares and roads, and the 
 reverse, which was regarded as a burden, rangeable among 
 the principal kinds of common labor ( see Mishnah Sabb. f. 
 73). The former consideration is confirmed as historical 
 even by non-Jewish testimony (see Ant. 1. c. ), and that 
 not later than the first half of the second century B. C: 
 
 Now, while the Rabbis of antiquity seem to have been 
 agreed that for rescuing brethren living in the neighbor- 
 hood of a town, or for defending a place attacked by 
 heathen enemies, those Sabbath restraints may be set aside, 
 they would yet, in their austere piety, not even leave such 
 allowances unrestricted, permitting to rescuing parties, 
 after they would have completed their noble work of 
 relieving imperiled brethren, only to return a distance of 
 2,000 cubits, but not the entire length of their journey to 
 their homes, wherefrom they had started on the Sabbath 
 (comp. Mishnah Rosh Hash. 1. c. yvith B. Erubin f. 45 ). 
 
 The other consideration, the violatioii of the Sabbath by 
 bearing one's armor, and consequently a burden on public 
 roads, weighed also so heavily with them in questions of 
 defence and rescue that, although they deemed the preser- 
 vation of lives and country paramount to the obligation of 
 that traditional religious observance, they would yet place 
 
1 8 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 a restriction even on this dispensation, which was only 
 later abolished through the sad experience of serious grief 
 entailed by such anxious application of the Sabbath 
 injunction. 
 
 To such a degree, then, the anxiety and scrupulosity as 
 to Sabbath restraints were developed in the Rabbinical ages 
 of antiquity ! While those pious teachers saw themselves 
 induced, in ill-fated times, to make some concessions when 
 there was immediate or imminent danger of life, they 
 would yet make them with timid minds and the attachment 
 of cautious limitations. The awe of the Sabbath had 
 permeated the Jewish consciences so completely, that only 
 preservation of life and country was judged worthy of 
 being put in the balance against the settled religious 
 restraints. And while the weight of inevitable necessity 
 made the opposite scale tardily rise, it was surely not a 
 sense oi levity or a disposition to compromise, that was 
 active in making such modifications of some parts of the 
 acknowledged Sabbath law. Dreadful contingencies urged 
 their temporary yielding to the mandate of preservation of 
 Jewish lives and habitations. 
 
 The sacred earnestness which we have thus far seen to 
 have prevailed as to the Sabbath observance, inspired not 
 only the teachers, but unquestionably also the people at 
 large. The successive training and usage of centuries had 
 established such deep reverence for this weekly day of rest,, 
 and created, so to speak, such an air of holiness in the 
 Jewish sphere of life, that equally the common people and 
 the learned class were possessed of an unbidden reverent 
 devotedness to it. 
 
 And they would equally with the doctors of the Law 
 imperil their lives for the sake of the Sabbath observance^ 
 in days of religious persecution. This they did, not only 
 in the Maccabean period, but also again during the cruel 
 proscription visited on the Jews by the emperor Hadrian,, 
 in the year 135 or 136 C. E. 
 
 In those bloody days of religious proscription, which 
 comprised not only the occupation of the teachers with 
 Scripture interpretation, lecturing on themes of traditional 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. I9 
 
 law, and the ordination of scholars for the Rabbinical 
 office, but also the practice of any Jewish rite by the people 
 (see B. Baba Bathra f 60), chiefly the Abrahamic rite, the 
 Sabbath, the reading of Scripture (Megillath Taanith ch 
 xii.), also the observances on the festivals of Passover and 
 Tabernacles (Midr. Rabb. Lev. xxxii. ; Mechilta Jethro vi.), 
 the daily recitation of the Shema-chapter, which was the 
 most obligatory portion of the Jewish ritual (Tosifta Berach. 
 ii.) etc., the intrepid devotion to the ancestral religion was 
 proved by laymen as well as teachers. Many of them bore 
 a zealous and glorifying testimony to the unalterable obli- 
 gation of the Law of God, by discharging their religious 
 duties, while they knew the penalty of death impendingon 
 them, if they should be apprehended in the act. Not only 
 have a number of them endured tortures unto death for 
 disobeying openly the imperial interdict by exercising the 
 Abrahamic rite and refusing to serve idols (see B. Sabbath 
 f 130) — the latter of which we will elsewhere establish as 
 having also been enjoined by Hadrian, only that it was prob- 
 ably not enforced so generally — but some of the stalwart 
 religionists continued to put their lives in jeopardy by prac- 
 ticing the various essential ceremonies of religion in defiance 
 of the prohibitory edict. They were not daunted by the risk 
 of being detected by the imperial myrmidons or informers 
 of their own race — for there were some Jewish renegades 
 wicked enough to play the vile part of delators in those 
 fatal days. They would, it is true, attempt as much as 
 possible to conceal, by different secret devices, their religious 
 observances from the Argus eyes of the ubiquitous spies, as 
 they would also relax, in some instances, certain minor 
 ceremonial restrictions, traditionally observed in connection 
 with the essentials of their religion. Yet for all their 
 measures of precaution they were constantly bearing their 
 lives in their hands, while attending to ceremonial functions. 
 That the threatened penalty of death did not deter such 
 Israelites from keeping the Sabbath holy, is attested 
 by the before-quoted passages of Rabb. Lev., and the 
 Mechilta. They would, further, do the Pentateuch reading 
 of the Sabbath on the roofs of the houses, the attendance 
 
20 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 at the synagogues or the lower apartments of their houses ; 
 
 being too insecure (see Jer. Erubin ix. i), though even \ 
 there they might be discovered and seized to await an 
 
 atrocious visitation for offending against the Roman j 
 tyrant's authority. With heroic steadfastness they would 
 
 acknowledge their reverence to the Divinely instituted i 
 
 Sabbath in those troubled times, which lasted long enough, j 
 
 indeed. It was not until some time in the reign of j 
 
 Antoninus Pius that, through the intercession of Rabbi j 
 
 Meir's pupil, Judah ben Shamua — if we may credit the j 
 
 testimony of a relative Rabbinical tradition (Megill. Taan. j 
 
 1. c.) — the cruel edict of the prohibition of the Jewish j 
 religion was revoked. 
 
 The Sabbath was then re-instated in its pristine freedom, j 
 
 The pious fervor with which it had been customarily | 
 
 observed, was yet increased, now the oppressive ban was [ 
 
 removed, and intensified by a deep sense of gratitude to 1 
 
 the Divine Ruler who had in his mercy disposed, that his j 
 
 servants should again be able to bear the "yoke of the I 
 
 sacred commands," without fear of human punishment. j 
 
 Hadrian's war of extermination (Shemad) was another J 
 
 "iron furnace," in which Israel's indomitable, iron tenacity 1 
 
 to their religion was severely tested and found proof. He '. 
 had indeed struck a grievous blow at the root of Israel's 
 
 proud existence, their religion, aiming by such barbarous ' 
 
 deeds at the total overthrow of the trunk that had breasted ! 
 
 so successfully the raging storms of the past. But that | 
 " ridiculous sophist and jealous tyrant " erred in his 
 calculation. Israel's vitality was too vigorous to succumb 
 to his unrelenting furor. They again came forth victoriously 
 
 as to the preservation of their religion, holding aloft its I 
 
 banner with the inscription of "Jehovah is One," ensan- j 
 
 guined though it was through the martyrdom of those ! 
 
 upholding the authority of the law of God, in open or ! 
 
 secret defiance of that of a human tyrant. ] 
 
 Alas ! once more should the freedom of the Sabbath be | 
 
 disturbed by Roman interference. It was in the reign of j 
 
 Marcus Aurelius and Aelius Verus, the successors of j 
 
 Antoninus Pius, that the Hadrianic proscription of the ! 
 
 J 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 21 
 
 fundamental and essential rites of the Jewish religion was 
 renewed, about 165-69 C. E. (B. Meilah f. 17, and see 
 Muenter, The Jewish War, etc.; also Graetz, History). 
 Again it was, so the Talmud relates, a Rabbinical doctor, 
 Rabbi Simeon ben Jochai, who accomplished the repeal of 
 the interdict. It seems, however, in view of the fact that 
 Marcus Aurelius was not at heart an enemy of the Jews 
 (see Muenter 1. c. p. lOO), having also, as we prefer to assume 
 with Rappaport, befriended the eminent Jewish patriarch, 
 Judah I., to have lasted only a short time. From the day 
 of its revocation we meet with no more imperial prohibitions 
 of the Sabbath. The civil condition of the Jews improved 
 henceforth more and more with the accession of rulers of 
 the Roman world, who had sufficient respect and toleration 
 for their religious institutions, not to vex them in their 
 earnest efforts to maintain them intact. And thus could 
 also the Sabbath obtain back its royal glory and solemn 
 grandeur, so much dimmed during the past ages of perse- 
 cution. The sceptre the Sabbath had since centuries 
 borne and swayed so freely and so blissfully for those 
 yielding implicit obedience to it, was from that time on 
 no more wrested from it by unholy attempts of cruel rulers. 
 They had, however, to contend yet with other adversaries^ 
 not materially aggressive, but none the less aiming with 
 set purpose at the honor and validity of the Jewish Sabbath 
 — I mean the pagan writers who treated the Jewish 
 religious rites, among them the Sabbath, with haughty 
 scorn and heartless derision ; the Jewish Christians, making 
 light of some traditional Sabbath injunctions ; and further, 
 the Gentile Christians, who attempted to detract more and 
 more from the obligation of the Sabbath of the Decalogue, 
 and enthrone in its stead another d&y, the first of the week, 
 These points we will now discuss severally. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 PACxAN WRITERS ON THE JEWISH RELIGION AND THE 
 SABBATH. 
 
 We have already before cited the utterances of Agathar- 
 chides and Plutarch on the Jewish Sabbath rest. We will 
 now deal with the fabulous allegations and odious allusions 
 which the bitterest libeler of the nationality and religion 
 of the Jews ever produced in a Greek-speaking country, 
 Apion, a grammarian and rhetor of Alexandria, attempted 
 concerning it. He flourished at a period most unfortunate 
 to the Jews of that city, the first half of the first century C. 
 E. He was a native of the rural part of Egypt, yet pre- 
 tended to Alexandrian-Greek birth and citizenship, and 
 made it his prime object to work upon the " ancient and as 
 it were innate enmity " of the Grecian inhabitants to their 
 Jewish fellow-citizens (see Philo, Against Flaccus § 5), 
 which was particularly aroused to a fierce degree about that 
 period, and to scatter, with flattering prospect of universal 
 credence, in his several writings the most scurrilous and 
 fabulous invectives against them as to their national origin, 
 their ancestors' departure from Egypt, and their various 
 religious rites and customs. Following in the main those 
 hostile authors who had before written with the same object 
 and in the same strain, as Manetho (about B. C. 250), Molo 
 (B, C. 90), Posidonius (B. C. 70), Cheremon (B. C. 50), 
 Lysimachus (B. C. 30) and others, he yet added from his 
 own mind some "very frigid and contemptible things" 
 ( Josephus, Against Apion, ii. i). He made of the Jc-.ws 
 original Egyptians, in order to dispute their claim to Greek 
 citizenship, and to represent them before the vulgar as 
 aliens in the city of Alexandria. Transcribing the older 
 Jew-hating writers as to Israel's expulsion from Egypt, he 
 put forth, on his own account, a most fictitious representa- 
 tion of their journey from there to Judea, with which he 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 23 
 
 connects the malignantly absurd story of the origin of the 
 name Sabbath. " When the Jews had traveled a six days' 
 journey," he declares, " they had buboes in their groins." 
 It was " on this account that they rested on the seventh 
 day, as having got safely to that country which is now 
 called Judea ; they preserved the language of the Egyptians, 
 and called that day the Sabbath, for that malady of buboes 
 in their groin was named Sabbatosis by the Egyptians." 
 Josephus undertook to write an apology of his co-religionists 
 to controvert some of the most preposterous and at the 
 same time grievous misrepresentations of Jews and Judaism 
 made in previous works of Grecian writers, and particularly 
 to confute a number of contemptuous slanders hurled 
 against the Jews in his time by that literary mountebank, 
 Apion. Josephus had no difficulty in dispellinghis senseless 
 insinuation regarding the Sabbath. " If Sabbo," he rejoins, 
 " really meant that malady in the Egyptian language, it 
 was yet so widely different from Sabbath, which is Hebrew 
 and denotes " rest " (ib. ii. 2). But how many of the 
 Asiatic and African Greeks or Romans of that century 
 were inclined to hear and read a vindication of anything 
 Jewish, and be disabused of erroneous notions on Judaism 
 formed and fostered in their minds with obdurate partiality .'' 
 Few, indeed, would be influenced by Jewish apologetical 
 writings to give up their prejudices and ill-will nurtured 
 against the Jews in those days. In Alexandria, where 
 Jews had resided since centuries, enjoying guaranteed 
 rights and privileges with the rest of the Greek citizens 
 (ib. ii. 4), and occupying, in Philo's time, two, out of the 
 five districts into which the city was divided (Against 
 Flaccus, § 8), the heathen populace cherished a profound 
 chagrin at that equality which entitled them to. every 
 public distinction and social prominence. Under Caesar, 
 whose fair treatment of the Jews of Alexandria stood 
 embodied in a documentary grant publicly exhibited on a 
 certain pillar of that city (Ag. Ap. 1. c), as also in the 
 reigns of Augustus and Tiberius, who were firmly protecting 
 its Jewish inhabitants against any injury, as well as strongly 
 guarding the religious liberty of the Jews in the whole 
 
24 THE SABIJATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 empire (Philo, Ag. Flacc. § 7, lO ; Legatio § 8, 40 ; Josephus, 
 Ant. xix. 5, 3), the Alexandrian populace could not vent 
 their ill-will to the Jews by any palpable acts of violence. 
 They could harbor d^ep prejudice against them, scorn 
 and envy them at heart, but further they might not 
 dare to go, knowing that a willing Csesar was always 
 prepared to chastise mutinous mobs. Things took a differ- 
 ent turn, however, with the accession of that frantic 
 monster, Caligula. Under this Herod-like emperor 
 unspeakable mischief and indignities were visited on the 
 Jews of Alexandria. 
 
 The governor, Flaccus, who had for five years, as long as 
 Tiberius was on the throne, behaved himself tolerantly to 
 the Jews, suddenly changed his policy when the empire 
 came into the hands of that furious tyrant, Caligula. 
 Riotous attacks upon the Jews were schemed by the Alex- 
 andrian mob — and they were not an inconsiderable portion 
 of the population — and Flaccus conspired with them. 
 They knew that the Jews could be provoked by no insult 
 to a higher pitch than by idolatrous intrusions. So they 
 concluded to erect images and statues, representing the 
 reigning emperor, in the synagogues, " putting forth the 
 name of the emperor as a screen " ( Ag. Flacc. § 6 ). 
 
 This was surely a false pretense, for Caligula had then 
 given no such orders. His deification and orders of erec- 
 tion of statues of himself in places of worship, were of a 
 later date. But the Grecian m.ob knew well, that the Jewish 
 heart was implacable against interference with their mono- 
 theistic belief, and that their abhorrence of image-worship 
 was too intense to allow any trifling with it. To make 
 sure that the peaceful Jews would be violently roused and 
 thus get involved in a riotous disturbance, as well as to 
 wound them most severely at the vital nerve of their 
 spiritual existence, nothing could be designed as having so 
 prompt an effect as an attempt at profaning their houses of 
 worship with idols. "^ A synagogue in which idols were 
 forced, was indeed held by the Jews equal to being 
 destroyed. This is evident from various passages in 
 Philo's " Flaccus " and " Legatio." 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 25 
 
 Flaccus was not satisfied with the defilement of the syna- 
 gogues alone. He further issued an ordinance declaring 
 the Jews as "foreigners and aliens," and gave also license 
 to the heathens to exterminate them ( Flacc. § 8 ). A 
 furious onset by the mob ensued. Plunder, destruction of 
 life and property, unnameable cruelties were perpetrated 
 upon the helpless Jews of Alexandria. Fortunately for 
 them, Agrippa I., the Jewish tetrarch bearing the title of 
 King, had come there a second time during this year of 
 persecution, and succeeded to bring about a cessation of 
 the hostilities and to " rectify things." This, however, meant 
 only a truce for awhile. For a new governor was sent there 
 after the removal of Flaccus, in 38 C. E., whose fierce 
 antagonism to the Jews did not much fall short of that of 
 his predecessor. Moreover, his administration fell in with 
 his master's order of deification of himself, in which the 
 Jews could never acquiesce, so that they could not have 
 expected a more lenient treatment from him, had he even 
 individually been favorably disposed towards them. Caius 
 Caligula, after dispensing cruel death to a friendly adviser, 
 to his father-in-law, also to his cousin, and banishment to 
 his sisters after blasting their honor ( Suetonius, Caligula, § 
 24), aspired to be adored as a god. He commenced with 
 presenting himself in the garb of demi-gods, such as Her- 
 cules, Castor and Pollux, Bacchus ; then pretended to the 
 dignity of such divinities as Mercur}-, Apollo, Mars (Philo, 
 Leg. §§ II, 13), till lastly he claimed to be Jupiter incarnate 
 ( ib. § 29), and had a temple erected to his own deity, in 
 which he placed a golden statue of himself, dressed in the 
 same vestments he would wear in person every day ( Sue- 
 tonius 1. c. § 22 ). 
 
 What the Jews could expect under the rule of such a 
 frenzied autocrat, was easy to predict. The mania of his 
 godship possessed him so thoroughly, that no other con- 
 sideration of policy or humanity could prevail against it. 
 Suspecting the Jews, at the outset of his claim of divinity, 
 as opposing it obstinately (Leg. §§ 16, 30),' he conceived a 
 bitter hatred to them which, becoming soon known to the 
 pagan Alexandrians (ib. §§ 18, 20), was improved by them 
 
26 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 to commit the most barbarous hostilities against their 
 Jewish fellow-citizens, Alas ! they were to be citizens no 
 more, but held as " the very lowest of slaves " (ib. § i6). 
 The infamous populace could now, without fear of punish- 
 ment, turn their fury against them. And they did so. 
 Philo has described their fearful suffering, the most 
 grievous part of it, in his own eyes as well as in those of 
 his co-religionists, was the dedication of the synagogues to 
 the worship of Caius ! To curry the favor of the emperor, 
 they ostentatiously published, in their "journals" which he 
 delighted so much to read, that they had transformed the 
 synagogues to his temples (ib. § 25), whereby they had 
 crushed the Jews to the dust, whom they knew to prefer 
 death to such profanation of their synagogues. 
 
 The governor, whose name is not given, looked inactively 
 on wh-ile the many atrocities were perpetrated upon the 
 Jews, "allowing the mob to carry on the war against them 
 without any restraint" (ib. § 20). It seems even that, 
 inspired by the central authority of Rome, he was himself 
 very active in oppressing the Jews with religious prohibi- 
 tions. We learn from Philo ("On Dreams" § 18), that a 
 certain governor had endeavored to change and abolish the 
 Jewish laws and customs, and to this end began with 
 forcing them to violate the Sabbath, "thinking that this 
 measure would be the beginning of the departure from the 
 whole ancestral Judaism." There is indeed no historical 
 evidence that this governor was identical with the one 
 under notice. But the language he used in his cruel 
 mockery of the Jews, when he found them determined not 
 to transgress the pivotal law of the Sabbath, savors much 
 of the spirit then predominating at the imperial court. 
 The governor, in his harangue to the Jews, gave himself out 
 as a combination and concentration of all thinkable evils 
 and dangers to life, before which the Sabbath should give 
 way even to the pious Jews, as he thought it otherwise 
 customarily yielded in such cases of extremity. Are we 
 by it not reminded of Caligula's pretension to be himself 
 the embodiment of law, against which no other human will 
 or time-honored statute counted for anything ? It was but 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 2/ 
 
 natural, from the truism of ' like master, like servant,' that 
 his subordinates should be congenial to him, and act with 
 the same arrogance of power and a claim of irresponsibility, 
 lesser in degree than the master's, only inasmuch as the 
 governors had also, on their part, to conform to the 
 emperor's one-man will. 
 
 The Alexandrian Jews sought again relief through the 
 medium of Agrippa, who was a most intimate friend and 
 favorite of Caligula. They addressed a petition to him, in 
 which they extensively set forth their profound loyalty, as 
 well as the violent treatment they had received from the 
 governors and the populace. Soon after they determined 
 to send an embassy of representative men to Rome to plead 
 their cause before the emperor, or rather, as it would appear 
 from the passage in Leg. § 29, that the delegates themselves 
 could not forbear to be "involved in the lawlessness 
 of which all the rest made themselves guilty" ( b}^ having, 
 namely, in their midst synagogues profaned by images of a 
 deified man), these offered their services of their own 
 accord and voluntary resolution. One of them was the 
 philosopher of world-wide fame, Philo, a brother to the 
 alabarch or imperially authorized president of the Alexan- 
 drian Jewish community, Alexander, who had, without 
 doubt for his stanch fidelity to God and refusing to own 
 the Roman monster as deity, incurred his displeasure and 
 was put in prison, from which he was not released till the 
 accession of Claudius (Ant. xix. 5, i). The ambassadors, 
 five in number according to Philo — who certainly knew 
 better than Josephus how many they were, the latter having 
 perhaps drawn his relative information from a more distant 
 pagan source, in which the delegation was stated as con- 
 sisting of three men — set sail in midwinter of 38 39 C. E., 
 embarking on their awful mission with resolute hearts, and 
 doubly staking their lives, as they really did, in committing 
 themselves to the doubtful mercy of the waves and the 
 undoubted frenzy of an all-powerful ruler, for the vindica- 
 tion of their ancestral religion" and their cruelly insulted 
 brethren. 
 
 (3; 
 
2S THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 The Alexandrian populace, too, had dispatched represen- 
 tatives to plead before the emperor in defence of their 
 actions, and at the same time to denounce, with every 
 possible calumniation, their Jewish fellow-residents. Jose- 
 phus (ib. xviii. 8, i) states their number also to have been 
 three, and lets, moreover, the two delegations be chosen by 
 agreement of the two parties at feud. This sounds, however, 
 utterly incredible, when we consider the many violent acts 
 and enormous indignities inflicted on the Jewish community 
 by the hateful populace for at least two years, and conse- 
 quently the implacable resentment the former must have 
 felt towards their persecutors. Can it then, in view of the 
 deepest animosity existing between the two parties, be 
 imagined that they arranged a peaceable meeting, in 
 which either of them should have proposed and agreed 
 upon a submission of their quarrel to the imperial tribunal ? 
 And what point of dissension could it have been that was 
 to be submitted? The civil rights of the Jews, disannulled 
 by Caius' governors, and disputed by the envious and hateful 
 populace.'' Surely the gravely insulted Jews would not have 
 condescended and given them the satisfaction of being a 
 party in a suit, in which they had not in the least any 
 legitimate voice, and of co-operating towards settling a 
 question and resolving a douOt that practically existed not, 
 • the Jewish rights being matter of governmental record, to 
 interpret which not the pagan Alexandrians, but the 
 imperial tribunal was the proper authority. Or should the 
 Jews have suggested to their enemies a joint deputation, 
 and acted so much against their own best interests, by 
 giving the fanatical, rapacious and murderous populace yet 
 a chance of extenuating, in the course of a controversial 
 suit, their enormous crimes committed against them .'' No, 
 indeed. We therefore presume as much more likely under 
 the then circumstances, that no understanding at all was 
 had between the Jews and pagans of Alexandria, but 
 that the Jewish delegation was resolved on without the 
 knowledge of the latter, for fear of forcible interference 
 from them and, perhaps, the governor, whose power of 
 forbidding their departure was unquestioned. By some 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 29 
 
 prudent arrangements, we suppose, they escaped discovery, 
 and succeeded to set out on their voyage unhindered. 
 Their departure must however, we further suggest, soon 
 have become known. This made the Alexandrian populace 
 hastily move to send on also a delegation of their own', in 
 order not to be overreached by the Jews. 
 
 Josephus states that the above-named libeler, Apion, was 
 one of the heathen delegation, presenting him as a sort of 
 spokesman of the opposition. Having no evidence to the 
 contrary, we must not dispute the accuracy of this state- 
 ment. We can, however, not help wondering, why, if 
 Apion had really been such a prominent member of the 
 heathen delegation, Philo has not once mentioned him as 
 such. From Philo's report it would, further, appear as 
 rather more likely that not Apion, but Isidorus, a most 
 dangerous demagogue of Alexandria, was the main speaker 
 of the opposition at the ambassadors' meeting with the 
 emperor (see Leg. § 45). But what matter, who of the 
 heathen Alexandrians present was the loudest and most 
 forward in the denunciation of the Jews ? It is sufficient to 
 know that all of them were united as to the charge of 
 disloyalty and disobedience to the emperor. This accusa- 
 tion had, under the circumstances, no need of even being 
 formulated in speeches. Caligula's mind was already filled 
 completely with this most aggravating supposition, before 
 the embassy arrived at Rome. The information of Capito, 
 a collector of imperial revenues in Judea, against the Jews, 
 that they had torn down an altar erected at Jamnia to the 
 worship of the god Caius (ib. § 30), and the hostile 
 insinuations of such courtiers as Helicon and Apelles (see 
 ib.), had sufficiently confirmed him in it. What this fresh 
 set of maligners could accomplish, was merely adding some 
 fuel .to the already burning rage of the emperor at the 
 refusal of the Jews to acquiesce in his pretension to be God. 
 
 His mind was withal, as we suppose, already at a previ- 
 ous and early period irritated against the Jews through the 
 insidious work of that Alexandrian sycophant Helicon, 
 who was "chamberlain and chief body-guard" to him, and 
 who, as Philo further observes, "discharged all his Egyptian 
 
30 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 venom against the Jews," (ib.), "exciting and exasperating 
 his master against them" (ib. § 28). Having risen from a 
 slave to the dignity of influential courtier under Caligula, 
 he used his influence extensively to instil his, in a manner, 
 native ill-feeling and antagonism to the Jews into his 
 susceptible spirit. His "satirical and quizzing observations 
 mingled with his more formal and serious accusations" (ib. 
 § 27), formed no doubt a most frequent subject of his 
 conversation with the emperor, to whom he was a constant 
 companion. He could, too, talk so largely to him about 
 Jewish customs, from his early notice of them in his native 
 city, Alexandria, where he had as instructors the " chatter- 
 ing part of the population" (ib. § 26) — those rhetorical and 
 literary mountebanks of the type of Apion — that the master 
 would easily look to him as an authority upon everything 
 pertaining to Jews and their religion. We think not to 
 judge amiss in attributing the failure of the Alexandrian 
 Jewish delegation to vindicate their nation and national 
 religion before the emperor, for the most part to this 
 perfidious sycophant, who would systematically and assidu- 
 ously undermine the ground of defence and apology, on 
 which those earnest Jewish men could place themselves to 
 support their cause. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 PAGAN WRITERS ON THE JEWISH RELIGION AND THE 
 SABBATH. — CONTINUED. 
 
 That the Alexandrian and other Greek works in which 
 notices of Jewish history and religious rites occur, had 
 some influence on the Roman writers who also presented 
 Jewish accounts in their various compositions, we are far 
 from disputing, although it is demonstrable in Tacitus 
 only. This " grave personage " had evidently read and 
 made use of a number of those Grecian works. Instead, 
 however, of consulting for a true historical purpose the 
 universally accessible Greek version of the Bible, and also 
 the works of Philo and Josephus that had long before his 
 time of writing been published, he preferred, from his 
 haughty contempt for the Jewish people, to draw his 
 information from those heathen sources, however turbid' 
 and incongruent with one another they were in regard to 
 the description of the ancient historical events of the 
 nation of Israel. He particularly copied, as we will later 
 see, Lysimachus and Apion, Alexandrian authors whose 
 names appeared already in our previous discussion. 
 
 But that the hatred to the Jews which was found among 
 the generality of the pagans, and is also encountered in 
 Roman literature, should originally have emanated from 
 Egypt, that is, from the Alexandrian writings of Manetho, 
 Cheremon, Lysimachus, Apion, and others, as Dr. Joel, 
 ''Blicke in die Religionsgeschichie" ii. p. io6 ; 116-19, 
 suggests, we cannot accept as resting on any plausible 
 grounds. Nor can we agree with him as to his conjoined 
 proposition, that Greek authors, such as Posidonius and 
 ApoUonius Molo who also wrote on Jewish matters, had 
 already "long ( before Apion ) thrown the Alexandrian 
 fables, passed as Jewish history, on the Roman market, so 
 
32 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 that it need not be wondered at that, as once Cicero who, 
 as an adherent of Pompey, had the Jews against himself, 
 was edified by them, so later Tacitus propounded, on the 
 strength of such authorities, his opinions on Jews and 
 Judaism, opinions that are surely all but creditable to him." 
 
 As to the delight which Joel lets Cicero have felt over 
 the reproductions, by Posidonius, Molo and others, of the 
 Alexandrian stories about the Jews, we have to object, first, 
 that there is to our knowledge no evidence at all adducible 
 that either one of those writers had spread them in Rome. 
 That Cicero had Molo,^ the rhetorician, for his teacher, 
 whose school at Rhodes, Greece, he attended even twice, 
 is true. Yet it proves nothing as to the question of his 
 acceptance of Jew-hating sentiments from him, a theory 
 also advanced by Graetz (History of the Jews, iii. p. 171), 
 who attributes Cicero's antagonism to Jews to the influence 
 excited by that Greek mentor on this, his Roman pupil. 
 Such conjecture is, however, too far-fetched. Hatred to 
 Jews was a sentiment which required no cultivation at the 
 hands of a teacher. Nor can it be supposed that it consti- 
 tuted a subject in the course of study at that particular 
 school. Had we to assume that such was the case, we 
 would consistently have to expect to meet with the same 
 aversion to Jews in Caesar's documents and acts recorded 
 in historical works, for he, too, studied under that Greek 
 master. But we know to the contrary, that he had shown 
 a constant favorable disposition to the Jews. Secondly 
 and mainly we object, that it is altogether insupportable to 
 account for Cicero's position towards the Jews by Grecian 
 influence. Let us now inquire whether such influence is 
 discernible anywhere in his extant writings. 
 
 The frothy pun which he flung out in his Oration as 
 prosecutor of Verres, — a man who, as senatorial governor 
 of Sicily, was to its inhabitants what Florus, in the subse- 
 quent century, proved himself as imperial procurator of 
 Judea, namely, a villainous grinder of the people and 
 defrauder of their substance and privileges, — " What has a 
 Jew to do with pork .''" will surely not be held out as a 
 reasonable indication of his settled antagonism to the Jews. 
 
THE SABBATli IN HISTORY. 33 
 
 Nor can we discern in his Oration for Flaccus who had 
 been charged with various acts of official malpractice while 
 he was governor of Asia Minor, one of the charges having 
 been the confiscation of the annual contributions of the 
 Jews of that province to the temple of Jerusalem, any 
 acquaintance with Alexandrian or other Grecian Jew-hating 
 literature at all. 
 
 In the defence of his client before the court at Rome, 
 Cicero had to deal with three sets of charges brought 
 against Flaccus by Laelius who, having contracted a deep 
 grudge against him and being besides, as it is intimated in 
 the oration itself, probably abetted by Pompey, had at great 
 expense procured Asiatic witnesses to testify against the 
 accused, acting at the same time as his prosecutor. The 
 charges were, first, those of Greek witnesses from Phrygia 
 and Mysia ; secondly, those of Jewish witnesses, probably 
 from those cities in which Flaccus had seized the Jewish 
 sacred money, as Apamea, Laodicea, Adramyttium and 
 Pergamus, or, if none such had come to Rome from their 
 native places (Cicero does indeed not mention any Asiatic 
 Jews as present at the court), of Roman Jewish representa- 
 tives who voluntarily and out of sympathy undertook to 
 plead the cause of their Asiatic brethren, or, possibly, of 
 Laelius himself, who may have individually assumed to act 
 as champion of the grievance of those Jews and to prefer 
 theif charges as their witness ; and lastly, of Roman citi- 
 zens who had brought complaints against him. 
 
 At the outset we may state, that the assault which Cicero 
 made upon the Jews in his oration, does by far not equal in 
 vehemence and acrimony his contemptuous arraignment of 
 pagan Greeks in the same address. This point is too 
 important to be left out of consideration in the question 
 before us. We will refer to it again later, in treating of 
 Juvenal's remarks on Jewish customs. Compared with the 
 striking reproaches which Cicero in his oration threw on 
 the Greeks of Asia in general, the contumelious sallies 
 against the Jews must be pronounced mild, indeed. The 
 butt of his attack on the Jews was their religion, and in 
 
34 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 particular that religious custom on which the charged dere- 
 liction of his client turned — the contribution of sacred 
 money to the Temple treasury — rather than they them- 
 selves as a nation, whom he would accuse of nothing else 
 than of enmity to his country,^ and this, on account of 
 their armed resistance to Pompey's forces, and by it to the 
 Roman supremacy, and of lack of patriotism towards 
 Rome, because they were " at times unruly in the assem- 
 blies in defence of the interests of the republic." Not a 
 word of disparagement of their general or individual 
 character did he put forth, however, unless we account his 
 charge of their want of patriotic attachment for Rome, for 
 which he indeed proposes that " it would be wisdom to 
 despise them," as such. But we would venture the asser- 
 tion, that not even in the innermost mind of Cicero the case 
 of the Jews in conquered provinces and anywhere in the 
 Roman empire, where they were not treated as equal 
 citizens, could fall under the category of a real moral delin- 
 quency. An unpatriotic position could be reprehensible 
 only in those cases where people had been granted the 
 complete benefits of Roman citizenship. 
 
 How different, however, was his language regarding the 
 Greeks ! He not only denounced their witnesses present 
 at the trial, but their entire race in Asia, as worthless, 
 because faithless, creatures. Not only did he declare them 
 enemies of Rome in much stronger terms than the Jews, 
 saying about them, that they " abominate the sight of our 
 faces and detest our name," and that " it was their power 
 and not their inclination that was unequal to the destruc- 
 tion of the republic." He even branded them unreservedly, 
 in equivalent words, as a nation of liars and perjurers ( see 
 Oration §§4, S, iS)- 
 
 Again, while he has no hesitancy in loudly stigmatizing 
 the whole class of the Asiatic Greeks to which the witnesses 
 belonged, as faithless and having no regard to truth, he 
 finds himself, by the " great unanimity " of the Jews as a 
 body, and the " weight they carry in the popular assem- 
 blies," constrained to utter his opprobrious invective against 
 them " in a low voice, just so as to let the judges hear him,'^ 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 35 
 
 afraid of their becoming " excited against himself and 
 against every eminent man," if those of their race who 
 attended at the trial should hear his reproachful declama- 
 tions about them. 
 
 This is assuredly a tacit admission, on the part of Cicero, 
 that the Jews, though now subdued by the Romans, were 
 yet to be feared for their compact moral force, by which 
 they could easily be incited to resent unremittingly any 
 offence aimed at their name and religion. Is this admission, 
 we ask, not really a commendation of the Jewish character, 
 although we own that Cicero was far from intending it as 
 such .'' 
 
 But, aside from this point of view, it will have to be 
 admitted by every reader of the Oration, that the Jews 
 stand out therein, in his whole argument, in prominent 
 favorable relief against the Greeks, in so far, at least, that 
 he had seriously to recognize and notice them as solid 
 factors, whereas he would not accord even this much to 
 the despised Greek nation, in denouncing which he used no 
 caution or guarded evasion whatever, paying not the least 
 regard to the sentiments of its people, might they be ever 
 so severely outraged by his speech. 
 
 This comparative prominence is further evident from the 
 fact, that he degraded the Asiatic Greeks, toward the end 
 of his argument against their witnesses, by holding out in 
 scathing illustrations their several inferiority, by which he 
 wished to urge implicitly upon the judges, that they were 
 altogether too insignificant to deserve even a transitory 
 attention by the judges in the suit they had brought. No 
 such sort of vilifying reflection upon the Jews, as to their 
 social and human merits in general, was attempted by him» 
 however. He declares them, indeed, forsaken by the 
 " immortal gods," in that they were then subjugated to the 
 Roman power. But this he did only, as is .obvious from 
 the context, to demonstrate to the judges, that the Jewish 
 religious customs need not be respected by the all-powerful 
 Rome. The truth of the Roman worship was to him proved 
 by the long series of eminent successes with which his 
 country was crowned. Its guardian gods were conse- 
 
36 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 quently the only true ones. The Jewish religion, he wished 
 to insinuate on the other hand, could by no means be true, 
 or the Jews must have succeeded to so propitiate their 
 Deity, that they would be spared the defeat which they 
 had, as it was then fresh in the memory of the Romans, 
 actually suffered. 
 
 Having thus far, by the parallel of Cicero's position 
 towards the Greeks and Jews in his oration, seen that the 
 latter fared incomparably better at his hands than the 
 former, we will now investigate the real nature of the 
 invectives he launched out against them, to ascertain 
 whether there is truly any influence of Grecian anti-Jewish 
 literature discoverable in it. Is it perhaps, we ask, to be 
 found in the circumstance that he denounced their annual 
 gifts of sacred money ( Shekel tribute) as a " barbarous 
 superstition .-' " There is in fact nothing foreign noticeable 
 in it. The sharp antagonism to the exportation of that 
 money was genuinely Roman. This custom of the Jews 
 was, for fiscal and economical reasons alone, obnoxious to 
 the Roman magistrates. The Senate had, so Cicero at 
 least brings forward in the same oration, already before 
 his consulship, and afterwards again while he was consul, 
 prohibited it. Relying, perhaps, on the Roman intolerance 
 against that Jewish custom, the spiteful and fanatical Greeks 
 of the eastern provinces had later, under Augustus, repeat- 
 edly prevented the exportation of that money to the holy 
 city. It happened then that the money — -designated, by 
 the way, 'first fruit,' in judicial Roman decrees ; see Ant. 
 xvi. 6, 7, and Philo, Leg. §40 — was, on or after having been 
 collected in various cities of Asia Minor and Libya, either 
 directly stolen from the Jews, or confiscated under pretense 
 of taxes, which the Jews had practically not owed (Ant. ib. 
 4, 5). Augustus, from his fair and generous mind, sent 
 decrees to all the Roman provinces, that no magistrate 
 should permit any impediment being laid in the way of the 
 Jews either assembling together (which assemblies were 
 always eyed with suspicion by Roman authorities ; cp. 
 Philo ib. §40) to make arrangements for forwarding the 
 sacred contributions to Jerusalem, or actually conveying it 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 37 
 
 thither (cp. Ant. ib.6 with Philo 1. c). Marcus A^rippa, the 
 general and son-in-law of Augustus, declared in a separate 
 order, doubtless consequently upon the emperor's own strict 
 injunction, the violent dispossession of the Jews of their 
 sacred money as sacrilege and punishable as such a crime 
 (Ant. ib. 4). 
 
 Cicero was indeed not so fair-minded as to tolerantly 
 appreciate that pious custom, anxiously cherished by the 
 Jews of the dispersion. Nay, he was bigoted enough to stig- 
 matize it before the board of judges as " a barbarous super- 
 stition that it were an act ot dignity to resist." He surely 
 evinced a large degree of malicious prejudice in this denun- 
 ciation. Yet we have to bear in mind, that his speech was that 
 of a barrister, and not of a judicial functionary. He was in 
 need of points of argument in favor of his client, and in the 
 predicament of a want of personal accusations or insinua- 
 tions to be used against his antagonists, he would resort to 
 vituperating generalities, such as the religion confessed by 
 the entire class to which the plaintiffs at court belonged. 
 That even from this view his abusive language was, judged 
 by our modern principle of religious tolerance, a cruel 
 trespass against the freedom and peace of conscience of a 
 large class of people under the Roman dominion, and to be 
 condemned in the bitterest terms of indignation, no one is 
 readier than we to admit. But not only must we not put a 
 modern critical estimate on intolerant utterances of persons 
 of remote barbarous ages, the language of a barrister calls 
 even at all times for its own peculiar estimate, and can 
 never be quoted as a reliable standard of the thought and 
 sentiment of his contemporary fellow-citizens, nor even of 
 his own mind and disposition as man, independently of the 
 practice of his profession. Thus we must not judge too 
 harshly of Cicero's invective in question. The less so when 
 we consider, that the mode employed by him is not 
 eschewed entirely in our own day, even in civilized. Christian 
 countries. Lawyers still usurp the privilege of assailing 
 and derogating an opponent at court in any possible 
 manner. If they cannot arraign his personal character, 
 they are, if not restrained by a genuine spirit of tolerance 
 
38 THE SABBATH IN IHSTORY. 
 
 and its ascendency over the role they assume at court, apt 
 to perpetrate the nuisance of holding out his racial descent 
 or religious communion to a reproach, which bigotry and 
 prejudice have always ready to hand. That such a course 
 is most reprehensible, will be conceded by all fair-minded 
 people. Yet it still exists, and often passes uncensured by 
 our tribunals. 
 
 As to Cicero's branding that Jewish religious custom a 
 " barbarous superstition," we have to remark, further, that he 
 was not the only Roman employing the last-named epithet 
 at least, when speaking of the religious usages of the Jews. 
 Almost every known Roman writer speaks thus disdainfully 
 of them. It was even peculiar to the bigoted Roman, to 
 stigmatize every foreign worship, not the Jewish alone, as a 
 worthless superstition.^^ No matter how lofty in its 
 fundamental conceptions of the Divine such worship might 
 be, it had to be condemned as unworthy and treated with 
 contempt, because it was in opposition to his own venerated 
 " immortal gods." 
 
 The exorbitant pride and conceitful patriotism of the 
 high-born Roman bigot were the chief motives for the 
 haughty scorn, not unfrequently mingled with jealousy^ ^ 
 as well, which he held constantly in store for all non-Roman 
 forms and modes of worship. From this point of view the 
 monstrosity of Cicero's attack on the Jewish religion cer- 
 tainly loses the offensive force of peculiarity. Nay, the 
 following circumstance may even have the virtue of 
 somewhat mitigating it. In speaking of the religion of 
 the Jews we find the term " superstition " used by Romans 
 of even avowed friendly disposition to them, and that 
 in such connections, in which it cannot possibly be sup- 
 posed to have been inspired by an invidious or slanderous 
 mood of mind. It practically occurs in decrees issued in 
 their favor ; see those published in behalf of the Asiatic 
 Jews under Caesar's government, in the ethnarchy of 
 Hyrcanus II , in which freedom from military service is 
 awarded them for their objection of having to \'iolate in it 
 the laws of the Sabbath and festivals, also the food 
 restraints, which observances are therein denoted as the 
 "superstition the Jews are under" (Ant. xiv, lO, 13, 14, 16). 
 
FHE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 39 
 
 Consistently with such Roman habit of expression, the 
 annual contributions of the Jews to the Temple treasury 
 might have been termed a superstition, without necessarily 
 implying a derogatory intent and giving offence to a Jewish 
 hearer. As positive we can only assume that Cicero's 
 adding, in his oration, the adjective "barbarous," and 
 withal his railing at the Jewish religion and nation, must 
 have trenchantly affected the sensibilities of the Jewish 
 people then present at the court. 
 
 Be all this as it may, this much will be admitted gener- 
 ally as beyond any doubt, that Cicero's entire assault on 
 the Jews in that oration shows not the slightest vestige of 
 an influence of extraneous literature, such as the Alex- 
 andrian, or that of Apollonius Molo, his teacher, on his 
 mind as to his estimation of the institutions of the Jewish 
 people. There is positively nothing in it that could not be 
 accounted for by his mere Roman position, virtually 
 independent of any Jew- hating remarks made in writings 
 or verbal aspersions of any Grecian literator. 
 
 As to Tacitus whom Dr. Joel also points out as having 
 drawn his anti-Judaic sentiments from Grecian sources, we 
 admit that he, at once the most circumstantial and venom- 
 ous Roman writer on Jewish subjects, had indeed got his 
 information about the history of the Jews, that is, their 
 origin and the cause of their exodus from Egypt, from a 
 medley of Alexandrian Greek accounts. But does this 
 circumstance indicate in the least, that his prejudice 
 against the Jews was aroused and inspired by them .-' 
 Should we not assume rather, that, as a bigoted and 
 conceited Roman, he had cherished a deep contempt for 
 the Jews, before he ever read any of those works, and that 
 it was just this previous antagonism to them that made 
 him look to that pagan literature for information as to their 
 ancient history, when "about to relate the catastrophe of 
 that celebrated city.'*" (Hist. v. 2.) This Grecian 
 literature with its Jew-detesting fables must indeed have 
 been found most convenient to him, for it completely 
 accorded with his own animus regarding the Jews. 
 
40 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 The story of their violent expulsion from Egypt he 
 adopted from "very many authors," who "agree" that it 
 happened under the king Bocchoris, when " a pes'Jlential 
 disease had spread over Egypt." Those authors were not 
 only Lysimachus (see Ewald, Hist, of Israel, in Joel 1. c. p. 
 Ii6), but must have been, since Josephus credits only the 
 latter with fixing the period of the expulsion at the reign 
 of said king (Ag. Ap. ii. 2), other Grecian writers besides 
 him — unless it be that Tacitus scrupled not to give out 
 Lysimachus' individual opinion as that of " very many- 
 authors." This is indeed not unlikely, considering that, 
 much as his own report in Hist. v. 3, resembles in the 
 outlines the description which Josephus produces as that of 
 Lysimachus, he practically deviates from him in about the 
 same proportion in some points, as he is found to agree 
 with him in others. It might accordingly be that he 
 followed Lysimachus in general, but garbled his accounts 
 to suit his own temper and whim, when he was about to 
 improve them in his Histories. 
 
 His perusal of Apion's writings is also traceable therein. 
 The literary calumnies about the Jewish people of that 
 Egyptian writer were spread broadcast in the latter part of 
 the first century, C. E. Tacitus rehearses the grotesque 
 fable reiterated by Apion from the works of Posidonius 
 and Apollonius Molo (see Ag. Ap. ii. 7), that the figure of 
 an ass was consecrated in the sanctuary of the Jewish 
 temple (Hist. v. 5), although he declares in the subsequent 
 chapter according to the truth, that they "allow no images 
 whatever in their cities, not to say in their temples," and 
 exhibits later, in ch. ix., the "generally known fact" that^ 
 since Pompey had on his entrance in the Jewish temple 
 found no effigy of a god in it, it was in all its apartments 
 empty of any such material representation of a deity. 
 
 His use of Apion's compositions may, farther, be inferred 
 from his notice, that " they do not bestow this adulation 
 (of setting up or venerating their likenesses) to kings, nor 
 this honor to the Caesars," which sounds much like a 
 censure. He may have come by it through the correlative 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 4I 
 
 note of that Egyptian libeler who, as Josephus reports, 
 (Ag. Ap. ii. 6), had charged the Jews with criminal dis- 
 loyalty for not erecting images to the emperors. 
 
 He had also apparently copied from Apion the story of a 
 six days' journey of the Jews (from the Arabian desert ), at 
 the end of which they landed in the country " now called 
 Judea." He based like him, in the subsequent chapter, the 
 origin of the Sabbath on the termination of that journey 
 and "the rest from their toils," not reproducing, however, 
 that furious calumniator's etymological feat of the Sabbath 
 being named after the malady in their groins — Sabbatosis in 
 Egyptian. He would not decide upon and directly adopt 
 that derivation, either. Indecision was, on the whole, a 
 prominent mark of his historical excellence. He prefers 
 many a time to enumerate various opinions on a certain 
 question, and then to let the reader trouble hirriself about 
 the one meriting choice out of the rest. This mode can be 
 tracked through his entire range of histories. As to the 
 Sabbath he narrates side by side with the above derivation 
 the views of others, that, namely, the seventh day received 
 its distinction by the Jews from the honor they paid to 
 Saturn, or the venerated number seven by which " most of 
 the heavenly bodies complete their effects and course" 
 ( Hist. V. 3, 4 ; cp. Ag. Ap. ii. 2 ). 
 
 There may be possibly, we suggest, some more parallels 
 to be discovered between both those writers as to subjects 
 of Jewish religious or historical import. And lastly, Taci- 
 tus may, we admit in the premises, have read every line of 
 literature composed by Grecian writers on and against 
 Jews that was extant in his time. But, we have to ask, 
 does all this indicate in the remotest way, that he learned 
 from those authors contempt for Jews and Judaism, as Dr. 
 Joel advances .■" This contempt was, as we expect to dem- 
 onstrate convincingly to every reader in the sequel, as 
 much a home-growth at Rome, as it was in Alexandria, and 
 had no need of being " imported into that city from abroad," 
 viz., from Alexandria, as that learned author insists. 
 
42 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 History shows variously that the antagonism to the 
 Jewish people in pagan countries was not alone domesti- 
 cated in the latter city, but also in other large centres of 
 Greek-speaking countries, such as Antioch, Syria, C^esarea, 
 Palestine, different cities of Asia Minor, etc. All that 
 can be imputed to the influence exerted by the Alexandrian 
 pagan writers of Apion's ilk with regard to the Jews is, 
 that they have more or less contributed towards widening 
 the chasm between Jewish and Gentile populations in 
 cities of the Roman empire having such mixture of 
 inhabitants. The calumnies they embodied in their works, 
 may have found their way into the minds of many heathens, 
 and made of them still fiercer opponents of the Jews than 
 they were before. Their story of the expulsion of the 
 ancient Israelites from Egypt on account of leprosy, may 
 in particular have been spread broadcast, and seized upon 
 with keen relish by the Grecian barbarians. 'This can be 
 deduced from the instance mentioned by Josephus, Wars 
 ii. 14, 5- Yet, we contend, the real and original causes of 
 pagan hatred and contempt for Jews are not to be sought 
 in contagious transplantation. Such view is too narrow, 
 and, in fact, as we will presently begin to prove, thoroughly 
 erroneous. 
 
 We are able to account for the pagan aversion to the 
 Jews, first, by the peculiarity of their religious usages and 
 their diverse worship ; secondly, their separateness, caused 
 for the most part by that diversity ; thirdly, their uncon- 
 cealed disdain for pagan polytheism ; and fourthly, their 
 attempts at propogating their religion and making converts 
 of polytheists and idolaters. An acrid envy at Jewish 
 success and prosperity — and " envy soon curdles into hate " 
 (Froude) — is moreover in all cases to be presupposed as a 
 ground-sentiment among the generality of pagans. And 
 it may, lastly, be lioted that such Roman writers of the 
 empire as Juvenal and Tacitus, who flourished after the 
 bloody Jewish revolutionary war, and partly witnessed yet 
 the insurrections under Trajan and Hadrian, must, from 
 their intense proud patriotism, have bitterly resented the 
 ever challenging attempts of the pertinacious small Jewish 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 43 
 
 nation, attempts that repeatedly compelled the Remans to 
 expend endless sums and spend enormous force?, that they 
 might retain hold of it. The rancorous indignation at the 
 continuous troubles, and serious and heavy losses that the 
 Romans had to suffer from the Jews, may have been not 
 the least of the elements of the virulent hate that made up 
 the general sentiment and disposition of those men against 
 them. If the reader will patiently follow us as we will 
 produce the relative illustrations, he will, we hope, be 
 convinced of the correctness of our view and, on the other 
 hand, also of the eccentricity of having to look to 
 Alexandria as the hot-bed of all pagan Jew-hating. He 
 will with us attribute such deplorable excrescence, whether 
 existing in Alexandria or Rome, to the causes just noted, 
 either combinedly or severally, as the case might at each 
 juncture have been. 
 
 From Haman to Tacitus the diversity of the Jewish 
 religious Law had formed a most serious object of pagan 
 vexation. Joel had evidently judged too rashly in assigning 
 to it only a "semblance of foundation," by which the aver- 
 sion nourished by the heathen against the Jewish people 
 might be explained (' Blicke,' etc., ii. p. 107). Haman's 
 famous charge was re-echoed by Tacitus who states ( Hist. 
 v. 4) : "In order to bind the people to him for the time to 
 come, Moses prescribed to them a new form of worship, 
 and (one) opposed to those of all the world beside. 
 Whatever is held sacred by the Romans, with the Jews is 
 profane ; and what in other nations is unlawful and impure, 
 with them is permitted." We cannot afford to enlarge here 
 on the malicious falsehood of the latter assertion, by which 
 he outmatched even the rancorous Haman of old. As to 
 the former, we have no doubt that it was the malevolent 
 expression of a sentiment of chagrin harbored by thousands 
 of pagans of his and other times before and after him. 
 Those " new rites, contrary to all other mortals," annoyed 
 them pungently to the core. They stood forth in contin- 
 uous and conspicuous opposition to their polytheism, and 
 impressed themselves, on the intelligent of them at least, as 
 an abashing testimony of their own inferior worship and 
 
 (4) 
 
44 T'HE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 rites. That they were constantly chafed by it, may be 
 gathered from Josephus' rejoinder to Apion ( i. 25 ), in which 
 he states as one of the causes of the reproaches which the 
 Egyptians cast upon the Jews, "the difference of our religion 
 from theirs, etc." It is surely not a vague supposition of the 
 historian that a hostile sentiment against the Jews grew 
 upon the thinking Egyptians, when they contrasted their 
 own inferior animal worship with the imageless worship of 
 those who would think themselves superior by allowing no 
 material representations of the Divine. They may never 
 have owned their feeling of shame, as little as the learned 
 Roman would own his, on comparing his national polythe- 
 ism with the purely spiritual Jewish Monotheism ; but it 
 existed nevertheless in their heart of hearts, pricking them 
 constantly and exciting a sharp odium against the con- 
 fessors of Judaism. The haughty disdain which the one or 
 the other of them vented against the Jewish religion and 
 rites from the tower of their pantheon was, we believe, 
 never entirely unmixed with a certain degree of that feel- 
 ing, overshadowed though it was by the irrepressible 
 national egotism, and sense of superiority over all the rest 
 of mankind, almost physically peculiar to the Roman 
 patrician. The same sentiments may properly be assumed 
 to have prevailed to a large degree with all other heathens 
 of antiquity. 
 
 The diversity of the religion of the Jews which scan- 
 dalized them so thoroughly, was as a rule accompanied by 
 the two other moments mentioned above, viz., their 
 separation and open disdain of polytheism, which combi- 
 nation must have vexed them the more strongly, and 
 confirmed the more enduringly the breach and alienation 
 between the two classes. 
 
 As to the Jewish separateness, Tacitus has given vent to j 
 his intense annoyance over it, specially their being 1 
 "separate as to meats and marriage with others" (Hist. 
 V. 5), which he, as it would appear from the context with j 
 the preceding sentence, "but against all others they have a [ 
 hostile ill-will," attributed in his mind to a mere national 1 
 and social aversion to other nations, not being capable, or, 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 45 
 
 at any rate, disposed, like many modern decriers of the 
 Jewish clannishness so-called, to account for it by merely 
 religious and ethical causes. Even the initiatory rite of 
 the Jews he would not explain in a purely religious bearing, 
 asserting of it that " it was instituted by them, that they 
 might be known by this distinctive mark" (ib). The trend 
 of this insinuation logically agrees with his previous 
 accusation, that the Jews have a "hostile ill-will against 
 all others." 
 
 The same nationally antagonistic separateness Juvenal 
 imputes to the Jews, or rather the fully Judaized children of 
 proselytes from polytheism, when he says (Sat. xiv. 103-4): 
 "They show the way to none who does not observe the 
 same religious rites with them ; and they lead to the 
 sought-for fountain only the circumcised." In about the 
 same strain the before-mentioned Lysimachus had charged 
 the Jews. He imputed to Moses that he urged the 
 Israelites "to have no kind regards for any man, nor give 
 good counsel to any, but always to advise them for the 
 worst" (Ag. Ap. i. 34). As to Juvenal's strictures it may 
 be observed here in passing, that they were not so much 
 directly aimed at Jews and Judaizers, as at Roman parents 
 as such, against whom he inveighs in that satire for the 
 evil examples they were, as he claims, setting to their 
 children. As a specimen of them he produces, among 
 others, that Judaizing peculiarity. Moreover, it must be 
 owned, as we will more explicitly notice hereafter, that he 
 was by far no such virulent hater of the Jews as Tacitus. 
 
 From the times of those pagan writers to the modern 
 era in which a Goldwin Smith and his congenial brethren 
 in prejudice and malice flourish, an immense line of 
 accusers of the Jews of a hostilly exclusive disposition 
 towards Gentiles has thriven, all of them blinded by 
 the obdurate prepossession, or at all events working on 
 the pretext, that the Jewish separation as to eating and 
 connubial observances was due to an hereditary and invid- 
 iously cherished antipathy to all other people not belonging 
 to the Jewish race or religious community. The distance 
 of nearly eighteen hundred years between the life of 
 
46 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 Tacitus and Goldvvin Smith has not essentially altered that 
 main accusation. The last-named celebrity, in an article 
 published a decade ago, basing on the refusal of the Jews 
 to intermarry with the Gentile English people his assump- 
 tion that they cannot be real patriots, argues as follows: 
 " Nothing is more destructive of those relations with the 
 rest of the community on which patriotism depends, than 
 the refusal of intermarriage." And he charges them with 
 being a "jealously separate race '- '^- - refusing to 
 mingle with humanity, and drawing on themselves the 
 hatred of the nations." He has proved himself in perfect 
 accord with old Tacitus, differing from him only in this 
 respect that the latter, not having before him a- blood- 
 stained volume of records of Gentile persecutions of the 
 Jews, such as the seventeen hundred years subsequent to 
 his lifetime exhibit, did not feel himself called upon to deal 
 with the problem, how the Jews " drew on themselves the 
 hatred of the nations" so much, as to note the "hostile 
 ill-will (he imagined) the Jews bore to all others." 
 
 For our present purpose we suggest in this connection 
 that, as little as Dr. Joel would be inclined to pronounce 
 Goldwin Smith's Jew-hating erudition as derived from 
 Alexandrian sources, so little must Tacitus be supposed to 
 have drawn his antagonism to Jews from them. There is 
 indeed no conceivable warrant for such a supposition. The 
 Gentiles, everywhere on the globe, whether in the east or 
 west, have ever taken offence at the Jewish separation, 
 Hiainly evinced by their refusal of participating in their 
 meals or intermarrying with them. They accounted for it 
 by a national or personal aversion, believing or at least 
 representing it as inherent in the minds, and continuously 
 tostered through the optional and intentional practice of 
 the Jews. That religious and ethical motives were the 
 real cause of that separatism, to which came considerations 
 of ceremonial purity, impeding and forbidding the mutual 
 intercourse of both classes more or less seriously, according 
 to the greater or lesser rigor with which those considera- 
 tions were popularly heeded in the various periods of 
 Jewish history, they could or would not accept and realize. 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 4/ 
 
 A third concurrent element in the growth of pagan hatred 
 to Jews, equally in Rome and Alexandria, and one of 
 decided moment, although modern Jewish writers as a rule 
 take no note of it, was their implacable and irrepressible 
 abhorrence of the pagan polytheism and idolatry. Tacitus 
 was truly correct in stating ( Hist. v. 5), that those Gentiles 
 who embrace the Jewish religion (as genuine converts) are 
 early impressed with nothing sooner than to "contemn the 
 gods etc." The first thing inculcated on the mind of the 
 pagan applicant for reception into Judaism, was indeed 
 invariably, and in all countries, the abandonment of poly- 
 theistic worship and total abstraction of the mind from such 
 worship. This was the absolute, indispensable condition, 
 under which any one heathen could ever expect to be 
 permitted to enter the fold of Judaism. The. negation 
 of polytheism and idolatry was, too, valued so highly, that 
 Rabbinism raised it, rather hyperbolically, it is true, to a 
 state of positive, practical profession of Judaism. See B. 
 Megillah f. 13 : "He who rejects false worship is called a 
 Jew." Compare also Sifre, Numb. § iii: "He who denies 
 idolatry, owns (implicitly) the (obligation of the) entire 
 Torah," or, as this frequently employed sentence is con- 
 strued in B. Nedarim f. 2^: "One who denies idolatry, is 
 accounted a practical observer of all the laws of the Torah." 
 Monotheism being the foundation-principle of Judaism, a 
 proselyte had indeed, as Tacitus alleges, to be taught first 
 to contemn the gods of heathenism. The unparalleled 
 jealousy of the Jews for their pure monotheistic creed had, 
 moreover, raised that contempt to a fierce, horror-like 
 sentiment, of which they made no secret, wherever in the 
 Graeco-Roman world they witnessed the practical folly of 
 idolatry. At rimes it would even develop into a polemical 
 position, and this in particular, when they were provoked 
 by hostile treatment at the hands of their polytheistic 
 neighbors. This is not only reasonably to be supposed, 
 but can be deduced from the following report of Josephus 
 (Ant. xix. 5, 3). The emperor Claudius issued an edict to 
 all the cities of the empire, enjoining the pagan populations 
 to respect the Jewish rights and privileg:;s, that is, not to 
 
48 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 "hinder" them in the observance of their "hereditary 
 (reh'gious) customs," adding advisedly : " And I do charge 
 them (the Jews) also to use this my kindness rather 
 modestly, and not to show a contempt of the religious rites 
 (deisidaimonias) of the other nations, but to keep their 
 own laws " (without, namely, at the same time disparaging 
 the worship of others). The like allusion seems to have 
 been intended by the same emperor in his special order for 
 the city of Alexandria (ib. 2), that both parties, the Jews 
 and Gentiles, should " employ the greatest care that no 
 dissension should arise (between one another) after the 
 promulgation of this edict." 
 
 Are we not entitled to discover in this circumstance an 
 
 example, that the Jews were not always merely apologetic j 
 
 as to their own creed, but now and then also aggressive I 
 against the dignity of heathen divinities and religious 
 
 usages ? We admit that this state of aggressiveness was, i 
 
 as a rule, brought on by the frequent outrages perpetrated \ 
 
 by the rancorous Grecians on the Jews and the enormous ; 
 
 scorn constantly exhibited towards them in society. They | 
 
 would through such insulting treatment be embittered to I 
 
 such a degree, that they could not, even in the intervals of 1 
 
 comparative peace, suppress their wounded feelings and i 
 irritated temper on those occasions, offering them a chance 
 to retaliate on their oppressors by some scornful strictures 
 
 on the extravagant folly and fallacy of their worship or j 
 
 impurity of their lives. Had they been ordinarily and j 
 
 constantly treated with indulgence by their pagan fellow- | 
 
 countrymen, they would possibly never have uttered a j 
 
 reviling word on their belief and rites. Yet this much is at ; 
 
 least shown by the aforesaid imperial act, that the Jews living \ 
 
 in various cities of numerous Syro-Grecian populations j 
 
 were then, as they were doubtless before and afterwards, ; 
 
 not always suffering from pagan assaults and insults, but j 
 
 occasionally maintaining even an offensive attitude towards , 
 their worship. Comp. Hausrath, ' N. T. Times,* i. 178, who 
 
 likewise maintains, from respective passages of the ] 
 
 Apocrypha, that the Jews really derided polytheism, and ' 
 
 that therefore Pliny's (Hist. Nat. xiii.), judgment on the j 
 
 .J 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 49 
 
 Jews as being a " nation noted for their insults to the 
 gods," had a foundation in fact. Let us observe here in 
 passing, that in Pliny we find another illustration of the 
 blind hatred of the greatest Roman intellects to the Jews, 
 a hatred that made them commit the grossest inconsist- 
 ency, rather than concede to them the credit of a pure and 
 commendable worship. Pliny himself derided the gods of 
 the popular mythology as childish fables. He was a radical 
 pantheist, and one not of the moderate Stoic type, for 
 he would not think of spiritualizing the popular divinities, 
 nor could he decide whether the belief in Providence was 
 profitable to mankind. Nature was his god ; see on his 
 system, Friedlaender, Darstell. aus der Sittengesch. Roms, 
 iii. 483 sq. Yet the Jews had to be held out to scorn for 
 their contempt of the numberless gods of heathendom. 
 He himself had declared it as a mark of human weakness 
 to inquire after the form of the Deity — if there were any. 
 But the Jewish rejection and detestation of idols was an 
 insult to the gods ! 
 
 The same has to be remarked on Juvenal, his con- 
 temporary. In his thirteenth satire he mocks at the 
 immense crowd of the then national deities, and speaks 
 of them in a manner which certainly must have shocked 
 the religious Roman readers and appeared to them as 
 the most blasphemous assault. Yet he had nevertheless 
 no word of recognition for the imageless worship of the 
 one invisible God of the Jews, and of appreciation of their 
 religious customs. We have, on the other hand, to bear in 
 mind that even he could not rid himself of the native Roman 
 attachment for the immortal gods, and would not only not 
 disadvise others from sacrificing to the divinities (see Sat. 
 354) '55). but once himself brought an offering to Ceres 
 Helvina (Friedlaender, 1. c. p. 490). 
 
 We may gather our supposition, further, from Rabbini- 
 cal sources. Idol and polytheistic worship are by Rabbis 
 of the first and second centuries C. E., arraigned sarcas- 
 tically in disputations with cultured pagans as well in 
 Rome as in Palestine (see B. Adodah Zarah, f. 44, 55, et 
 
50 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 alias ; comp. also with that passage of f. 55, the identical 
 argumentation used in the monotheistic or monarchic 
 Jewish Christian production, the Clementine Homilies, ix. 
 6, by Peter, in his alleged address at Tripolis). 
 
 It seems, furthermore, to have been a settled rule among 
 the Jews, that meats and drinks sacrificially consecrated to 
 idols, were to be regarded not only as prohibited for use, 
 but as ceremonially defiling as a corpse (see B. Ab. Zar. f. 
 30, et passim). 
 
 This Jewish horror for things sacrificed to idols passed 
 even, we may observe here in passing, over to the Jewish 
 Christian church. Not only do the Clementine Homilies 
 contain a solemn interdiction of sacrificial meat of the 
 pagans to the Gentile Christians (vii. 4, 8), which is 
 denounced as such an abomination that it is by comparison 
 designated "the repast of demons" (ib. 8). But the 
 Apostolic decrees, attributed to the council of the Jewish 
 Christian church of Jerusalem, enjoin the same abstinence 
 on Gentile converts to Christianity (Acts. xv). Whatever 
 may be declared against the authenticity of this narrative 
 of Acts (see Baur, ' Paul the Apostle,' and the author of 
 'Supernatural Religion'), so much is at least indisputable, 
 that those decrees reflect the Jewish Christian sentiment 
 and determination, which these sectaries had carried over 
 into their new affiliations. They continued to feel the same 
 implacable horror for all things offered to idols, as they felt 
 before they severed their connection with orthodox Judaism, 
 and would consequently insist on those who turned to their 
 creed from heathendom, to abstain from them likewise. It 
 was Paul alone who would declare idol-meat an indifferent 
 thing to those Christian believers who had "knowledge" 
 (i Cor. viii). 
 
 That the decided, open contempt with which alike Jews 
 and Jewish Christians treated the idolatrous practices, 
 feasts, and consecrated meats and drinks which they 
 noticed among pagan worshipers, will not infrequently 
 have led to contentious scenes, cannot be doubted. Jewish 
 scrupulosity had, moreover, not only denounced wine 
 really consecrated to idols as unlawful for use, but prohib- 
 
THE SABBATH IN IHTSORY. 5 I 
 
 ited all the wine made by pagans (Mishnah Abod. Zar. ii. 
 3). And at a certain epoch of the first century C. E. (not 
 during the Jewish revolutionary war though, between 65 - 
 70, as Graetz, 'Hist, etc' iii. 575, suggests, for already in 
 the time of Josephus' administration of Galilee the 
 objection to the use of oil made by heathens had passed 
 as a fixed rule, and could therefore not have been recently 
 introduced) an interdict was put on the purchase of bread 
 and oil from pagans. 
 
 These and the like authoritative Jewish restrictions 
 necessarily implied to the heathen people who could not 
 help taking note of it, the imputation to them of an 
 abhorrible religious debasement and a deterring impurity 
 of life by the Jewish people. 
 
 In general, it was everywhere in the Graeco-Roman 
 world known, that the Jews despised their polytheistic 
 worship and rites. This necessarily created and kept up a 
 stinging grudge against the professors of Judaism. It was, 
 as we may here add, partly from this grudge that the 
 heathen Syro-Grecians contested the claims of the Jews to 
 live together and enjoy equal rights with them. 
 
 Such a small number of dissenters — as they would hold 
 the Israelites — should presume to scorn the established, 
 almost universal worship of the gods, and set themselves 
 with their own against the powerful nations of the earth ! 
 This was too much for them to bear without bitter 
 resentment. They would at times object that, if the Jews 
 wanted to enjoy equal privileges with them, they should 
 also adopt the same worship with them ; see Ant. xii. 3, 2 ; 
 Ag. Ap. ii. 6. The same compatriots, so they argued alike 
 in Grecian countries and in Rome, should have the same 
 national religion in common, which was polytheism. That 
 the Jews would not only not recognize the national divini- 
 ties and participate in the solemn rites performed in their 
 honor, but despise the latter as irrational and reject the 
 former as non-entities, could not but grievously offend and 
 provoke the heathen mind (comp. Tacitus' and Pliny's 
 reproachoe mentioned before). 
 
52 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 Lastly, we have to mention as one of the chief causes of 
 pagan contempt for Jews, their proselytizing efforts and 
 successes, which vexed the Roman men of letters as well 
 as some of the bigoted emperors of the first century C. E., 
 to an intolerable degree. The Jewish religion had at that 
 period made stupendous headway and very marked inroads 
 upon paganism everywhere in the Roman empire. No impor- 
 tation of Alexandrian literary vituperations was therefore 
 needed, as Dr. Joel opines, to incense Roman literators 
 against the Jews. The immense proportions Jewish prop- 
 agandism had assumed, were alone sufficient to make a 
 bigoted Tacitus pour out all his gall, or the satirists vent 
 all their spleen, on the Jewish people. Not only was their 
 national pride sorely offended at noticing their country 
 deities, with their many peculiar services, festivals and 
 ceremonies neglected, and many of their countrymen 
 devoted to a religion so utterly antagonistic to their 
 polytheism, and which was professed by a people held in 
 all respects so much inferior to the Roman, and subdued 
 under their rule. But the Jewish religion being conceived 
 as a lazv demanding of its votaries a mode and conduct of 
 life so different to the Roman in many essential points, they 
 found in it a standard of civil life radically conflicting with 
 their own, and menacing by its spread the predominance 
 of their own law, which they believed should alone govern 
 as far as the imperial dominion reached. This filled the 
 pure-blooded, proud Roman with a sort of pious horror. 
 
 To substantiate our assertion, we will produce the 
 respective utterances of Tacitus, Juvenal and Seneca. 
 Tacitus, after reviewing some of the "new rites" of the 
 Jews " contrary to the rest of the mortals," together with 
 his interpretation of their origin and import, and setting 
 forth their distinctiveness as to meals, marriage and 
 circumcision, says : " Those gone over to their religion 
 adopt the same custom (of circumcision), and they are 
 early impressed with nothing sooner than to contemn the 
 gods, to cast off their (allegiance to theirj country, and to 
 despise their children and brothers " (Hist. v. 5). It is 
 evident from this description that he had seen and heard of 
 many good Romans attached to Judaism in preference to 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 53 
 
 the time-honored worship of the guardian gods, even to 
 such an extent that they would undergo the painful rite of 
 initiation in its faith. Not the downfall of the Jewish State, 
 nor the temporal and social degradation of the Jewish 
 people ensuing from it, had refrained those converts from 
 entering the pale of the politically annihilated nation. 
 This roused his ire to the utmost pitch. He inwardly 
 chafed at a phenomenon so astounding, and at the same 
 time so humiliating to the national religion of his country. 
 Conversion to Judaism was to him a total aversion from 
 Romanism, in its comprehensive politico-religious sense. 
 
 Juvenal, although by far not so virulent in his utterances 
 on the Jews, censures those " happening to have a Sabbath- 
 fearing father (that is, one converted to Judaism), and who 
 (consequently) adore nothing but the clouds and the 
 divinity of heaven ; * * -:^ but they are used to contemn 
 the Roman lazvs, and learn, observe and fear (in preference) 
 the Jewish laxv, all that Moses has handed down in a secret 
 volume" (Sat. xiv). Here we have a distinct arraignment 
 of the Jewish observances, believed to be subversive of 
 loyalty to Romanism in all its relations, which radical 
 transformation he imputes to all those proselytes and their 
 children, who saw fit to forsake the religion of their native 
 country. 
 
 In the same strain had Seneca, a few decades before, cast 
 his bitter reproach upon the Jews for their propagandism, 
 saying : " As meanwhile the (religious) custom of that 
 wicked nation has gained strength to such an extent, that 
 it is already received throughout all lands, the vanquished 
 have (thus) given laws to their conquerors" (see Augustine, 
 De Civitate Dei, vi. ii). He nored the vast and steadily 
 growing advancement of Jewish belief and practice in the 
 empire, which appeared to him, as to many other Romans, 
 as a substitution of a foreign set of laws for the Roman, 
 and could in his indignation at such a state of affairs not 
 but discant contemptuously on the Jewish propagandist 
 impetuosity. It was not the Jewish religion he attacked, 
 but the effrontery of the Jewish people to attempt sup- 
 planting the Roman worship and rites by their own among 
 the Gentiles. 
 
54 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 The Jewish proselytism so eminently carried on since 
 the reign of Augustus and perhaps already before, was 
 viewed by representative Romans with mingled rancor and 
 jealousy. In the Augustan age we find the poet Horace 
 already alluding to the zealous propagandism of the Jews, 
 in the passage, "and just as the Jews, we will compel thee 
 to join this (the poet's) crowd" (Sat. i, 4). This unmis- 
 takably shows that the zeal for spreading their faith, in 
 Rome at least, had then been very active among Jewish 
 enthusiasts.^^ Ovid, Horace's younger contemporary, who 
 also flourished mainly in the period of Augustus, may too 
 have alluded to such state of things, in his 'Remedy of 
 Love.' In it he advises the young man suffering from the 
 malady of voluptuousness, to strenously engage in some 
 kind of work, since idleness promotes sensuous passions, 
 or to journey away from the place of temptation, and not 
 to " fear showers, nor let the Sabbath of the stranger detain 
 him, nor yet the Allia, so well known for its disasters" (the 
 memorial day of a defeat which the Romans had once 
 sustained). 
 
 While we must not press this point too far as an evidence 
 of conversions to Judaism among the people of Rome in 
 the poet's days, for it is possible, as Riley in his annotation 
 to that passage observes, " that the Romans in some 
 measure imitated the Jews in their observance of their 
 Sabbath, by setting apart every seventh day for the worship 
 of particular deities" — a question to which we will later 
 recur — , and that accordingly the outward adoption of 
 the Sabbath by some Romans was not a real, not even a 
 half-conversion, since even this had to be attended by an 
 unconditional surrender of every sign of polytheism ; and, 
 further, because that passage easily admits, on the other 
 hand, of the interpretation, that the poet did not at all 
 advert in his mind to any sort of religious observance of 
 the Sabbath by some Romans, but merely to the circum- 
 stance that, as the seventh day was commonly known as 
 one "not suited for the transaction of business" by the 
 Jews (Ovid, 'Art of Love,' 1. I.), it was by some supersti- 
 tious Romans, who were though entirely bare of any 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 55 
 
 attachment for Judaism, feared as an ill-omened season for 
 beginning any new work or setting out on a journey on it, 
 and that he consequently wished solely to encourage the 
 young man, whom he addressed, not to mind such scaring 
 delusions at all : we yet have to recognize this much as a 
 certain result from the poet's description, that the influence 
 of Judaism had made itself somehow felt in the Roman 
 society of his time. 
 
 Especially so, when we hold in view that the noted 
 passage in the Art of Love, which we reproduce later, 
 allows the interpretation, that Roman ladies of pagan 
 nationality were accustomed to visit synagogues on the 
 Sabbath of the Jews. This would show from the poet's writing, 
 that the Jewish Sabbath had actually awakened the sincere 
 religious interest of native Romans in his time. 
 
 The Jewish propagandist zeal did not diminish under 
 Tiberius, but seems rather to have grown apace as the 
 empire continued. To the epoch of this emperor belongs 
 the reproach made by Jesus to the Scribes and Pharisees, 
 that they " compass sea and land to make one^ ^ proselyte " 
 (Matt. xiii. 15). While the imputation of their traversing 
 the whole earth to catch only one pagan soul is on its face 
 an exaggeration, and one doubtless due to the irritated 
 temper of Jesus ; and while the student of history will at 
 all events have to pronounce the charge of Jesus as one- 
 sided and inspired by partisan passion, since it is an 
 undeniable fact that the Asmonean princes were, as 
 outspoken and fanatic Sadducees, by far the most aggressive 
 and obtrusive propagandists Judaism ever produced, so 
 that it cannot be seen why the one party, the Pharisaic 
 doctors and votaries, should be charged with an excess of 
 proselytizing zeal, and no such reproach uttered against 
 the other ; we have yet no valid reason to doubt the 
 authenticity of Jesus' accusation in its substance, namely, 
 that proselytism was in his time very brisk among the 
 Jewish people. 
 
 We will at once adduce another instance from which 
 this may be inferred for the period of Tiberius' reign. 
 An account of a persecution of the Jews of Rome by 
 this emperor is preserved in history. It is presented by 
 
56 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 the four authors, Josephus, Philo, Suetonius and Tacitus. 
 The Jewish and Egyptian cults must at that time have 
 made such rapid encroachment in the eternal city, that the 
 authorities were deeply alarmed, and concluded to proscribe 
 and suppress them. Tacitus (Annals ii. 85) who relates 
 the fact, that under Tiberius *' action was also taken 
 concerning the expulsion of the Egyptian and Jewish 
 rites," and Suetonius (Tiberius, xxxvi.) who reports of him 
 that he " restrained the foreign religious customs, the 
 Egyptian and Jewish rites," leave no doubt that the 
 measures of repression related further on by those writres 
 were puritanical^ "^ in their character, undertaken, namely, 
 to cleanse the Roman polytheistic institutions of intruding 
 foreign elements, prominent among which were the Jewish 
 and Egyptian, which seem to have then made the largest 
 headway in the capital. Philo who, in passing, attributes 
 the persecution then enacted against the Roman Jews to 
 the promptings of Tiberius' privy-councillor, Sejanus,^'' 
 exonerating the emperor entirely from its opprobrium (Leg. 
 § 24 ; cp. Ag. Flaccus § i), represents indirectly its origin 
 to some accusations laid against them. Of what nature 
 they were, he does not signify. He merely states that 
 Tiberius discovered immediately after Sejanus' death, that 
 *' the accusations which had been brought against the Jews 
 who were dwelling in Rome, were false calumnies, inven- 
 tions of Sejanus ;" and also that the emperor sent official 
 declarations to all the governors of the provinces, comfort- 
 ing the Jews everywhere, that "the punishment^ ^ was not 
 executed upon all, but only on the guilty ; and they were 
 but few." 
 
 While we have to note with regret that that Jewish 
 author who, as the contemporary of Tiberius, could have 
 given us the best and truest information on the offence 
 committed by or at least charged on the Jews, as also on 
 the character of their penalty, was yet utterly silent on 
 these points, we are nevertheless not left wholly uncertain 
 about the reference he made in his mind in regard to them. 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 5/ 
 
 The analogy offered by the two before-named Gentile 
 writers, throws sufficient light on the facts in question as 
 they were present in Philo's mind, though he did not 
 explicitly state them. It was undeniably the Jewish propa- 
 gandism at which the Roman authorities had taken grievous 
 umbrage, and for which they proceeded with vengeance 
 against the Jews. This our supposition is not only not 
 contradicted by Josephus who, in Ant. xviii. 3, 5, puts 
 forth a very singular version of the origin of the persecu- 
 tion under Tiberius, but, in the main, even supported. 
 According to him its direct cause was an act of fraud 
 committed by a Jewish conversionist who was a fugitive 
 from Judean justice, and his three accomplices, upon a 
 prominent female proselyte, Fulvia, the wife of Saturninus. 
 ^^ We see that even Josephus has connected, though 
 indirectly, the persecution of the Jews v/ith propagandist 
 efforts of some of them. Accordingly we may suggest 
 that we are substantially furnished with testimony by all 
 the four above-named writers, that the progress of the 
 Jewish propaganda in Rome must under Tiberius have been 
 very strong and alarming, so that either he himself, or his 
 privy-councillor, perhaps in conjunction with the Senate, 
 concluded to peremptorily proceed against and forcibly 
 suppress it.^* 
 
 That Jewish proselytism had not lessened, but rather 
 increased under the emperors Caligula and Claudius, in 
 whose reigns the Jewish prince Agrippa enjoyed such vast 
 privileges, succeeding at last to become king of the Jews, 
 in which exalted position he wielded a very potent influence 
 under which the Jewish cause could not but have thriven 
 freely and auspiciously, is provable from various sources. 
 Not only does it result from Seneca's stricture quoted 
 above, and which belongs to this and perhaps partly to 
 Nero's period, but it is also demonstrable from the Satire 
 of his younger contemporary, Persius — like him by-the-by 
 a Stoic, having had Cornutus as teacher. Persius, criticising 
 in his fifth Satire some varieties of moral slavery, which he 
 declares as worse than bodily servitude, holds out to 
 censure also those in the bonds of superstition, as one 
 
58 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 example of which he designates the observance of Jewish 
 hoh'days. which he must have noticed or at least known to 
 exist, among Judaizing Romans. He says: "And when 
 Herod's days ^^ have come, and lamps holding violets 
 which are placed at the greasy window, discharge a heavy 
 fume, and the tail of the tunny-fish swims round in a red 
 platter, and the white bowl swells ( is filled ) with wine: 
 thou movest the lips silently, and fearest the circumcised 
 Sabbaths" ( vv. 179-84). This shows incontestably that 
 towards the middle of the first century C. E., the age of 
 this satirist, the Jewish religion had made remarkable 
 headway in Rome, and its rites were embraced by a number 
 of those Roman people, who were no more satisfied by the 
 rotary mechanism and spiritless forms of the State religion. 
 Jewish propagandism could then flourish and extend in 
 Rome the more, because Tiberius' edicts of repression had 
 been revoked by Caligula (Dion Cass. Ix. 6, in Renan, 
 'Apostles'). 
 
 As to the much-mooted expulsion of the Jews from 
 Rome by Claudius, this circumstance seems not to have 
 materially interrupted, for any considerable length of time 
 at least, the energical progress of the Jewish propaganda, 
 since it is an historical fact, conceded, too, by almost every 
 modern author who wrote on this subject, that it thrived 
 in his reign all over the Roman world. Suetonius' report 
 (Claudius, § 25 ; cp. Acts xviii. 2), " The Jews making 
 constant tumults under an instigator, Chrestus, he expelled 
 from Rome." is contradicted by Dion Cassius, who records 
 of Claudius that he, " finding the Jews again overweaning, 
 did, as they could not be banished from the city without 
 tumult by their multitude, not drive them out, but forbade 
 them, follov/ing their parental mode of life, to hold 
 meetings." ^'^ While the edict surely appears even in 
 Dion's version hard and oppressive enough, it yet does not 
 seem to have prevailed long, nor markedly checked the 
 propagandist influence and agitations of Jews in Rome. 
 For we have the above-cited testimony of Seneca for its 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 59 
 
 continuance which, while the exact date of its composition 
 is not known, can yet safely be taken as referring to the 
 state of things obtaining at and extending through the 
 reigns of both Claudius and Nero. 
 
 Under the latter emperor the spread of Judaism in Rome 
 was doubtless considerable, having also had, as may properly 
 be surmised, a powerful champion in the person of the 
 empress Poppaea, who is by Josephus characterized as 
 God-fearing — a title often used for Judaizing converts 
 from paganism. That she was a devotee of Judaism is 
 very probable, from her solicitous intercession with the 
 emperor in behalf of Jewish petitioners against the 
 determination of both the king and the procurator of Judea, 
 in a matter concerning the reverence for the temple of 
 Jerusalem (Ant. xx. 8, 1 1 ; see also Winston's note ib., and 
 Schuerer, 1. c). 
 
 That with the downfall of the Jewish State this propa- 
 
 .gandism did not abate, but perhaps rather increase, maybe 
 
 inferred from the invidious paragraphs of Juvenal and 
 
 Tacitus, and in particular from Dion Cassius' account of 
 
 Domitian's furious proceedings against Judaizers. 
 
 Captive Judea, though held down by the iron grasp of 
 the Roman power, and smarting under the contumely 
 poured out upon her by the heartless victors, had yet in her 
 widowhood — mainly, we hold, by the eternal verity and 
 unvarying vigor of her principles of belief — continued to 
 make many spiritual captives from among the heathen. 
 Jerusalem was destroyed, the Jewish State dissolved, but 
 Judaism itself remained a conquering force. Its professors 
 were politically cowed and socially scorned, yet this misery 
 had not impaired the spiritual essence of Judaism itself 
 It remained intact, and proved itself powerful and trium- 
 phant in continuing to win converts to itself. As captives 
 even, the Jews carried with them into strange lands the 
 boon which attracted the favorable attention and desire of 
 a number of pagans. 
 
 (5) 
 
60 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 Domitian, though he had worked with all his might to 
 stamp deeper and deeper on the name of the Jews the 
 odium of their expatriation, by severely and occasionally 
 ferociously exacting the Jewish fisc so-called — that most 
 repulsive tax imposed by Vespasian in place of the annual 
 sacred gift of the Shekel, as a tribute to the Capitoline 
 Jupiter — could not hinder the vast expansion of Jewish 
 belief and rites in the realm, and specially in Rome. His 
 own cousin Flavius Clemens who was invested with the 
 consulship, and his wife Flavia Domitilla, his own niece, 
 were adherents of that Judaism which he so utterly detested. 
 For the first time in the history of the progression of Juda- 
 ism in Rome, proselytes to this faith were stigmatized with 
 the title and charged with the crime of atheism, now that 
 he had sworn bitter vengeance on it. Those high person- 
 ages were judicially accused and condemned of that crime. 
 Both had to pay a dire penalty. Clemens was sentenced 
 to death, and his wife Domitilla banished to an island.^ ^ 
 The same charge of atheism was brought against " many 
 others" (see Dion Cassius ) who had adopted or, as this 
 writer is pleased to render it, " lapsed into Jewish customs." 
 Their punishment was either death or confiscation of 
 property. 
 
 The same writer's testimony opens to us a most unam- 
 biguous and clear view of the propagation of Judaism in 
 heathen countries, as late even as the latter years of the 
 first century C. E. For those vengeful proceedings of 
 Domitian were enacted in the last year of his reign. And 
 as his mild successor, Nerva, had decreed that no one 
 should be harassed for his " Jewish mode of life " (Dion 
 Ixviii.), it is justly to be supposed that conversions to it 
 became again as frequent under him as they were under 
 Domitian. 
 
 To sum up, it cannot be questioned that these cases, 
 occurring in the very heart of the empire and witnessed by 
 many bigoted puritans, also by the contemporary literators 
 Juvenal and Tacitus, will have aroused their jealous ire 
 and intense contempt toward the pertinacious Jewish 
 nation. 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 6l 
 
 Think of the spleeny satirist Juvenal and his younger 
 compatriot Tacitus, the praetor, and later, under Trajan, 
 consul and afterwards consular, being by inevitable fate 
 compelled to witness for over half a century a mighty, 
 impulsive Judaizing activity in the capital. Imagine them 
 seeing thousands of homeless Jews, reduced to slavery or 
 beggary, in Titus' and the subsequent reigns ; and on the 
 other side noticing, despite the crushing scorn fastened on 
 their nation, a continuous influence on pagans of their 
 religious precepts. More bitter than wormwood it must 
 have been to them, particularly to Tacitus, to note a goodly 
 number of their countrymen not only abjure the allegi- 
 ance to the many immortal gods and tutelar divinities and 
 " contemn " them, but — scandal of scandals — fly to, and 
 own and worship a god " apprehended merely in the mind, 
 and as an only one, eternal, inimitable and imperishable 
 Being" (see Hist, v.); to note them, moreover, observe 
 the Jewish Sabbaths, holidays and fasts, dietary ^^ and mar- 
 riage restraints, and specially the rite of circumcision — a 
 rite that was, judging from the frequent derisive allusion to 
 it by many Roman writers of the empire, to the Roman 
 mind the most obnoxious of all,-^ but to which so many 
 neophites submitted themselves and their male children 
 with pious alacrity, to become fully incorporated in the 
 community of Israel. ^^ Add to the Judaizing of Roman 
 converts the above-discussed grievances against the Jews 
 of their diversity of worship, their separateness and dis- 
 dainful treatment of polytheists, supplemented by an always 
 ready and ample proportion of Gentile envy against them, 
 as also by tfae intense national indignation at them for caus- 
 ing to the Roman power such an excessive strain on men 
 and resources by their contests and wars ; and then judge 
 whether Roman laureate poets or other literati by the grace 
 of the immortal gods, and withal high-flown patricians and 
 dignitaries of the city could not, through these circumstances 
 alone, have become Jew-haters, independently of any for- 
 eign influence, especially that of the Alexandrian literature, 
 as Dr. Joel has so emphatically and with such an amount of 
 literary diligence, as well as self-complacency, asserted ^ 
 
62 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 We positively protest — and believe to have abundantly 
 supported this our position -- that the mischief of literary 
 slander and aspersions cast by Roman scribes on Jews and 
 Judaism, sprang originally from those fountains flowing 
 everywhere in the pagan world, in Rome as well as in 
 Alexandria, with an ever fresh current. That their baleful 
 veins were somehow sympathetically interconnected, we 
 are ready to admit. But that they were associated through 
 real contact, cannot be sustained by any shadow of evidence. 
 
 The diversion from our main subject which we allowed 
 ourselves in the foregoing discussion, to refute the one- 
 sided and overdrawn assertion of Dr. Joel, will appear of 
 not inconsiderable moment for its illustration in the sequel. 
 For the arguments we employed to show the various causes 
 of pagan hatred and contempt for Jews as being every- 
 where home-born, enable us to account much better for the 
 false and derisive representations of the Jewish religion and 
 its usages in Roman literature. Consequently we will also 
 understand better the various opinions expressed in it on 
 the Sabbath. 
 
 It may be laid down as an axiom that it was just the con- 
 tempt, in which Jews and Judaism were held by those 
 literators, and the malevolence they cherished against the 
 Jewish nation, that kept them in almost total ignorance of 
 their real religious conceptions and the import of the rites 
 practised among them. While any foreign form of worship 
 was to the bigoted Roman a superstition, and as such held 
 in light esteem or thorougly despised, his own being the relig- 
 ion proper,"^ and for this reason to be revered, might it be 
 ever so absurd, the Jewish was yet more offensive to him for 
 the combined causes previously mentioned. Should such a 
 conceited bigot, in his assumption of the Roman superiority 
 above all the rest of mankind, take the pains of searching 
 at the fountain-head and seeking the crystal springs, the 
 concurrence of which made up the stream of Jewish life? 
 That would have been expecting too much. A superficial 
 observation of any Jewish rite practised in the 
 capital, was to him sufficient to babble about it in his 
 oeculiar, contemptuous strain. His words or works were 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 63 
 
 anyhow not intended for Gentiles synnpathizing with 
 the Jewish nation, but for those either indifferent 
 to or possessed of ill-will towards it. Why then should 
 he, in speaking of points of the Jewish religion, take caution 
 lest he might pervert the truth and give forth misstate- 
 ments? Reproach for any distortion of facts, not to say 
 for incorrect statements pertaining to Jewish questions, he 
 had surely not to fear. And as to his individual conscience, 
 this suffered no touch of compunction about any misrep- 
 resentation of the Jews and their religion. It was over- 
 ruled by the native assumption of primacy which engrossed 
 his mind, allowing no fair judgment and justice to be 
 awarded to any institution that was not Roman, and was 
 especially blunted with regard to the Jews, by the force of 
 the intense contempt he nourished against them. 
 
 When we observe an astounding ignorance betrayed by 
 Roman writers on Jewish subjects, we will, moreover, as 
 regards some of them, be at a loss to determine, whether it 
 was real or only feigned. Their stable antagonism to Jews 
 would not permit them to state those subjects in the favor- 
 able light, in which they may have appeared to themselves. 
 They found it much easier and more gratifying to make a 
 mockery of them in spite of their own better knowledge. 
 As a typical ignorance of Roman literators about Jewish 
 religious observances, Juvenal's designation of the Mosaic 
 code as a " secret book"^^ may be cited. Such, indeed, 
 it was and remained to the body of the Romans. Even the 
 authorities were utterly ignorant of the real inwardness and 
 purport of the Mosaic institutions. They noted the Jewish 
 law as so peculiar and different from the Roman. Sus- 
 picious emperors were haunted by it as by a spectre, 
 instilling on their minds the fear, that it might be a code 
 enjoining an irreconcilable opposition to the temporal 
 power of Rome, or the sovereign impersonating it. We 
 have already above reflected on Caligula's questioning 
 of the Jewish delegates about their "constitution," that is, 
 as we explained it, the Mosaic Law, with regard to the 
 worship and its obligations set forth therein. He could 
 surely have informed himself about the principle of the 
 
64 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 immateriality of the Deity maintained by the Jews, from 
 the extant Greek version of the Pentateuch. But he 
 doubtless scorned the idea to read it himself, or hav^e it 
 interpreted by unbiased expositors. 
 
 A like instance of an imperial investigation of the statutes 
 of the Jews, is reported in the Rabbinical literature. It 
 shows strikingly, how little acquaintance with them the 
 Roman authorities had got. If, as Graetz ( Hist. iv. 119) 
 maintains, it belongs to the period of Domitian's reign, ^^ 
 it might be connected with the o'pposition the Jews mani- 
 fested against the imposition of the poll tax. They 
 abhorred it so deeply, that "some either concealed their 
 Jewish mode of life or dissembled their Jewish descent" 
 (Suetonius, ' Domitian,' ch. xii.), rather than pay a tribute, 
 by which their hearts were revolted. That furious despot 
 may have construed the opposition as an attempt at 
 rebellion, and consequently desired to get authoritative 
 information, whether it could be found as grounded on or 
 referable to some texts of the Jewish Scripture. To 
 obtain it he may have sent those "two military ambassa- 
 dors"^* to the Jewish academy and Senate of Palestine, 
 of whom an account is given in Sifre, Deut. § 344; the Jerus. 
 treatise of Baba Kamma f. 4 ; and the Babylonian treatise 
 ■of the same denomination, f. 38 (unlicensed edition). They 
 may have been commissioned to descry that portion of the 
 Jewish Mosaic-traditional Law, having a more or less direct 
 bearing on the mutual relations of Jews and Gentiles, with 
 the chief view of ascertaining whether any, or how many 
 of its precepts indicated or implied disloyalty to foreign 
 rule and insubordination to other laws, which were in this 
 case the Roman. 
 
 The versions of the three just named Rabbinical passages 
 'have indeed in their present transmitted form a legendary 
 aspect. They disagree with one another, too, on the 
 subject-matter proposed at that imperial inquiry. In both 
 the first and last-named places the envoys are said to have 
 taken exception but to one Rabbinically construed ordin- 
 nance of the Pentateuch, and this not identical in both. 
 The Jerus. Talmud reports two such instances of Mosaic- 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 6$ 
 
 traditional usage (one of which is again subdivided in two 
 propositions), touching the mutual relations of Jews and 
 Romans. But in the main, namely, as to the inquisition 
 into the prevailing principles and regulations regarding 
 the responsible interrelations of both nations, they agree. 
 And this justifies our assumption that there is a real 
 historical background to that differently rendered Rabbini- 
 cal account of the imperial inquiry, made, once upon a 
 time, into the Jewish Law. 
 
 Whether it was undertaken for merely political reasons, 
 or for judicial and social objects, or to collect a general 
 information about the principles of faith, practices of 
 religion and ethical maxims of the Jews, is immaterial in 
 the question now before us. Thus much we may justly 
 infer from that account, that the emperor — whoever he 
 was — had with his entire administration kept himself till 
 that time in utter ignorance on the established customs of 
 the Jews. Whether it was essentially lifted by that official 
 inquiry, is very questionable, indeed. For we do not believe 
 that any one of the Roman emperors cared much about 
 knowing the intrinsic merits of those Jewish customs, not 
 bearing in some way on the problem of the loyalty of the 
 Jews to the imperial government. The result of the inquiry 
 by the ambassadors will then have had very little, if any, 
 beneficial result for the Jews. Their religion will from 
 thence not have been better appreciated by the Roman 
 bigots, than it was before. 
 
 They will have continued to spurn its rites as " absurd 
 and mean " (see Tacitus, Hist. v. 5, end), and persevered in 
 their scornful ignorance of them. 
 
 That Roman military and judicial functionaries, admin- 
 istering the Jewish affairs in Palestine, were during the 
 empire, specially from the second century C. E. on, 
 somewhat read in the Jewish Scriptures — some of them 
 understanding, perhaps, the Hebrew language — as can be 
 proved from many passages of the Rabbinical literature, 
 does in truth not conflict with our opinion, that the bigoted 
 Roman at home was ignorant on Jewish matters from his 
 deep contempt for the Jewish nation. It was, we hold, 
 
66 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 inevitable, from their close contact and administrative 
 dealings with the Jews. Besides, the sense of expediency 
 must have urged that some of those officials should acquire 
 a better knowledge of them, than their cultured or learned 
 countrymen at home. It was their station that unavoidably 
 made them somewhat familiar with the institutions of the 
 Jews, so many questions of their civil law and religious 
 custom coming under their cognizance. That therefore 
 the governor, Tinnius Rufus, Quintus' successor in Hadrian's 
 reign, and a few more civil and military officers of the 
 Roman government in Palestine, showed themselves fairly 
 versed in Scripture, does not signify aught against our 
 supposition. And while we admit ourselves that the 
 historical inquirer receives from several indications of 
 literature the impression, that later in the second century, 
 perhaps already during or after Hadrian's reign, there was 
 an endeavor on the part of some cultured Romans and 
 pagans in general, even those not connected with the 
 Roman administration in Judea, to attain some better and 
 more comprehensive knowledge of the contents of Hebrew 
 literature, we presume to avouch, on the other hand, that 
 it was not from any love or devotion to it, or the motive of 
 being able to appreciate better the Jewish character and 
 institutions, but mainly to qualify themselves for keeping 
 up disputes on the latter with those aggressive Jews, 
 who would press them with arguments against their 
 polytheism. By being Scripture-proof themselves they 
 hoped to retaliate on them with the weapons of criticism, 
 and bring home to them, if possible, the weakness of their 
 own position. This can be gathered in particular, as far as 
 both Jewish and Christian polemics are concerned, from 
 the notices preserved by Origen of the ' True Account ' of 
 Celsus, on which we cannot here enlarge. 
 
 The same ignorance that prevailed in Rome about the 
 Law and customs of the Jews, was exhibited by its men of 
 letters about their object of Divine worship. From Cicero 
 to Juvenal, and beyond the latter's time into the period of 
 Hadrian and the Antonines, we meet either with absurd 
 misconceptions or coarse taunts of the Jewish God by 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 6/ 
 
 many cultured Romans. Cicero, in his Oration for Flaccus, 
 betrays a total lack of knowledge of the fixed Jewish 
 belief of the divine Unity. For he exclaims there : "How 
 dear it (the Jewish nation) was to the immortal gods, is 
 proved by its having been defeated, etc." The Roman 
 pantheon, much as his own philosophical reasoning has 
 helped shelling it, was still his sublime ideal. About the 
 spiritual Jehovah of the Jews he had not learned, or he 
 could not have made the foregoing exclamation. 
 
 Juvenal makes of the Jews " adorers of clouds and the 
 heaven "2^ as deities (Sat. xiv. 97; cp. " summi fida 
 internuntia coeli," ib. vi. 545). Tacitus has indeed so far 
 done justice to the Jews, that he stated according to the 
 truth their imageless and intellectual worship of one only 
 divine Being. But it was by no means from any sense of 
 approbation or consent that he made this statement, but 
 from his malignant mind and with scornful criticism. He has 
 moreover tainted that true account by countenancing, at 
 another place, the story of an ass's image being worshiped 
 in the Temple (Hist. v. 4), and, further, by relating in the 
 name of some, that a sort of service of Bacchus was carried 
 on there, though he had for himself to find it incongruent 
 with the known Jewish institutions. 
 
 In the Talmud we meet with many sacrilegious diatribes 
 uttered by Romans of official rank in controversies with 
 Rabbis. The Romans with all their intellectual refinement 
 and even philosophical training could not disengage their 
 mind from the attachment to their gods, nor advance 
 towards the Jews with a tolerant valuation of their religious 
 conceptions and practices. Custom had identified them 
 with the national polytheism, which they recognized and 
 demanded as the only acceptable form of worship for the 
 various nations of the empire. However deeply decaying it 
 was in the capital, it nevertheless predominated outwardly^ 
 and outwardly even the freethinkers made obeisance to it. 
 Not only nature's forces were vvorshiped in their manifold 
 personifications, even abstract virtues and vices had their 
 shrines. Dead parents were held as gods, and dead 
 emperors were pre-eminently awarded divine honor. Even 
 
•68 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 a number of living emperors claimed divine adoration from 
 the people. Fervid, high-wrought patriotism, mingled with 
 a slavish adulation, made the soldiers worship the inanimate 
 golden eagles in front of the legions as the ' gods of war.' 
 
 The Jewish decided and stern opposition to every form 
 of polytheism, even the cultured Roman could not compre- 
 hend.^*' He was neither competent nor inclined to lift 
 himself in his thought to the eminence of the purely 
 spiritual apprehension of the Divine and, while he would 
 not discard allegiance to his national gods for himself, to 
 judge fairly of those among whom such apprehension was 
 firmly established. If nevertheless true enlightenment as to 
 the unity of God is known to have existed with some of the 
 Roman people at certain periods of their historic life, it 
 did not, we believe, flash on them from their self-illumined 
 spirit, but came to them refracted through the medium 
 of Jewish missionaries and their diligent course of 
 propaganda. 
 
 As a characteristic specimen of the stubbornness with 
 which leading Romans defended, on the one hand, the 
 most ridiculous and decrepit religious institutions of their 
 own, and spurned, on the other, all the foreign, branding 
 them with the stigma of superstition, we may adduce 
 Cicero's denunciation, in the above-discussed Oration for 
 Flaccus. of the Jewish contribution of sacred money as a 
 ^* barbarous superstitution." When we bring this acrimoni- 
 ous judgment home to himself and his vaunting nation, we 
 will meet with such a striking contrast in favor of the Jews, 
 that we can account for his refusing to apply the same 
 stigma to some of the most senseless institutions of his 
 own country, merely by his immovable, blind, patriotic 
 partiality. 
 
 The reader is without doubt in general familiar with the 
 genuinely Roman organization of the auguries. They were 
 held equal in importance with the sacrificial ritual. The 
 augurs were the seers or prophets of Rome. They were the 
 interpreters of the divine will and dispositions from certain 
 signs. The Roman contrivances of divination were so 
 essential and indispensable in the opinion of even the most 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 69 
 
 enlightened citizens that, much as some could not help 
 mocking at them as fallacies, or designating them at least 
 as "inventions for the illiterate," or to "satisfy the errone- 
 ous notion of the multitude" (Cicero, De Divin. i. ch. 47), 
 there were again others who put forth their whole armor 
 of logical arguments and philosophy to defend them (ib. ch. 
 49). Even the Stoics of Rome, whose tenet of Fate or 
 Necessity should of itself have precluded their belief in or 
 vindication of them, were obsequious to this predominant 
 and deeply rooted organization, arguing in its favor in this 
 wise : " The omens from cleft livers, or peculiar sounds 
 of birds are not due to a direct interference of God. But 
 the universe had from the beginning been so constituted, 
 that certain signs have to precede certain events, some in 
 entrails, others on birds, or in lightning, portents, constella- 
 tions, the vision of dreamers or the speech of soothsayers" 
 (ib. ch. 52). It were mainly Epicurean freethinkers like 
 Ennius, who were outspoken and independent enough to 
 freely jeer at that Roman hocus-pocus (ib. ch. 58). The 
 elder Cato, too, is reported to have declared — and this 
 sentence had made such a mark that tradition preserved it 
 for coming ages — that "he wondered how an haruspex 
 should not laugh on meeting a colleague." Cicero 
 agrees with this sentiment (De Divin. ii. 24; De Nat. 
 Deor. i. 26). He, further, arraigns the Stoics strongly for 
 their inconsistency, contending that according to their 
 theory that nothing occurs by chance and everything that 
 happens, however rarely, has its appointed natural cause, 
 there could not possibly be any validity in portents ( De 
 Divin. ii. 28). He also directly assails the three departments 
 of haruspicina, v'z., divination from entrails and other 
 marks of victims, from lightning, and from various prodigies 
 (ib. ii. 18 sq.). His standpoint is, that there is actually no 
 divinity in divination, that is, the gods are not connected 
 with anything from which diviners derive their predictions 
 and premonitions. 
 
 And yet for all that he pleaded earnestly for the reten- 
 tion of the institutions of divination, and the obedience 
 ■due to the auspices revealed by the national college of 
 
70 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 augurs. To run counter to such "religion" and obstinately- 
 set at naught this "inherited custom," was to him most 
 censurable and deserving of punishment (ib. ii. 33). He 
 holds that, although the organization of the augurs was 
 originally intended only to serve as oracles, it was yet later 
 preserved and retained for the sake of the commonwealth 
 (ib. 35). "The custom, ceremony, discipline and law of the 
 augurs and the authority of their college," he puts forth^ 
 " are retained alike with regard to the opinion of the 
 vulgar, and the great advantages accruing therefrom to the 
 State" (ib. 33). 
 
 It were, as we see, motives of statecraft and indulgence 
 of the popular belief, that prevailed on Cicero to stand up 
 for a 'religion,' which he had otherwise to expose as so 
 unreasonable. He could not get it over his egotistically 
 patriotic heart to dissuade the people from its continuance, 
 much as his clear, philosophical mind protested against it. 
 Differently he thought, however, concerning the Jewish 
 custom in question. It certainly was approvable by the 
 most caustic logic. Yet to tolerantly acknowledge it as 
 pious and proceeding from a consciousness of nationality, 
 which he himself praised as the worthiest quality as far 
 as the people of his own country were concerned, he had 
 no mind. The augurs' observation of the sacred chickens 
 kept in pens, and the way they ate, was ' religion, ' strictly 
 to be heeded. But the religio-patriotic gift of the Jewish 
 people dispersed from the centre of their national and 
 publicly religious life, he must stigmatize with the contu- 
 melious title of " barbarous superstition ! " 
 
 In about the same manner has Tacitus pitifully compro- 
 mitted himself by denouncing what was to him Jewish 
 superstition, while he was a victim to real superstition 
 himself. In his narration of the prodigies that appeared, 
 during the last throes of the Jewish revolution, in 70 C. E.,. 
 on the heavens in the beleaguered city of Jerusalem, he 
 taunts the Jews as a " nation given over to superstition, but 
 opposed to religions (religious rites)," because they held it 
 wrong to avert the evil of which they were forewarned by 
 those portents, either with sacrifices or vows. 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 7 1 
 
 Had they resorted to propitiating the divine wrath 
 manifested by those signs, by victims, animal or human — 
 for the latter practice was yet in vogue in Nero's time and 
 still later ; see Joel, ' BHcke etc' ii. p. 25 — the religious 
 historian would apparently have been satisfied. But since 
 they did not attempt to expiate those portents (see on this 
 point also Josephus, Wars vi. 5, 3, 4, and compare 2 Mace, 
 v. 2-4), and would most unquestionably have with 
 abhorrence abstained from doing so, if it were to be 
 attempted by a human sacrifice (he seemingly wondered, 
 too, that they held it as " criminal to kill any of the agnates," 
 Hist. v. 4), they had to be branded as a superstitious 
 nation ! 
 
 Again, he proved himself a very credulous man by fairly 
 believing in the Chaldean horoscopy. Deploringl^ he 
 relates the continuously decaying faith in this art of the 
 Chaldean astrologers, "of which the past as well as the 
 present offered such illustrious examples." Even the 
 Chaldean wisdom he could value — for its pretended benefit 
 to the State only, it is true — , but for Jewish wisdom, the 
 "beginning of which is the fear of God," he could not 
 conceive the slightest regard. Their firm and unshaken 
 religious belief was decidedly 'superstition,' whereas he 
 had not independence of spirit enough to decide for himself, 
 whether the Stoic Fate doctrine, or the Epicurean chance 
 theory commended itself for acceptance (Ann. vi. 22). 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 ROMAN WRITERS ON THE JEWISH SABBATH. 
 
 Can we in view of the indiscriminate disregard for Jewish 
 religious institutions with which we meet in the works of 
 the literary men of Rome, expect from them a fair valuation 
 of the Sabbath ? Can we expect that those denouncing the 
 Jewish religion as superstition, and who were purposely or 
 carelessly ignorant about it in its various precepts from 
 their utter contempt for its professors, should speak 
 reverently and appreciatingly of their weekly day of rest? 
 Contemplative rest, sacred meditations, the average Roman 
 knew not. To have a halting day once every week on 
 which man should pause, collect his mind, and abstract it 
 from the turmoil and also pleasures of common life, was a 
 perception exceeding his horizon. The Roman festivals 
 were mostly gay holidays with plenty of exciting sensuous 
 enjoyments. When he therefore saw the Jews and Judaizers 
 observe the Sabbath with abstinence from labor and due 
 sanctity, his pagan spirit must have been roused to 
 disdainful pity for the former, and scornful spite against 
 the latter. Many a one will have vented his disgust at this 
 observance in derisive and reviling language. Literators 
 have embodied this sentiment in their writings, as we will 
 now demonstrate. 
 
 Before we review, however, the opinions on the Jewish 
 Sabbath, uttered by writers from the Augustan age onward, 
 we have to premise that from their contemptuous ignorance 
 about all the Jewish solemn days, they used to confound 
 them with the Sabbath, or, rather, comprised them all, even 
 the fast days, under the generic name 'Sabbata. ' 
 
 That the fasts were to them included in this name, can 
 be proved from the following. Suetonius (Augustus, y6) 
 preserved a statement of Augustus, made in a letter to 
 Tiberius, i:i which that emperor boasts, as one more proof 
 of his moderate living and continence, " not even a Jew 
 observes the fast of the Sabbath (he employs the unusual 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 73 
 
 singular form, Sabbas) so strictly as 1 did (fast) to-day." 
 He doubtless alluded here not only to the fast of the 
 Atonement day, as Joel proposes (1. c. p. 133), but to other 
 fasts as well. The same import has Martial's jejunia 
 sabbatariarum, or sabbatariorum, " the fasts of the Sabba- 
 tarians" (Epigrams iv. 4). In this epigram he depicts the 
 incomparably unbearable smell of a certain Bassa in the 
 following way. Naming a number of very bad odors, 
 among them the "smell of the fasts of the Sabbatarians, "^ 
 he sarcastically suggests that Bassa had better smell of all 
 those intolerable things, than to smell as he really did. 
 This is reducible to the meaning, " of all these things, 
 Bassa, I would rather smell than smell like you;" see the 
 translator in Bohn's Library. The expression Sabbatarians 
 suggests the supposition, that he thought at the same time 
 of Judaizing converts from paganism, who, from Josephus' 
 notice (Ag. Ap. ii. 40), kept the fasts like the born Jews. 
 
 We construe Juvenal's peculiar description of the land 
 of Agrippa and Berenice — Judea — as the one, Observant 
 ubi festa mero pede sabbata reges, " where kings observe 
 the solemn Sabbaths with bare feet" (Sat. vi. 159), in the 
 same sense of fasts of the Jewish people. That he should 
 have had in mind that of the Atonement day only, is not 
 likely. ^^ He can fairly be supposed to have known of the 
 Jewish custom of having the feet bare on many fasts. The 
 Roman Jews had doubtless observed it on the so-called 
 public fasts, pre-eminently the Ninth of Ab, and also the 
 communal fasts for rain, provided these properly Palestinian 
 days of humiliation were kept in the dispersion as welL 
 There is from their partial perpetuation unto our own day 
 all likelihood, that they were then observed also in Italy, 
 and that out of reverential accommodation to the mother- 
 country, though the rainfalls were there regular. These 
 fasts for rain were the Mondays, Thursdays and Mondays 
 following the new moon of Kislev, on which public gath- 
 erings for devotion and penitence took place, if the ' former 
 rain ' had not fallen till then. That it was enjoined to be 
 barefooted on the second trio of these fast days, is attested 
 in the Mishnah. B. Taanith f. 12. 
 
74 I'HE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 That the Thursday fasts of this description were not 
 unknown to some Roman writers, may be gathered from 
 Horace's Satire, ii. 3, in which he introduces "Jove's day" 
 (Thursday) as the one on which this god " appoints fasts." 
 It is the opinion of several commentators, that he alluded 
 here to a Jewish fast, adopted also by Judaizing Romans. 
 If it be really feasible to construe Horace's statement in 
 this meaning, we will suggest that he either knew as well 
 of the existence of Monday fasts, but singled out only the 
 Thursday for its superior consecration, or that, in his 
 superficialit}' as to Jewish customs and indifference to 
 religion in general, he took no notice of the established 
 Tote of those fasts, but mentioned the Jove's day fasts 
 merely at random, having by chance heard that the Jews 
 and Judaizers observed fasts on Thursday. 
 
 Be this as it may, and whatever allusion Juvenal may' 
 have made in the above passage of his Satires, this much 
 can incontestably be maintained from other sources, that 
 Roman writers mixed up the Jewish fasts with the Sabbaths, 
 giving them the latter designation. 
 
 That they included the Jewish festivals in the name 
 Sabbath will, after the foregoing elucidation, not surprise 
 us. We may deduce this, moreover, from the above-quoted 
 paragraph of Persius who, alluding, as we have shown, to 
 all Jewish holidays, comprises them under the general 
 name ' Herod's days' and also ' Sabbaths.' 
 
 Even new moon's day is, by Horace at least, denoted 
 Sabbath, as will appear from the satire on which we will, 
 for several important reasons, enlarge in the following. In 
 the ninth of his first book of Satires the phrase "thirtieth 
 Sabbath " occurs. That it cannot mean any other solemn 
 day of the Jews than that of the new moon, the reader will 
 promptly hold evident with us. This satire had the fate of 
 a various interpretation in several points. In order to get 
 familiar with the treatment of religion by that leading poet 
 of the Augustan age, we will reproduce it synoptically, 
 offering in connection our own exposition of its chief 
 contents. 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 75 
 
 Horace was once molested by a bore ( not a Jew from the 
 Roman Ghetto, as Mommsen, ' Provinces of the Roman 
 Empire,' iii. p. 250, gives it) who persisted in following him 
 beyond the Tiber — where the " poor Trastevere, the Jew- 
 ish quarter, densely populated since Augustus " (Gregoro- 
 vius) was situated. His friend Aristius Fuscus met him by 
 chance. He, too, knew and at once recognized that 
 obstrusive fellow. Horace motioned the friend to manage 
 to rescue him from his clutches. The importuner did, 
 however, not take the hint. Horace got exasperated, and 
 contrived the make-shift of getting him out of the way by 
 suggesting in the form of a question, that the friend had to 
 communicate some secret to him. By this means he surely 
 expected to get rid of him. Fuscus, most likely satisfied 
 in his mind that Horace's device would be attended with 
 no success, attempted to employ another and, as he thought, 
 better one. He said, in the hearing of the bore, " I 
 remember well (about what matter I have to speak to you 
 secretly); but I will tell you it at a more opportune time 
 (and place) ; to-day is the thirtieth Sabbath : dost thou 
 wish to offer an affront (for this affront by-the-by Horace 
 puts in his friend's mouth the filthiest word of the Latin 
 vocabulary) to the curtailed (circumcised) Jews .''" 
 
 We surmise that the spot where they had met, was near 
 a synagogue or, perhaps, on the porch of one, in which the 
 Jews, it having been Rosh Chodesh, were assembled or 
 about to meet for worship. To his friend's objection 
 Horace replied : " I have no religion." " But I have," the 
 friend rejoined ; " I am somewhat weaker, one of the many. 
 Excuse me, I shall speak to you at another time." The 
 bore then saw fit to take his retreat. 
 
 Whether the affair described by Horace took place in 
 reality, or is a mere product of his fancy, thus much we 
 gather at any rate from this satire, that he was not only a 
 rude scoffer at Jewish religious observances, but in the 
 main an unscrupulous reviler of every religious sentiment 
 of believers. Godless Epicurean as he was, he had no 
 reverence for things holy, and made no conscience of 
 disturbing other people's devotion. While in the case in 
 
 (6) 
 
76 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 point it were Jews whose religious sentiments were to have 
 been spared, he would surely, from the language he used, 
 not have paid any regard to those of other devotees, either. 
 The "fear of the gods" he elsewhere characterized as the 
 bane of society (ib. ii. 3). 
 
 We contend, further, that the friend who avows himself 
 as "one of the many," was by no means a Jew, as Jost, 
 'History of Judaism,' i. 330, suggests, nor a sort of 
 proselyte, as Schuerer (Hist, of the Jewish People, etc.. ii.) 
 thinks. There is positively, we maintain, no warrant 
 whatever for either construction of the words " unus 
 multorum." All that is implied in them is, that the friend 
 confessed himself as being one of those who had religion, 
 or at least veneration of the Divine. This would constrain 
 him in his conscience, not to scandalize the Jews or any 
 other class of worshipers at their place of devotional 
 assembly, by standing in front of it and holding an 
 animated or demonstrative conversation. We have to ask 
 those authors inclined to make of Horace's friend a Jew or 
 Judaizer, Was it consistent or at all possible that the poet 
 should have imputed to his friend such a contemptuous 
 allusion to the Jews as we note in the above, had he been 
 one of them, or attached to them by religious belief.-* 
 Would such action not have been a most barbarous outrage 
 of a friend's feelings, of which no sensible person ever 
 makes himself guilty ? 
 
 On Ovid's mention of the Sabbath we reflected in part 
 already above. We have seen that he called it " the 
 Sabbath of the stranger." That he designates the Jews as 
 strangers, though they were assuredly not treated as such 
 by the emperor Augustus (see Philo, 1. c), must not surprise 
 us from the pen of a Roman writer. The Roman men of 
 letters as a class seem to have had a settled aversion to the 
 Jews. The very tolerant regard which Augustus had 
 manifested towards the Jews as to the observance of their 
 Sabbath (see Philo and Josephus), was evidently not shared 
 by our poet. 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. TJ 
 
 In fact, it seems, he treated it not only as the Sabbath of 
 the stranger, but it is probable that his knowledge of 
 Jewish matters and customs was only gathered by a 
 superficial hearsay, and was withal limited to the rites 
 of circumcision and the Sabbath, which formed the princi- 
 pal, salient points of demarcation of the Tews from the 
 Gentiles in the eyes of the Roman public. He with other 
 earlier and later writers of the capital, kept himself at a 
 haughty distance from the Jews, and remained proudly 
 ignorant of their religious institutions. This distance we 
 may recognize also in his styling them once the "Jew(s) of 
 Syria " (Art of Love, 1. I.), and again, later in the same 
 book, the "Syrians of Palestine," which latter denomination 
 he probably derived from Herodotus (comp. Mommsen, 
 ' Provinces of the Roman Empire,' iii. p. 244). 
 
 As to Ovid's notice of the Sabbath, it occurs yet, beside 
 the passage quoted above, in two places of the just 
 cited 'Art of Love.' In the first place he advises the young 
 man anxious to start a courtship, to betake himself to 
 various public institutions and shrines, among them the 
 temple of Venus and Jewish synagogues, concerning which 
 latter he suggests "nor let the seventh holy-day observed 
 by the Jew of Syria escape you." 
 
 That the poet should here have had before his mind the 
 attraction of "numbers of Roman females to the services 
 held in the synagogues on the Sabbath, probably by the 
 music," as Riley (as above) remarks, is a rather far-fetched 
 assumption. The Jewish music in the Roman synagogues 
 was doubtless of a very primitive character, a plain chant, 
 that can barely be thought to have attracted the notice and 
 desire of attendance of any outsider but him, who was 
 otherwise drawn thither by a sense of devotion to the God 
 of Israel worshiped therein. It would, on the contrary, 
 appear as more probable that, if Gentile Roman ladies 
 were meant by the poet, he thought of them as seeking 
 the Jewish places of worship with the sincere, pious purpose 
 of adoring the true God and otherwise entering into 
 religious relations with the Jews. 
 
78 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 But this interpretation is by no means necessitated by 
 the tenor of the passajj^e in point. We have to declare it 
 quite admissible, that he referred only to Jewish ladies 
 visitin^ their own places of worship on the Sabbath, from 
 among whom he advised the young man addressed to 
 choose an object of love. 
 
 Later in the same book he proposes to him not to fix 
 upon any inopportune or unlucky day for his purpose, to 
 which sort of days he does yet not count, as he expressly 
 states, the fatal memorial day of A.llia (see above) and 
 " the day, when the festival occurs, observed each seventh 
 day by the Syrian of Palestine, [a day] not suited for the 
 transaction of business." 
 
 Persius' passing on the celebration of the Jewish Sabbaths 
 and holidays by Judaizing Romans as an instance of that 
 kind of slavery, which consisted in allowing religious fear 
 to sway the mind, we have already discussed above. 
 
 We will now turn to his older contemporary, Seneca. 
 His malicious utterance regarding the extensive acceptance 
 of Jewish laws by the Roman and other nations, the pith of 
 which is the sentence, that they, the vanquished, have 
 given laws to their conquerors, we have already reviewed. 
 Let us now examine what he says on the Jewish Sabbath. 
 He reproaches the Jews that "they injure themselves by 
 its observance, as they lose by it almost the seventh part 
 of their lifetime, passing it in idleness" (Augustine, 1. c.).^^ 
 That proud philosopher of the Porch who professed such 
 sublime doctrines as " Virtue is shut out from no one, it is 
 open to all ;" or, "the mind makes the nobleman, which 
 enables us to rise from the basest condition above fortune ;" 
 or, " All men have the same beginning and the same origin. 
 No one is more noble than another, except the man of lofty 
 genius, with talents fitted for the successful pursuit of the 
 higher objects of life," had yet no mind to apply them so 
 universally as to make them embrace the Jews as well. No, 
 these were a " most criminal nation," — an incriminating 
 denotation which we meet with in no other Roman writer, 
 not even the malicious Tacitus, who made out the 
 Christians only as " hated for their crimes." 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 79 
 
 Seneca's national and relit^ious prejudice against the 
 Jews was evidently intensified by his notice of the rapid and 
 large progress that their religion was then making among 
 the Gentiles. A man of such superior intelligence, and 
 ethical teacher of such high pretention as he was, should, 
 we verily expect, have been free from intolerance of every 
 description. We should think to find him a foremost 
 champion of religious liberty and social toleration. Instead 
 of it we meet him in the van of base and coarse haters of a 
 people, whose national crime was no other than their 
 tenacious adhesion to their ancestral religion. 
 
 The Sabbath, he charges, the Jews pass in idleness ! 
 Bigot as he was, he would not acknowledge the sacred rest 
 and meditative and devotional exercises of the Jews on the 
 Sabbath as meritorious, and at least equal to the feasts 
 of ecstasy, which he and his colleagues would indulge 
 themselves in with rapturous delight when they would 
 pretend to have arrived at solutions of hard ethical 
 problems, that had for a long time engrossed their high 
 mental faculties ! 
 
 Nor would he pause to reflect on the circumstance, that 
 his own fast and fierce fellow-citizens lost much more time, 
 than the Jews, in the celebration of their many public 
 festivals. " The seven ordinary Roman festivals of the 
 year lasted together" — towards the end of the glorious 
 Republic — "sixty-two days, aside from the gladiatorial 
 fights and other numerous occasional sports and amuse- 
 ments" ( Mommsen 1. c. iii. p. 496). Moreover, what a 
 preponderantly favorable contrast with the popular festivals 
 of Rome must not the Jewish Sabbath have offered to an 
 unprejudiced person, in its great conduciveness to the 
 elevation of the mind, which so prominently figured as the 
 end of every wise man in the Stoic philosophy. As how 
 much preferable must not have appeared to such a person 
 the material loss of one day out of seven, when it was 
 counterbalanced by the remarkable gain, in its stead, 
 of refinement of thought and feeling, to the spending 
 of series of days in idle excitement in the circuses, where 
 barbarous spectacles were the intellectual food on which 
 
8o THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 the Roman vulgar subsisted ; where beasts were set to 
 fighting not only with one another, but also with men, and 
 the combats of gladiators with each other — those select 
 performances with which candidates courting the suffrages 
 of the crowd, or grands ambitious to settle themselves in 
 the high opinion of their fellows for glory's sake, used at 
 times to treat the masses — formed the keenest delight 
 offered to the populace ! And, further, how incomparably 
 more conducive to the advancement of pure morals must 
 not to such a person have appeared the reading and study 
 of the Law, replete as it was with the most salutary lessons 
 for a pure and noble life, as it was customary with the Jews 
 on the Sabbath, than the meaningless and dry heathen rites 
 performed in the capital of the world. 
 
 Indeed, had the Hebrew Scriptures with their many rules 
 of purity taken hold of the degenerating people of Rome 
 during the empire, instead of the attempt of the Stoics 
 to reform them, the chronicles would ha\'e had to record no 
 such stupendous depravity as to cases of adultery, incest, 
 paederasty, patricide and infanticide. But no, the Jewish 
 religion and its sacred literature were accorded no regard 
 by the leading and learned men of Rome. They were too 
 narrow and contracted in their estimation of their own 
 country institutions, to give credit to those of the Jews, or 
 encourage a broader influence of their sacred literature. 
 
 Juvenal ^^ makes the same reproach of idleness as to the 
 Sabbath of the Jews and Judaizers. In the above-quoted 
 satire in which he dilates on the evil examples given by 
 Roman parents to their children, he produces as one of them 
 the Jewish mode of life, which the sons of Judaizing parents 
 adopt from them. " But the father is in fault," he complains, 
 " with whom each seventh day was a day of idleness, and did 
 not belong to any part of active life." The harsh and 
 contemptuous verdict of idleness by which both he and 
 Seneca condemn the Sabbath, must not surprise us, 
 consideringthat they looked at it through the darkened glass 
 of national prejudice and bigotry, and, in particular, that 
 they were sorely vexed at seeing a number of their Gentile 
 compatriots find spiritual solace in the reverence for, or 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 8 1 
 
 * fear of the Sabbath.' Their contempt for the Jews being 
 mingled with the deep indignation, that some of the good 
 Romans had so glaringly estranged themselves from the 
 custom of their mother-country, prompted them the more 
 vehemently to denounce the Sabbath as an institution and 
 vehicle for fostering idleness. 
 
 That Tacitus, the most malignant Roman traducer of the 
 Jews, fell in with those two literators in denouncing the 
 Sabbath as a day of idleness, we must not find strange. He 
 differs from them only in being more explicit on the origin 
 of the Sabbath, of which he enumerates, with his reputed 
 historical excellence, several accounts gleaned from the 
 armory of Grecian Jew-haters, such as Apion and the like. 
 The theory that "the seventh day was fixed for rest, because 
 that day had brought them the termination of their toils," 
 seems to have suited him best. For he could attach to it 
 the imputation of the preference of the Jews for idleness, 
 which he indeed brings forward in the connected sentence : 
 *' then," those writers say, " sloth having pleased (the Jews), 
 the seventh year, too, was given over to idleness." 
 
 We have, with this chronic, bitter Jew-hater's opinion on 
 the Jewish Sabbath, arrived in our review at the period of 
 Trajan. The violent commotions of oriental Jews in his and 
 Hadrian's reign, and the latter's unexampled furious 
 prosecution of those of Judea, were surely no opportune 
 occasions for dissolving the prejudice against the Jews in 
 general, and rectifying the misconceptions the bigoted 
 Romans had cherished regarding their religious institutions, 
 among them the Sabbath. 
 
 Nor were perhaps the times of the Antonines much 
 more favorable for a fairer estimation of the Sabbath 
 by them. Uprisings of smaller proportions occurred again 
 in Palestine under Antoninus Pius and even Severus, and 
 measures had to be taken to deal with them (Mommsen^ 
 'The Provinces of the Roman Empire,' ii. p. 244). Such 
 insurrections would surely not permit the cultivation of a 
 more friendly sentiment towards the Jews by the Roman 
 people, at least by their men of letters or of prominent 
 political station. The emperor Pius showed himself indeed 
 
82 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 yielding to the Jews, in that he repealed for them Hadrian's 
 interdict of circumcision. Yet for all that we do not believe 
 that the spirit of national prejudice and antipathy will have 
 permitted the body of representative Romans to abate 
 their contempt for Judaism. With regard to the Sabbath, 
 it can be equally supposed that they, though perhaps 
 knowing a little more about it from the Hadrianic period 
 onwards than before, did not treat it with any fairer 
 measure of indulgence than they had formerly done. If 
 they have not further derogated it as a day of idleness, 
 they will doubtless have denounced it as an idle supersti- 
 tion. 
 
 On the whole we maintain, that it was so alien to their 
 national consciousness, as well as to their religious dispo- 
 sitions and habits, that its appreciation was ordinarily not 
 to be expected. Of its repeated proscription, too, under 
 Marcus Aurelius and Verus, mention was made in the 
 earlier part of this work. 
 
 As a representative heathen sentiment on the Sabbath 
 about Hadrian's period (and thereafter), we will, before we 
 close this chapter, adduce that of Tinnius Rufus, the 
 governor of Judea in his reign. This personage is in the 
 Rabbinical literature frequently credited to have been 
 engaged in colloquies with Rabbi Akiba. He is reported 
 to have once questioned this sage : " What can be the 
 preference of one day before others, that the Sabbath was 
 for your people singled out of the rest of the week days ?" 
 The striking reply of the Rabbi was : " And what distin- 
 guishes one man from others ; I mean, why was Tinnius 
 Rufus himself chosen from the rest of the Romans for the 
 high post he presently holds ? " The governor retorted : 
 " For what other reason than because the emperor deemed 
 it right to intrust me with it ?" " In the same way," Akiba 
 declared, " the Sabbath has been selected from the other 
 days. God wished to honor it " (Rabb. Gen. ch. xi). The 
 foregoing objection against the Sabbath is so likely to have 
 been made by a genuine Roman, that the authenticity of 
 the Midrashic narrative connecting Rufus' name with said 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY, 
 
 83 
 
 colloquy, cannot well be questioned. For with the Romans 
 the distinction of one day from the others of the week for 
 objects of Divine worship and sanctification, was. at best a 
 superstitious abnormity. 
 
NOTES. 
 
 ^ Zunz. in his "Gottesd. Vortraege," quotes Josephus, 
 Against Apion ii. i8, and Acts xv. 21, in which passages the 
 custom of reading the Law in public every Sabbath, is 
 mentioned as very old. 
 
 2 If Plutarch had taken pains to acquaint himself with a 
 larger volume of Jewish historical facts, than he really did, 
 he might have hit upon one instance at least, entirely similar 
 to those cases of the Greek mythology enumerated before 
 in the chapter of his book in point, and which he declared 
 as so commendable, because they offer an example of 
 prompt resoluteness to fight with material weapons, com- 
 bined with prayerful reliance on divine aid. About the 
 same thing Jonathan, the Asmonean leader, exhorted his 
 brave warriors to do, when they were surprised by 
 Bacchides' forces in the valley of the Jordan on the 
 Sabbath, which day he had slyly chosen to make havoc 
 among the Jewish army. Jonathan summoned his men "to 
 arise and battle for their lives," though it was the Sabbath, 
 for there was no escape, the waters of the Jordan cutting 
 off the possibility of retreat. At the same time he urged 
 them to " call unto God, that they might be saved oat 
 of the hands of the enemies." There was surely no 
 "cowardice" in those Jews ; their unbending religious faith 
 was blended with an equally unbending heroism. And 
 yet they were slow in resolving to make battle on the 
 Sabbath even in the utmost extremity to which they were 
 reduced, fearing God more than the destruction of their 
 lives ! ( See i. Mace. ix. 43 sq.). 
 
 ^That the zealots had in the fight against Cestius not 
 regarded the Sabbath, as Josephus states reproachfully 
 (Wars ii. 19, 2), cannot well be held out as an instance of a 
 diminution of that anxiety in the minds of the Jewish 
 people. For not only were the zealots only a faction or 
 factions out of the whole Jewish population, the great 
 majority of whom were moderate and yet peacefully 
 inclined at that point of time ; but we have also to 
 consider that those enthusiastic revolutionists could, in 
 their fiery impulse to avenge the unheard-of outrages 
 committed on their nation by Florus and previous 
 
86 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 procurators, and to defend and free it from the oppressive 
 crushing dominion of the Romans, not be expected to sit 
 down passively and ponder scrupulously over the possibility 
 of breaking- the Sabbath, by setting out to meet the 
 approaching army of Cestius. They could not afford, we 
 suppose, to wait till this commander would make the first 
 attack, losing perhaps meanwhile, during the Sabbath rest, 
 the best advantages over him. There was in those days 
 of fearful pressure and successive miseries too much at 
 stake for their country to be determined by the nice 
 distinction between offensive and defensive warfare, which 
 at any other time themselves doubtless recognized as well 
 As to Josephus' animadversion, ib. 17, 10, we suggest, that 
 the same reply holds good which we objected to the 
 previous one, only that we know of no mitigating explana- 
 tion of the act itself reported there. 
 
 I may mention here yet in passing that Graetz, History 
 of the Jews, iii. 545, has rendered the passage of Josephus ib. 
 ii. 19,2, in which he observes that the Sabbath is with them 
 kept the most holy, incorrectly. He lets him convey the 
 notion, that the zealots were observing the Sabbath most 
 of all. But we have to object, that Josephus did there not 
 specially refer to the zealots, but stated merely a practice 
 of the Jews in general. Nor does he discriminate in that 
 place as to classes keeping the Sabbath more or less holy, 
 so that his words might be construed to indicate " most 
 of all." These two words do not occur in his statement 
 at all. He solely wished to put down the Sabbath, in 
 contradistinction to other holy days or religious rites, as 
 being most strictly observed by the Jews. 
 
 On the tenability of his other opinion, that the Sham- 
 maites were political sympathizers of the zealots, the 
 Hillelites favoring peace and discouraging a revolt from the 
 Romans, we will here not pass. The reader is referred to 
 what Jost, Hist, of Judaism, i. 327. Note, observes on this 
 theory. Only this much we will object, as pertinent to our 
 present subject, that to discover political zealotism in the 
 mere theoretical exposition, credited to Shammai (not the 
 Shammaites!) in B. Sabb. f. 19, of the two words "ad 
 ridtah " in Deut. xx. 20, where directions are given for any 
 future war of conquest (see Sifre, Deut. §203), is altogether 
 too conjectural. Moreover, Sliammai's authorship of that 
 exegetical proposition is by no means authenticated, the 
 Tosifta Erubin, iii. 7, reporting it in the name of Hillel. 
 Who is, in our day, competent to decide, that the version 
 in the Babylonian Talmud is more accurate than that 
 of the Tosifta ? 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY, 8y 
 
 *Comp. Ant. xix. 6, 3, where the insolent mob of Doris 
 is reported to have, under Claudius, forced this emperor's 
 statue in the synagogue of that city, in spite of an imperial 
 edict previously published, that guaranteed to the Jews 
 undisturbed, religious liberty. 
 
 ^This suspicion was doubtless based on his knowledge 
 of what happened under his predecessor, Tiberius, that the 
 Jews, namely, offered desperate resistance to Pilate's 
 attempt of placing shields dedicated to the emperor 
 (Josephus, Ant. xviii. 3, i, has "ensigns with the effigies 
 of Tiberius" instead) within the city of Jerusalem (Leg. 
 §38-39)- Philo seems to have alluded to this occurrence, 
 together with the profanation of the Alexandrian syna- 
 gogues under Flaccus' administration, when he advances 
 with respect to the order of Caius to erect his statue in the 
 Temple : *' For you (Caius) seem not to have attempted 
 the innovation with the Temple through ignorance of what 
 was likely to result from it" ( ib. §31). Helicon of whom 
 we treat in our text, and other persons of his household, 
 the greater portion of whom were Egyptians, have 
 undoubtedly, on their part, not failed to foster that 
 suspicion. 
 
 ''That the desecration of the Alexandrian synagogues 
 was the immediate and decisive cause of the mission ot the 
 Jewish deputation to Rome, appears not only from the 
 passage in Leg. § 29 quoted in our text, but, further, from 
 the colloquy they held among themselves before they were 
 summoned to a second audience with the emperor, upon 
 receiving from a co-religionist the startling news, that the 
 Temple of Jerusalem was destroyed (that is, as good as 
 destroyed, because supposed to have been defiled by 
 idols), the emperor having given the order of erecting a 
 statue of himself in the holy of holies : "And will it be 
 allowed to us * ''•' to open our mouth about the syna- 
 gogue before this destroyer of the most holy place .'' " (Leg. 
 1. c.) That the Jewish disfranchisement during the 
 administration of Flaccus and his successor, and the 
 atrocious treatment from the populace, formed part of their 
 complaint, is certainly not to be questioned. This is 
 evident enough from Philo's statement, that the Memorial 
 with which the envoys provided and, perhaps, wished to 
 introduce themselves to the emperor, contained "a sum- 
 mary of what we had suffered, and of the way in which we 
 considered that we deserved to be treated" (ib. § 28) ; as 
 also from his later reflection (ib. § 29) upon " both the 
 objects on account of which we were sent." Their complaint 
 was about their religious and bodily persecutions, as well 
 
83 'J'HE SABBATH IN HISTORY, 
 
 as about the insolent encroachment on their charters 
 of civil equality. Both objects were combined. Yet, we 
 hold, predominant and directly urging to the voyage to 
 Rome was not their political suffering, but the unendurable 
 affront of the dedication of the synagogue to Caius, the 
 deified emperor. 
 
 We consequently do not agree with Graetz, otherwise so 
 highly deserving of the elucidation of those gloomy events 
 in the history of the Alexandrian Jews, who ( History iii. 
 553) insists that their "disputed equal rights were the 
 (sole) cause of the Jewish embassy." He wishes to prove 
 it mainly from Ant. xix. 5, 2. But the edict of Claudius 
 presented there, has by no means an exclusive political 
 bearing ; it guarantees to the Jews religious liberty, as well 
 as it re-secures their established rights and privileges. Nor 
 can we for one moment entertain the supposition, that the 
 "sedition" set forth there as having arisen between the 
 Jews and the Greeks of Alexandria, was on account 
 of political rights. The Alexandrian populace could not 
 withhold these from the Jews This only the Roman 
 government might violently do, directly or through the 
 lord-governors. Why then should they fly to arms and 
 fight with the Alexandrians to recover what these could 
 neither bestow nor deny, their civil rights ; specially now, 
 after the death of their most cruel oppressor, Caius, when 
 it was surely more practicable to seek redress for present 
 political disabilities at the seat of the central power, Rome ? 
 But when we attribute that armed uprising of the Jews to 
 continuous religious insults and affronts, which we know 
 them to have endured up to that time, and also to all kinds 
 of social chicanery to which they were daily exposed, we 
 have found a much more reasonable motive for it. The 
 unspeakable suffering as to their religious conscience and 
 personal security, that seemed to them never to cease, at 
 last incited them to armed resentment, for which they 
 doubtless chose the absence of the resident governor, so 
 that they had not to fear a forcible suppression of their 
 attempt from this side. 
 
 As to the word " politeia " used by Philo, and which 
 Graetz construes in a political sense, we contend that it has 
 in the relative passages no such meaning at all. He meant 
 by it the national religious constitution or law of Israel, as 
 contained in the Mosaic code. In this sense it is incontro- 
 vertibly employed by him in 'On the Migration of 
 Abraham,' ch. xvi., where he propounds, "A good name falls 
 to the lot of nearly all who, rejoicing in contentment, do 
 not overthrow any one Of the existing laws (he has here in 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 89 
 
 mind such laws as the Sabbath, the festivals, circumcision, 
 of which he speaks in the immediate sequel), but observe 
 the ancestral (or national) constitution — ten patrion 
 politeian — not without thoughtfulness." Comp. also the 
 " God-loving constitution," that is, the Mosaic Law, in * On 
 Monarchy' ch. vii. The same signification it has without 
 doubt in the sentence (Leg. § 44), " * * when we were 
 sent for (by the emperor to an audience with him, not, 
 'when we were delegated' by our Jewish community) to 
 enter upon the contest concerning the politeia." And the 
 same religious bearing, we hold, the term has in Caius' 
 question to the delegates (ib. § 45) : " I wish to know what 
 legal principles you practically entertain as to the politeia .'* " 
 
 He was evidently curious to hear an authoritative 
 interpretation of the principles of the national law, which 
 the Jews urged so persistently in their opposition to offer 
 worship to his godship, to ascertain whether it really 
 conflicted organically with such compliance, or was only 
 put forward as pretext and disguise of their inward 
 disaffection and disobedience to him. 
 
 ^Hausrath, 'New Testament Times', in Joel, ' Blicke, etc' 
 ii. p. 118, says : "Apion made his Jewish historical studies 
 and investigations in the taverns of Alexandria, and 
 reproduced the material gathered there with the most 
 decided talent for everything filthy." 
 
 ^Molo was by far not so malicious against Jews as Apion ; 
 see josephus, Ag. Apion ii. 15. 
 
 ^Whether Cicero succeeded in convincing the judges, 
 that the Jews were real enemies of Rome, we do not know. 
 The charge he advanced could certainly not apply to the 
 remoter past. It is attested by authentic history that the 
 Jews were, in the times previous to Pompey's invasion of 
 the Jewish land, not averse to the Roman protectorate. 
 From the first half of the second century B. C, the Jewish 
 rulers were anxiously seeking friendly alliances with Rome. 
 Judas Maccabeus made a league of friendship and assist- 
 ance with the Senate, which was afterward renewed by his 
 brothers Jonathan and Simon during their respective 
 administrations, and again by the latter's son, the high- 
 priest and sovereign, John Hyrcanus. Nor was surely the 
 appeal of John's grandsons, Aristobulus and Hyrcanus H., 
 who contended with each other for the title to the govern- 
 ment, to Pompey for an authoritative decision of their 
 claims, a sign of disregard for Rome or disdain of her 
 glory. It must on the contrary appear to every one as a 
 mark of open, respectful acknowledgment of her great 
 power and prestige. 
 
90 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 Aristobulus, it is true, was repugnant to Pompey's 
 authority (Ant. xiv. 3, 3 sq.), and his men obdurately 
 refused to peaceably surrender Jerusalem with its fortifica- 
 tions to him, according to the agreement made before 
 between both (ib. 4, i), a refusal that brought on the forcible 
 attack and ultimate capture of Jerusalem by the Roman 
 army. 
 
 But unbiased judges could scarcely detect any sudden 
 national hostility to Rome in the determined endeavor of 
 Aristobulus' military to fight off a power, attempting to 
 usurp the possession of the capital of the Jewish nation, to 
 which it had no claim whatever, save the flimsy one derived 
 from the league obtaining between the two nations, and 
 which they could not allow to interfere in disfavor of him 
 whom they held their rightful sovereign. Even if the 
 refusal of Aristobulus' men had to impress itself on the 
 minds of Roman authorities as a direct affront offered to 
 them, this could not with any shadow of right and consist- 
 ency be made a charge of against the entire Jewish nation. 
 For the multitude of the Jews were, at least since Alexander 
 Janneus, avowed votaries of Phariseism (Ant. xiii. 10, 6), 
 and on this account decided opponents of the Sadducean 
 claimant, Aristobulus. Adhering to Hyrcanus (ib. xiv. 2, 
 i), from sectarian motives at least, they quietly submitted 
 to Roman interference, although they practically dis- 
 countenanced, on the other hand, as we may state here 
 additionally, the assumption of king'y rule by either of the 
 contending rivals (ib. 3, 2). They could consequently not 
 as a body be adjudged enemies of Rome. 
 
 That the resistance to Pompey's forces had indeed not 
 permanently been construed as an aversion from the 
 Roman supremacy, is clear from Augustus' official testi- 
 mony, that " the nation of the Jews have been found 
 grateful to the Roman people ^ - "" in times past also, 
 and chiefly Hyrcanus the high-priest, under my father (.-'), 
 C.-Esar the emperor" (ib. xvi. 6, 2). The interval between 
 this epoch and the time of Cicero's delivery of the oration 
 in question, was only about twelve years. Blind prejudice 
 alone could then have maintained that the whole Jewish 
 nation was hostile to Rome. P"or indeed those who were 
 grateful to Rome a short time afterwards, could not have 
 been permeated by a spirit of enmity towards it on that 
 day when Cicero put forth his argument in his speech. 
 
 Let us observe yet that to conclude from the apocryphal 
 'Psalms of Solomon,' as Hausrath did, that the sting of the 
 wound which Pompey had inflicted on the Jewish people, 
 was never afterwards removed, is too hazardous. The 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 9I 
 
 interval between Pompey's invasion and the incorporation 
 of Judea as a Roman province under Augustus in 6 or 7 
 C. E., or rather the time of the census and taxation, was 
 indeed, on the whole, agreeable between the two nations, 
 as is evident from the foregoing. 
 
 ^'^ For a good Roman to embrace such a superstition was 
 at times held really criminal. Tacitus reports of Xero's 
 reign, that the adherence of one's wife to a "foreign 
 superstition" was then adjudged a cause for divorce (Ann. 
 xiii. 31). 
 
 ^^ See Suetonius, 'Augustus,' on this emperor's abstaining 
 from visiting the sanctuary of Apis, while traveling through 
 Egypt. 
 
 ^^Renan, 'Apostles,' remarks: '"It was only due to the 
 tolerant spirit of Augustus himself, that no repressive 
 measures were enacted against Judaism and other foreign 
 cults" (from Dio Cass. li. 36). 
 
 ^^Graetz' conjecture in his 'Proselytes in the Roman 
 Empire,' that allusion is here made to the conversion of 
 Flavins Clemens, is too visionary to deserve any earnest 
 notice. 
 
 ^* Such measures had already been employed in the best 
 days of the Republic. There is a notice of Valerius 
 Maximus preserved (quoted by Schuerer, ' The Jewish 
 People, etc.') which reads : "The same (the praetor Hispalus) 
 compelled the Jews who had attempted to infect the Roman 
 customs with the cult of Jupiter Sabazus, to return to their 
 homes" (own country). This was about B. C. 139. There 
 can be no doubt that some Jews had then made zealous 
 efforts to win Roman polytheists over to their faith. Who 
 those proselytizers were, whether, as Schuerer suggests, the 
 envoys of Simon, the Asmonean prince, sent to Rome to 
 renew the former mutual league (see i Mace. xiv. 24 ; xv. 
 15-24) — and this is by no means unlikely, considering that 
 in the Asmonean family, at least in the branch starting 
 from Simon, proselytism was a conspicuous, vehement 
 trait ; see on John Hyrcanus, Ant. xiii. 9, i ; on his son 
 Aristobulus L ib. ii, 3 ; and on his other son, Alexander 
 Janneus, ib. xv. 4, — or some other Jewish enthusiasts 
 making it their mission to acquire proselytes out of 
 paganism, is by far not so important to submit to inquiry, 
 as is their numerical proportion to the generality of the 
 Jewish residents of Rome. We hold, against Schuerer, 
 who would deduce from said notice, that " no Jews dwelt 
 permanently in Rome about B. C. 139," that there was 
 indeed a previously established Jewish settlement there, the 
 Jewish population comprising more than just those banished 
 
 (7) 
 
92 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 thence in that year. That notice, we contend, does not 
 warrant the assumption, that everyone of the then Roman 
 Jews was engaged in proselytism, so that the order must 
 have affected each and all of them. There was beyond doubt 
 a considerable number of them in the city, who were not 
 eager at all to meddle with the religion of the pagan inhabi- 
 tants, being perfectly satisfied to follow their several pursuits 
 and ply their trades inoffensively. We presume that such 
 Jews were not included in the order, and remained unmo- 
 lested in the city thej^ had chosen for their habitation. 
 
 The same view we apply to the state of Jewish propa- 
 gandism under Tiberius. That it was in his reign carried on 
 rather zealously, we admit. There may have been more 
 missionaries in Rome at that time than merely those four 
 described by Josephus, and to whom he imputes the origin of 
 Tiberius' proscription of the Roman Jews. But, on the other 
 hand, we cannot reconcile in our mind the assumption that 
 more than a limited number out of the whole Jewish popu- 
 lation were engaged in proselytism. The Jewish people 
 were neither then, nor at any other period, a nation of 
 proselytizers. Kuenen's judgment is doubtless correct, that 
 "the conversions were rather the result of the zeal ot a few, 
 than of general measures concerted in Judea " (Religion of 
 Israel, iii. 274.) 
 
 We hold it important to emphasize once more our 
 opinion of an established settlement of Jews having existed 
 already in the year B. C. 139 in Rome, in order to 
 controvert the common notion, (Hausrath, N. T. Times, i. 
 \']'j, entertains it, too) that the Roman Jews occurring in 
 the extra-Jewish literature of the empire, were none other 
 than descendants of slaves. This notion is mainly founded 
 on Philo's statement, that the Jews of Rome in Augustus' 
 time were "mostly Roman citizens, having been emanci- 
 pated, etc." (Leg. § 24.) We have to charge Philo with 
 being indeed accountable for that notion. He conveys in 
 truth the idea, that there were at the beginning of the 
 empire no other Jews in Rome, than freedmen and a residue 
 of those still bound in slavery. But such assumption is 
 not only unreasonable, but is, as we will prove, refuted 
 from Cicero's Oration for Flaccus. 
 
 There can be no doubt whatever, that the agreeable and 
 friendly relations which had obtained between the two 
 nations since the early Asmonean period (see above Note 9), 
 drew many Jews towards Rome. They cannot but have 
 met with a hospitable spirit at the hands of their new 
 allies, and felt themselves at home and secure under the 
 potent aegis of the all-ruling Rome. They immigrated 
 
THE SA15HATII IN HISTORY. 93 
 
 thither of their own free accord, as free men, and enjoyed 
 the liberties and privileges of citizens. The before-noted 
 incident of the year 139 had not, as already suggested 
 above, affected the entire Jewish settlement of Rome, nor 
 was perhaps the proscription enforced for any length of 
 time. New accessions steadily increased the original stock 
 till, when masses of their unfortunate brethren were 
 carried as prisoners of war from the east and sold as slaves 
 about the middle of the first century B. C, these found in 
 them a respectable, compact community of free and, 
 therefore, very helpful citizens. 
 
 We further object against the theory that the Roman 
 Jews of the empire descended from manumitted slaves only, 
 that Cicero, in the named Oration, presumably held B. C. 
 59, refers to the Jewish people as ".very numerous," and 
 having great " weight in popular assemblies." Is it, we 
 ask, thinkable that he could allude to them as of such 
 quality, had they been no more than emancipated slaves, 
 with a residence in the capital of only four years' duration ? 
 For such a short time only had then elapsed since Pompey's 
 conquest of Jerusalem. Moreover, we have to ask, what 
 authority is there for the supposition that Pompey carried 
 masses away as captives from Judea ? Josephus at least 
 makes no mention of it. The captivity of the Jews and 
 their slavery in Rome are, in our view, authenticated only 
 for B. C. 53-52, in which time fell the conquest of Crassus, 
 when " about 30,000 of them were carried captives (Ant. 
 xiv. 7, 3). This we assert, though we are aware of the 
 apocryphal book of the Psalms of Solomon presenting in 
 Ps. ii. 6 sq., viii. 24 sq., and xvii. 13, a numerous captivity 
 of Jerusalem's sons and daughters, which three psalms are 
 by Wellhausen, 'The Pharisees and the Sadducees,' put 
 down as alluding to Pompey's invasion. (See also Haus- 
 rath, N. T. Times, ii. 183, who, moreover, lets the whole 
 work be composed as an expression of indignation over 
 Pompey's act at that juncture). 
 
 We have then to adjudge Philo's statement in question 
 as inaccurate, in so far as he mentions no other Roman- 
 Jews as citizens than those coming from enslaved captives. 
 Admitting that the number of these was larger than that 
 of the ancient Jewish community of free citizens of Rome, 
 we yet uphold emphatically our conviction, that the latter 
 existed there since very early days, and formed a 
 respectable and influential part of the entire Roman 
 population, to whom by-the-by the gibes of Roman 
 satirists would most illy appl3\ A Juvenal and Martial 
 may have been acquainted only with that class of Roman< 
 
94 THE SABBATH IN HISTORV\ 
 
 Jews living in abject poverty, or purposely chosen such as 
 specimens for their depictions of Jewish life and habits, in 
 about the same way as modern scribblers in preponderantly 
 Christian cities are wont to present American Judaism as 
 they find or seek it out in the squalid quarters of wretched 
 immigrants from half-civilized European countries. 
 
 As to the gibberish 'Jupiter Sabazus'in the above notice 
 of Valerius Maximus, we will yet adduce Schuerer's sugges- 
 tion ( 1. c), that the name may be a confusion of the 
 Hebrew Sabaoth with (Jupiter) Sabazius, a Phrygian 
 deity ; and likewise the peculiar interpretation put on it 
 by Mommsen, Roman History, ii. p. 429, who relates : 
 "The same fate (that befel the Chaldean astrologers) was 
 simultaneously visited on the Jews, who had admitted 
 Italian proselytes to their Sabbaths." He obviously took 
 Sabazus in the sense of Sabbath. 
 
 ^^ Philo, as contemporary, should, as we would presume 
 at first view, merit the credit of supplying a correct report 
 in assigning the entire persecution to Sejan, and not to 
 Tiberius. That this emperor was no decided enemy of the 
 Jews, we should, farther, in the premises, conclude from 
 the assurances, mentioned in our text, which he gave to 
 the Jews of the various provinces through their governors. 
 That such assurances were given, must, moreover, appear 
 as certain, because Philo who reports the fact could have 
 had the most accurate knowledge of it, as doubtless a com- 
 munication in behalf of the Egyptian Jews had also come 
 to Alexandria, his heme. Indirectly it might also be 
 inferred from Tacitus ( Hist. v. 9, and Annals ii. 42 ), that 
 Tiberius was not unfavorably disposed to the Jews. Yet 
 since the other three writers have not mentioned Sejan in 
 connection with the persecution of the Jews, Philo's single 
 attribution of it to that powerful intriguer will remain sub- 
 ject to serious doubt. The more so, when we hold in view 
 Suetonius' characterization of Tiberius. He asserts regard- 
 ing the popular notion that Sejan was the author of the 
 cruel acts committed in his reign, that in reality " he was 
 not so much set up by Sejan, as that this councillor only 
 furnished him the occasions when he sought them." Philo 
 may then have labored under the same impression with 
 many other people of that day, judging that crafty coun- 
 cillor to have been the author of the atrocities which in 
 fact Tiberius perpetrated of his own cruel mind. 
 
 '^ Both Josephus and Tacitus agree in stating that 4,000 
 men were in penalty levied out of the Roman Jews and 
 sent to the island of Sardinia, the latter-named author 
 representing them, moreover, as young men of the families 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 95 
 
 of freedmen who were assigned for the penal labor of put- 
 ting down the robberies on the island. Suetonius, too, lets 
 the Jewish youth of Rome be enlisted and distributed in 
 provinces of unhealthy climates. This threefold testimony 
 would at once give the lie to Tiberius' assertion, quoted in 
 our text from Pliilo, that "the punishment was not exe- 
 cuted upon all, but only on the guilty ; and they were but 
 few," were it not for the reconciling view, that such enroll- 
 ment in the army was in the eyes of that cruel emperor no 
 punishment at all. This view could, however, scarcely 
 hold out to account for the penalty decreed, according to 
 the same three historians, on the other Jews. Josephus 
 presents it in the following : - '^' " but punished ( with 
 banishment from the city, as the context shows ) a greater 
 number of them who were unwilling to become soldiers on 
 account of keeping the laws of their forefathers." Sueto- 
 nius gives it : "The rest of that nation, following the like 
 persuasion, he removed from the city (that is, ordered to 
 leave it ) on pain of perpetual servitude, if they should not 
 obey ( this order )." Tacitus advances : " The rest should 
 have to leave Italy, unless they would before a certain day 
 have renounced their profane rites." However divergent 
 these three accounts are from one another, thej' agree at 
 least as to the main point that, after the forcible enlistment 
 of the younger Jews designated for Sardinia, the rest of the 
 Roman Jews were punished also. Whether with banish- 
 ment from the city, as Josephus and Suetonius have it, or 
 with compulsion to renounce their religion, if they wished 
 to remain in Italy, according to Tacitus, there can be no 
 dispute on the proposition that either proscription was a 
 real, heavy penalty. Or should we resort to the extreme 
 view that Tiberius at least esteemed no penal infliction of 
 any sort a real punishment, as long as the head remained 
 on the trunk, capital penalty alone coming to him under 
 that categorj', in order to square his reassuring assertion to 
 the Jews through the governors, with the opposite reports of 
 those three historians ? We have not the mind to venture 
 such view, although we would gain by it the advantage of 
 accounting for that assertion in this manner, that the "few 
 guilty " ones were those who had actually to suffer with 
 their lives for the accusation laid against them. 
 
 ^'^ We cannot withhold our mistrust of Josephus' account 
 of fraud as the originating cause of the order of banishment 
 of the Roman Jews. Not only have the three other writers 
 not mentioned it, but it appears, moreover, too strange, 
 not to say, suspicious, that the repression decreed alike on 
 the Egyptian and Jewish cults, should have been called 
 
-96 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 forth almost simultaneously by crimes committed at about 
 one same time in both communitieti, the one incest, the 
 other, fraud ( Ant. 1. c. 4, 5 ). It is our opinion that 
 Josephus got his information on the subject from a tainted, 
 pagan source, and one partial to Tiberius and attempting 
 to free him from the odium of uncalled-for religious perse- 
 cution. In it the crimes were invented for this purpose. 
 Our own view that the measure was concerted from an 
 invidious and jealous sentiment towards foreign worships, 
 believed to become more and more detrimental to the 
 State religion, will find confirmation in the fact, that Sue- 
 tonius adds yet the proscription of the Chaldean astrolo- 
 gers, as being then ordered likewise. For it would be prepos- 
 terous to suppose that this proscription was also caused by 
 a particular criminal act. We have at least no intimation 
 to this effect, either in the work of Suetonius or any other 
 Roman writer. From all indications offered us by that 
 author, we cannot assume any other motive to have 
 actuated the Roman authorities in proceeding against the 
 astrologers than the same puritan one, which made them 
 proscribe the Jewish and Egyptian worships. In their case 
 it was the strong apprehension in the minds of the authori- 
 ties, that the national institutions of divination would be 
 seriously impaired by being longer i2idulgent towards their 
 art and practice. 
 
 ^^If Tacitus alone were to be consulted as to the 
 banishment of the Jews under Tiberius, it would appear 
 to us as more plausible, that born Jews were not at all 
 affected by his decree, but that it was aimed only at 
 freedmen of pagan descent, partially converted to Judaism, 
 and belonging to the class of the God-fearing or half- 
 proselytes. It is true, the number of several thousand 
 Judaizing freedmen existing in Rome at one time, seems 
 stupendously large. But it can surely not be pronounced 
 impossible, considering the zealous propaganda then made 
 by Jews, and which we prefer to hold as having been 
 chiefly active among people of lower grade, as these could 
 much more easily and with an immeasurubly better prospect 
 of prompt success be approached by the missionaries — the 
 Christian missionaries of our day furnish sufficient illustra- 
 tions of the truth of our opinion — , than the high-born and 
 wealthy persons of Roman society. 
 
 Freedmen were only half recognized in Roman society. 
 Their position was a middle one between the free citizen 
 and the slave. It could then not have been such an 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 97 
 
 arduous effort to turn a large number of this class away 
 from the polytheism of their former masters, in whose 
 service they were treated so cruelly and vilely, and gain 
 them for the Jewish worship. 
 
 Taking those freedmen of Tacitus for converts from 
 paganism vve can, further, much better and readier under- 
 stand his other statement, "the rest were ordered to leave 
 Italy, unless they would before a c^^rtain day have cast 
 off their unholy rites." Not only do these last words 
 convey, in our view, the sense of adopted in contra- 
 distinction to hereditary religious rites, as likewise the 
 exoression employed in the same context, " infected by 
 that superstition," seems unmistakably to point here as in 
 the similar decree of the proscription of B. C. 139 (see above 
 Note 14) in which it is also used, to a propagandist 
 introduction of Jevvish rites into Rome ; but we would, 
 if born Jews were to be understood as the subjects in the 
 passage in point, be at a loss to account for it. how a 
 wholesale coercion of them to forsake their own national 
 religion within a certain, short period, on pain of total 
 expulsion from entire Italy, could have been decreed by 
 the Roman authorities. The Jews of Rome were, as Philo 
 reports, mostly citizens and as such, however much 
 prejudice there may have prevailed against them in that 
 city, they were legally guarded and guaranteed against 
 any infringement of their religious liberty. An order of 
 religious ostracism directed against any class of real Roman 
 citizens, seems to have been impossible, as it would posi- 
 tively have been utterly un-Roman. Whereas the order gains 
 a different aspect, when we take the freedmen against whom 
 the proceedings of proscription were enacted, as of pagan 
 extraction, and only partially converted to and leaning on 
 Judaism. They, being yet in a state of semi-dependence, 
 had no legal right, so the Senate may have held, to 
 apostatize from the national religion and embrace a foreign. 
 Or the Senate would, on the whole, not scruple to resort to 
 violent measures against those descended from slaves, their 
 lives and persons being otherwise valued rather low (cp. 
 Tacitus' "vile damnum"). The "rest" of the freedmen 
 who, according to this historian, were by order of the 
 Senate threatened with expulsion if they would not 
 abjure their religious rites, were, we further intrepret 
 agreeably with our proposition, those half-converts to 
 Judaism of older age or otherwise unfit for military service. 
 
98 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 Lastly, we contend that, had those freedn:ien of Tacitus 
 been born Jews, they would we firmly believe have promptly 
 allowed themselves to be expatriated, rather than leave 
 off their paternal worship or religious rites. But we know 
 them to have existed in large numbers in Rome, when 
 Philo visited there in the reign of Tiberius' successor, 
 Caligula. How could this have been, were we to maintain 
 that the penal proceedings were aimed at born Jews ? They 
 would in this case without doubt have to one man emigrated 
 from Rome, so that Philo could not possibly have found 
 them there in the way described by h m. 
 
 Graetz' suggestion that, having really been banished by 
 Tiberius, they were recalled by him twelve years after- 
 wards (Hist. iii. 261), could not offer us any acceptable 
 egress from that dilemma. For it is a mere conjecture, 
 without any historical warrant. Jost, Hist, of Judaism, i. 
 332, too, objects that it is insupportable. 
 
 ^^By Herod's days he meant without doubt the Sabbaths 
 and holidays of the Jews. In the same significance 
 " sabbata," in v. 184, is to be taken. This term was with 
 the Roman writers the generic appellation for all Jewish 
 solemn days, including even the fasts. 
 
 We may remark here that Persius' description in vv. 
 180-81, throws a desirable light on the estimation of the 
 Jewish custom of lighting the rooms and premises on 
 Sabbaths and holidays. The Talmud represents it as 
 a means of cheerful comfort, appropriate for such sacred 
 days. This view seems to us, however, a late interpreta- 
 tion of an old, firmly established usage, reaching perhaps 
 back to obscure antiquity. Be this as it may, we can at 
 all events conclude from Persius' illustration, as also from 
 Josephus (Ag. Ap. ii. 40), who mentions it as adopted by 
 Judaizing Gentiles apart from the abstinence from labor on 
 the Sabbath, that it was held as an obligatory observance 
 of essential religious importance. 
 
 That Persius designates the Jewish holidays Herod's 
 days, may be explained by the circumstance th it Agrippa 
 I., who passed under the name of Herod (see Acts xii.), was 
 a reputed, high Jewish personage, a representative Jew, as 
 the phrase runs nowadays. His name offered itself conse- 
 quently very availably to a contemporary Roman writer, 
 for affixing to it customs descriptive of the Jewish people. 
 
 ^''The inconsistency of Claudius' persecution of the 
 Roman Jews related by Suetonius, with his published 
 friendly edicts for the Jews in the provinces (see Josephus, 
 Ant. xix. 5, 2, 3), could in itself not make us discredit that 
 biographer's account. It could be reconciled this way, that 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 99 
 
 the emperor, beinpf truly of a tolerant spirit to the Jews, 
 was 3'et provoked by some dangerous act of Roman Jews 
 to such a degree, that he could not well help resorting to 
 severe measures against them, which, moreover, were 
 confined to the capital. 
 
 Again, it is quite possible that true Jews were not 
 affected at all by the edict of expulsion. Suetonius* 
 attachment of " impulsore Chresto" would render it quite 
 plausible that it was aimed at Christians of the Jewish 
 stock, and not at orthodox Jews. The relative statement 
 in Acts xviii. 2, may mean the same thing, and Aquila and 
 Priscilla, too, can be supposed as having been adherents of 
 the Jewish Christian party already in Rome. (Comp. Baur 
 ' Paul,' i. 328, who suggests so much at least, with reference 
 to that relation of Acts, that "they were by no means 
 entirely unacquainted with the Christian faith " ). It is well 
 known that the Christian sect was in those days yet 
 counted among the Jews. The ordinary Roman did then 
 not distinguish between the Jewish believers in the Messiah 
 of Nazareth, and the bulk of the Jews denying the claim of 
 his Messiahship. The imperial order of which Suetonius 
 speaks, may accordingly have been called forth by those 
 sectaries only, and the tumults he mentions as frequently 
 made by them, have been nothing else than disputations 
 they engaged in with orthodox Jews on the merits of the 
 new faith, and quarrels resultirig therefrom ; or they were, 
 perhaps, merely the self-conscious, loud and open proclama- 
 tions by those sectaries of their Messiah and of his eagerly 
 awaited second coming, which had to impress the Roman 
 authorities as being plots of political innovation, that were 
 to be met with striking measures of repression. 
 
 Baur, 1. c. i. 327, too, interprets the " impulsore Chresto" 
 as meaning nothing else than Christianity itself, which was 
 then becoming known in Rome, and gave occasion to 
 disturbances and disputes within the Jewish population. 
 Only that he declares it as natural that the two contending 
 parties, the Jews and the Christians, were both expelled 
 from the city. 
 
 While our construction would promptly lift the inconsist- 
 ency in question, we yet have to object that the expression 
 " impulsore Chresto" does not without violence to the 
 letter warrant the assumption, that the author meant by it 
 a movement or commotion stirred up by or on account of 
 Christian sectaries, but rather demands our supposing one 
 created by a personal Chrestus or temporal Messianic 
 kingly pretender. For it was in the latter capacity only 
 that the Roman authorities were apprehensive of the 
 
lOO THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 Christus's, who rose among the Jews from time to time. 
 This appears not only from Pilate's proceeding against 
 Jesus (see Matt, xxvii. ii, Mark xv. 2 and in especial Luke 
 xxiii. 2, 3), but also from the fate of the subsequent Messiah- 
 pretender, Theudas, who, as Josephus reports (Ant. xx. 5. 
 I ; comp. the respective unhistorical notice in Acts v. 36), 
 was put to death by order of the procurator Fadus. Later, 
 under the procurators Felix and Festus, there were other 
 Messianic pretenders likewise punished with death ; see 
 Ant. XX. 8, 5. 6, Wars ii. 13, 5, Acts xxi. 38, Ant. xx. 8, 10. 
 
 The severity with which tumultuous concourses, especially 
 under leaders, were viewed and visited by the imperial 
 Roman authorities, is further evidenced by the violent 
 interference of Pilate, in the year 35 or 36, against the 
 Samaritans who, incited by a certairi prophetical leader 
 and Messiah (see Hausrath, 1. c, who not only represents 
 the movement as a Messianic one, undertaken in rivalry 
 with John's JeivisJi preaching of the Kingdom, but expresses 
 by-the-by what has long been our own firmly maintained 
 opinion, that that leader was none other than the notorious 
 Simon of Gitto, nicknamed the Magician, of Acts viii.), 
 marched in arms to the Mount Gerizim to recover hidden 
 sacred vessels (Ant. xviii. 4, i). Pilate at once construed 
 this as an attempt at revolt (ib. 2), and made bloody havoc 
 among them. 
 
 A short time before, John the Baptist had suffered death 
 at the hands of the tetrarch Herod Antipas, because he had 
 feared a rebellion from him and the crowds that had joined 
 him (ib. 5, 2). No matter how spiritualistic the motives of 
 such Messianic illusionists were, the Roman officials or 
 creatures of the Roman power and favor knew of no pity 
 towards such offenders. (Let usobserve here yet in passing 
 that Keim, History of Jesus, ii., insists that the most reason- 
 able account for Antipas' cruel procedure against John was 
 his political apprehension, just as Josephus states it. Haus- 
 rath, 1. c. p. 116, coincides with him in preferring Josephus' 
 account to the Gospel explanations of it.) 
 
 We would according to our foregoing suggestions inter- 
 pret Suetonius' report, that the expelled Jews were the 
 followers of a Messianic pretender, who acted his part in 
 Rome in an aggressive and boisterous way. The indulgence 
 with which Claudius treated the Jews, owing perhaps to 
 the most favorable esteem in which he held the princes 
 Agrippa I. and his brother Herod H., made the Jews of the 
 empire once again breathe the breath of ease and self- 
 confidence. Nay they, or some of them at least, may 
 through that prestige ha.ve become proudly elated or, as 
 
THE SABBATH IN llfTSDHV. 10 1 
 
 Dion gives it, been " again overweaning." The hope of a 
 speedy release from the Roman supremacy may under such 
 circumstances have been fondly and freely cherished by a 
 considerable number of Jews. This temper was possibly 
 improved by a certain pretender who set up for the 
 Messianic deliverer, preaching in the synagogues or other 
 gathering places of the Jews his tidings of the mission to 
 recover the Jewish independence. That person may even 
 have been identical with the Theudas noted above. He 
 may have come to Rome also, where he incited the Jews 
 to co-operate with him in his scheme of a Messianic 
 insurrection. Claudius then cut the movement short by 
 his order. 
 
 By way of conjecture we will yet propose, that the 
 " impulsor Chrestus" might have been Paul, to whom it 
 happened later in Palestine, to be mistaken by a 
 Roman chief captain for a Chrestus, or Messiah, see Acts 
 xxi. 38. By his unheard-of pretension of the abrogation 
 of the Mosaic Law and his attempted fusion of Judaism 
 and heathendom by means of his Christian system, it is 
 possible that he brought the Jewish inhabitants, even the 
 Jewish Christians of Rome, to a pitch of rage that sought 
 its vent in loud retorts and, perhaps, even assaults upon 
 him and his retinue. The emperor may have put a stop to 
 such uproarious scenes by his order. 
 
 As to the discrepancy between the account of Suetonius 
 and Dion Cassius, we will yet mention that Schuerer, ' The 
 Jewish People, etc.,' attempts to harmonize both by sug- 
 gesting that the word " expulit " used by the former writer 
 means only, " he contemplated to expel," the same as in 
 the analogous case of the decree of Tiberius against Chal- 
 dean astrologers ; see Suetonius, on Tiberius, 36. 
 
 In conclusion we may be permitted to suggest, that 
 Claudius' proscription of Roman Jews must not at once be 
 considered as prompted by a decided aversion to the Jews 
 as a nation, or to their religious customs We have to bear 
 in mind that imperialism was very sensitive and suspicious 
 of anti-monarchial tendencies coming forward within its 
 domain. When we hold in view the persecutions and banish- 
 ments which the Roman philosophers, in particular the 
 Stoics, endured from Nero, Vespasian and Domitian, we will 
 be obliged to discard the prepossession that Claudius and 
 other emperors interfering against Jews engaging in 
 tumultuous movements or for other State reasons, were at 
 the same time inspired by national or religious hatred to 
 them. The fate of the Roman Jews under Claudius was 
 
I02 Tnk S'AI5bA'IH in rilS'lOKV. 
 
 surely not any worse than that of all but one of the philoso- 
 phers who were expelled from Rome in the years 71-75 C. 
 E. Nor was it equal in severity to the persecution visited 
 on this class by Domitian, in 93. The supposed or open 
 republican opposition of the Stoic philosophers to mon- 
 archy was mainly the cause of it. Likewise will we have to 
 judge of Claudius' proceeding against the Jews, since it was 
 called forth by some agitation which doubtless appeared 
 dangerous to the government, as having been a measure of 
 political discipline rather than a national-religious pro- 
 scription. 
 
 ^^ Suetonius who passed his youth in Rome under Domi- 
 tian, could have given us the most authentic and explicit 
 account of that imperial act of inquisition. But he has 
 neglected doing so, leaving only a brief notice behind, in 
 which he does not mention at all any penal proceedings 
 against Domitilla and many other Judaizers. touching even 
 on the fate of Flavius Clemens only in the few words, that 
 the emperor "suddenly punished him with death on a very 
 slight ( trivial ) suspicion " ( Domitian, ch. xv.). 
 
 The Christian church claims Domitilla as her own. It 
 makes of him a convert to Christianity. Eusebius, using 
 Bruttius' Annals, has fathered this tradition. On the 
 strength of it Christian writers qualify Flavius Clemens as 
 a Christian, too. Both pass in Church history as martyrs. 
 Chandler, History of Persecution, p. 45, argues in favor of 
 the theory that they were Christians, from the view that 
 atheism was the common charge laid against the Christians, 
 and that Domitian was not known to have persecuted the 
 Jews for their religion. The same opinion Gibbon pro- 
 pounds ; see ' History of the Decline etc.,' ii. p. 25. He 
 contends that the charge of atheism and Jewish manners 
 imputed to the accused, was " a singular association of 
 ideas which cannot with any propriety be applied except 
 to the Christians." We, on our part, cannot however per- 
 ceive the singularity of that association. Nor is there in 
 Dion's account such an association only. It really exhibits 
 a perfect identification of both the charges of atheism and 
 Jewish customs (not "manners"). By these customs the 
 Jewish worship and religious usuages are doubtless under- 
 stood. 
 
 Dion says (Ixvii. 14): "Both were indicted for athe- 
 otes " — which, in view of the parallel expression 'aseheia' 
 used by him in connection with the account of Nerva's 
 clemency, can mean nothing else than irreligiousness, that 
 is, a defection from the national worship, by either embrac- 
 ing another religion, or adhering to any one odious philos- 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. IO3 
 
 ophy of the age, or being otherwise a freethinking despiser 
 of the country-deities — " of which even many others who 
 had fallen away to the customs of the Jews were convicted." 
 
 Can the thinking reader for one moment doubt that he 
 had here perfectly identified the Jewish customs with 
 atheism ? It is true, he holds in the account about Nerva 
 ' asebeia' and 'Jewish life' apart. He says of this emperor: 
 " He did not permit that any people should be accused of 
 either asebeia ( irreligion, godlessness ) or a Jewish (mode 
 of) life." But this does not in the least indicate that he 
 had in the former notice not identified both, atheotes and 
 Jewish customs. No. Dion did in the relation about 
 Nerva not in the least think of contrasting both Roman 
 offences. They were in the two accounts identical in his 
 mind. In both of them he used irreligiousness, which he 
 once denoted atheotes and then again asebeia, as a generic 
 atheistic misdemeanor, expressive of every manner of deser- 
 tion of the country-gods. Only that he conveyed, in the 
 first-named passage, Jewish religious customs as directly 
 included in the term atheotes, whilst in the other he 
 thought it important enough to mention yet expressly 
 Judaism, because this religion had then without doubt been 
 the most widespread and popular of all the alien ones in 
 Rome. 
 
 It could readily be expected from Domitian, infuriated as 
 we hold him to have been against any alien worship that 
 had gained ascendency in Rome, that he dealt with cruel 
 decision with Judaizers from the ranks of the Latin stock, 
 who committed the high treason of denying the native 
 tutelar deities, among whom he himself claimed to be 
 ranked as Rome's guardian genius. He could not bear to 
 see his good patricians and withal his superior citizens 
 affected by the astounding ideas of an immaterial God and 
 the adoration due to him alone. His Roman puritanism 
 revolted against it, as it was the case with Tiberius before him. 
 
 Baur ( Paul, ii. 61 ) presents also the ordinary Christian 
 conception, that Flavins Clemens was an adherent of Chris- 
 tianity. He grounds it not only on the charge of atheism 
 stated by Dion, but on the " most contemptible sloth " with 
 which he is reproached in Suetonius' account. This sloth 
 he construes into a lack of interest in the politics of Rome, 
 which was so peculiar to the Christians as a class. His 
 misdemeanor then lay, according to Baur, not so much in 
 his contemptible political inactivity as in his profession of 
 Christianity. It must consequently, however, appear very 
 strange that Suetonius should not at once have called the 
 offence by its right name, that is, Christianity ! 
 
104 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 Graetz, History of the Jews, iv. p. 43'? sq., and in his 
 essay, " The Jewish Proselytes in the Roman Empire," has, 
 to the contrary, raised it beyond any doubt, that in Flavius 
 Clemens nothing but a convert to Judaism is to be recog- 
 nized. He brings to bear on the question some Jewish 
 legends, in particular those of the Midrash Rabb. Deut. ch. 
 ii. f. 2155 and of B. Abodah Zarah f. 10. which, while they 
 are far from being directly available for historical use, may 
 yet safely be adduced for the elucidation of the problem, 
 whether Flavius Clemens is to be adjudged a convert to 
 Judaism or Christianity. 
 
 In the two before-named places a Roman dignitary 
 figures as a self-devoted Judaizing intercessor to rescue 
 Israel from an impending expulsion (or extermination), 
 or;ce decreed by a Roman emperor and senate. His Juda- 
 ism had been consummated by the initiatory rite. This 
 description the two relations have in common. In all other 
 points they differ from each other. The Midrash designates 
 that high Roman as a synkletos " senator." The Talmud 
 produces him under the fantastic name Ketia bar Shalom. 
 The former makes him take poison at the urgent request 
 of his wife who was still more attached to Jews and 
 Judaism, which act of the self-destruction of her husband 
 she had devised, that the execution of the imperial decree 
 against the Jews would be stayed and the sentence ulti- 
 mately nullified. The Talmud makes of him a mere 
 martyr on his own account, and that only in a certain 
 Sense. It lets him suffer involuntary death for daring to 
 remonstrate with the emperor about his attempt on the 
 Jews, and to deprecate it. Whilst he succeeded in con- 
 vincing him alike of its inefficiency and inexpedience, 
 and prevented his carrying it into effect, he yet was guilty 
 of a capital crime, consisting in the confutation of an 
 emperor by a contradicting argument, for which he incurred 
 the penalty of death that was really, as it is alleged there, 
 inflicted on him. The woman figures in this passage 
 also as more devoutly Judaizing than himself 
 
 Now, as to the historical availability of this story or 
 these stories — for both relations differing from each other 
 indeed more than they agree on the points set forth 
 therein, should by right be considered as two separate 
 accounts — we assent to Graetz in so far as to discover a 
 latent kernel of history in the chaff with which it is handed 
 down to us. But we can by no means subscribe to his 
 opinion (History 1. c. p. 436), that the Midrashic story has 
 a " sober and historical " stamp. It positively has all but 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 10$ 
 
 this. It is on the contrary one of the many fantastic 
 pieces of glorification of Israel, gotten up to illustrate the 
 occasional self-sacrificing acts of friendly Gentiles, in which 
 precious little regard is paid to real history. 
 
 Let us adduce a Rabbinical counterpart to our story, 
 occurring in B. Taanith f 29, which the reader will find 
 totally akin to it as to tendency. We are told there of a 
 Roman ofificer (senator or judge) having given up his life to 
 save that of Rabban Gamaliel in the period of the 
 Hadrianic persecution, when he was by the governor 
 Tinnius Rufus condemned to death. That Roman "lord" 
 proposed to rescue him from his dire fate, if he would 
 promise him under oath to insure him entrance into the 
 ' World to come.' This readily done, the Roman lord 
 killed himself by casting himself down from a wall. Thus 
 Gamaliel's life was saved. For, it is remarked there, 
 further, the rule was, that if one of the judges who had 
 passed a capital sentence died, it at once became void. 
 
 The fabulousness of this tale is too obvious and glaring 
 to deserve any earnest attention except from the view 
 of curiosity. The reader will at once conclude from the 
 fabric of its impossibilities and inaccuracies, that it is 
 nothing but a tendency-fiction, devised by a credulous 
 author or, at any rate, for credulous masses, to exhibit 
 another specimen of magnanimous self-devotion of pagan 
 patrons to Jews and Judaism. It is assuredly of the same 
 type as that of the Midrash under discussion. 
 
 But yet we cannot altogether reject the latter as bare 
 of every true historical reminiscence. Dion's attestation of 
 the two high Roman personages having leaned on Judaism 
 and the penalty which the cruel emperor had inflicted on 
 them therefor, may safely be held as the original substance 
 of which the legendary web presented in the Midrash and 
 Talmud was woven. The historical fact that Flavins and 
 Domitilla were as devout Judaizers cruelly punished for per- 
 sisting in the religion they had newly embraced, was 
 doubtless delivered to the fervent memory of succeeding 
 ages in Israel. The inference of their being most friendly 
 to the Jews and showing them many favors, was easily drawn 
 from that traditional circumstance. And as tradition had, 
 further, presumably preserved many an occasion from the 
 reign of the cruel emperor Domitian, on which interference 
 for the sake of Israel was pressingly needed at the hands 
 of Roman men of influence, those two martyrs offered 
 themselves readily for the origination of legends, such as 
 we meet with in the above-cited relations of the Midrash 
 and Talmud. 
 
I06 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 '■^^ Josephus, Against Apion, ii. 40, states the Judaizing 
 character of a " multitude of mankind from inclination," 
 and that there is "no nation whatsoever, whither our 
 custom of resting on the seventh day hath not come, and 
 by which our fasts and lighting up lamps (on Sabbaths and 
 festivals comp. ib, lO), and many of our prohibitions as to 
 our food, are not observed." 
 
 His representation, dating from the end of the first 
 century of our era, and delineating as it evidently does the 
 practical observance of Jewish rites by Gentile Judaizers 
 along that period, is borne out by Juvenal, Sat. xiv., who 
 mentions about the same religious customs of proselytes to 
 Judaism. He left out the fasts, because they were to him 
 doubtless included in ' Sabbata ; ' also the lighting of 
 lamps, which is easily thought to have been comprised in 
 the 'fear of the Sabbata.' 
 
 Let us remark here in passing, that with Juvenal's 
 " metuentem Sabbata" and Persius' " Sabbata palles," which 
 phrases are expressive of awe-struck reverence felt by 
 proselytes towards the Sabbath, may be compared the 
 Talmudical Emath Shabbath "fear of the Sabbath." 
 
 As to Josephus' enumeration of Jewish rites adopted by 
 a multitude of Gentiles, we must not at once conclude that 
 all those heathens who were, according to his testimony, 
 practicing them, had conceived a sincere attachment for 
 Israel and devotion to their God, and that they were if not 
 full, at least half-proselytes. There were without doubt a 
 number of them whose minds had not turned to the true 
 God, but who, loathing the trite ceremonies of their own 
 country-religion, or moved by a certain superstitious 
 preference, chose some Jewish religious rites, whilst they 
 yet remained within the pale and the fetters of polytheism. 
 
 We will not, to prove this, refer to Riley's proposition 
 quoted above, that Ovid in speaking of the "seventh 
 holy-day observed by the Jew, etc.," as the dav on which 
 ladies were to be met at the synagogues, had before his 
 mind the custom of pagan Roman ladies to visit there 
 from sheer curiosity, who were all but devout worshipers 
 of Israel's God. This explanation would indeed carry with 
 it a decided moment of doubt as to many other cases of 
 supposed Sabbath observance by Gentiles, which might 
 have consisted in nothing else than their attendance, upon 
 some outward motive, at Jewish synagogues, but yet caused 
 the impression that a sincere religious disposition and 
 conviction of the truth of Judaism had drawn them 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 10/ 
 
 thither. But as that commentator's view lacks every internal 
 evidence, and it is certainly possible that the poet alluded 
 to real God-fearing Roman women of pagan extraction, we 
 must not bring it to bear on our question. 
 
 A rather reliable testimony as to the co-existence of 
 polytheism with the practice of Jewish rites, is furnished 
 us, however, from another source. Tertullian, the Mon- 
 tanist church Father who flourished in the latter part of the 
 second century, apologetically argues in his treatise 'On 
 Fasting' (Works, vol. iii. Aiite-Nicene Libr. ed.) against 
 the so-called Psychics, who had opposed the few special 
 fasts of the Christians, that the custom of holding fasts was 
 so genuinely adapted to religious minds that it was found 
 even among heathens. Even they, he reasons, recognize 
 every form of "humiliation of spirit." "When the heaven 
 is rigid and the year arid, barefooted processions are 
 enjoined by public proclamation." That here the adopted 
 features of the Jewish communal fasts for rain are brought 
 forward, will at once strike the reader as probable. 
 TertuUian's subsequent exposition renders it the more 
 plausible. He continues: "There are moreover some 
 colonies where, besides, [the inhabitants], by an annual 
 rite, clad in sackcloth and besprent with ashes, present a 
 suppliant importunity to their idols. ^ ^ * There is, I 
 believe, a Ninevitan suspension of business ! A Jewish 
 fast, at all events, is universally (that is, everywhere in 
 those colonies) celebrated ; while, neglecting the temples, 
 throughout all the shore, in every open place, they continue 
 long to send prayer up to heaven." * * -^^ 
 
 Who will not at once recognize in this heathen rite an 
 imitation of the Jewish Atonement day .-" But it was 
 outward only. Those pagans, whoever they were— Tertul- 
 lian was not explicit enough to describe their nationality 
 and locality — had in some way learned of the great annual 
 Fast of the Jews, and seen fit to adopt it as part of their 
 ritual, whilst they never thought of leaving off their 
 idolatry on this account. The heathen custom of fasts for 
 rain, represented by Tertullian as a rather general one 
 among idolatrous nations, seems likewise to have been 
 borrowed from Judaism. But were they by it any nearer to 
 the real Jewish religion, especially its ground-principle. 
 Monotheism ? By no means. 
 
 We have accordingly to suggest that the apparent 
 Judaizing with which many an ancient observer met among 
 some pagan people in certain lands, may have misled him 
 to take it for a true and real conversion, or at least for a 
 
 (8) 
 
I08 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 Strong devotion to Judaism, while it was in fact a mere 
 outward imitation of some Jewish ritual observances, 
 alongside of which those pagans may have been addicted 
 to the grossest forms of idolatry. How much Josephus or 
 the authorities upon which he based his above assertion, 
 might have been affected by deceptive impressions of that 
 kind, we have no means of ascertaining. 
 
 ^ The reason why this rite vexed them, as it seems, 
 most, is doubtless, because it was in their eyes the pitch 
 and therefore formed the criterion of denationalization. 
 That this view prevailed among the pagans, we may infer 
 from the circumstance that Tacitus (Hist. v. 5, 25) lets the 
 contempt of Roman Judaizers for their nationality follow 
 immediately, in the same sentence, after his mention of 
 their practicing the rite of circumcision. This necessa'rily 
 impresses one that he meant to convey the notion that that 
 contempt was the inevitable result of the initiatory rite, as 
 being the unambiguous symbol of casting ofif the old and 
 putting on the new nationality — Judaism. He says there : 
 "Those em.bracing their religion practice the same (namely, 
 circumcision), and they are early impressed with nothing 
 sooner than to contemn the gods, to cast off (the allegiance 
 to) their country, and to despise their parents, children, 
 brothers." 
 
 The same local and loc^ical sequence we find in Juvenal, 
 Sat. xiv. Discoursing there on the children of Roman 
 proselytes to Judaism, he declares, "soon they are circum- 
 cised, too. But they are used to contemn the Roman laws, 
 and learn, observe and revere the Jewish law, etc." That 
 this juxtaposition and connection is not accidental in either 
 writer, but was intended to insinuate what we suggested, 
 the reader will readily allow. 
 
 Our view may be substantiated, further, from Josephus, 
 Ant. XX. 2, 4. He reports that the mother of King Izates of 
 Adiabene objected to his decision of consummating his 
 conversion to Judaism by undergoing the performance of the 
 rite, that "he would thereby bring himself into great odium 
 among his subjects, when they should understand that he 
 was so fond of rites that were to them strange and foreign.'* 
 
 We suggest, by-the-way, that Hadrian's prohibition of 
 circumcision, while it was surely not the only original 
 cause of the tremendous uprising of the Jews, as Spartianus 
 relates, but was perhaps imposed on them in penalty for it 
 after it had been subdued by the Roman forces (see Graetz, 
 History, etc., iv. p. 451), was likely intended by that em- 
 peror as a most crushing blow at once at the Jewish religion 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. IO9 
 
 and nationality, since he knew well that it was the indis- 
 pensable sign of the religious-national identity of the Jews, 
 and their demarcation from all the other nations of the 
 empire. 
 
 That the prohibition might not h.ive h.id any religious- 
 national bearing, was again and but recently advanced by 
 Mommsen, 'Provinces of the Roman Empire,' ii. His older 
 predecessor in this opinion, Casaubonus, is quoted by 
 Muenter, ' The Jewish war under the emperors Trajan and 
 Hadrian,' p. 36. 
 
 ^"^The Roman writers Juvenal and Tacitus knew or 
 noticed converts to Judaism only by the mark of the rite 
 of circumcision. This deserves special remark the more, 
 since several modern writers exaggerate the proportions 
 of the so-called God-fearing proselytes, who had connected 
 themselves with Israel without the submission to this rite. 
 Tacitus' direct statement, "Those embracing their religion 
 practice the same," allows of no other construction, than 
 that he had before his mi-.id and knew of no other than 
 such full converts. Had he known of any cases of Judaizing 
 without the acceptance of that rite, he would surely have 
 mentioned them. The same is true of Juvenal, in the 
 satire quoted above. Even if his words "soon they are 
 circumcised too," should have to be taken as expressive 
 of a gradual advance from other Jewish religious usages to 
 circumcision as the final act of their initiation into the 
 Jewish communion, we still contend that he thought of this 
 concluding act as the fixed rule and custom, and these not 
 left optional with the sons of proselyte parents, but obli- 
 gatory on them. We insist — supposing the perception 
 of progression in time was the only correct one in the 
 context — that he wished to convey in that passage that, as 
 the converted fathers were circumcised, so will the sons be, 
 only that these were in their earlier childhood first being 
 trained to regular Jewish observances, and ultimately, at a 
 later, more convenient period, the initiatory rite was per- 
 formed on them also. But we can allow that perception 
 only provisionally. There is indeed no cogent evidence, 
 that Juvenal used the word mox " soon" in the strict sense 
 of temporal progression. In poetical works a small word 
 or phrase inserted in the context, often serves only to 
 round off the rythmic form, and its literalness must not be 
 pressed at all. The adverb " soon " may accordingly have 
 suggested itself to the author on going on in his com- 
 position as a metric stop-gap at the very point where we 
 find it placed, while his mind was far fiom expressing the 
 idea of temporal succession. 
 
I lO THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 Be this as it may, thus much appears as most certain 
 at least, that Juvenal's sentence in point allows of no other 
 interpretation than that he reflected on the circumcision 
 of the sons of Roman proselytes, and implicitly on that 
 of the fathers themselves, as the settled rule, knowing of 
 no other mode of admission to the fold of Judaism. 
 
 But such view did not alone prevail in the minds of the 
 named Roman writers. We may lay it down .as a certainty 
 that the distinguishing mark, by which proselytes were 
 commonly known and judged in the whole Greco-Roman 
 world, alike by Gentiles and Jews, was the acceptance 
 of the initiatory rite and the Mosaic religion in general. 
 As to the Jews, it unmistakably appears from the various 
 relative accounts of Josephus, that they would ordinarily 
 approve of no other conversions than those attended with 
 circumcision. He would himself, while he was tolerant 
 enough to discountenance compulsory circumcision of 
 pagans (see Life, sect. 23), yet recognize a merit of triie 
 piety only in such voluntary conversions to Judaism, as 
 were accompanied by the self-imposition of that rite (see 
 Ant. XX. 2, 4, end). Nor is%there any warrant for that 
 license in the interpretation of the term sebomenoi ton 
 theon "worshiping God," occurring in his works, by which 
 some modern writers attempt to prove their exaggerated 
 view of mere outward Judaizers having formed that large 
 contingent ot proselytes, known to have existed in that 
 century almost everywhere in the Greco-Roman .world. 
 [On the whole, we have to reproach a number of modern 
 writers with being altogether too boldly conjectural in their 
 view on the so-called God-fearing of the Judaic-Grecian 
 literature. In Voelter's 'The Revelation of John, etc.,' p. 8, 
 we learn of the theologian Harnaek having discovered 
 in those " fearing the name of God " of Rev. xi. 18. prose- 
 lytes to Judaism. Voelter disputes this and contends for 
 the view, that pagan proselytes to Christianity were there 
 understood. But neither exposition is justified by the text. 
 Those authors are too prepossessed by the notion that a 
 God-fearing must be a proselyte. John has in our opinion 
 merely borrowed in xi. 18, as he did in xix. 5, from Ps. cxv. 
 13. alluding to no proselytes at all. 
 
 Even the conservative Ewald, in his History of Israel, vol. 
 vii., would trace proselytes in the God-fearing of several 
 Psalms. We admit the remote possibility that e. g. in Ps. 
 cxviii. 4, which he also mentions, proselytes were meant. 
 But there is in fact no internal or lingual evidence what- 
 ever for such an assumption. The "Yirai"-or "Abhdai 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. I I I 
 
 Jehovah " of Scripture are generally — and we prefer to 
 think in all instances — nothing but Israelites devoutly 
 revering God. They are identical with the Tsadikim 
 " righteous " or " pious ; " comp. Mai. iii. i6, i8. 
 
 Some of our ancient Rabbis have already indulged in the 
 exegetical venture of discovering proselytes in the "Yirai 
 Jehovah" of some passages of Scripture, thus setting the 
 example to modern writers to do likewise. But they had 
 no more authority for doing* so, than the latter have. In 
 Rabb. Lev. ch. iii., for instance, the God-tearing of P.s. xxii. 
 24, are explained to mean proselytes. But there is actually 
 no plausible reason, why it should have been so explained. 
 The God-fearing of that verse are, we aver, none other as 
 to national extraction than those of the "seed of Jacob and 
 of Israel," named therein afterwards. The latter two 
 appellations are solely parallels of the first, such as 
 Scripture exhibits in numberless instances. Moreover, the 
 Psalmist can surely not be supposed to have distinguished 
 those " God-fearing" by placing them ahead of " the seed 
 of Jacob and Israel," had they been meant for proselytes. 
 Our objection holds good against the same construction 
 put on the God-fearing of Ps. cxxviii. i, in Rabb. Numb, 
 ch. viii. A more forced interpretation than this Rabbinical 
 one could not have been ventured ! ] 
 
 Let us observe that the " worshipers of God " reported in 
 Ant. xiv. 7, 2, as having everywhere joined the Jews in 
 sending contributions to the Temple, cannot have been 
 others than full proselytes. Not only is it not conceivable 
 that half-proselytes should universally have taken such 
 fervid interest in the national sanctuary as to help 
 maintaining it. but the analogy of the use of the title 
 'sebomenoi' in Acts xiii. 43. where it either designates full 
 proselytes or comprises them at least, precludes the 
 supposition that Josephus understood by it only partial 
 converts. When, further, Josephus relates in Wars vii. 3, 
 3, that the Jews were "continuously gaining over large 
 numbers of Greeks through their religious rites and thus 
 making them, after a sort, a portion of themselves," it 
 would show the most ignorant disregard for the known 
 facts of history to assume, that he meant by these Greek 
 converts none but half-proselytes. The Jews had at no 
 time made converts a " portion of themselves after a sort," 
 unless these were previously consecrated by the rites of 
 initiation and solemnly assumed to conform to the Mosaic 
 religion. Moreover, the privileged and flourishing condition 
 
ri2 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 oi the Jewish citizens in which he presents them there, can 
 leave no doubt, that they will have made their own uncom- 
 promising terms to those who wished to join their 
 eommunity as equal members. 
 
 We incline to think that both Josephus and the author of 
 Acts, have in the passages quoted before (comp. Acts, ib. 
 V. 26) employed the appellation sebomenoi " worshiping 
 God " in a generic sense, that is, for all proselytes, whether 
 full or partial, and that in contradistinction from born Jews. 
 This appellation, we further suggest, was commonly pre- 
 ferred in Greek-speaking Jewish communities to the other, 
 foboumenoi "God-fearing," for denoting proselytes, though 
 the latter title corresponded more directly, because literally, 
 to the Scriptural " Yirai Jehovah" (for which latter word the 
 Rabbis were accustomed to use Shamayim " Heaven " ). In 
 Acts, at least, where proselytes are so often noted, the word 
 sebomenoi is almost exclusively employed for proselytes. 
 It strikes us as most probable that the Rabbis, who by-the- 
 way make a very sparse use of the term ' Yere Shamayim,' 
 adhering more generally to the Mosaic name 'Ger,' had 
 originally, like Josephus and the author of Acts in said pas- 
 sages, adopted it as the generic designation of proselytes, 
 without regard to the mode of their admission and 
 the range of Mosaic precepts they were to have aecepted. 
 It stands at all events in such a generic bearing in Rabb. 
 Numb. ch. viii. In other places of the Rabbinical literature, 
 again, it is used in contrast with Ger Tsedek, a "true (cir- 
 cumcised) proselyte;" so in Rabb. Lev. ch. iii.; Mechilta ch. 
 xviii. The question whether in those passages in which 
 the two terms are opposites, the Yere Shamayim corres- 
 ponded entirely to the Ger Toshab of the Talmud, is not 
 so easy to solve, considering the indecision of the olden 
 Rabbis concerning the needed qualification of the latter- 
 named proselyte. There are indeed three relative diver- 
 gent opinions of Rabbis of the second century C. E. 
 reported in B. Abodah Zarah, f 64. But this much 
 may be taken for certain, that the title Yere Sham- 
 ayim was by the Rabbis intended to serve as the 
 equivalent of the Greek terms sebomenos "God-worship- 
 ing" or foboumenos "God-fearing." It varied in application, 
 we propose, as likewise these Greek terms did with the 
 Greek-speaking or writing Jews or Jewish Christians. It 
 once designates the proselytes as a class, and again, in con- 
 trast to the formal converts, the partial ones. 
 
 In the latter application Josephus wished without doubt 
 to characterize Poppaea, the wife of the emperor Nero, when 
 he calls her theosebes " God- worshiping " (Ant. xx. 8, 11). 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. II 3 
 
 She had, we suggest, turned away from polytheism and pro- 
 fessed the Unity of God — as so many women of rank, wealth 
 and superior intelligence appear to have done in the first 
 century of our era in Grecian communities as well (see Acts 
 xiii. $0, xvii. 54). ^^d as many other women, wives of 
 Greeks or Syro-Greeks, are reported to have done (see 
 Wars ii. 20, 2, Acts xvi, 14) — , attending perhaps also at 
 times at Jewish places of worship. 
 
 Likewise were the many "Judaizers" in the cities of 
 Syria, from the description Josephus gives of them in Wars 
 ii. 18. 2, in connection with the affairs at the beginning of 
 the Jewish revolutionary war, mere nominal adherents of 
 Judaism by the profession of Monotheism, the attachment 
 for which they may have solely evinced by visiting the 
 synagogues more or less regularly on days of Divine service, 
 on which latter account the Judaizers everywhere may pre- 
 eminently have received the title sebomenoi "worshipers 
 of God." Their monotheistic leaning on Judaism was pos- 
 sibly, besides, marked by some other Jewish ritual observ- 
 ances, such, that is, as they found congenial to their minds. 
 
 To such kind of proselytes Josephus doubtless adverted 
 also in his polemical treatise 'Against Apion ' ii. 40, where he 
 attributes to "a multitude of mankind " a " great inclination 
 of a long time to follow our religious observances ; " comp., 
 also ib. sect, ii, in which passage, however, formal conver- 
 sions may have to be understood. 
 
 And of such half-proselytes, bearing the name of God- 
 worshiping or God-fearing, there must have been large 
 numbers in Egypt and Cyrene, as Strabo bears witness 
 (cited by Josephus, Ant. xiv. 7, 2), in Syria and the 
 Decapolis, as is attested by Josephus in various places, and 
 in Asia Minor, Macedonia and Greece, as it is evident 
 from many passages in Acts (see besides the before-quoted, 
 xvii. 17, xviii, 4,6, 7). and certainly in the Jewish land 
 proper. 
 
 They were in Palestine as in the other countries of the 
 Greco-Roman world received as welcome additions, although 
 they were reluctant to enter as full members of the Jewish 
 communion by a thorough conversion to Mosaism, as long 
 as they solemnly adopted the monotheistic creed and 
 renounced every vestige of adhesion to polytheism. The 
 Jewish authorities of Palestine may have imposed on such 
 neophites the so-called seven Noachian precepts, although 
 if these alone had been asked, there would, from a Rabbini- 
 cal view, not have been any difference between them and 
 any other pagans who were unconverted, since they were 
 
114 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 incumbent on them as well — an objection which is already- 
 uttered in the Talmud ( B. Ab. Zarah, 1. c.) against the 
 opinion, that those seven precepts constituted the obliga- 
 tion of a Ger Toshab " half-proselyte." 
 
 In the various countries of the Dispersion a thorough 
 renunciation of every trace of polytheism and a sincere 
 profession of the foundation- principle of Judaism may have 
 sufficed for their limited admission. The acquisition of 
 such converts, it is safe to assert, gave nowhere and at no 
 time that satisfaction to the Jewish proselytism which it 
 expected. But it was provisionally contented with such 
 trophies of Monotheism, in especial since it always held 
 the end in view, that by degrees the new converts would 
 submit to the initiatory rite and become devoted to the 
 entire Mosaic religion. Preliminarily they were accorded 
 a distant fellowship with Israel, and surely they enjoyed 
 all the rights and privileges prescribed for the Ger in the 
 Pentateuch. Perfect fellowship, religious-national equality, 
 however, they could attain only by their formal transition. 
 
 Those modern writers therefore, among them Schuerer, 
 ' History of the Jewish People,' and Mommsen, ' Provinces, 
 etc.,' who advance the theory, that those proselytes desig- 
 nated in the Greek-Jewish or Jewish-Christian literature as 
 ' God-fearing ' or ' God-worshiping' ( both terms are used 
 interchangeably in Acts xiii. 26 and 43), were indiscrimin- 
 ately ranked as equal accessions among the race and nation 
 of Israel, at certain periods and in Grecian communities at 
 least, greatly err and misrepresent the status and standard 
 of the pious, national Israel of the ages of antiquity. This 
 theory would already be refuted by the circumstance, which 
 certainly should not have escaped their notice, that the great 
 sensation and alarm which Paul's and Barnabas' anti-cove- 
 nant conversions in Antioch, Syria, had created among the 
 Palestinian Jewish Christians, could never have occurred, 
 had it been the rule in the Grecian communities to recog- 
 nize uncircumcised Judaizers as real Jews. Ewald, History 
 of Israel, vii., has the almost correct perception of those 
 God-fearing proselytes. He lets them be regarded solely 
 as partial members of the Jewish communities. We, on 
 our part, differ from him only in that we ask discernment 
 being used in all places in which the title occurs, since it 
 stands sometimes, as set forth above, generically, including 
 both species, the whole and the partial converts, and may 
 in single cases denote as well whole as partial ones. 
 
 A few cosmopolitan compositions, such as the pseudo- 
 graph moral poem of Phocylides (Ewald adjudges this 
 production to the early times of the Ptolemies), or the 
 
THE SABCATH IN HISTORY. 1 I 5 
 
 address to the Gentiles in the fourth book of the Sibylline 
 Oracles ( written about 80 C. E., and probably of Jewish 
 origin ; so Schuerer ), in which the worship of the true 
 God attended by righteousness of life is more or less 
 directly put forth as the only requisite for a welcome 
 entrance into Israel's communion, must not be held out as 
 the expression of the religious disposition regarding prose- 
 lytes, predominant among the body of the true and orthodox 
 Jews of the Dispersion. ( Hilgenfeld, 'Judaism and Jewish 
 Christianity,' p. 33, attributes this Sibylline book to an 
 Essene or Essene-like Baptist. In this case the book could 
 the less be referred to as offering a standard by which to 
 measure the disposition of orthodox Judaism.) They were 
 individual sentiments, shared yet at most by a few 
 other philosophically cultured Jews. Yet the generality of 
 the Jewish people wou'ld not countenance such liberal 
 ideas, nor permit them being put in practice. 
 
 Neither must, in this question, reference be made to 
 Philo's relative reasonings, and the proposition derived 
 from them, as it is done by Schuerer, that Hellenistic Juda- 
 ism was much more inclined to a free reception of Gentile 
 proselytes, if they but adopted the worship of the true God, 
 because it considered the Abrahamic descent "only as a 
 secondary matter after all." To Philo, we positively 
 object, such descent was by no means only of a secondary 
 concern. It was to him of as primary an importance as it 
 can be imagined to have been to the most devout Rabbi of 
 any school in Palestine. Much as he exalts " the proselyte 
 who has come over to God of his own accord" ( On Curses, 
 ch. vi.), he nevertheless would not hold him equal to the 
 born Israelite. And notvvithstar.ding his philosophical 
 universalism in pronouncing virtue as the only preference 
 valued by God, he firmly adhered to the notion of Israel's 
 special choice from all the nations and predilection by God. 
 
 " Israel has been selected from all mankind and appor- 
 tioned to the Creator and Father as a sort of first-firuit." 
 This superiority is inherited by the race from their most 
 righteous and virtuous ancestors — reasons he in ' On the 
 Creation of Magistrates,' ch. vi. 
 
 Israel, "the most God-beloved of all the nations," was to 
 him appointed and consecrated to be the " priests and 
 prophets to all mankind " ( On Abraham ). 
 
 The twelve tribes over whom Moses pronounced his en- 
 treaties of blessing before his demise, were "of noble descent 
 and noble birth, ranked highest by the Commander, the 
 Maker of all things and Father" (On Humanity, ch. iv). 
 Those blessings, he proposes there, are yet to be fulfilled ; 
 
Il6 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 his implicit view beinj]^, that even the latest generations of 
 Israel would be titled inheritors of that ancestral nobility 
 and superior rank. He argues there, further, that " Moses 
 alone had from the beginning perceived the closest rela- 
 tionship in which the whole nation of Israel would stand to 
 the Divine, a relationship much more genuine than that of 
 blood." (See on all these and kindred passages, Gfoerer, 
 'Primitive Christianity' i. p. 486, sq.). It is, from the fore- 
 going, clear enough, that Philo was as fervently national, as 
 any most orthodox Rabbi could ever have been. He 
 emphasized Israel's nobility of descent and superior estima- 
 tion by God as pointedly, as any orthodox Jew in the heart 
 of the nation's capital could have done. And yet would 
 that author impute to him the universalistic position of 
 accounting ' God-worshiping' converts from paganism, who 
 had not formally passed over to Judaism, as equally privi- 
 leged members of the Jewish nation ! 
 
 What passages from Philo could be alluded to as war- 
 ranting such a position ? In 'On Repentance,' ch. i., where 
 he expresses the loftiest religious and humanitarian senti- 
 ment, that those who have turned from polytheism to 
 monotheism, should be regarded as " our friends and kins- 
 men," he has been but an enthusiastic exponent of Lev. xix. 
 34 and Deut. x. 19. And what else can be justly proved 
 from 'On Monarchy,' ch. vii., but that he reproduced the 
 pith of the various injunctions of justice and benevolence, 
 set forth in the Pentateuch with regard to proselytes .■* All 
 that he has added there of his own mind is, the figurative 
 paraphrase of Numb. xxxv. 15, and the interpretation, pecu- 
 liar to himself and at the same time, we own, most tolerant, 
 of the first part of v. 27 in Ex. xxii., namely, that the former 
 gods of the proselytes should not be blasphemed by the 
 Israelites. As to his Fragment on Exodus xxii. 20, it 
 would indeed, were it genuine, show that he held the cir- 
 cumcision of a proselyte not needful, and consequently 
 justify the inference that he regarded such a new convert 
 as equal with a native Israelite. But whoever looks closely 
 at this piece will at once be convinced of its spuriousness. 
 Philo is there, in commenting on said verse, alleged to have 
 remarked the following : 
 
 " He shows most evidently that he is a proselyte, (and) 
 not one circumcised in the flesh ••' - - for in Egypt 
 the Hebrew race was not circumcised, etc." 
 
 Now we ask, is it possible to suppose that Philo exposed 
 such ignorance as to state the Mosaic type of a proselyte 
 to be invariably — for this import his assertion has, from 
 the antithesis he employs — uncircumcision ? Is it fair to 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. II7 
 
 think him unaware of Ex. xii. 48 ? Again, can he have 
 betrayed .such inacquaintance with Scripture as to put forth 
 that the Hebrews were not circumcised in Egypt .-' Does 
 not Josh. V. 5 attest the contrary } 
 
 These objections will we hope convince the reader that 
 the above Fragment is inauthentic, and can therefore not 
 be brought into play in the question before us. 
 
 Moreover and mainly we object concerning this, as all 
 the other attempts to make, out Philo such a cosmopolitan 
 religionist as to have dispensed a proselyte who had only 
 adopted the worship of the true God, from all the ritual 
 observances of Mosaism, that in the above-cited chapter in 
 'On Curses,' he incontestably shows his ground-sentiment 
 in our problem to be, that the proselyte was inferior to the 
 born Israelite. Freely dilating on Deut. xxviii. 43, in which 
 passage the proselyte is threatened to gain more and more 
 the ascendancy over the Israelite, if he should fall away 
 from God and his commands, he explains as follows : He 
 who has "come over to God of his own accord" will be up, 
 and the man of "noble descent who has adulterated the 
 coinage of his noble birth, will be dragged down to the 
 lowest depths." 
 
 Here he has not only reiterated his innermost view of 
 Israel's inherited and appointed nobility and precedence 
 above other nations, he has also most directly and unmis- 
 takably signified his other perception of the normal super- 
 iority of the born Israelite over the converted heathen. 
 This condition would, he reasons in accordance with the 
 Scriptural threat, be inverted, however, if the Israelite 
 should apostatize from his faith. 
 
 We have then to declare positively and emphatically, 
 that Philo can by no means be accounted as putting forth 
 a universalistic doctrine about proselytes. But even if it 
 could really be proved that he was so liberal in his opinion 
 as Schuerer imputes to him, we could yet not attribute with 
 any semblance of fairness the same cosmopolitan view to 
 the generality of the Hellenistic Jews. It would be the 
 height of frivolous conjecture to assert, that they were in 
 their religious practice guided by the abstract speculations 
 of that Pythagorean-Platonic theosophist and allegorist of 
 Alexandria. They were, we aver, on the contrary as strict 
 in their position regarding the admission of Gentiles as the 
 Palestinian Jews were. They too held the initiatory rite 
 with the body of the Mosaic precepts as incumbent on any 
 Gentile convert, who aspired to be recognized as a full 
 member of the Jewish community. 
 
Il8 THE SAHISATII IN IIISIORY. 
 
 We have yet to continue our argument, and extend it to 
 Jewish Christianity. VVe will subsequently see that these 
 sectaries, too, set such a high value on the initiatory rite, 
 that they insisted on its imposition on converts to their 
 creed, who wished to be on a par of immediate spiritual 
 fellowship with them. That none of the primitive apostles 
 ever thought of dispensing formal converts to the Jewish 
 Christian body from it, we hold to be a positive fact. As 
 to the four well-known decrees set forth in Acts xv., we 
 have passed on them at another point. We maintain that, 
 if they are to claim any genuineness at all, it consists at 
 most in their being ordained for half proselytes to their 
 creed, just as the true Jews had their own so-called seven 
 Noachian precepts for such neophites. But that any of the 
 apostles should have remitted the rite of initiation to 
 those Gentiles passing over to the Christian community as 
 claimants of full membership, is utterly unhistorical. Not 
 in a council meeting, nor even by private transaction — as 
 Baur proposes on the strength of Gal. ii., after positively 
 rejecting the former as inauthentic — can it be supposed 
 that either Peter or James should have approved of Paul's 
 anti-covenant mode of receiving Gentile converts. We, on 
 our part, cannot attribute any more genuineness to Gal. ii. 9, 
 than we can to the liberal speeches of Peter and James in 
 Acts XV. The complete exchange of roles in this tendency- 
 work, in which these two apostles are made Paulinists, is 
 conceded by the foremost critics of our day. They will 
 surely not have deviated from the fixed norm, which they 
 had doubtless carried over to their new relations from 
 their former unmixed Judaism, that Gentile converts were 
 to attain equality with born Israelites only by the initiatory 
 rite and the acceptance of the Mosaic religion (the 
 latter with the Jewish Christians, of course, minus the 
 sacrificial precepts.) 
 
 If the apostle James, the head of the Church, deputed 
 an inquisitorial party to investigate Paul's liberty of anti- 
 Law reception of converts in Antioch (Gal. ii. 12, 4), he will 
 surely not have yielded to Paul afterwards, and sanctioned 
 his course. Nor could Peter who, while at Antioch, was 
 "compelling the Gentiles to live as do the Jews" (ib. 14), 
 have given his approbation to Paul's proceedings, as it is 
 stated there (v. 9). It is an incontrovertible fact that not 
 only in the primitive Jewish Christian church, but among 
 its conservative perpetuators, the Nazarenes, as well as the 
 ascetic sect, the Ebionites, circumcision was the indispensa- 
 ble sacred rite of initiation into Israel's and their own 
 communion. It were not only "certain of the sect of the 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 1 IQ 
 
 Pharisees who believed" that insisted on the complete 
 Judaizing of Christian converts, if they wished to be 
 thoroughly united with them, as the Pauline author of Acts 
 (xv. 5) represents, but all the Jewish Christians together 
 with their leaders did so, as it is evident from Acts xxi. 20- 
 22 itself, and in especial from Paul's, own Epistle to the 
 Galatians (ch. ii ). And it were not only all the Jerusa- 
 lemite Jewish Christians who were indignant at Paul's 
 " liberty," that is, the Jewish lawlessness he preached 
 everywhere, but also those of the cities of Asia Minor and 
 other Grecian communities where he held forth as mission- 
 ary, although the tendency-writer of that work makes out 
 solely the Jeivs of those communities as having been his 
 opponents (xx. 3, 19). The Hellenistic Jewish Christians, 
 all of them, that is, who remained in sympathy with the 
 mother-church — and their number was doubtless much 
 larger than that of the Paulinists of Jewish descent — will 
 have continued to insist on the complete conversion of 
 Gentiles, with the initiatory rite, as they persevered in the 
 strict observance of the latter for themselves. 
 
 That they should with Paul's anti-covenant propagandism 
 have gradually left off circumcision among themselves, as 
 Baur ('Paul,' and ' History of the Church,' etc., p. lOi) pro- 
 posed, lacks every historical warrant. The contempt of cir- 
 cumcision in Ep. Barn, and Ep. of Ignatius proves nothing, 
 for both writers were Gentile Christians. And as to his 
 other argument from the Clementine Homilies, there can 
 be deduced from this work neither an evidence of the 
 leaving off of the rite by the Jewish Christian sect of the 
 Ebionites, nor of their renunciation of it for Gentile con- 
 verts. Baur argues from the circumstance that there is not 
 the least question of circumcision in the Homilies. But 
 since he has to concede himself that in the Contestatio, 
 attached to the Homilies, there is a trace of circumcision 
 being held* indispensable by the then Ebionites, its author's 
 silence about it cannot carry much weight. When we 
 further consider that, according to the most reliable 
 testimony of P^piphanius, the Ebionites held yet in his own 
 time the rite of circumcision as all-important — as we will 
 exhibit hereafter — the non-mention of it in the Homilies 
 can certainly not be accounted for by the unconcern enter- 
 tained for it by their Ebionite author. The omission of 
 circumcision in this pseudo-Clementine work can, we hold, 
 be accounted for, without "having recourse to Baur's forced 
 theory. 
 
120 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 First of all we have to bear in mind the exalted percep- 
 tion which the F^bionites, as Essenic or Essene-like 
 Christians, had of baptisms. To the Essenes their own 
 lustrations were preferable to sacrifices (Ant. xviii. I, 5), 
 and the purifications together with the common meals had 
 to them supplanted the need of the sacrificial ritual of the 
 Temple. The same superior estimate of baptism we meet 
 with in John the Baptist. It had to him doubtless a 
 "mysteriously purifying and absolving power" (Strauss, 
 New Life of Jesus, i. p.' 254). To John is in the pseudo- 
 Clementine Recognitions attributed the institution of 
 baptism instead of the sacrifices (see Hilgenfeld, 'Judaism 
 and Jewish Christianity,' p. 49). The sentiment that 
 baptism for the remission of sins supplied the place of 
 sacrifice, which latter was to be repudiated, is also expressed 
 by the Essenic or Baptist author of the fourth book of the 
 Sibylline Oracles (Hilgenfeld, 1. c. p. 33). 
 
 The attribution then of such an invaluable merit to 
 baptism as a ceremonial medium of atonement b}^ the 
 ascetic Jewish and Messianic sects more or less related to 
 the Essenic stock, renders it quite conceivable that the 
 Ebionite Clementine author, too, should have assigned an 
 exceeding merit to and laid particular and inte:!se stress on 
 baptism for the admission of converts from paganism to 
 the Ebionite Jewish Christianity; see Horn. xiii. 9. But as 
 little as the Essenes and John the Baptist and his adherents 
 wished by their ablutions to disparage circumcision as the 
 Jewish initiatory rite, and, further, as little as the Ebionites 
 of the two centuries consecutive on the time of the com- 
 position of the Clementine writings, ever thought of 
 neglecting the rite of circumcision — as will later be found 
 indisputaj^ly attested — , though they continued to value 
 the baptisms highly, so little must we with Baur assume, 
 that the Ebionite author of the Clementine Homilies 
 intended a disregard for it, because he made no'mention of 
 it in the body of his work. (The words " etiamsi non sit 
 circumcisus" in the Clementine Recognitions, v. 36, which 
 work we possess only in the Latin garb, have doubtless 
 been added by a later reviser, since they do not appear in 
 the similar sentence of the Homilies, which is, besides, 
 essentially different in its tenor from that of the Recog- 
 nitions ; see Hilgenf. 1. c. p. 102). 
 
 Secondly, may the silence of the author of the Homilies 
 be accounted for by the notorious fact, that in his time 
 there rested a dire necessity on Jews and certainly also on 
 Jewish Christians, of keeping conversions of Gentiles 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 121 
 
 attended by circumcision, if any such could be attempted 
 at all, secret, for the edict published by the emperor 
 Antoninus Pius, which strictly interdicted its performance 
 on non-Jews, though it repealed Hadrian's prohibition of it 
 for the Jews themselves ; see Muenter. 1. c. p 99, and 
 Friedlaender, 1. c. 
 
 While we provisionally do not agree with the latter 
 author — the relative paragraphs of the imperial Roman 
 law-compends are not presently accessible to the writer in 
 their original complete form, and he has to depend on the 
 abrupt quotations in modern works — that since the 
 publication of that edict formal transitions to Judaism 
 ceased entirely, and converts thence joined to the Jews 
 could only have been of the class of the ' proselytes of the 
 gate,' that is, half-proselytes, we yet hold it quite conceivable 
 that the existence of the edict alone, though it was not 
 penally enacted or, if so, not penally enforced till Severus' 
 time — the first third of the third century C. E. — should 
 have determined a writer, especially one living in the 
 capital of the Empire, such as the author of the Homilies 
 supposably was, to pass circumcision by in silence. 
 
 To what end. we ask, should he have mentioned it, if it 
 was then, for its imperial prohibition, not feasible for 
 converts from paganism, or if its performance on them was 
 at any rate fraught with some danger to those executing or 
 encouraging it, though perhaps not subject to prompt, 
 judicial punishment .'* 
 
 As to this, we would propose — whilst we, for the cause 
 stated before, declare ourselves open to correction — that 
 Antoninus Pius merely enacted the prohibition of the 
 circumcision of non-Jews, without at the same time making 
 it a punishable offence. We presume this from the fact 
 that it was apparently the emperor Alexander Severus who 
 first "forbade Gentiles to turn Jews under grave penalty'* 
 (Vita 17, cited by Mommsen, as above). Up to this 
 emperor's time the prohibition of Antoninus may have 
 merely lingered on in the letter, without that penalties 
 were awarded against offenders. The Jews and, for aught 
 we can reasonably infer from Justin's Dialogue with Trypho> 
 ch. xlvii., the Jewish Christians also (those whom Justin 
 proposes as not inducing or coercing other (Gentile) 
 Christians to observe circumcision, etc., were doubtless the 
 Jewish Paulinists), may in such condition of abeyance and 
 suspense have, from the exceeding awe of the sacred rite, 
 continued to perform it clandestinely, and with the same 
 
122 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 caution the Talmud relates of the period of Hadrian's pro- 
 scription, on proselytes. Yet such attempts were supposably 
 rare, for the fear of imperial intervention must have 
 weighed heavily even with enthusiastic proselytizers. 
 
 From Severus' time onwards, when severe penalties had 
 been denounced against such offenders, we own that formal 
 conversions to Judaism or Jewish Cnristianity were decid- 
 edly at an end. That his penal injunction was rigidly exe- 
 cuted, even under his several successors, appears from 
 Origen's statement in his treatise 'Against Celsus.' which 
 was written about 250 C. E. In it he mentions that the 
 Sicarians — a nickname which the Romans had then, perhaps 
 already since Hadrian's time, given to every circumcised 
 person, the same that they had, two hundred years, before, 
 used in speaking of the wild faction of the zealots — were on 
 the mere evidence of the rite being performed on them put 
 to death. This he testifies of his own time. The Samari- 
 tans Vvith whom the rite was also held indispensable as the 
 initiatory one of their nation, were then the chief sufferers, 
 the Jews alone having enjoyed the liberty of practising it 
 among themselves. 
 
 On the whole, it may be safe to assume, that formal con- 
 versions to Judaism or the apostolic and Ebionite Jewish 
 Christianity, were rare already from Hadrian's proscription 
 forth. The Jews will consequently from the latter period 
 onwards have shown little zeal for gaining additions to 
 their fold from paganism, since the prospect of the final 
 initiation of the converts was so dim and uncertain. With 
 the Jewish Christians it will have been about the same. 
 For we cannot, as far as the Ebionites are concerned — - 
 and the Nazarenes were surely as strict, if not stricter than 
 they, with regard to Israel's covenant-rite — accept for one 
 instant the theory that, because they prized baptism so 
 highly, even for the renunciation of paganism, they will 
 have remitted it to new converts to their faith and received 
 them as full members without its performance, even during 
 the period that an imperial injunction was laid upon it. It 
 is impossible to the true historian to coincide in such a 
 theory. For the Ebionites did not only hold the pagans 
 as impure and defiling by touch, which- trait Epiphanius 
 relates of them in especial (Haer. xxx. 2, in Hiigenfe'd, 
 'Hist, of the Her. of Prim. Christ.' p. 430), and on account 
 of which they will surely have eschewed all associations 
 with the uncircumcised nf pagan descent, might they even 
 have outwardly joined in the profession of their own creed, 
 not to say that they will not have accorded to the latter a 
 complete religious union with themselves. We have, 
 
THE SABBATH IN HITSORY. 1 23 
 
 besides,, the most authentic testimony of the paramount 
 import ascribed by that sect to the rite of circumcision, 
 which decisively precludes the idea that they should, even 
 during the pressure of its imperial prohibition for Gentiles, 
 have passively connived at its omission and admitted bap- 
 tized converts to their church as members equal with 
 themselves. 
 
 Epiphanius ( Haer. xxx. 26, in Hilgenfeld, 1. c.) repre- 
 sents them as " boasting of circumcision as being the seal 
 and stamp of the patriarchs and the righteous, who had 
 lived according to the Law, by which they ( the Ebionites ) 
 believe to become like unto them ;" also as referring the 
 rite to Jesus and putting forth the argument (proverbially), 
 ' Christ was circumcised, so must thou be circumcised.' 
 
 Is it then thinkable that a sect attributing such sacred 
 religious-national import to circumcision, will at any time 
 have left it off either for themselves or for converts to their 
 new faith, as long as they could exact it from them without 
 peril to themselves ; or that they, in the epoch of great 
 peril for attempts of formal conversions, recognized uncir- 
 cumcised, though baptized, new converts as their peers and 
 united with them on equal terms of Jewish and Christian 
 fellowship .-* Nevermore. 
 
 We can accede to such supposition the less, when we 
 consider that there is unimpeachable testimony, that alike 
 the Ebionites and Nazarcnes continued to impose Mosaism 
 on Gentile converts to their faith, at least till towards the 
 end of the fourth century. Can it then be imagined that 
 they were at any time remiss in urging on them circum- 
 cision, its chief rite.-* 
 
 Of the Mosaic-Jewish character of almost the entire 
 Christian church up to Hadrian's persecution even the 
 Gentile Christian^ writer Sulpicius Severus bears witness 
 (Hist. sacr. ii. 31). Likewise asserts the tolerant Jewish 
 Christian annalist Hegesippus, flourishing in the earlier 
 part of the second half of the second century, that he found 
 everywhere, in Greece and in Rome, the " right doctrine as 
 the Law and the prophets and the Lord proclaim," which is 
 conclusive proof that anti-covenant and anti-Law Paulinism 
 was then not the rule, but the exception, even among 
 foreign and Hellenistic Jewish Christians. 
 
 The predominance of Mosaism with Jewish Christians, 
 and the imposition by them of circumcision. Sabbath and 
 other Jewish rites on Gentile Christians in the reign of 
 Marcus Aurelius, is attested by the discussion in the 
 before-quoted chapter xlvii. of Justin's Dialogue. It is 
 true, he makes there a division between such Jewish pro- 
 
 (9) 
 
124 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 fessors of Christianity, who would insist on the acceptance 
 of the Mosaic religious observances by new Gentile con- 
 verts, without which they refused to hold communion with 
 them, and others who would be indulgent enough not to 
 refuse to live together with them unless they adopted the 
 Jewish rites. And it is sufficiently clear, too, that, although 
 he discusses the subject in the form of a proposition only, 
 he had reference in his mind to the two ways as factually 
 co-existing in his own days. Yet, we cannot, from the 
 other testimonies we possess of the continued imposition 
 of Mosaism at least to the latter part of the fourth century, 
 but suppose, as already indicated above, that the tolerant 
 Jewish Christians, whom he suggests as freely communing 
 with inobservant brethren in the new faith, were none 
 others than Paulinists ; and these were but few. 
 
 To about the same period as Justin's writings, belong the 
 complaints in the polemical Epistles of pseudo-Ignatius 
 about the observance of the Mosaic Law among Gentile 
 Christians ( see Hilgenfeld, 'Jud. and Jewish Christ.' p. 40). 
 
 And that the imposition of the Mosaic religion — minus 
 the recognition of the sacrificial ritual, of course — on 
 Christian converts by both the Jewish sects of the Naza- 
 renes and Ebionites, whatever caution with regard to the 
 initiatory rite they had to observe since the publication of 
 Antoninus Pius' edict, and notwithstanding they had to 
 desist openly from formally exacting the rite at least since 
 Severus' rigid decision, had nevertheless not ceased as late 
 as the latter part of the fourth century, we can derive from 
 the following accounts of Jerome and his contemporary, 
 Augustine. 
 
 Of the Ebionites Jerome asserts (in Isa. i. 12, in Hilgen- 
 feld, ' History of the Her., etc.,' p. 441 ), that they declare 
 the Mosaic Law obligatory upon all, even the Gentile 
 Christians ; and of the "allies" of the Ebionites, that they 
 decide that only the Jews and those of Jewish origin have 
 to observe it. 
 
 Who these allies were, is debatable. Hilgenfeld ib. p. 
 442. admits the possibility of the Nazarenes being under- 
 stood by them. He yet remarks at the same time, that 
 even in this case "it is not provable that they should have 
 dispensed the Gentile Christians from the observance of the 
 Law generally, and already long before Jerome's time." 
 For even Augustine bears yet witness, he argues further, of 
 the Nazarenes of his time, that they " were compelling the 
 Gentiles to Judaize" (in his treatise against Faustus, the 
 Manichaean ). This treatise was written about 400 of our 
 era. And if Augustine adds there, that the Jewish Chris- 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 1 2$ 
 
 tians who force Gentiles to Judaize are " those whom 
 Faustus mentions under the name of Symmachians or 
 Nazarenes, who endure to our own times," we have a suffi- 
 cient testimony for those latter days of Jewish Christianity, 
 as to its vigorous insistance on the Mosaically regulated 
 life of the new converts, who wished to be at one with 
 it. It is immaterial in our argument, whether Augus- 
 tine employed the title Nazarenes as indiscriminately, as 
 did Faustus himself, namely, with the inclusion of the 
 Ebionites. In any case we gain from his statement the 
 evidence, that the Nazarenes were yet in his days, as it was 
 done by the Jerusalemite apostles in those of Paul, compel- 
 ling the Gentile converts to adopt the Jewish religious rites. 
 If he included the Ebionites, we would by it have a cor- 
 roboration of Jerome's assertion as to the same course 
 being pursued by this sect. 
 
 We will not any further enlarge on this and correlated 
 points, most important as they are, for fear of wearying the 
 reader. To sum up, we may state it as thus far sufficiently 
 evidenced, that the generality of the Jewish Christians, 
 whether of Palestine or any other country of the Roman 
 empire — the Paulinists surely excepted — would at no time 
 practically depart from the initiatory rite for themselves, nor 
 assume the authority of dispensing Gentile converts from 
 it for a complete union with themselves. If they continued 
 to impose Mosaism on them till the end of the fourth century, 
 as we elicited in the foregoing, they can certainly not be 
 thought as dropping its chief rite, which they so profoundly 
 revered, for the sake of winning Gentiles over the more 
 quickly and promptly, and as being satisfied with baptizing 
 them, in the " conviction that they could never be won over 
 by any other means," as Baur argues. No, neither the 
 Ebionites and Nazarenes of Palestine, nor any of the 
 Hellenistic Jewish Christians, except the followers of Paul, 
 would for any cause surrender the religious bulwark of the 
 Jewish religious nationality, the initiatory rite, nor depart 
 from the inviolable norm, that it be the indispensable con- 
 dition for a complete union of Gentiles with the Jewish 
 nation. 
 
 How they put themselves right with it in' the period of 
 its imperial interdiction, with or without annexed penalty, 
 we can indeed not definitely ascertain. Yet we meet 
 everywhere with the surest indications that they have at 
 no time disregarded it, even for the converts from paganism. 
 
 And reverting to the initial point of the present 
 discussion we reiterate, that the initiatory rite was in the 
 Greco-Roman world continuously regarded as the indispen- 
 
126 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 sable mark of the Jewish religious nationality, by the pagan 
 writers, as well as by the Jews and all the Jewish Christians, 
 except the small number following Paul or his teaching. 
 
 -■^ Religion is in Cicero, De Nat. Deor. p. 44, defined as 
 "the cult of the country gods." 
 
 2^ Sat. xiv. 103. In the sixth satire, v. 544, he speaks of 
 the Jewish laws as the " Solyman laws," alluding perhaps to 
 Jerusalem as the center of Jewish legislation. Or he may 
 have had in mind the fables as to the name of Jerusalem, 
 which Tacitus mentions (Hist. v. 2). The latter reproduces 
 there two opinions, one according to which Hierosolymus 
 was one of the two leaders of the Jews from Egypt, and 
 another, that Jerusalem received the name Hierosolyma 
 from the Solymi of Homer. 
 
 ^^From the fact, however, that the account of Sifre 
 quoted in our text, names Usha in Galilee as the place of 
 the Jewish Senate to which the ambassadors were dispatched, 
 we had better suppose that the affair happened in the first 
 years of the accession of Hadrian, who was otherwise a 
 very inquisitive — scoffer. For it does not seem that the 
 removal of the Senate to that town took place earlier than 
 towards the end of Trajan's reign, when it was perhaps 
 necessitated through the destruction of Jamnia by Quietus 
 (see on this, Gastfreund, Biography of R. Akiba, p. 20). 
 
 With no less propriety the Rabbinical account of the 
 imperial scrutiny could be taken as referring to the 
 government of Caligula, whose curiosity about Judaism the 
 reader will find well attested in the present work. 
 
 ^* Sifre (1. c.) imputes to the emperor the crafty device 
 and request to the ambassadors, that they should first 
 become proselytes — to gain, presumably, free access to 
 the central seat of Jewish learning, and have ample 
 opportunity of listening to the unreserved discussions of 
 points of Law, and catching their freely disclosed inward- 
 ness, without that they would in the least arouse the 
 suspicion, that their attendance was inspired by anything 
 but a devout eagerness to enlarge their store of knowledge 
 of the authoritative interpretation of the sacred Law by 
 the lore of the Jewish sages. 
 
 ^''Comp. Strabo xvi. 2, in Hausrath 1. c. i. 178: "The 
 Jews designate as God what we call heaven and the universe 
 and the nature of things." Juvenal may ha^e gleaned his 
 information from him. But was not Jupiter himself the 
 sky ? Ennius at least represents him so : " Aspice hoc 
 sublimen candens quem invocant omnes Jovem " (cited by 
 Cicero, De Nat. Deor. ii. 2). 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 12/ 
 
 Juvenal's misrepresentation was possibly original and 
 due to the notice which could broadly be made by all the 
 pagans, that the 'Jews observed and distinguished by some 
 solemnity the appearance of the new moon for the festivals 
 of their calendar. An analogous instance may be adduced 
 from a passage of a Christian Gnostic work, ' The Preaching 
 of Peter,' quoted in the Stromata of Clement of Alexandria 
 (vi.), in which the author admonishes his brethren to 
 worship God " not Jis the Greeks, nor as the Jews do, the 
 latter of whom, believing to be the only ones who know 
 God, are not aware that they worship angels and arch- 
 angels, the month and the moon ; and unless the moon has 
 . appeared they do not celebrate the Sabbath which is 
 called the first (Rosh Hashanah .-*), nor the New Moon, nor 
 Passover, nor the feast of Passover ('heorten;' cp. Matt. 
 XXV. 5). nor the Great Day" (Day of Atonement). Celsus, 
 flourishing in Marcus Aurelius' time, also reproaches, in his 
 'True Account,' the Jews with worshiping the heaven and 
 the angels who dwell therein. (Origines, Contra Celsum, 
 V. 6). Origen repels the reoroach, and nobly defends the 
 Jews who. he protests, being expressly prohibited to bow 
 down to the sun. moon and stars, and truly fearing this 
 awful injunction, can surely not be supposed to worship the 
 heaven and the angels. This custom would be in violation 
 of Judaism. 
 
 ^^ Hausrath, 1. c. i. 178, remarks: "To worship an 
 invisible Being seemed to the Romans a monstrous super- 
 stition and unheard-of credulity. * * -^ Xhe Jews who 
 had dedicated their whole life to the service of their faith 
 as none other had done, seemed to the Romans to be 
 without any religion at all, because it presented no points 
 of analogy with the religions of the Gentiles. It was 
 possible to endure other gods, indeed, but the disdaining of 
 all gods seemed unendurable." 
 
 ^^That Roman writers knew that the Jews observed 
 more fasts than just that of Atonement day, is evident from 
 Tacitus, Hist v. 4, who speaks of " frequent fasts " of the 
 Jews. Among them he may have also adverted in his 
 thought to the Jewish private fasts for disquieting dreams. 
 Rabbinical Judaism had indeed assigned to them a high 
 rank, in the belief that they were a religious means, by 
 which the ill omens they might chance to betoken, could 
 most effectually be warded off. They were held so 
 important, that one of the ancient theologians is reported 
 to have proposed that they might be kept even on the 
 Sabbath. 
 
f28 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 This kind of fasts had perhaps in particular elicited the 
 attention of the Romans, who were so much concerned 
 about the ominous presages of dreams.* The wisest of 
 them connected them with the Providence of their deities 
 (see Friedlaender, as above, p. 532, sq.). 
 
 ^^The reader will we hope not deem it amiss if we insert 
 in this place some sentiments on the Sabbath, the Jewish 
 customs in general, and the Jews as a nation, so very con- 
 genial to those of Seneca, though they were uttered several 
 centuries later. Rutilius, a high-bred Roman of the fifth 
 century, originally coming from Gaul, who made a voyage 
 to his native country in the year 418, has left behind an 
 ' Itinerarium.' from which Lardner (Works, vol. viii. pp. 89- 
 90) reproduces the following as to his Jewish experience. 
 At the port of Faleria he went ashore. At the station he 
 found the Gentile people celebrating the feast of Osiris. Ill 
 luck threw him on the mercy of a Jew who had farmed the 
 revenues of the port, and was at the same time keeping an 
 inn or hotel. In it he stopped. Doubly unfortunately for 
 him it happened, that he had to endure the discomforts 
 which the Jewish Sabbath entailed. And what was still 
 worse, his fare consisted of " mashed shrubs and beaten 
 sea-weed," — a most frugal one indeed. In a furious tone 
 he therefore breaks forth against the Jews, exclaiming : 
 "We despise by right the filthy nation that, itself shame- 
 less, observes circumcision. The root of folly it is, however, 
 that to them cold Sabbaths are of great concern ; but their 
 heart is still colder than their religion. Every seventh day 
 is (with them) devoted to base inactivity — a weak image, 
 so to speak, of a weary God -'' "" "" "" Oh, that Judea 
 had never been subdued, in the wars of Pompey and 
 under the command of Titus ! The contagion of that 
 exterminated (? ) pestilence is spreading wider and wider. 
 The conquered nation is oppressing its victors." 
 
 Have we not in this last sentence a close resemblance to 
 Seneca's lament over the wide-spreading influence of 
 Judaism .'' Rutilius yet differs from him so far that he 
 does not reflect on the Jewish proselytism proper, but 
 rather on the spread of the Jewish people all over the 
 Roman empire, and their acquisition of important official 
 and social positions, by which he exaggeratingly charges 
 they were making the Gentile society dependent on them- 
 selves. This gave him deep chagrin. The more so, 
 because he was himself a sufferer from Jewish "oppression," 
 on the Sabbath of his host. That he decries the Sabbath 
 observance of the Jews as the root of folly, is partly 
 accounted for by the sour temper which this same experi- 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. I29 
 
 ence had occasioned in him. In the main he has, in the 
 condemnation of the Sabbath for the inactivity of its 
 observers, fallen in with Seneca, Juvenal and Tacitus. 
 New he is only in his blasphemous sarcasm, that the 
 Sabbath was " much like a weak image of a weary God," 
 insinuating thereby without doubt, that the Sabbath with 
 its lack of manifest energy appeared as the type of an 
 exhausted or powerless God, and that the Jews worshiped 
 such a one. 
 
 ^^ That Juvenal was, for all the slight with which he 
 treats the Sabbath and other Jewish ceremonies, by far not 
 such a vehement antagonist of the Jews as Tacitus, we 
 have already noted above. The latter was the veritable 
 Stcecker of his generation. His attacks were direct bolts 
 of malice and hate. Juvenal, however, exposed the Jewish 
 customs more in the form and tone of an indirect criticism. 
 He wished to set forth, in his 14th satire, the perverse 
 parental influence on the Roman youth. The Jewish mode 
 of life of converted Roman parents, which he held so sub- 
 versive of the true Roman virtues, offered itself to him as a 
 fit object for such illustration. A.s to his contempt for the 
 Jewish nation, it surely was not so deep and bitter as that 
 which he cherished against the Greeks — a circumstance 
 already empliasized above with regard to Cicero's onset 
 against the Jews. 
 
 Greeks, Syrians and other oriental people with whom 
 Rome seems to have been flooded in Juvenal's time, were, 
 from the language he puts in his friend Umbricius' mouth, 
 hated much more than the Jews, not only by him, but most 
 likely by many other Roman men of letters and common 
 citizens. Against the Greeks he was put out most. They, 
 though the fewest of the "dregs" of society, as the satirist 
 styles those aliens, had yet through their "quick compre- 
 hension, desperate impudence, and ever ready and most 
 impetuous talk," succeeded in insinuating themselves into 
 the noble and rich families of Rome, and became their 
 actual " souls and rulers.'' That the "hungry little Grecians" 
 should by their bland and cunning ways acquire the best 
 houses and crowd out the better citizens, whose " infancy 
 had breathed the air of the Aventine," offended him, as 
 doubtless many other natives, much more sensitively, than 
 did the occasional sight of some poor Jews, we may set down 
 as certain. And it were these exclusively, it seems, whom 
 he at times encountered, or at least had in mind, in writing 
 the passages of those satires, which we will note farther 
 on. The thrifty and wealthy of them — and it will from one 
 of our above discussions appear as very probable, that a 
 
130 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 good number of this class existed in Rome and belonged 
 to a long settled colony of the times anterior to Pompey's 
 conquest of Judea — he seems not to have known or cared 
 to notice. 
 
 In attempting to show, that Juvenal had not despised the 
 Jews in the same degree he did the Greeks, we must not 
 be understood as intending to palliate the odiousness of 
 his reviling remarks on the former, which we meet in his 
 fourteenth satire. For we are well aware from other of his 
 compositions, that he cherished the most decided disregard 
 to the Jews. His intolerant gibe of those wretched Jews 
 whose only property was, to use his own phrase, "a basket 
 and hay" (Sat. iii. 14; vi. 542), proves sufficiently how 
 bigoted he was. He could not brook to see even the pauper 
 Jews, forsaken creatures as they were, because homeless 
 and exiled through the late national catastrophe, and per- 
 haps before doomed to slavery and but recently emanci- 
 pated, enjoy the scanty shelter and wretched accommoda- 
 tions, which they found in a grove in the eastern outskirts 
 of the city, formerly consecrated to the nimph Egeria, but 
 now let out to them at a fixed rent. Here those destitute 
 Jews, possibly because they had not found room enough in 
 the established quarter of their brethren beyond the Tiber, 
 were encamped, putting up perhaps layers of hay or straw 
 as couches, on which to rest their weary and foot-sore 
 bodies. Here those unfortunate Jews, victims of the disas- 
 trous war of the revolution, lived and died. (A cemetery 
 has since been discovered in that vicinity, attesting the 
 separate habitation of some Jews there; Garrucci, in 
 Friedlaender, Darstell. aus der Sittengesch. Rom's, iii. 576)- 
 The invidious satirist grudged them even those dingy 
 abodes, because — the Muses were by them forced out of 
 their sacred dwelling-place. 
 
 That his knowledge of the Jews was, as we have already 
 observed before, exclusively or at least very largely confined 
 to the poor of them, may be deduced not only from satires 
 iii. 16 and v. 543, but also from iii. 296. And those he at 
 once degrades, too, to the low level of beggars. Possibly 
 he noticed here and there among poor Jews, that their 
 utensils consisted in no more nor better things than " a 
 basket and hay." It may be, too, that he once noticed 
 a poor Jewish woman, following the unenviable profession 
 of a fortune-teller, "beg in the ear" of an inquisitive 
 Roman noblewoman, and offer, for a pittance, to disclose 
 the future to her, for " the Jews were selling any kinds of 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 131 
 
 dreams for the smallest fee." But" was all this, if it trans- 
 pired in fact, sufficient ground for insinuating, as he does 
 in his writings, that the Jews were a sort of shiftless 
 vagrants ? 
 
 On the other side, we ought not to make such a reproach- 
 ful account of this disparagement of the Jews, considering 
 that he once, in a manner, allowed himself to be identified 
 with them. In the above-cited third satire he describes 
 how he was once mistaken for a Jetvish beggar. He 
 introduces there a drunken rowdy who attacked him as he 
 once walked alone of a night along some streets of the 
 city. Drunken ruffians were, as he remarks, in the habit of 
 rudely and abruptly attacking solitary people of mean 
 estates, who would naturally pass the streets without 
 attendants carrying torches before them, in which those of 
 better station could indulge. The assailant suddenly 
 stopped and made him answer the question, What coarse 
 meal he had for supper.-* and, Where he put up; in what 
 proseiicha he should look for him } 
 
 How shabby must his appearance have been, if he could 
 be mistaken for a Jewish mendicant ! 
 
 His description makes, furthermore, the inevitable 
 impression, that he had not only himself associated in his 
 mind the Jews with street-beggars, but was prompted by 
 the inglorious design to represent the Jews as a class as 
 being in the low state of mendicancy. 
 
 As to the question occurring in said satire, " In what 
 synagogue shall I seek thee T we may in conclusion add, 
 that it at the same time offers us a bit of valuable informa- 
 tion. We infer from it that the custom of beggars and 
 transient poor taking up their nightly abodes in synagogues, 
 either in the apartment adjoining the place of worship 
 proper, which was used as a school-room for children, or in 
 the room of worship itself, had not only existed among 
 oriental Jews ( see B. Pesachim, f lOi ), but apparently also 
 in Rome. 
 
 A sentiment congenial to that of Juvenal, is presented to 
 us by the epigrammatist Martial, his older contemporary 
 and friend. He is notorious for his mercenary, base flat- 
 tery of the emperor Domitian, as well as a number of 
 courtiers and wealthy patrons among the civilians. His 
 rhymes were sold to the highest bidders. His extreme 
 efforts to magnify the emperor to the sky, met, it is true, 
 with no ready response to his suit for a considerable 
 sum of money. Yet there were others weak enough to be 
 taken in by his fawning encomiums. They paid him well 
 for them. It was perhaps, we suggest, for that refusal by 
 
132 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 the emperor, that he avenged himself on him after his 
 death by representing him as " the monster of the times, 
 without one virtue to redeem it "( see translator in Bohn's 
 Library). Similarly the case may have been regarding his 
 bitter sentiment against the Jews. It may have been due to 
 the vexatious experience he made with a certain Jewish 
 poet. In epigram 94, book xi., he addresses himself to a 
 rival composer of verses, of the Jewish persuasion, rebuking 
 him sharply for carping at his writings, and for the worse 
 trespass of stealing his verses. But for all this he could 
 pardon him, had he not additionally attempted to seduce 
 the object of his affection. For this most grievous offence 
 he challenges him in these words : " You deny that such is 
 the case, and swear by the temple of Jupiter. I do not 
 believe you ; swear, circumcised poet, by Anchialus." That 
 our conjecture is not so far-fetched, will be conceded by all 
 those whose knowledge of Jewish affairs extends below the 
 surface. It is an undeniable fact, that the acrimony of 
 many a Jew-hunter in some European countries, even in 
 modern days, could in some instances be traced to the 
 refusal of a loan or an important favor on the part of a 
 single or several Jewish persons. 
 
 Martial may then have identified the Jews with the class 
 of mendicants on account of his ill-will toward his double 
 Jewish rival. Be this as it may, we should at any rate 
 least expect that he, beggar himself — he was constantly 
 asking his patrons for presents, as for a doga, a cloak, etc. 
 (see Friedlaender, Darstell. aus der Sittengesch. Rom's, iii. 
 398) — would deal so angrily with the poor Jews, as he 
 really does in the seventy-fifth of the xii. book of his 
 epigrams. Replying in it to the interrogation of a friend, 
 why he went so often out of the city and repaired to his 
 small farm at (or near) " arid Nomentum," he states as the 
 reason the unbearable din of city life. A tremendous noise 
 was constantly disturbing him during the day, one kind of 
 which was the endless annoyance (of himself, personally .'') 
 by " the Jew taught by his mother to beg" (a matre doctus 
 nee [sc. cessat] rogare Judaeus). 
 
 He evidently wished to picture the Jews here as a class 
 of beggars, importuning people on the streets for gifts, and 
 being with their petitions loud enough to disturb him, the 
 musing poet, even in his study, though it was situated as 
 high as the third story of a house on the Ouirinal ! 
 
^\)e Sabbatl7 \r) JHistory 
 
 Dr. Isaac Schwab, 
 
 RABBI 
 
 ST. JOSEPH, MO. 
 
 PART II. 
 
 She^sibbath in primitive Qhi^'stianity 
 U/ith Jesus and the ^postles. 
 
 St. JosBph, Mo 
 
 St Jo««ph Staam Printing Co 
 
 1889 
 
Copyright, December, li 
 by 
 Dr. Isaac Schwab. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 Nothing daunted by the great indifference with which 
 the author's Part First published just a year ago was 
 treated at the hands of all but a few of those who were 
 most expected to be devoutly concerned for a literary pro- 
 duction of this kind, he now launches out the Second. 
 Neither does he allow any sullenness to come on him and 
 get the better of his temper of mind in the recollection of 
 the many annoying experiences which he underwent in his 
 effort at interesting in his first and, again, in this second 
 book those whom he so safely anticipated to be alive to 
 their importance and become his ready patrons. He is, on 
 the contrary, buoyed up with strong hope that " The 
 Sabbath in History" will gradually make its way into many 
 libraries of both Jews and Christians, and even force 
 recognition as a deserving contribution to religious-histor- 
 ical science from that large class habitually apathetic to 
 serious Jewish literature. He trusts withal that Providence 
 will aid him in carrying through his plan of putting before 
 the world a complete history of the sacred Sabbath. 
 
 He contemplates publishing the Third Part which is to 
 close the first volume of his work, next spring. There will 
 follow a second and third volume ; the one treating of the 
 Sabbath in olden Rabbinism and in the Middle Ages, the 
 other bringing its history from thence to our own times. 
 
 It was mainly economical causes that decided him to 
 narrow the range of the present treatise to the period of 
 Jesus and the Apostles. ' The Third Part will contain these 
 divisions : The Sabbath with Paul and other Hellenistic 
 Jewish Christians ; the Sabbath with the Jewish Christian 
 sects of the Nazarenes and Ebionites ; and the Sabbath as 
 regarded by Gentile Christians till the fourth century C. E. 
 
136 
 
 I'RKKACK 
 
 The author confidently expects that every enlightened 
 reader will give him credit for manifesting in the present 
 book a conscientious seriousness as well as scientific 
 honesty. As to its other merits let the book answer for 
 itself Regarding the various deductions and assertions 
 given forth in it, he submits .them to competent and 
 unbiased critics who will, he hopes, accurately and cau- 
 tiously ponder before pronouncing on them. If that be 
 done, let their verdict come forward frankly. By the fric- 
 tion of critical estimate there may yet more clear light be 
 created to be thrown on the subject-matter of his book. 
 History, being, as Cicero says, " the light of truth," would 
 thus but the more essentially be benefited. But let the 
 judgment of the critics be uttered with due decorum, the 
 same the author himself affirms to have maintained through 
 his entire book. 
 
 May it win acceptance and good graces from the intellec- 
 tual reading public for whom it is intended. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 The Position of Jesus ou the Mosaic Law 141 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 Jesus' Heterodox Position even ou the Decalogue 14ti 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Jesus Halts between the Acknowledgment of the Authority of 
 
 the Mosaic Law aud the Problem of its Abrogation . 149 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Ceremonial Religion Recedes in Jesus' Mind and Teaching 
 
 before his All-absorbing Messiahdom ir>2 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Jesus' Indiffereuce to the Jewish Ceremonial Religion Account- 
 able also by his Prophetical Claim 155 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 Jesus' IndifiEerent Treatment of Ceremonial Religion Owing 
 perhaps also to Some Peculiar Messianic Traditions aud 
 Popular Notions 158 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 Jesus' Position on the Sabbath - His Two Sabbath Coutrovei"- 
 
 sies l(jl 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 The Other Four Sabbath Controversies in the Gospels .... 174 
 
1^.8 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 Retrospect as to Jesus' Positiou ou the Sabbath 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 The Sabbath with Jesus' Disciples in his Lifetime .... 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 The Sabbath with the Disciples of Jesus after his Death 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 The Jewish Christians Ride on Animals on the Sabbath (?) 
 
 Page. 
 
 182 
 
 lyi 
 
 201 
 
 233 
 
 Note 34 ( marked in the text beside the last word on page 145 ) : 
 The Judicial Persecution of Jesus and of Some Jewish 
 Christians after him for Antinomian Infidelity, By the 
 Statute of Numbers xv. 30, 31 — A New View 
 
 Rest of Notes 
 
 Excursus A , 
 
 Excursus B , 
 
 241-273 
 273-297 
 298-301 
 302-314 
 314-318 
 319-320 
 
 Excursus C 
 
 Excursus D 
 
TH[ SABBATH IN PRIMITIVE CHfilSTIANIT!, 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE POSITION OF JESUS ON THE MOSAIC LAW. 
 
 We have in our yet unpublished work "The Mineans of 
 the Rabbinic Writings," of which one division, "The Essenes 
 as Mineans," and again another part, appeared about two 
 years ago in the 'American Israelite,' set forth the point of 
 view thus far entirely left out of sight by both Christian and 
 Jewish writers on early Christianity, that one chief cause of 
 the intense aversion of all classes of orthodox Jews against 
 Jesus was, his heterodox doctrine about the authority of the 
 Mosaic Law. He surely did not hold its Divine authority 
 in all its enactments and enunciations, as was the concep- 
 tion of the faithful Jews. The dogmatic expression for this 
 orthodox belief was, Torah min ha-shamayim. "the Torah is 
 from Heaven" (God). Alike the Sadducees and the Phari- 
 sees, and with the latter the large body of the Jewish peo- 
 ple, firmly maintained and adhered to it. Only the Essenes 
 with their rejection of sacrifice and defection from the 
 national worship of Israel as established on the basis of the 
 Mosaic ritual, must have contested the truth of that dogma. 
 They will, as we proposed in that disquisition on the 
 Essenes, either have heretically declared the relative Mosaic 
 ordinances interpolated and not forming part of the original 
 law of God, as their later Ebionite kindred, judging from 
 the Clementine Homilies, contended, or treated them in 
 practice with total unconcern, explaining them, at most, 
 figuratively, as types of certain virtues and moral qualities^ 
 in the manner of the Alexandrine allegorizers. 
 
 (2) 
 
142 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 That the latter mode of Scripture interpretation subsisted 
 with the Essenes, is testified by Philo, in 'On the virtuous 
 being also free,' ch. xii. Having before credited them with 
 cultivating "most strenuously the ^MzVrt/ part of philosophy, 
 in which work they employ as teachers the ancestral laws," 
 he states afterwards, when he relates that the exposition of 
 Scripture followed its public reading on the Sabbath, that 
 "most (Mosaical precepts) are studied with them by the aid 
 of symbols," that is, by that method aiming to discover a 
 hidden ethical meaning in the material letter. 
 
 That they were also, on the other hand, eclectic with 
 regard to the Mosaic precepts, may be gathered from 
 Josephus who, in Wars, ii. 8, 6, attests their zealous occu- 
 pation with the Scriptures of the ancients, in which they 
 chiefly "choose those precepts conducive to the benefit of 
 the soul and the body." This statement does, it is true, not 
 at once imply a rejection of the rest of the Mosaic precepts, 
 which did not afford to them any intellectual or physical 
 benefit. But if we are permitted to trace the Ebionite pre- 
 tense of the spuriousness of the sacrificial ordinances and 
 many other appointments and utterances of the Pentateuch 
 to their original stock, the Essenes (and why should we not 
 be?), that eclecticism gains the substantial character of a 
 total Essenic repudiation of all those parts of the Mosaic 
 dispensation, contrary to their own philosophico-ascetic 
 doctrines. The above alternative that they may have 
 declared the sacrificial ritual of the Pentateuch as spurious 
 and not coming from the "God-inspired Moses," not to 
 say, from God, will accordingly have a greater likelihood. 
 
 That they thus trampled the orthodox dogma of the 
 Divine origin of the entire Torah under foot, and must for 
 this apostasy alone have passed as heretics, will appear to 
 the reader as self-evident. Jesus, having shared with the 
 Essenes the opposition to the sacrificial Temple service,^' 
 cannot possibly have believed in the Divine authority of the 
 sacrificial ritual as ordained in the Pentateuch, or in the 
 
 See Excursus A. 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. I43 
 
 Divine command of the manifold ritual institutions laid down 
 in it as pertaining to or connected with the national-relig- 
 ious worship of Israel. 
 
 That opposition of Jesus incontrovertibly results from the 
 account of the deposition of the witnesses made at his trial 
 before the Synhedrin (Matt. xxvi. 6r, comp. xxiv. 2; Mark 
 xiv. 58); from Matthew xxi. 12, and parallel of Mark xi. 16, 
 17; from Matthew xii. 6 (we do not refer to xxiv. 2, and par- 
 allel in Mark xiii. 2, for these sentiments were added later, 
 after the accomplished fact); from his repeated employment 
 of the phrase adopted from Hosea, "I will have mercy and 
 not sacrifice," and this even on occasions and in connections 
 where there was no logical need of it whatever (see Matt. 
 ix. 13, xii. 7); from his emphasis of the purpose of the Tem- 
 ple to be a house of prayer [only] (Matt. xxi. 13, Mark xi. 
 17); and further, from the fact that he is not known from 
 the Synoptics — only from the fourth gospel — to have ever 
 made any festival journeys to Jerusalem (so Keim; see also 
 Strauss "A New Life of Jesus," i. 234). His last expedition 
 thither about the Passover season had a mere Messianic ob- 
 ject. Even his Paschal supper — the last one of his life- 
 shows no other concern, premeditated or only incidental, 
 than for the exhibiting of his own symbols of bread and 
 wine, and not for the Paschal lamb itself. The latter, while 
 we must not dispute the Synoptical account of its prepara- 
 tion for his immediate circle of adherents, can, at most, be 
 regarded as being prepared out of accommodation to cir- 
 cumstances, but not from a sense of religious obligation on 
 his part. For, if he had indeed laid any value on the 
 Paschal sacrifice, its flesh served at the meal would by all 
 means have offered a much more appropriate object of 
 reflection with regard to remission of sins, than could bread 
 and wine. Moreover, such preparation from the sense of 
 ceremonial obligation, would have conflicted most seriously 
 with his obviously settled opposition to all sacrifice. 
 
 And surely is his denial of the Divine authority of the 
 Mosaic Law again proved from his antithetical arraign- 
 ment, in the Sermon on the Mount, of oaths, which are at 
 any rate sanctioned in the Pentateuch (see Deut. vi. 13, 
 
144 f^HE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 Numb. XXX. 3); of the judicial laws of retaliation (see 
 Exodus xxi. 22-25, Lev. xxiv. 19, 20, Deut. xix. 16-21); of 
 the law of divorce (see Deut. xxiv. i) ; and, above all, from 
 his avowing himself the Lord of the Sabbath (which self- 
 evidently implied also all the Mosaic holy days). 
 
 Whether Jesus had adopted the philosophical anti- 
 anthropomorphic view of the Law being given through 
 angels,* a view expressly maintained by the Hellenists 
 Stephen (Acts vii. 38, 53) and Paul (Gal. iii. 19), or the 
 opinion that it had an exclusively human, Mosaic, origin, 
 he had in either case set himself radically at variance with 
 the large body of the orthodox Jews. The second alterna- 
 tive of his attributing to the Mosaic Law a mere human 
 authority, seems more plausible, from his open, and, at 
 times, implied contest against many Mosaic enactments, 
 and in especial from his following utterance. 
 
 To defend his attitude towards the institution of divorce 
 expressed in his noted Sermon (Matt. v. 31, 32; comp. Mark 
 x. 3 sq.), he represents Moses, in his reply to the Pharisees 
 questioning him on his pronounced antagonism to it (in the 
 correct form delivered by Mark, x. 2, which Keim, 'History 
 of Jesus,' V. 28, maintains to be the original), as the arbitrary 
 deviser and framer of the respective ordinance (Mark, ib. 5> 
 Matt. xix. 8). On this occasion, it would appear, he has 
 once for all explicitly disclosed his mind on the origin of 
 the Mosaic dispensation. This disclosure was, that he held 
 it as having proceeded — if in its parts, so logically in the 
 whole — from Moses, and was not immediately communi- 
 cated or even directly inspired by God. Nay, he has by that 
 sharp contrast between an original law of God and its later 
 alteration by Moses, which he put forth at that controversy, 
 laid himself open to the suspicion that he entertained the 
 enormously un-Jewish notion, perhaps already deeply 
 rooted in the Jewish Essenism, but appearing in t e rankest 
 growth in Christian Essenic productions of the second cen- 
 tury, C. E., that all parts of the Mosaic ritual not congenial 
 with a self-created religio-philosophical system, were to be 
 adjudged spurious. 
 
 * See Excursus B. 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. I45 
 
 Even if Jesus could be thought as totally disconnected 
 with Essenism, — what will at all times rennain impossible 
 to substantiate, so strong and so manifold are his points of 
 contact with that heterodox sect, — we would at any rate, 
 in consequence of that unqualified antithesis, have to assert, 
 that he had by it paved the way for the generalizing dis- 
 tinction of the later Christian Essenes between the "true 
 things "of the Law, as coming from the God-inspired Moses, 
 and the spurious ones in it, as being written down by some 
 one after the death of Moses (Clem. Hom. iii. 47), who was 
 instigated by the evil one to do so (ib. ii. 38). Jesus has, it 
 is true, not extended his contrast farther than between God 
 and Moses. But such a dogmatic digression once made, it 
 was on its authority, as being that of the "true prophet" 
 (Jesus), who was esteemed so supremely by the Ebionites, 
 easily enlarged by this'sect. The later Ebionites who dis- 
 tinguished no more between an original lavv of God and a 
 succeeding one of Moses, but between an unwritten tradi- 
 tional, merely God-inspired law of Moses (their marked 
 abhorrence of every thought of. materiality connected with 
 God excluded of itself the assumption of anj^ law being 
 given by God to man) and a written law, in which true and 
 false things were mixed (the former alone being "from the 
 tradition of Moses"), and, again, between those true and 
 false things themselves, the latter of which were those not 
 consonant with their peculiar religio-philosophical system 
 (see Clem. Hom.), have doubtless started from the platform, 
 the outlines of which were given by Jesus. 
 
 In whatever light the antithesis in point in its re-asser- 
 tion at that polemical encounter may be viewed by different 
 expounders and readers, no one will be able to dispute, that 
 Jesus has in his outspoken negative position on divorce, and 
 the manner of his antagonism to it, positively disowned the 
 Divine authority of this ordinance, thus deserting the ortho- 
 dox Jewish belief that all Mosaic ordinances alike have a 
 Divine origin. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 JESUS' HETERODOX POSITION EVEN ON THE DECALOGUE. 
 
 In the above-noted unpublished work of ours we main- 
 tain, that Jesus has not attributed Divine authority even to 
 the Decalogue. We prove this, first, from the expression 
 he used in the Sermon on the Mount, " it was said by them 
 of old" (Matt. V. 2i), instead of giving it, in the ordinary 
 way of the orthodox Jews, " the Torah says," or, to avoid 
 all misconstruction of his intent, "God's word teaches us." 
 The phrase as employed by him, has by all means an eva- 
 sive character. We can compare it, with Philo's " men of 
 old," when he speaks of the rite of circumcision (Bohn's 
 Libr. ed. iii. p. 176). That Jesus has once, in a controversy, 
 referred to the fifth commandment of the Decalogue as 
 "the commandment of God" (Matt. xv. 3), cannot be ac- 
 counted an offset to the impression which that phrase in 
 his Sermon necessarily makes. It can easily be supposed 
 that the spirit of controversy had elicited that acknowledg- 
 ment. For he had to bring it out in a direct way and with 
 some emphasis, in order to set forth the contrast which he 
 wished to illustrate with a striking pointedness. 
 
 Secondly, Jesus' attempt at correcting and improving 
 upon part of the Decalogue in the Sermon, cannot possibly 
 harmonize with a perception of its immediate revelation by 
 God. God's word, believed to be such, can never be sub- 
 jected to improvement. If the objection is made, that 
 single reforms of Mosaic ordinances were attempted even in 
 orthodox Judaism, from the earlier age of Ezekiel down to 
 the period of Rabbi Judah, the Patriarch, we have to assert 
 in reply, that no spirit of opposition to them, or denial of 
 their Divine origin, moved the single representative men 
 or collective authorities to decide upon respective altera- 
 tions. It is provable that the Jewish reforms undertaken 
 at certain periods of antiquity, were due either to such 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. I47 
 
 economical conditions as demanded most urgently a sus- 
 pension of this or that law, or, as was more frequently the 
 case, to the sincere belief and conviction that the best 
 interests of Judaism required a judicious setting aside of a 
 certain ordinance, that the more essential part of the Mosaic 
 ritual and withal the monotheistic principle and practice 
 itself, should suffer no impairment. Furthermore, all or 
 nearly all such alterations made at times by Jewish author- 
 ities of old, were intended only as temporary, and not as 
 total abolitions. Even if the latter were occasionally 
 intended, it was done with the direct aim of giving a more 
 solid support to other laws held too essential, and affecting 
 too deeply the very substance of Judaism to be even tem- 
 porarily neglected. No one of those reforming men and 
 councils ever presumed to question the Divine authority of 
 the body of the Mosaic ritual or any portion of it, or to 
 suggest a human improvement of the purport and bearing 
 of the Law, which all the orthodox truly believed to be 
 Divinely given in its entirety. None of them would pre- 
 sume to place the wisdom of their own ' I ' above that of 
 the 'I Am', the Author of that irrevocable Law. It was 
 only Jesus who practically did so. 
 
 Thirdly, no true believer of the Divine authority of the 
 Decalogue would ever have dared to explain away any 
 single one commandment of it, as we see that Jesus did 
 with the third, indirectly at least, by his unqualified declara- 
 tion against all oaths (Matt. v. 33, 34). 
 
 Fourthly, we will ask, could he, had he really attributed 
 Divine authority to the Decalogue, have left out, in the 
 enumeration of the commandments, the observance of 
 .which insured entrance into the world to come (see Matt, 
 xix. 16 sq.), all the first four commandments ? Could he — 
 and this question is more directly to the purpose of our 
 main theme — have eliminated from it the Sabbath observ- 
 ance, if he believed it directly enjoined by God as the fourth 
 commandment ^ Surely, if the observance of any of the 
 Divine commands conditioned an Israelite's share in the 
 good of the future world, must the Sabbath have been con- 
 sidered of such importance by any orthodox Israelite. 
 
148 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 None such would exempt or omit the Sabbath law from the 
 range of those religious obligations, indispensable for 
 acceptance with God for rewards and benefits here and 
 hereafter. 
 
 The Sabbath must then have appeared to Jesus as not of 
 Divine origin,— a conclusion which is the more indisputably 
 confirmed by his assertion about himself: "For the Son 
 of man is lord of the Sabbath" (Matt. xii. 8), by which he 
 meant to state that his own authority had superseded that 
 inherent in the Mosaic Sabbath law. This, he pretended, 
 had to yield to his own directions, whenever he saw fit to 
 give them. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 JESUS MALTS BETWEEN THE ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF THE 
 AUTHORITY OF THE MOSAIC LAW AND THE PROBLEM OF 
 ITS ABROGATION. 
 
 Our view, also elaborated in our work on the 'Mineans' 
 is, that Jesus, while evidently disavowing the Divine author- 
 ity of the Mosaic Law, even of the Decalogue, has yet not 
 openly declared the ceremonial religion of Israel as abro- 
 gated. But since it cannot be denied that from the nega- 
 tion of the Divine authority of the Law to the negation of 
 its permanent obligation, there was but one step, Jesus 
 must be regarded as the spiritual author of the later grow- 
 ing .pretension of its abolition, which men like Stephen, 
 Barnabas and Paul put forth in a decided, radical way. 
 Jesus only dropped the seed of this heterodoxy in the soil 
 of Christianity. The harvest was later reaped by the Hel- 
 lenistic and Gentile Christians. These did not hesitate, in 
 view of the unquestionable opposition of Jesus to the tradi- 
 tional estimation of the ceremonial Mosaism, to recognize 
 him as endowed with the authority of abolishing it. They 
 interpreted his religion —as they were warranted to do 
 from his delivered speeches and declarations — as being 
 more or less directly a system of natural precepts. In this 
 natural Jesus-religion the Decalogue, or rather Hexalogue, 
 assumed a superior place. [See Irenaeus, Ag. Her. iv. 13, 
 where he dilates on the natural Lazv which Jesus has not 
 annulled, referring to Matt. v. 21 seq That the Decalogue 
 became to the Christians the real body of the Law, strictly 
 so called, as the synopsis of Mosaism, is evident from the 
 Apostolical Constitutions, vi. 20, et passim, and especially 
 from the Talmud, B. Berachoth f 12, where we read, that 
 "the Jewish communities outside of Jerusalem wished to 
 follow the Temple usage of reciting, at the morning ser- 
 vice in the court-hall, the Decalogue immediately before 
 
I50 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 the Shema, but that the authorities (would not permit them 
 to, as they) had already (even for the service in the Tem- 
 ple) abolished this custom on account of the objection of 
 the Mineans." ■•'■ By these Mineans were meant heretical 
 folks, prominently the Jewish Christian schismatics. That 
 in very fact not the entire Ten Words formed the Law of 
 Christianity, but only the six which Jesus had named to the 
 inquirino- rich young man (instead of the tenth, which is, 
 according to his exposition in INlatt. v. 28, already partially 
 included in the seventh, he uses the command of Jove to 
 the neighbor, ib. xix. 19; Mark x. 19 uses instead, pecu- 
 liarly enough, "Do not defraud," which restraint does surely 
 not occur in the Decalogue), appears from a most inter- 
 esting passage of the Tosifta, Shebuoth iii. 6, where the 
 discussion between Rabbi Reuben and a philosopher — 
 doubtless a Gentile Christian — turns on the Hexalogue, 
 beginning with honor to parents and ending with the pro- 
 hibition of covetousness. From this passage we can easily 
 conclude that the Christian Law was just this selection out 
 of the Decalogue. This is further to be deduced from ch. 
 12, sect. iv. of the above-quoted work of Irenaeus, where he 
 reproduces the Hexalogue as the Law enjoined by Jesus, 
 in the form in which it occurs in Matt. xix. 16 sq. In the 
 form of a Pentalogue the Law incumbent on the Christians 
 is presented by Paul, in Rom. xiii. 9. Christianity had 
 accordingly only adopted the name of the Decalogue, but 
 not its entire contents, as the Law proper.] It was, we 
 hold, doubtless the precepts of natural religion to which 
 Jesus alluded in the Sermon on the Mount, when he 
 declared: "Think not that I came to destroy the law, etc." 
 (Matt. V. 17, 19). He actually mentioned in the whole 
 Sermon not one of the ceremonial appointments, to which 
 his affirmation might apply. He disserted merely on some 
 ethical laws,^^ together with those of retaliation and 
 divorce. The question of his opponents, silently under- 
 stood from his protesting words of v. 17, whether he believed 
 in the perpetual obligation of the whole Mosaic Law with 
 all its ceremonial ordinances, he shirked entirely. He 
 
 * See Excairsus B. 
 
THE SABBATH IN IHSTORY. 1 5 I. 
 
 made a declaration which was not at all expected by his 
 hearers, or by those for whom the composition was 
 intended. No one had suspected or accused him of an 
 opposition to the ethical part of Mosaism and Judaism in 
 general. By nevertheless dilating on some portions of it, 
 and skipping over the real accusation formed against him, 
 he laid himself open to the criticfsm that his purpose in 
 digressing from that accusation implied in v. ly, and from 
 his asseveration in vv. i8, 19 (if this be genuine), ^^ to 
 his ethical expositions, was that of evasion. This the 
 inquirer of our own day will readily discover. That he 
 should, in any part of his affirmation, have adverted to the 
 body of Mosaic enactments, is impossible, considering his 
 vehement antagonism to the Temple ritual, round which 
 clustered, besides, such a vast range of other ordinances, as 
 well as his opposition to the divorce law, and especially his 
 utterance on the Sabbath, Matt. xii. 8. Indeed would an 
 avowal of that orthodox nature, were it even to be con- 
 strued from his affirmation, have been most inconsistent in 
 him and contradictory to his entire position, which we 
 learn him to have held from various passages of the rela- 
 tive extant literature. No, it is beyond any doubt that the 
 Mosaic precepts which he avowed to be perpetual, were 
 the moral ones, those of the natural religion. As to the 
 ceremonial enactments of Mosaism, he may yet, for all the 
 derogation of a large part of them, be credited with not 
 having come to destroy or abrogate them. For we posi- 
 tively hold that the main and direct object of his public 
 activity lay outside of them. They were indifferent to him, 
 compared with the exclusive aim that possessed him from 
 the beginning of his career, to assert his Messianic dignity. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 CEREMONIAL RELIGION RECEDES IN JESUS MIND AND 
 TEACHING BEFORE HIS ALL-ABSORBING MESSiAHDOM. 
 
 The standpoint we assume in our work on the Mineans 
 is, that the pretension of being the Messiah was uppermost 
 in Jesus' mind, and that to it all other concerns had to be 
 made subservient. Claiming as he did to be the inaugur- 
 ator of the Messianic kingdom, and especially to reappear 
 again in the divine-like capacity of Israel's Messiah for its 
 completion (Matt. xxiv. 30), religious rites, even those of 
 superior sanctity, were to him only of a subordinate and 
 secondary value. They were to him indifferent compared 
 to the object he pursued, and he wished, too, that they 
 became so to his adherents. The chief care of his disciples 
 and followers should be, to prepare themselves for the im- 
 pending event of the world's renovation under his Messiah- 
 dom, by repentance, which he, like his predecessor, John 
 the Baptist, was preaching from the commencement of his 
 public course. It was his watchword (so Keim). To the 
 cry of repentance he added later certain precepts of moral 
 righteousness, conditioning the participation in the world 
 and life to come. These precepts were joined by admon- 
 itions to acts of love and charity, by which treasures and 
 fair claims of reward in heaven'^^ would be secured; see 
 Matt. vi. 20, xix. 21. When we compare with these pas- 
 sages the account in Jer. Peah f 15, of Monobazus, king of 
 Adiabene, disposing of all(.'') his property to the poor, 
 which act of charitable self-disposssssion he related as being 
 inspired by the motive of "garnering treasures for the 
 world to come," we cannot help noticing the actual preva- 
 lence, in the century of Jesus, of associating the merit of 
 charity with the hope of the future world. Charitable 
 deeds were not only held as means of securing God's favor, 
 but also as advocating agencies in turning his wrath of 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 1 53 
 
 judgment for sins, alike individual and communal, the com- 
 mission of which was feared as forming the cause for accu- 
 sation and prosecution before the Divine tribunal, and at 
 the same time as delaying the realization of the Messianic 
 kingdom. 
 
 The combination of teshubah, "repentance," with maasim 
 tobhim, "good works," that is, works of charity, is often 
 found in the Rabbinical literature. They are in Pirke 
 Aboth iv. 13, declared to be "like a shield against Divine 
 visitations." As interceding agencies for Divine pardon 
 they are named together in B. Yoma f. 87. That charity 
 was held effective in expiating sin is evident from B. Ber- 
 ach. f. 5; it is there derived from Prov. xvi. 6. That it 
 saves from the chastisement of hell subsequent to the judg- 
 ment in the Hereafter, was without great violence to the 
 letter deduced from Prov. xi. 4, in B. Baba Bathra f. 10. 
 Its atoning quality is once even set above that of sacrifice; 
 see B. Yebamoth f. 105. 
 
 The high estimation of charity for propitiating the Deity 
 was rather a ground-sentiment in Judaism of old. It occurs 
 also in Dan. iv. 24, and in Ecclesiasticus iii. 30. That Jesus 
 added beneficence to the poor to his cry of repentance, 
 would then easily have resulted from a mere Jewish stand- 
 point. Even for a direct Messianic purpose, that combin- 
 ation has an analogy in the Talmudic literature. In B. 
 Synhedrin f. 97, it is related that Rabh, the renowned 
 scholarch of Sura, Babylonia, in the first half of the third 
 century, C. E., uttered the view, that "the farthest term 
 computable from Scriptural prophecies for the arrival of the 
 Messiah was now reached: his coming depends yet on our 
 repentance and good works." The same view as to repent- 
 ance is expressed in Jer. Taanith f. 64: "The relief from 
 the night of the Roman power over Israel and the arrival 
 of the Messiah, the son of David, are kept back solely by 
 the lack of true repentance." Such sentiments were indeed 
 typical in old Israel. We may safely lay them down as 
 having existed and pervaded the religious conscience of 
 the thoughtful and pious Israelites in the times of the 
 Roman rule, no less than in the former Persian period; see 
 
154 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 on the latter, Ezra v. 12; ix. 7. Every grievous sin adher- 
 ing to individuals or the community, was in times of 
 oppressive rule and national suffering considered an impedi- 
 ment to the restoration by God of a state of independence 
 and prosperity. It had to be repented of and atoned for, 
 in order to conciliate the Deity and dispose Him toward a 
 cessation of such suffering, and the approximation of the 
 glorious era so vividly hoped for. 
 
 The notion of sin interfering with the enjoyment of 
 Messiahism had so thoroughly worked itself into the 
 minds of scrupulous Rabbis mentioned in the Talmud, 
 that they were haunted by the apprehension lest all 
 their merits of the study of the Torah and practice of 
 charity would not suffice to be held worthy by the 
 Deity of surviving the throes of the Messianic days 
 and witnessing the advent of the Messiah, because they 
 might have committed sins which remained unpardoned; 
 see B. Synh. f. 98, and compare the similar sentiment in 
 B. Berachoth f. 4, that "some sin may frustrate the bliss of 
 futurity." The relative phrase current among the pious 
 Rabbis was, shema yigrom hachet, "sin may cause" 
 (namely, the forfeiture of future good). Can we then won- 
 der that the Baptist and after him Jesus, laid, in their 
 preaching of the Messianic kingdom, such mighty stress on 
 repentance ?^^ They only echoed a sentiment predomin- 
 ant in Judaism, that the prerequisite for God's favorable 
 interference against heathen oppression and for the com- 
 mencement of his kingdom represented by the son of 
 David (or David the second; see B. Synh. f. 98) was, 
 repentance. Meritorious works of humanity, too, were, as 
 we have seen above, held as decided expedients for win- 
 ning God's favor and accelerating the Messianic kingdom. 
 Jesus naturally urged them in sympathy with other Messi- 
 anic aspirers and inquirers, in connection with repentance. 
 And as to religion proper, all that he taught, in the sus- 
 pense of what was by him presented as the transition to 
 the kingdom of Heaven, to be indispensable for sharing in 
 the benefits of his Messiahdom was, to observe the pre- 
 cepts of natural religion. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 JESUS' IIs^DIFFERENCE TO THE JEWISH CEREMONIAL RELI- 
 GION ACCOUNTABLE ALSO BY HIS PROPHETICAL CLAIM. 
 
 We have in the foregoing exposition aimed to establish 
 that Jesus treated ceremonial observances as insignificant 
 because of his Messianic pretension, which had engrossed 
 his mind and pushed aside all other spiritual cares. We 
 will in this chapter go some further and show that he has, 
 more or less overtly, passed him'self as the prophet em- 
 powered to suspend or change the Mosaic ritual. That he 
 actually put forth the claim to be the prophet predicted in 
 Deut. xviii. 15 sq., we have no doubt. It is not only testi- 
 fied in the fourth gospel (v. 46), but the fluent application 
 of that Deuteronomical prediction to Jesus in the speech of 
 Peter (Acts iii. 22), as well as its quotation by Stephen in 
 his harangue of apology (ib. vii. 37), which can evidently 
 have had no other object than to convey to the hearers 
 that reference is had to Jesus, leave no doubt that within 
 both the Judean and Hellenistic Christianity it was inter- 
 preted as positively bearing on the coming of Jesus. That 
 both those relations of Acts are not purposely fabricated 
 by its author, but are genuine expressions of Jewish 
 Christianity, which originally received that notion directly 
 from the mouth of Jesus himself, may be further proved 
 from the Clementine Homilies, iii. 53. There the declara- 
 tion is imputed to Jesus: " I am he of whom Moses 
 prophesied saying, 'A prophet, etc.'" These are traces 
 indisputably pointing back to Jesus as the author of the 
 claim, that Moses had in that passage foretold his com- 
 ing as ' the prophet,' that is, as his only real, spiritual 
 successor. As ' the prophet ' ^esus would naturally apply 
 to himself the direction given in Deut. ib. vv. 15, 19, that 
 the people have on pain of Divine punishment, to listen to 
 his announcements and dippositions. It is worthy of notice 
 
156 * THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 that Rabbinism had, in its comment upon this Mosaical 
 injunction, advanced the proposition, that a truly accredited 
 prophet of the future must find a ready hearing, even if he 
 should demand of the people a direct transgression of any 
 of the Mosaic ordinances, idolatry only excepted; see Sifre, 
 Deut., sect. 175, and B. Synhedrin f. 90. Whether this con- 
 struction was already in Jesus' time Rabbinically put on 
 that Scriptural injunction, we do not know. But it is 
 certainly very likely that Jesus, having once fairly asserted 
 the distinction of being the predicted prophet, will of his 
 own mind have interpreted it in that sense. In connection 
 with it he may also have claimed the power, as emanating 
 to him from the Deity, of changing Mosaic laws. 
 
 We suggest that he gradually progressed from the pre- 
 tension of being a prophet to that of himself representing 
 the prophet proper. The Jewish people at large must, from 
 various indications, have in the century of Jesus been much 
 disposed to recognize miracle-workers as prophets. We 
 know that the olden Rabbis would frown down any attempt 
 of individuals pretending the gift of prophecy or the pos- 
 session of the holy spirit. They firmly held that with 
 Malachi prophecy had ceased, and was never afterwards 
 Divinely re-instituted. This view was evidently main- 
 tained also by the author of the first book of Maccabees, 
 who wrote in John Hyrcanus' time ; see ib. ix. 27, also iv. 
 46, and xiv. 41, and Grimm's commentary in loco. But 
 different it was with the common people, especially the 
 credulous part of them. Miracles were in the conscious- 
 ness of the Jewish people regarded as a prominent signa- 
 ture of a prophet. Scripture itself had variously produced 
 and confirmed such perception. Whatever the mediaeval 
 religious philosopher, Maimoni, has to argue against the 
 supposition that mere wonder-working and the realization 
 of predictions mark the faculty and calling of a prophet 
 (Introduction to Zeraim), it cannot be denied that practic- 
 ally the common Israelites of old, and those of the century 
 of Jesus in particular, found in miracle-working of a Jewish 
 monotheist the chief mark of a prophet. Apparently had 
 thaumaturgy largely flourished, and prophetic claimants 
 
THE SABBATH IN IHSTORV. 157 
 
 had found easy credence, in that century. Josephus was 
 most lavish in awarding the degree of prophet to promi- 
 nent persons. He credited John Hyrcanus with the pro- 
 phetic gift ; Wars. i. 2, 8, comp. Ant. xiii. lO, 7. Even of 
 the Pharisees as a class he asserts that "they were believed 
 to have the foreknowledge of things to come by Divine 
 inspiration ; 1. c. xvii, 2,4. That in the mystic circle of the 
 Essenes and kindred ascetics, with which class John the 
 Baptist and Jesus had at all events some connection, 
 prophecy played an integrant p^rt, is well known ; see 
 Wars. i. 3, 5, Ant. xv. 10, 5. 
 
 It was mainly miracle-working that readily won for those 
 saints the title of prophets. John the Baptist secured it 
 from his followers (Matt. xvi. 14J. from other Jewish people 
 (ib. xiv. 5; xxi. 26), as also in a prominent degree from 
 Jesus himself (ib. xi. 9). And this for no other cause than 
 the performance of "mighty works" (see ib. xiv. 2). Jesus, 
 too, aimed to signalize himself by miraculous exploits as 
 possessed of the prophetical holy spirit. His Galilean 
 adherents were drawn to him by the fame of his miraculous 
 power (Matt. xi. 8, 26, 31, 33), a fame that had spread even 
 far beyond Galilee, in all directions (ib. iv. 23-25). People 
 would give him the designation of prophet, or of one of the 
 olden prophets revived (ib. xvi. 14). As the prophet of 
 Nazareth he was yet distinguished by the multitude toward 
 the end of his life (ib. xxi. ii). And the immediately sub- 
 sequent Christianity glorified him as "a man approved of 
 God by miracles and wonders and signs" (Acts ii. 22). 
 
 That it was not difficult for Jesus to promote himself 
 from the once acknowledged distinction of prophet to the 
 highest rank of the Mosaically predicted prophet, caa 
 easily be perceived. We suggest that he resorted to this 
 superior claim mainly, to assuage the consciences of those 
 who, while they were inclined to accept his Messiahdom, 
 were yet too much absorbed by the attendance to the mul- 
 tifarious ceremonial rites of Judaism, such as the written 
 Law had prescribed and tradition established, to give the 
 Messianic questions that undivided solicitous devotion, 
 which he demanded as so needful in the face of the k'ng- 
 
 (3) 
 
158 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 dom of Heaven. He had to reassure their scrupling- minds, 
 that ritual observances were not all-important, as they 
 believed, but were only secondary, in view of the necessity 
 to attend to matters pertaining to that kingdom. He, as 
 'the prophet,' had, moreover — so he may have argued — the 
 inspired authority to change the Mosaic Law and intro- 
 duce modified and partly new rules of conscientious life, 
 fitted for the Messianic period. He was doubtless cautious 
 in advancing this transcendent claim, uttering it perhaps 
 only to his most intimate disciples, Peter, James, and John, 
 or yet, besides, to the rest of the twelve select apostles. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 JESUS' INDIFFERENT TREATMENT OF CEREMONIAL RELIGION 
 OWING PERHAPS ALSO TO SOME PECULIAR MESSIANIC 
 TRADITIONS AND POPULAR NOTIONS. 
 
 More openly he may have reflected upon the topic, that 
 the Mosaic Law would of itself cease in the times of Mes- 
 siah, — his own times, as he pretended. It is not at all 
 unlikely that in mystical circles some such notion had 
 gained ground. How it did, is not easy to ascertain. Per- 
 haps that it was worked out from Jer. xxxi. 31, where a 
 new covenant is spoken of by the prophet, although there 
 was not the least warrant for the construction of this verse 
 in the sense of the abrogation of the anciently given Law. 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 1 59 
 
 That no alteration of the Torah was implied in those words 
 of Jeremiah, is surely evident enough from the subsequent 
 verse 33. Yet whoever has noticed the loose method of 
 Scripture exposition in N. T. passages, will not find it 
 strange that the true literal sense of that announcement 
 was not consulted by Messiah-enthusiasts. However 
 remote the relation of an agreeable theory might be to a 
 Scripture text, it was yet without any scruple accommo- 
 dated to it, and made to indicate, or at any rate intimate, 
 that theory. Moreover, it has to be mentioned that even 
 in orthodox Jewish spheres the presumption that in the 
 Messianic era the Mosaic ordinances would be invalidated, 
 had some adherents. The proposition that "in the Mes- 
 sianic future the commands of the Pentateuch would no 
 more be valid," is, it is true, only made as a premise, in B. 
 Niddah f 61. But the very attempt at premising it shows, 
 that there was some relative tradition back of it. Possibly 
 this tradition had its origin in the same interpretation of 
 the before-quoted verse of Jeremiah, which, it may be, was 
 put on it also by Jesus. 
 
 There is another passage, occurring in the Yalkut on Isa., 
 sect. 296, that comes under this category: "God sits in 
 Paradise, meditating on a new Torah, which He will reveal 
 through the Messiah." Such remarks, perhaps never earn- 
 estly meant by those uttering them, may nevertheless have 
 passed into the phraseology of the common people, and 
 this in centuries much anterior to that collection. They 
 may in particular have been ventilated in the Herodian 
 period, in which the Messianic expectations were aroused 
 to the highest pitch. Is it, therefore, not plausible, that 
 Jesus, even without emphasizing his prophetic authority 
 against the further obligation of the Mosaic ritual, improved 
 those vague and stray views, to the end that his followers 
 might be relieved of the anxiety of conscience for a period- 
 ical neglect of various religious observances.-* 
 
 We have even some direct evidence that he limited the 
 obligation of the Law to the Messianic term. The phrase 
 "Till heaven and earth pass away," expressive of the dura- 
 tion of the Law (Matt. v. 18), we can fairly construe as 
 
l6o THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 chosen by him to indicate his own conception of its limited 
 permanence, a limitation which was by his own Messiah- 
 pretension implicitly given out to be then imminent.^ ^ We 
 might also pertinently adduce Luke xvi. i6: "The law 
 and the prophets (were) until John," to prove that Jesus 
 believed and declared the validity of the Mosaic Law as 
 expired with the inauguration of the Messianic kingdom, in 
 which John was the first and he the second factor, had we 
 not the following objections to the authenticity of this pas- 
 sage. First, the sentence excites our doubt on account of 
 the Pauline, and, therefore, dnti-Law authorship, of that 
 gospel. Secondly, the subsequent verse, 17, so flagrantly 
 contradicts the sentiment of the temporal limitation 
 of the jiLaw to John's preaching, expressed in the pre- 
 ceding, that we have necessarily to assume a garbling pro- 
 cess to have got hold of the entire context, a process sufifi- 
 ciently evidenced, besides, by the vv. 17 and 18, when we 
 compare them with Matt. v. 18, 32. The supposition that 
 garbling occurred in this context becomes, thirdly, rather 
 imperative, when we hold over against Luke's assertion in 
 V. 16, the parallel in Matt. xi. 13, which the Pauline author 
 unquestionably left incomplete in copying from his source, 
 by dropping the verb "prophesied."^** 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 JESUS' POSITION ON THE SABBATH— HIS TWO SABBATH 
 CONTROVERSIES. 
 
 The reader will, we hope, pardon us for making him fol- 
 low us through the length of all the foregoing discussions, 
 in which our main subject had partly to retreat before the 
 general question of Jesus' estimation of ceremonial 
 Mosaism. But they had in our opinion to be premised, in 
 order to afford a better understanding of his particular 
 position on the Sabbath. This we will now proceed to dis- 
 cuss in detail. 
 
 There are some Sabbath controversies'*^ which he is 
 reported to have had with the Pharisees,* ^ only two of 
 which are related in the most reliable gospel, that of Mat- 
 thew. Keim notes only these two as historical. They are 
 those about the plucking of ears of corn by his apostles, 
 and the healing of the man with a withered hand, on the 
 Sabbath. Whether the two events occurred on one Sab- 
 bath, and directly after each other, as Matt. xii. represents 
 it (it is uncertain whether Mark intended to connect both 
 cases as to time, the word "again" in iii. i, making it 
 doubtful whether immediate succession was meant by the 
 writer), or on two different Sabbaths, as Luke vi. i, 6 pro- 
 duces it (Keim approves the latter; see his Introduction 
 to vol. HI.), will forever remain doubtful. Keim in prefer- 
 ring Luke's relation surely knew no more about it than 
 any other reader of the extant gospels."*^ 
 
 We will follow the order in which the gospels introduce 
 the disputes, and start with that on the plucking by the 
 apostles of the ears of corn, when they were once "an hun- 
 gred" on a Sabbath day. This happened according to 
 Keim (1. c. iii. 358) earlier in time than the other. It 
 occurred, as he further proposes (ib. p. 363), during the 
 first months of his ministry, about Easter (Passover).'*'* 
 
l62 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 To cut (katsats in Hebrew) or tear off (talash) from a 
 tree or plant rooted in the ground on the Sabbath, was by 
 the Rabbinical doctors judged to be a Mosaically prohib- 
 ited manual occupation; the former was declared a chief 
 labor, the latter its derivate. On this derivative kind of 
 labor, see Mishnah B. Sabb. f. 95 and 103, and the Boraitha 
 there. To invest this prohibition with a more direct Scrip- 
 tural authority, some later Rabbis attempted to account the 
 Sabbath breaking of the gatherer of sticks (Numb. xv. 32) 
 as having consisted in pulling off limbs or twigs from a 
 tree or shrub. The case of the apostles evidently came, in 
 the mind of the rebuking Pharisees, under this category. 
 According to Luke who adds, that the apostles rubbed the 
 ears in their hands (vi. i), they would, besides, have made 
 themselves guilty of yet another Sabbath violation. For 
 in the Rabbinical view the husking of grain was a sort of 
 labor derivative from threshing (see Tosaf. B. Sabb. f. 73), 
 which latter was counted among the thirty-nine chief 
 labors. Mark ii. 23 sq., has presented the event with such 
 brevity that one would, without the aid of the other Synop- 
 tics, be at a loss to learn from v. 23 alone, whether he laid 
 the stress of the questionable act of the apostles on their 
 making the way in the cornfield by plucking the ears (with 
 the stalks, perhaps), or on their doing the latter for the 
 sake of allaying their hunger. 
 
 Jesus, in rebutting the charge of Sabbath breaking by 
 his apostles (Matt. xii. 1-8) proved himself a real Rabbin- 
 ical dialectician (see Geiger, 'Sadducees and Pharisees,' p. 
 31). In his plea he points out David's using, in the 
 extremity of hunger, for himself and his men the loaves of 
 shew-bread that had been removed from the sacred table, 
 to be eaten by priests alone (r Sam. xxi.). By this anal- 
 ogy he aims to give support to the theory, that in a case of 
 distress a layman may presume to do what is ordinarily 
 permitted to priests only. With this theory, unexpressed 
 yet foremost in his mind, he proceeds to draw the final 
 conclusion, applicable to the case in dispute. Priests, he 
 went on to argue (Matt. ib. v. 5), may freely attend to the 
 Sabbath sacrifices, the Law permitting, nay, commanding 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 163 
 
 it. If, then, he meant to urge, priests may carry on man- 
 ual occupations prohibited to other Israelites on the Sab- 
 bath (slaying an animal was accounted one of the thirty- 
 nine chief labors), why should a lay person not be equal to 
 a Temple functionary in so far that he may, in a condition 
 of pinching hunger, do some work otherwise ui'.lawful, but 
 which, from the analogy of David's case who would in a 
 state of starvation presume to be as privileged as a priest, 
 ought to become likewise permissible to every other Isra- 
 elite, reduced to such extremity .'' Why, therefore, — this 
 was the implication of his argument, — should my apostles 
 not be as reproachless for their act of necessity as David 
 was in his .'' 
 
 Thus far Jesus himself used a Phariseic-Rabbinical 
 method of arguing. Not only in form he had in that 
 argument not removed himself from Rabbinism, even as to 
 its tenor he had scarcely forsaken its wonted scope. For 
 it, too, had made marked allowances for cases of necessity. 
 Nor even had the sentence attached in Mark ii. 27, "The 
 Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath," 
 any direct marks of un-Jewish intent, so that the Pharisees 
 might have become indignant at its use. Phariseism itself 
 — later Rabbinism at least — had formed and employed the 
 identical sentence, though for a different object. It was, 
 to support the old and firmly established rule, that "to save 
 human life and rescue it from danger, the Sabbath has to 
 give way" (see Mechilta cd. Weiss f no, and B. Yoma f. 
 85). The doctors putting it forth in the cited passages did 
 so in consequence of a forced interpretation put on the 
 word Idchem "unto you," in the verse, "And ye shall keep 
 the Sabbath, for it is holy unto you" (Ex. xxxi. 14). This 
 word, though it is by no means superfluous or exceptional 
 in the context in which it stands, was yet, in the manner 
 of olden Rabbinical exegesis, pressed to suggest the sent- 
 ence, "The Sabbath is given to you, but you are not given 
 to the Sabbath." This sentence was subsequently pro- 
 pounded to furnish a Scriptural support to that rule, which 
 
164 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 had perhaps since days immemorial entered of itself into 
 practical Judaism, and, for aught we know, never met with 
 the slightest objection, even from the most rigid Sabbath 
 observer. 
 
 The difference regarding this sentence between ortho- 
 dox Judaism and Jesus was, however, that in the former 
 incidents of hunger were never thought of being brought 
 within its scope. It was restricted to instances in which 
 danger to life was feared, if a certain labor prohibited on 
 the Sabbath would be omitted toward the imperilled per- 
 son. But yet, while the Phariseic opponents of Jesus must 
 have seriously dissented from him as to his license in 
 applying that sentence to cases of hunger as well, they 
 could nevertheless have had some indulgence for it, had he 
 not so flagrantly, and in such an unheard-of manner, 
 aggravated it by adding the assertion: "Therefore the 
 Son of man is Lord also of the Sabbath" (Mark ii. 28; see 
 also Matt. ib. 8, in whose gospel, by the way, the other 
 sentence "The Sabbath was made for man, etc.," is want- 
 ing, and Luke vi. 5). That this self-elating assertion is 
 genuine, there can be no doubt. By it he shows himself 
 not only removed from orthodox Phariseic Judaism, but 
 most decidedly cut loose from the cardinal principles of 
 positive Judaism, as professed by each of its sects with 
 deep conviction and unshaken faith. The opponents must 
 have been shocked in their inmost souls on hearing him 
 put forward such an enormous vaunt. Were they to inter- 
 pose a counter-argument to such a daring claim of divine 
 authority.'' They must have felt too keen a dismay to 
 reply to him at all any more. 
 
 That he should have had no other intention with his self- 
 appellation "Son of man," than to generalize from himself, 
 the typical son of man, — the Messiah, — to all people as sons 
 or children of men, we can not possibly accept with Geiger 
 (as above)."* ^ No, the impression which the assertion that 
 the Son of man was Lord also of the Sabbath must have 
 made on the expostulating Pharisees, was certainly an 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 165 
 
 entirely different one. It was no other than that he repre- 
 sented himself as the supernaturally endowed Messiah, 
 and, perhaps, 'the prophet,' who could practically, if he had 
 a mind or saw the necessity of it, abolish even the Sabbath. 
 That he laid the stress of his assertion not, as Geiger 
 proposes, on his human character, in which indeed all his 
 coevals were his equals, but on his pretended divine-like 
 Messiahdom, as adopted from Daniel, Enoch, and some 
 similar mystical books, becomes the more evident as we 
 hold fti view the other self-elating utterance which he, 
 according to Matt. ib. v. 6, made on the same occasion. 
 He argues there: "But I say unto you that one (or, some- 
 thing) greater than the Temple is here."^'^ He doubtless 
 insinuated thereby that, standing in dignity and sacredness 
 higher than the Temple, he could also, if he so pleased, do 
 away its service. This interpretation is by no means 
 extravagant. It is fully borne out by the trend of his 
 thought, expressed on another occasion with regard to the 
 Temple. When he was, after his violent proceedings in its 
 court, questioned, "by what authority he was doing these 
 things.'*" — by which things those arbitrary and domineering 
 proceedings were surely meant alongside of his other inno- 
 vations — he retorted with the counter-question: "The 
 baptism of John whence was it ? from heaven or of men ? 
 etc." (Matt. xxi. 23-25). In this rejoinder is certainly 
 implied the justification for the assumption of his own 
 authority. He doubtless meant to insinuate that his 
 authority emanated from God, as well as John's. In both 
 the foregoing instances concerning the Temple we, then 
 see Jesus asserting an authority of a divine character, with 
 which he claimed to be vested,, in superiority above all 
 other men. We meet with the same self-exaltation in his 
 affirmation, "the Son of man has power on earth to forgive 
 sins" (Matt. ix. 6), which was interconnected with his 
 announcement of his judicial power over all nations, to be 
 exhibited at his second coming, on the Judgment da}^ (ib, 
 XXV. 31 sq.). A divine lordship he surely pretended to as 
 immanent in his Messiahdom. He deduced it rather 
 
i66 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 explicitly from his stock sentence of Ps. ex. i, in his Mes- 
 sianic controversy with the Pharisees (Matt. xxii. 41-46)^ 
 on which occasion he geive them also plainly enough to 
 understand that he claimed to be the son of God. 
 
 All these instances prove forcibly that Jesus intended to 
 put forth claims of divinity. We have disserted on this 
 subject at large in our work on the Mineans. Here a suc- 
 cinct mention must be sufficient. 
 
 As to his assertion to be the Lord of the Sabbath, it 
 could certainly impress those who had called him to 
 account for countenancing its violation by his apostles, not 
 differently from his other pretensions of spiritual magni- 
 tude. What else could they judge from it but that he 
 declared the Sabbath, by the bulk of the Jewish nation 
 believed to be Divinel}' instituted, thrown at his mercy, to 
 be abrogated, or at any rate modified, by his dictate — for 
 those at least who had joined themselves to him and 
 believed in his miracles and mission .-* Nay, the ultimate 
 inference which the simple Rabbis of Capernaum who ques- 
 tioned him have drawn from it, was possibly no other than 
 that he not only usurped a superior authority over the Sab- 
 bath as received from the Deity, but one inherent in him- 
 self as God's rival and opposite. For, they may have 
 reasoned, one pretending to a superiority above the Sab- 
 bath, must at the same time think himself exalted above 
 Jehovah who had commanded its observance, else he can- 
 not put forward a derogatory sentence like that. 
 
 It may not be amiss to quote here the view of Salva- 
 dor, 'Jesus Christ,' ii. 80-8 1 : "If one placed himself." argues 
 he, "above the institution proper; if, as Jesus did, one pro- 
 claimed himself the absolute Lord of the Sabbath, this was 
 an attack upon the Law by overthrowing one of its corner- 
 stones. In fact, this was an elevation of one's self above 
 the God of the Jews, or, at least, a pretension to be His 
 equal." Even Keim who vindicates Jesus throughout his 
 whole work against the presumption of divinity, admits "as 
 early indications of his higher nature the calling himself 
 greater than the temple, a lord of the Sabbath, and one 
 who was authorized to exercise the divine prerogative of 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 1 67 
 
 forgiving sins" (iii. p. 78). On this last claim of authority 
 by Jesus that author observes (ib. p. 367), that the Phari- 
 sees found it to be "his most flagrant breach of the Law. 
 Here he had done violence not only to a divine ordinance, 
 but to the personal majesty, the sovereign prerogative of 
 God. It seemed to dart on them like a light (we can 
 afford to allow for this Gentile Christian sarcastic hit !) 
 that the principle upon which he as transgressor of the 
 Law acted, was contempt of God, blasphemy against God, 
 heathen denial of God." Keim further concedes that "the 
 Son of man (which title he had assumed already in the 
 early part of his ministry) is in the greater number of pas- 
 sages in which he occurs, plainly an exalted being." Let 
 us ask, if a Christian critic of the nineteenth century could 
 not help discovering in those instances of Jesus' self-asser- 
 tion the claim of a Jiigher nature and of an exalted being, 
 were the Rabbinical questioners of his own time expected 
 to find less in them } Scarcely so. And if we analyze 
 those veiled phrases, what result will, if we are candid, 
 meet us } None other than that they are high-wrought 
 paraphrases of divinity. We, at least, are unable to dis- 
 cern in the concept of a nature higher than the human, and 
 of a being exalted above all other human beings, anything 
 else than that of divinity. Those Rabbis of Capernaum 
 will then, with their ready comprehension of Jesus' lan- 
 guage, have promptly recognized in him a most radical 
 assaulter of the principles of Judaism already at the early 
 period of his public preaching, ere yet he had announced 
 himself, before the Jews of all classes, as the designated 
 judge and ruler of all nations, or openly assumed the addi- 
 tional title "son of God" (on the latter see Matt. xxvi. 64 ; 
 Mark xiv. 62 ; John xix. 7), which title he had already be- 
 fore his trial, in his argument against the Pharisees on the 
 descent of the Messiah (Matt. xxii. 41-415), perceptibly 
 enough intimated as belonging to him. 
 
 We will now turn to the second controversy on healing 
 on the Sabbath. Jesus is reported to have been asked in 
 the synagogue of Capernaum, "Is it lawful to heal on the 
 Sabbath day T (Matt. xii. 10.) The interrogators were of 
 
l68 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 course again the Pharisees ; see ib. v. 14. This evangel- 
 ical writer held them, moreover, so strongly in his thoughts 
 that he characterized, though more in passing, even that 
 synagogue as a sectarian one (ib. v. 9), whereas it was 
 surely assigned for the worship of the entire Jewish popu- 
 lation. Jesus is said to have rebutted the query by the 
 axiom that "it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath day" 
 (ib. 12; Mark iii. i sq. has an entirely different version of 
 the proceedings). This axiom is placed at the end of his 
 argument. It is preceded by an illustration from practical 
 life (vv. II, 12), to bring it home to them with as deep a 
 sense of confusion as possible. The illustration is of a case 
 in which, as he suggested, themselves would disregard the 
 Sabbatic injunction without any scruple. Now we hold it 
 quite possible that Jesus argued with the questioners from 
 the view of mercy due to the sick and the suffering, as we 
 find it in the gospel account. But the statement with 
 which Matthew winds the story up, that "the Pharisees 
 went out, and took counsel against him, how they might 
 destroy him," we have to pronounce, to give it very mildly, 
 as a bold exaggeration. The Pharisees were positively no 
 such monsters as to try to kill a man or have him killed 
 for making another man's withered hand whole on the Sab- 
 bath. That writer evidently calculated on the credulity 
 and ignorance of the generality of his readers. For all his 
 fairly informed Jewish contemporaries knew, as every one 
 else, even slightly versed in Rabbinical legislation, must 
 know, that healing the sick on the Sabbath was among the 
 learned Pharisees held only as a preventive restraint, which 
 no one ever thought of including among the Mosaically 
 prohibited labors, and thus holding a perpetrator legally 
 liable to capital penalty. Healing was only Rabbinically 
 forbidden on the Sabbath, and that with the preventive 
 object, that one might not ultimately go and commit the 
 trespass of crushing medicinal roots or herbs into powder. 
 This would be a real labor, equal to grinding, which, again, 
 was counted among the thirty-nine chief occupations inter- 
 dicted on the Sabbath. 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 169 
 
 Secondly, we have to object against that statement that, 
 while the prohibition of healing on the Sabbath was doubt- 
 less rigidly heeded in Jesus' time, it is yet incredible that 
 the Pharisees should have taken occasion from the cure 
 performed by him, to even severely persecute, much less to 
 destroy him. We could indeed credit it if the writer had 
 intended to convey, that the Pharisees conspired against 
 him for his pretense of supernatural healing, connected 
 with his Messianic claim,"* ^ independently of the Sabbath. 
 But this is not the case. 
 
 The remonstrance with the Pharisees turns here on the 
 Sabbath-breaking by actual healing, and not on a myste- 
 rious Messianic cure by remission of sin, as we find it in 
 Matt. ix. 1-6. But healing on the Sabbath in a desperate 
 case like that of the man with a withered hand, could not 
 make the violator liable even to a severe animadversion 
 from the Phariseic doctors. The Rabbinical prohibition of 
 healing on the Sabbath did not extend to any case of sick- 
 ness in which danger to life was to be feared, if medical 
 application were omitted. The set rule among the Rabbis 
 was, that no Mosaic command, except the three cardinal 
 restraints of idolatry, incest, and murder, could stand in 
 the way of saving life. The leading view among the 
 learned Jews was, that the Divine commands were not 
 given that life should on their account be sacrificed or 
 jeopardized, but that, on the contrary, it be spared and 
 preserved. They referred this principle to Lev. xviii. 5. in 
 the latter words of which they found a warrant for it. The 
 Sabbath law, sacred and inviolable as it was, should yet 
 not interfere where human life was at stake. There was 
 not one of the representative Rabbis of antiquity who dif- 
 fered from this view. Those of the first and second centu- 
 ries of our era had received the rule that "saving life 
 vacates the Sabath," from former ages, and were all agreed 
 that it was fair and perfectly in accord with the spirit of 
 Judaism; see Mechilta f. no, ed. Weiss; B. Sabb. f. 132; 
 
170 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 Tosifta Sabb. p. 134. It was as firmly established in 
 orthodox Judaism as that circumcision and Temple service 
 should put aside the Sabbath obligation (this appears from 
 Tosifta 1. c). 
 
 It seems to us, further, that the Rabbis had not at all an 
 extreme conception of what was to be called "saving life." 
 Not only was it generally understood that the fear of 
 immediate danger was sufficient cause for setting aside the 
 Sabbath law in any case of sickness or serious accident, 
 but there is all likelihood that even where the danger was 
 only indirect or remote, its fear was by the Rabbis consid- 
 ered a justifiable cause for breaking the Sabbath; see B. 
 Sabbath f. 128, 129. Nay, since opinions must have dif- 
 fered then on what was a real dangerous condition (sak- 
 kann), as they necessarily differ at all times; and, further, 
 since we know from the Talmud that the term mesukkan 
 "endangered" was applied even to him who was only sickly 
 (see 3. Sabb. f. 37), we have to declare that the scope of 
 dangerousness, on the ground of which medical assistance 
 and relief was allowed to be administered to the sick, was 
 rather wide with the pious doctors of old. Now that a 
 man with a withered hand fairly came under the head of 
 "dangerous," will from the foregoing appear very probable. 
 To treat such a man with the grounded prospect of cure, 
 the learned Jews of Jesus' time are not likelj' to have held 
 a violation of the traditional restraint of healing on the 
 Sabbath. 
 
 Thirdly, we have to object that, since his pretended 
 miraculous cures, whether of the sick or the possessed, 
 were of a magical or, to give it more euphemistically, a 
 psychical nature, produced by the "holy ghost and power" 
 within him (Acts x. 38), and resulting from his mere word 
 of mouth (see Matt. viii. 8, 13. 16; ix. 6. 7, et alias), which 
 was often preceded or attended by his hand touching the 
 sufferer or the sufferer touching him (ib. viii. 3, 15; ix. 29; 
 xiv. 36, et alias), — and surely was the case of the man 
 with a withered hand not intended by the evangelist to 
 pass as other than a spiritual cure, — the expostulation of 
 the Pharisees with Jesus for a cure of this kind performed 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 171 
 
 on the Sabbath is very problematic. We know that 
 the olden Rabbis did not in the least object to wearing 
 magical charms, inscribed with Scripture verses, on the 
 Sabbath, although they were immediately intended as a 
 panacea for bodily ailments and infirmities; see Mishnah 
 B. Sabb. f. 60. They did evidently not attach to any mode 
 of spiritual healing the apprehension that such sani- 
 tary process might lead to crushing medicinal substances. 
 The Phariseic doctors of Jesus' time had, we may fairly 
 suppose, no different view. It is therefore very question- 
 able that they should, on finding him about to execute a 
 psychical cure on the Sabbath, have called him to account 
 for its violation by it. 
 
 Fourthly, we have to impugn the correctness of the rela- 
 tive account given by Mark iii. 4. (It is, we believe, excus- 
 able to note in the question before us, this evangelist, 
 though he can by no means be held as reliable as. Mat- 
 thew.) He adds: "But they held their peace." This 
 assuredl}^ r»eans that the Pharisees were disabled by the 
 point-blank shot of argument hurled at them by Jesus. 
 The questioners, the implication is, were so dumbfounded 
 that they could not reply to Jesus' query: "Is it lawful on 
 the Sabbath day to do good, or to do harm .''" We, how- 
 ever, able to judge of the Phariseic temper and skill in 
 debating by many examples of the later consentient 
 Rabbis, would oppose that it is not at all likely that the 
 learned remonstrators felt themselves so badly discomfited 
 by the question of Jesus, that they held ituseless to argue 
 with him any further. We have to insist that, if the gospel 
 account of Jesus using that plea in the above questioning 
 form of an aphorism is in the main authentic, they were 
 not at all argued down by it, but had enough courage and 
 presence of mind left to meet him in his argument in this 
 wise: "Yes, indeed. We too allow doing good on the 
 Sabbath. It is with us a dispensatory rule to remove on 
 the Sabbath cases and boxes filled with any articles set 
 apart for use on working days, if they obstruct a place 
 where traveling poor are to be accommodated. We per- 
 mit this freely, though we otherwise hold burdensome 
 
172 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 exertions unlawful on the sacred day of rest (see B. Sabb. 
 f. 126). For charity stands with us as high as you claim it 
 valued by yourself. Furthermore, though we are ordina- 
 rily very strict in following out Isaiah's admonition (Isa. 
 Iviii. 13), to 'honor the Sabbath by not following our own 
 business, etc.,' allowing no talking or figuring about any of 
 our secular affairs, we yet make an exception with objects 
 of charity. We declare it quite proper to apportion 
 amounts of benevolent gifts for the poor, the orphans, and 
 such like wretched creatures of society (see B. Sabb. f 150; 
 comp. however the observation of Tosaf ib. on the division 
 of opinions as to some objects of charity). We also permit 
 several things needful for a dead person to be done on the 
 Sabbath, which are otherwise prohibited (see ib. f 150, 
 151), for we value charity so highly that we extend it even 
 to the dead (comp. Jer. Peah, f. 15)." It is true, the fore- 
 going, statutory rules occur in the Rabbinical literature of 
 an epoch much ulterior to the lifetime of Jesus. Yet we 
 can entertain no doubt that the Phariseic doctors in the 
 latter's time thought and decreed congenially with the 
 Rabbinical sages of the second century, and that the above 
 dispensations passed current already with them. 
 
 Such and the like rejoinders, we should think, were 
 readily at the command of the Phariseic opponents of 
 Jesus, so that Mark's allegation, "But they held their' peace," 
 must appear most doubtful. Nor does this imputed silence 
 become more plausible by suggesting, that Mark may in 
 his mind have adverted to Jesus' proposition of an only 
 sheep having fallen into a pit on the Sabbath which, while 
 he has, in his effort at brevity (that Mark had, in composing 
 his gospel, the object of abbreviation, is set forth at length 
 by Strauss 1. c. i. 169, seq.), not mentioned it in his version, 
 is yet possible to have been in his thoughts, being 
 impressed on them from the original of Matthew's gospel, 
 out of which he supposably gathered his own relative 
 account. According to Matthew, Jesus used this homely 
 illustration to substantiate his argument that doing good 
 was lawful on the Sabbath. If it could be supposed that 
 Mark silently adverted to it when he made the assertion, 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 1/3 
 
 that the Pharisees held their peace, we would have to 
 oppose our doubt of it for the reason, that it appears from 
 the Talmud that the learned Rabbis — and the Pharisees of 
 Jesus' time presumably as well — had not at all held it as 
 such a matter of course, that the animal was permitted to 
 be drawn out of the pit. It is to be inferred from B. Sab- 
 bath f. 124, that they would only hold it permissible, if it 
 could not be (ed from the top, so that it might be kept from 
 the pangs of starvation for the rest of the day. Yet when- 
 ever this was possible, they will have insisted that the 
 owner must wait with drawing it out till the Sabbath was 
 over. The Phariseic opponents could accordingly have 
 been prompted to parry the stroke aimed at them by Jesus' 
 illustration by replying: "No, we do not admit that your 
 illustration is to the point. We firmly maintain that our 
 prohibition of needlessly assuming any laborious exertion 
 on the Sabbath, applies even to the case of an only sheep 
 that has fallen into a pit. Only that our pity for the suffer- 
 ing brutes — we regard even the prevention of cruelty to 
 and suffering of them as a Mosaical and Divine command — 
 bids us set aside the consideration of laborious exertion on 
 the Sabbath. When, therefore, the animal would have to 
 starve by our neglect of drawing it out, we allow the latter 
 to be done. But when there is a chance of feeding it from 
 the top, we urge that it be left in its place till after the 
 Sabbath." 
 
 We will not carry our criticism any further. The reader 
 will at this point have sufficiently recognized the tendency 
 of the evangelists to represent the Pharisees who had 
 polemical encounters with their hero, as so much inferior 
 to him in the power of argument, and as unable to cope 
 with him in any controversy. They must in any case have 
 been crushed beneath the weight of his argument, and he 
 must every time have been gloriously triumphant — is the 
 uniform verdict of the gospel writers, bent on wreaking 
 their vengeance on the antagonists of their Master. 
 
 (4 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE OTHER FOUR SABBATH CONTROVERSIES IN THE j 
 
 GOSPELS. i 
 
 There are four more Sabbath disputes delivered as having ; 
 been carried on between Jesus and his Jewish opponents. ■ 
 Two of them, belonging to the author of the fourth gospel, 
 seem to us, however, to be of one same body of narrative, 
 having by some chance been disjointed. Accordingly there ; 
 would in fact be but one Johannine Sabbath controversy to j 
 notice. As to the spittle and clay story in ch. ix. of the \ 
 fourth gcspel, it can of course not be accounted a contro- 
 versy, and, therefore, not be ranged under the above head. 
 
 Our view on the authenticity of these controversies will 
 be stated severally as we go on in our discussion. Two of 
 them occur in Luke xiii. 10-17 and xiv. 1-6. In the latter 
 place the Pauline author puts in the mouth of Jesus the | 
 identical argument which Matthew imputes to him in the i 
 case previously surveyed; with this difference only, that he [ 
 changed the sheep to an ass or ox, and the patient treated ' 
 by Jesus to one sick with the dropsy. 
 
 It seems to us that Luke having met with Jesus' illustra- 
 tion of the animal fallen into a pit either in Matthew or in j 
 the original copy common to both evangelists, liked it so ' 
 well and found it of such a prolific nature, that he concluded 
 on weaving it into two separate stories, inventing a new I 
 one, — the one in question, — in which another instance alike 
 of a miraculous cure by Jesus and of the discomfiture of the ; 
 Scribes and Pharisees by his cogent reasoning, could be 
 given to the believing public. 
 
 In Luke's other case of Sabbath healing, that of a woman 
 with "the spirit of infirmity" of eight years' standing (xiii. 
 10-17), Jesus is introduced with an argument of defence, ! 
 also taken from ordinary experience, but of a different "i 
 nature from the above. It is to be inferred from its repre- j 
 sentation that the dispute was a heated one. For the ruler ; 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTOKV. 1 75 
 
 of the synagogue who had taken decided exception to the 
 process of healing going on on the Sabbath, was addressed 
 by Jesus with the collective taunt: "Ye hypocrites." It 
 goes without saying that "the adversaries were put to 
 shame" (v. 17) in this encounter as well! The Pharisees 
 were a set of antagonists to be worsted and cowed, and 
 consequently the uniform verdict of the evangelists was, 
 that they were shamefully beaten, whenever they dared to 
 remonstrate \Yith the Master. 
 
 Now we presume to doubt the truth of the account that 
 the adversaries were put to shame by the illustration held 
 out to them by Jesus. We can not accept it as reasonable 
 that they were totally confounded by the retort, that he 
 might as well perform his cures, as that they habitually 
 "loose their domestic animals from the stall and lead them 
 away to watering" on the Sabbath. 
 
 The divergence between both propositions was doubtless 
 so great in their mind, that they were most apt to 
 promptly rejoin: "We do lead our animals to watering on 
 the Sabbath (comp. Tosifta Sabb. iv. i.). What of that ? It 
 is not a labor or an act seductive to any kind of it, if proper 
 provision is made with the view to the prohibition of carry- 
 ing from private precincts to public places (see Mishnah, 
 Erubin ii. i). Whereas we believe that if healing is per- 
 mitted to go on on the Sabbath, the apprehension that real 
 labor may ensue from it in the agitation and anxiety of the 
 mind of both the curer and the patient, is near enough. 
 We therefore hold it forbidden. To you, of course, the 
 apprehension that one might heedlessly come to commit 
 the labor of crushing medicinal roots on the Sabbath, may 
 appear as a capricious stickling. For even if he should 
 trespass that way, he would in your view at most violate an 
 angelic or humanly Mosaic command. To us, however, 
 who are convinced of the Divine authority of the Sabbath 
 law, as well as of the Divine denunciation of kareth 
 " extermination " against its violators, it must be of vital 
 concern to guard ourselves and others from its breach by 
 all possible ramparts of prevention." 
 
176 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 We will now proceed to the accounts of the fourth 
 gospel. This half-Gnostic Gentile Christian writer, who, 
 by the way, expressed himself as frivolously about the 
 Mosaic Law as he alluded insolently to the Jews, has in ch. 
 V. 17, after the mention of Jesus' curing an "infirm" man on 
 a Sabbath at the pool of Bethesda (probably situated south 
 of Jerusalem), imputed to him as argument of apology: 
 "My Father worketh until now and I work too." There is 
 surely no intrinsic evidence against the authenticity of this 
 argument, either in its language or contents. Jesus was, 
 we should think, quite as able to resort to this kind of 
 reasoning as he was to the other related by Matthew. But 
 since the genuineness of John's narrative is, on the whole, 
 as will be seen immediately, subject to serious doubt, and 
 the substance of the argument itself bears in our view 
 a native Gentile stamp, we will not be amiss in attributing 
 the quoted sentence to this author as his own free composi- 
 tion, rather than to Jesus. Keim (1. c. iii. p. 215) has 
 already critically noted the circumstance, that John has in 
 the narrative in point totally transposed a certain cure by 
 Jesus of a paralytic in Capernaum, reported by the Synop- 
 tics (Matt. ix. 1-8; Mark ii. 1-12; Luke v. 16 transfers the 
 scene to the wilderness, however), to Jerusalem, making, 
 moreover, of the sick a chronic sufferer of thirty eight 
 years' standing, and fixing the cure on the Sabbath. That 
 the author of the fourth gospel used that Synoptical 
 account and spun out his own story from it, making of it a 
 Sabbath and Sonship controversy, appears to us very prob- 
 able. Aside from this we have the following momentous 
 objection to the claim of the authenticity of the narrative. 
 The argument itself imputed to Jesus has to us the signa- 
 ture of Gentile reflection. Not that Jesus, having else- 
 where made the declaration that "the Son of man is lord of 
 the Sabbath," which was certainly the most sweeping he 
 could utter regarding the Sabbath, was not capable, too, of 
 giving vent to the idea of work being free to him, because 
 God his Father works also on the Sabbath. But we have 
 from several analogies of Gentile Christianity the strong- 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 1 77 
 
 est warrant for our opinion, that such argument was 
 exclusively employed by this class. We hold it to have 
 been the stable one with Gentile Christians in their polem- 
 ics with Jews on the obligation of the Sabbath. 
 
 Justin Martyr, in his Dialogue with Trypho, the Jew, ch. 
 xxiii., holds out to him, whom he wishes to turn to his anti- 
 Mosaic Christianity, the point of consideration, alleged to 
 have been used by the old man through whom he himself 
 had been converted to Christianity, — that "the elements 
 (or stars) are neither idle nor do they sabbatize." He aimed 
 thereby to impress on Trypho, that the Sabbath command 
 cannot be from God, because he continues to put forth his 
 providential energy on the Sabbath as well. (In connec- 
 tion with this point he urges another, namely, that, since 
 the Sabbath was not dommanded before Moses, and was 
 then introduced only because of Israel's sins, neither can it 
 be obligatory now, since Jesus Christ, the virgin-born of 
 Abraham's seed, had been sent on account of sin.) In the 
 same Dialogue, ch. xxix., where Justin had previously 
 scornfully remarked that the Jews do not understand the 
 sense of Scripture, he reflects on the non-observance by 
 the (Gentile) Christians of the Sabbath, saying: "Nor 
 must you (the Jews) think it something fearful that we 
 drink warm water on the Sabbath (that is, heat the water 
 to drink or use it), since God administers the world on this 
 day in just the same way as on all the others." He adds 
 there yet in apology of his Christian standpoint the ground 
 of objection advanced in Matthew xii. 5; and further, that 
 so many just men who lived before Moses, had been 
 approved by God, though they observed none of the ritual- 
 istic laws of Mosaism. 
 
 To strengthen our opinion, that the argument of God's 
 providential working on the Sabbath was peculiar to Gen- 
 tile Christianity for its opposition to the observance of the 
 day by Jews, we will yet adduce a pertinent instance from 
 the Rabbinical literature. It is a relation of the Midrash 
 which, while it is of a legendary composition, shows yet the 
 settled existence of that argument with the Gentile profes- 
 sors of Christianity. "A Minean,"it is said there, "over- 
 
1 78 THE SABBATH IN ULSTORY. 
 
 heard the four Palestinian Rabbis (Gamaliel, Klazar, Josua 
 and Akiba, supposed to have been in Rome about 96 C. E. ; 
 see Graetz, History of the Jews) preach in the city of Rome 
 on the topic, that God not only commands, but himself 
 observes what he asks men to do; herein (as in other things) 
 he is exalted above human rulers, who give orders, but do 
 not obey them themselves. (This was, by the way, a favor- 
 ite theme with the older Rabbis ; comp. Jer. Rosh. Hash. f. 
 57). When they left after they had done preaching, a Minean 
 questioned them : ' If your affirmation were true, why is it, 
 then, that God does not himself keep the Sabbath ?' etc." 
 (Rabb. Ex. ch. xxx.) We refrain from reproducing the 
 sequel of the controversy. It turns on a scholastic problem 
 in which, we presume, the non-theological reader cannot 
 be interested. That entire Midrash relation is indeed an 
 unreal expository web, which could have been of value only 
 to Israelites in the earlier stage of culture. But yet it con- 
 tains this historical thread at least, that Mineans were wont 
 to argue against the Sabbath from the point of view of 
 God's providential activity on it. The Minean of the 
 Midrash was, as we prefer to hold from the analogy of 
 Justin's identical argument, a Gentile Christian. 
 
 But even if he had been meant for a pagan Roman, — this 
 class were also in the Rabbinical literature denominated 
 Mineans, — our view would not the less gain a very substan- 
 tial support from that Midrashic relation. In so far at 
 least, as we learn from it that the objection to the Sabbath 
 on the ground of God's exercising his providential energy 
 on it, had a Gentile origin. And this we essentially aimed 
 at when we proposed, that it issued from Gentile Chris- 
 tianity, and was habitual with this party, in contrast with 
 Jewish Christianity. 
 
 That the before-mentioned Minean might have been in- 
 tended for a pagan Roman, is manifest from the following 
 notice in another place of the Midrash. In the continua- 
 tion of the dialogue between Rabbi Akiba and Tinnius 
 Rufus which we presented above (p. 82), the latter asked 
 the Rabbi : " If indeed it be so as you pretend, that God 
 honors the Sabbatli, why does he on it make the wind blow, 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 179 
 
 the rain fall, and the grass grow ? " The Rabbi's reply does 
 not concern us now. We only wished here to refer to that 
 dialogue for the purpose of corroborating our supposition, 
 that that Minean could well have been a heathen Roman.** 
 The sanne point of argument having been attributed to both 
 the Minean and the governor Tinnius Rufus. it is surely 
 not far from possible, that the two relations entered the 
 Midrash from the actual experience of disputes on the Sab- 
 bath held between Jews and Romans, especially imperial 
 officers stationed in Palestine with whom Rabbis and other 
 Jewish people frequently met and had encounters on points 
 of Jewish religious law. This does yet not exclude the 
 same argument being often used by Gentile converts to 
 Christianity who fanatically opposed Jewish rites in general, 
 and especially contended that they were not liable to the 
 observance of the Sabbath, — all in accordance with the 
 license promulgated by the apostle of the Gentiles, Paul. 
 We have practically shown it used by Justin. And we 
 maintain, too, that it proceeded from unconsecrated Gen- 
 tile thought, but not from the minds of the Jewish-born 
 devotees of the new sect. (It is yet possible that a few 
 fanatical Hellenistic Christians of the type of Stephen were 
 essentially in accord with the Christian converts from 
 paganism.) Our view therefore is, that the author of the 
 fourth gospel imputed to Jesus the above noted argument 
 from his own mind. 
 
 This view, in passing, furnishes at the same time an 
 evidence, indirectly at least, — if any additional one were 
 yet needed, — that that gospel was not written by the Jewish 
 Christian apostle, John, but by a Gentile who had assumed 
 this name. As to the Sabbath controversy in point it 
 remains yet to be noted, that John has given it a twofold 
 bearing. Not only is Jesus rebuked for healing on the 
 Sabbath, but also the cured man is rigidly questioned about 
 his license in taking up his bed and walking away with it, 
 it being the Sabbath (v. 10)." The implication is, that the 
 Jews (it is mainly the Jews in general who are brought for- 
 ward in the fourth gospel as Jesus' antagonists, not the 
 Pharisees, as in the Synoptics ; the change was without 
 
l80 Tt4E SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 doubt made from the anti-Jewish sentiment of its author) 
 were indignant at his carrying away his couch on which he 
 lay prostrate in one of the porches of the pool. We have 
 to interpret the accusation, if it is to have any sense at all, 
 that the Jews were exasperated at his breaking the Sabbath 
 law of carrying things from a private precinct to a public 
 place, or, as it might have been, the reverse, which was 
 indeed a grave offence with them, and one prominently 
 included in the thirty-nine chief labors prohibited on the 
 Sabbath. The removing of the bed itself, however, that is, 
 its handling, was surely not thought unlawful by any one 
 of the orthodox Jevv^s. Whether Jesus was also charged 
 with that offence, because he had occasioned it by his 
 address to the impotent man (v. 8), is not directly clear 
 from V. i6. 
 
 John's other altercation between the Jews and Jesus about 
 his Sabbatic healing reported in ch. vii., is so hopelessly 
 entangled in the context in which it is placed, that it can 
 yield no satisfactory decision, whether he intended it for an 
 independent controversy or only as supplemental to the 
 previous one hereto discussed. We cannot be expected 
 to try to throw light on the confused matter of the vv. 14- 
 25, in which that altercation is produced. This is a task for 
 Christian expounders. On the whole we have the impres- 
 sion that it logically and locally belongs to the controversy 
 of ch. V. Why it was left out there and came to be placed 
 here, is inexplicable to us. 
 
 Now the new argument with which Jesus is introduced 
 here in v. 23 in repelling the charge of Sabbath breaking by 
 "making a man whole" was, that the Jews themselves 
 allow circumcision to take place on the Sabbath. The 
 "ruler" who had called him to account for it, then "said 
 nothing unto him" (v. 26). John insinuates by this state- 
 ment that they were too much astounded at the over- 
 whelming intelligence of " the Christ" to come forward 
 with an answer. 
 
 What is the pith of the argument imputed here to 
 Jesus .-* This is indeed very difficult to decide. From its 
 external tone and aspect w.; should judge that it is sub- 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORV. l8l 
 
 stantially similar to Jesus' objection of the Temple sacrifice 
 vacating- the Sabbath ( see Matt. xii. 5 ). Both sacrifice and 
 circumcision on the legal eighth day, had indeed vacated the 
 Sabbath obligation according to Jewish custom. A solid 
 warrant for the latter is variously attempted to be obtained 
 in B. Sabb. f. 132. The argument attributed to Jesus may 
 have been meant to be : " If out of regard to the Mosaic 
 Law commanding the rite of circumcision for the eighth 
 day, the Sabbath has to recede before it in the instance that 
 both collide, because ycu hold that without its performance 
 on the proper day the ]e\v is not perfect before God, how 
 can you be angry at me for making a sick man entirely 
 whole or /^^r/i"^^ (though only physically). -• " Possibly — as 
 it has been suggested already by others, see Bloomfield's 
 commentary, in loco — the following antithesis was here 
 aimed at: "If the Sabbath has to yield to a rite performed 
 only on a single part of the body, how can it be wrong to 
 attend to a whole (suffering) human being and completely 
 restore him.''" In the same strain a Rabbi of old is 
 reported to have argued to defend and support the rule 
 that ''saving life vacates the Sabbath." "If circumcision," 
 the Rabbi reasons, "which is done on only one member of 
 the body, puts the Sabbath aside, how much the more must 
 the entire human body (when endangered) have the force 
 of temporarily vacating it .-'" (Mechilta p. iio). We 
 venture yet another possible interpretation of the argu- 
 ment as set forth by the author of the fourth gospel. It 
 has to be borne in mind that Jesus passes with this evan- 
 gelist as the pre-existent Logos that became flesh in him. 
 The Mosaic Law and the dogma on Jesus as worked out by 
 this writer, were utter opposites (see i. 17; and comp. v. 8, 
 9; iii. 36). The antithesis he imputed to Jesus in vii. 23, 
 may accordingly have been intended to have this force : 
 "If a Jew may be circumcised on the Sabbath, that the law 
 of (your) Moses may not be broken, are you wroth with 
 me because I, viz., the only begotten God (see i. 18), nay, 
 identical with God as the personified Logos (see i. i), made 
 (by my divine, miraculous power) a human being entirely 
 well again? If the authority of Moses who has commanded 
 
l82 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 you all those laws, is to be respected to such a degree that 
 even the Sabbath has temporarily to yield to another para- 
 mount command of his, how much the more authority must 
 I have for my own acts who, in my capacity as the Word 
 incarnate, am surely so much superior to him! " 
 
 Putting this construction on the argument, we find it to 
 have about the same motive as the antithesis which Jesus 
 is by Matthew reported to have employed in the Sabbath 
 controversy recorded there. There the superiority of Jesus 
 above the Temple is affirmed; here that above Moses. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 RETROSPECT AS TO JESUS' POSITION ON THE SABBATH. 
 
 The Sabbath disputes brought forward and discussed in 
 the two foregoing chapters, whatever may have to be 
 objected to the genuineness of the one or the other of them, 
 and whether or not only those of Matthew have a claim to 
 historical recognition, show at least this solid kernel of 
 authenticity that Jesus, as Keim remarks in vol. iii. p. 326 
 of his work, "set himself in conflict with the law of the 
 Sabbath, as he most decidedly did with the Mosaic divorce 
 ordinance." We will, besides, reproduce this author's 
 reflection on the page following there: "No instance of 
 neglect of the Law on the part of Jesus can, it is true, be 
 formally established. But his self-dispensations from the 
 severe rule of the Sabbath, etc., point in that direction." 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 1 83 
 
 These concessions we have to put up with, considering 
 that they come from an author who, on the one hand, 
 strenuously exerts himself to defend the Law-abiding posi- 
 tion of Jesus, and on the other, can, as a Christian writer, 
 trained in the Pauline faith-religion and consequently 
 imbued with a Gentile anti-Mosaic bias, if not an anti-Jew- 
 ish disdain, not well be expected to enter with any sympa- 
 thetic estimation of Jewish religious sentiment into the 
 survey of Jesus' speeches and activity, antagonistic to 
 orthodox Judaism. 
 
 We have yet to state that he has ultimately not left those 
 concessions unaltered. In his attempt at championing 
 Jesus as an upholder of the Law, he afterwards modifies 
 them again. The fact is, his view on Jesus' regard for the 
 Law is so unsettled and wavering (we have touched on 
 this already above), that we are at our wits' end in attempt- 
 ing to ascertain which one of his manifold sentiments we 
 shall choose as the standard for accurately judging of it. 
 We can indulge his inconsistency only in view of that of 
 the gospel accounts themselves. The modification of his 
 judgment occurring on page 327, he gives forth on pp. 362- 
 63, where he does not objectively admit Jesus' disregard of 
 the Law, but does so only subjectively, that is, as to the 
 perception and purpose of the Phariseic opponents. "But 
 it was easy for them," he says there, "to establish, in a 
 number of points, his disregard of the Law, etc" His other 
 observation on the conflict of Jesus with the law of the 
 Sabbath on p. 326, he subsequently qualifies in so much, 
 that Jesus "decided, on his own authority, that the law of 
 the Sabbath must be limited by the moral law, which 
 allowed the doing what was necessary to the maintenance 
 of life, and commanded the saving of one's neighbor." 
 
 This sweeping qualification has, we own, a very luring 
 sound; but only to the Gentile Christian who swears on the 
 words of the teacher Paul, that with and through Jesus the 
 Mosaic ritual was abolished, and who regards the ethical 
 Jesus-religion as the legal system that was, by a Divine 
 arrangement, to supplant Mosaism. Different it was, how- 
 ever, with the representatives of orthodox Judaism in Jesus' 
 
184 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 time. They would not only not own any contrast between 
 the ritual and moral law, but would denounce any attempt 
 at putting up such a contrast as a rank heresy. For to 
 them there was, nay, there could be, no moral law without, 
 not to say, above the Mosaic code. It was fully contained 
 therein, partly expressly and partly by implication. Both 
 the ritualistic ordinances and the moral rules of life were to 
 them equally enunciated by God through Moses. They 
 were to them coming from one source, were of one mould, 
 and most congruous with one another. In their judgment 
 and belief, therefore, the plea that there is an extraneous 
 moral law which is to serve as the regulator of the Sabbath 
 observance, as Keim formulates it, must have been as sub- 
 versive of true Judaism, as any other radically irreligious 
 assault upon it. 
 
 But Keim's qualification is defective and incorrect from 
 still another view. He evidently meant to suggest that 
 the plucking by the hungry apostles of a few ears of corn 
 on the Sabbath, was a thing "necessary to the maintenance 
 of life." which cause decided Jesus to interpose with the 
 dispensation urged by the moral law. But where in the 
 world did that author gather the information that the 
 maintenance of life depended on those few ears of corn.'' 
 How does he know that the apostles' craving was mortal, or 
 would at least have proved injurious, had they not gratified 
 it on the spot.'' How does he know that they could not 
 have succeeded to get victuals for satisfying their hunger 
 in many another way, if they were only willing to make 
 some exertion, have a little patience, and impose on them- 
 selves a momentary self-abnegation .-' The text does, 
 indeed, not say that they were famished or pinched with 
 hunger, so that waiting any longer could have been fraught 
 with a dangerous collapse. They were only "an hungred." 
 And since we justl}' infer from the observation by the 
 Pharisees of the apostles' act, that the latter were then only 
 taking a walk along the near outskirts of the town of 
 Capernaum, wc may further fairly conclude that, if they 
 had felt the commonly prevailing reverence for the Sab- 
 bath, they could without any real suffering and fear of ill 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 185 
 
 result from their hungry sensations, have wended their way 
 back and got all they wanted to eat in a lawful manner, 
 among the coreligionists in town. As to Keim's other 
 point in that qualifying sentence, that " the moral law com- 
 manded the saving of one's neighbor," we indeed agree, as 
 we are positive that the Pharisees of old did agree (see 
 above), that this principle is alike reasonable and coercive. 
 Yet that author's bringing it to bear on the issue of Jesus' 
 miraculous healing of the man with a withered hand on the 
 Sabbath, is impertinent, because he presents that moral 
 law as an extraneous abstract power, demanding that the 
 Sabbath give way to such kind of saving one's neighbor. 
 He ought to have known from the relative passages of the 
 Rabbinical literature accessible to non-Jewish Inquirers as. 
 well, that orthodox Judaism itself found it totally con- 
 gruous with the Mosaic dispensation, that "saving life 
 should vacate the Sabbath," without even faintly looking 
 for any external standard that would in such cases urge to 
 interfere on behalf of suffering humanity, viz., the moral 
 law ! Lastly, we have to object to Keim's qualifying sen- 
 tence that, whatever moral considerations may have pre- 
 vailed with Jesus in defending those anti-Sabbatic acts 
 recorded in Matt, xii., yet as the most weighty and para- 
 mount argument stands forth indisputably his assertion of 
 a personal, divine-like authority over the Sabbath, in the 
 words : "For the Son of man is lord of the Sabbath. "^ 
 Here it is no more an abstract ethical criterion urging on 
 to interference with the Sabbath, but a prete;,nded divinity 
 of some sort, personified in himself. What this affirmation 
 must have implied to the orthodox opponents of Jesus, we 
 have already suggested before. Christian writers who pro- 
 pose to themselves the task of exalting, in behalf of Jesus, 
 the moral law that was to repel, in accordance with his 
 precepts, the Sabbath observance, ought at the same time 
 not to overlook or lightly pass over the fact of that affirma- 
 tion, which by far outweighs in significance the emphasis of 
 humane points of view attributed to Jesus in the record of 
 that Sabbath controversy. They ought to consider, fur- 
 ther, that if Jesus had held those moral considerations a 
 
1 86 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 sufficiently valid apology for the act construed as a 
 breach of the Sabbath by his opponents, he would not have 
 had to add the argument of his own supernatural authority 
 over it. 
 
 If Christian writers made proper account of this, they 
 would not inveigh against the orthodox antagonists of- 
 Jesus with such endless volleys of revilement as we find 
 that most of them do, from the relentless Canon Farrar 
 (see his ' The Life of Christ') to the more moderate Keim, 
 who vents the following (1. c.) : " It is well known how 
 scrupulously, how sternly, the Jews, especially the Phari- 
 sees (the latter is not true, for the common Jewish people — 
 the Am-ha-arets — were provably, as far as they knew how 
 to be so, every whit as conscientious in the observance of 
 the Sabbath as the learned, pious extremists; and as to the 
 Sadducees and Essenes, their Sabbath strictness was surely 
 without any flaw, though it had, according to their respect- 
 ive sectarian tenets, a somewhat different aspect from the 
 Phariseic ; see our Note 42), upheld the honor of the day 
 which was said to have been solemnized by Adam, 
 although they expressly elevated it into the weekly day of 
 enjoyment (this is the height of insolent perversion of 
 truth, and betrays the author's ignorance of the history of 
 the Sabbath, which exhibits in numberless instances the 
 keenest conception by the pious Jews of the day as one of 
 self-sanctification, while all the enjoyment by which they 
 distinguished it — and they did distinguish it so solely 
 because "delight" was, according to Isa. Iviii. 13, one of its 
 signatures — was limited to innocent comforts which were 
 sufficiently tempered, if b}^ nothing else, surely by the 
 many minute restrictions as to acts and movements with 
 which the Sabbath law was traditionally and continuously 
 hedged in) ; how, under the ridicule of the Gentiles they 
 lost battles and repeatedly lost Jerusalem when besieged, 
 through their Sabbath rest, etc." (The ridicule, it need 
 not be said, Keim has surely not witnessed himself, nor is 
 it likely that the hostile forces and their leaders had in the 
 hot pursuit of w^irfare leisure enough to indulge in it. He 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 18/ 
 
 has no historical witnesses for it, either, for what he 
 evidently alludes to, was uttered by some pagan writers 
 long after the respective events, but not by the pagan com- 
 batants themselves; see above p. 13). 
 
 It is, indeed, easy for the Christian biographers of Jesus 
 to follow the contemptuous tone of the gospels towards his 
 orthodox opponents of old, and level against them all the 
 taunt their vocabulary supplies, for their minute ritualistic 
 peculiarities on the one hand, and, on the other, for having 
 had the susceptibility of being scandalized by the various 
 innovations of him, who was one of their own nation, and 
 concerning whom their judgment, but not that of Gentiles, 
 whether of antiquity or of modern days, was the only com- 
 petent criterion. For, as Hartmann, 'The Self-Decompo- 
 sition of Christianity,' says, "Jesus was a Jew from head to 
 toe; his culture was a national Jewish one;" and again, 
 "Jesus is Jew and nothing but Jew." Jesus truly belonged 
 to the jurisdiction of the authorities of his own, the Jewish, 
 people. His continuous contact and, as we also know, fre- 
 quent contentions, were with Jewish people. And it is the 
 Jezvs only who have the indefeasible right of submitting his 
 acts and speeches to the critical judgment, zvhich the same- 
 ness of racial ties and the common native religion, as well 
 as the common patrimony of one record of ancestral history, 
 alone authorise. 
 
 Again, it is easy for those biographers to pour out every 
 imaginable epithet of abuse and scorn upon the Scribes and 
 Pharisees whose ceremonial austerity, while it was exact- 
 ing towards others, was at the same time of a' most self- 
 denying character, because they stand at the safe distance 
 of nearly nineteen hundred years from them. They have 
 surely not to fear their rising from the grave to avenge the 
 rancorous and derisive language which they employ against 
 them. No Christian writer of our times who, like Canon 
 Farrar, for instance, standing on the proud pedestal of 
 monumental Gentile presumption, looks contemptuously 
 down and vents his biting sarcasm on them, runs any risk 
 on that head. And as to the offence given by such scornful 
 derogation and heartless criticism of the opponents of Jesus 
 
1 88 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 to those who are of all others sensitively affected by it, the 
 Jews of every age, there is no scruple about that, either. 
 Do not the Jews for their small numbers stand in vanishing 
 proportion to the multitude of Gentile Christians.-' These 
 have on their side at once the impunity and the immunities 
 which are, as this world goes, peculiar to the majority and 
 to might. The Christian Gentiles, at least many of 
 them, while they claim to be the spiritual heirs of old 
 Israel, — with an egregious improvement on the heritage to 
 boot, — yet think themselves warranted in haughtily dis- 
 sociating themselves from the Jews in the inmost range of 
 their feeling, as well as in their turn of mind. They eye 
 them askance with a sort of scornful pity, and in the vain 
 sense of a fancied superiority, which the mingled Pauline 
 and Johannine spirit has, in written and in spoken words, 
 been producing and nurturing all through these past 
 eighteen centuries. There is no denying this to be true. 
 The writer giving unreserved utterance to this deplorable 
 circumstance, — he does it though with resentment and 
 malice towards none, — regards himself entitled to the claim 
 of an accurate notice of it. Close observations running 
 through a period of nearly four decades of his own life, and, 
 besides, a fair proportion of literary information, confirm 
 him in the assumption of its positive existence. 
 
 Now if non-Jewish biographers of Jesus cannot help 
 admitting his conflict with the law of the Sabbath and its 
 apparent neglect by him (Farrar gives it thus in his most 
 amiable style : "Jesus laid his axe at the root of their 
 proud and ignorant Sabbatarianism;" as above, ii. ii8), 
 what has the Jewish investigator to say.-* He will, as the 
 writer does, concede that Jesus observed the Sabbath 
 (comp. also Matt. xxiv. 20), that he did not directly disown 
 its inviolability by common labor, not to say, that he did 
 not decree its abolition, or much the less propose that 
 another day be substituted in its place. 
 
 Yet we learn from the gospels, on the other hand, that he 
 opposed the traditional mode of its observance, as it was 
 conceived and practiced by the generality of the Jewish 
 people of his day. We have, further, above essayed to 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 189 
 
 show convincingly that he cannot have believed in the 
 Divine authority of the Law, even of the Decalogue, in 
 which the institution of the Sabbath was so eminently 
 enjoined. As another additional, though only indirect, 
 evidence that he disbelieved the Divine authority of the 
 Sabbath, we have produced above, p. 147, his eliminating 
 its observance from the number of obligations indispens- 
 able for entrance into the world to come. 
 
 Should there even be a possibility of refuting our rela- 
 tive proofs, yet no one will be able or have the hardihood 
 to deny the authenticity of the sentence, appearing in all 
 the three Synoptics, that "the Son of man (himself) is lord 
 of the Sabbath." This alone would show his denial of the 
 Divine institution of the Sabbath. That sentence unques- 
 tionably bears the sense, that Jesus claimed, in his pre- 
 tended divine-like Messianic capacity, to have the power 
 of annulling the Sabbath at will, or at any rate to order it 
 to yield to his own option. 
 
 What of it, then, that he has not directly declared the 
 Sabbath abolished .'' Did it not practically, as far as the 
 awe of the Sabbath for himself and his followers was con- 
 cerned, come to the same thing, whether he spoke the final 
 word of its abolition, or withheld it, either for prudential 
 reasons, or because he held all ceremonial religion as 
 weighing too lightly against the main, Messianic question 
 that exclusively agitated and absorbed his thought and 
 should do so with all his believers, for him to set himself to 
 the task of doctrinally expatiating on the merits of the 
 Sabbath, or yet, perhaps, from some scruple restraining him 
 from putting forth that decisive word, — as long as he openly 
 and directly pronounced himself "lord of the Sabbath .-'" 
 
 Has he by this affirmation not substantially laid the axe 
 on the Sabbath of the Decalogue ? Has he by it not seri- 
 ously shaken the sense of its obligation with his disciples 
 and his other votaries, who were in the main guided by 
 his words .'' If the Messiah called in question the absolute 
 inviolability of the Sabbath, was it to be expected that 
 they should persevere in the traditional awful reverence 
 towards it .'' 
 
 (5) 
 
IpO THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 It is a known or, at least, very noticeable fact, that the 
 devotees of Jesus had implicit, indestructible reliance in 
 their Master's Messiahship, and also in the sure fulfillment 
 of the prediction by him of his second coming. He himself 
 having, as we are seriously inclined to maintain, laid the 
 chief stress of his Messianic mission on his second Advent, 
 his votaries have naturally done likewise. And there is 
 abundant proof in the N. T. literature that they were look- 
 ing forward to that Advent with intense, never faltering 
 confidence. Now since there is no reasonable doubt that 
 those of his followers who overheard him speak that 
 momentous sentence of his being the " lord of the Sab- 
 bath," took him actually by his word and interpreted it in 
 the plain sense which it was to convey, viz., that they 
 could, by his arbitration, be dispensed from its observance: 
 may we not justly suppose, too, that this word continued 
 to resound in their consciousness ever after his death, so 
 long as the paroxysm of their feverish hope of his second 
 Advent lasted, which was, indeed, during the whole life- 
 time of each one of them, deciding them in their attitude 
 towards the Sabbath in the same way that his living word 
 did ? And, further, must they not all through their own 
 lives have expected, for the glorious period of his real 
 second presence, a dispensation from the accepted Jewish 
 Sabbath observance all the more authoritative, as then he 
 would arrive "in glory, with angels, and as Judge of all" 
 (see Matt. xvi. 27, xxv. 31 sq.) ? 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 THE SABBATH WITH JESUS' DISCIPLES IN HIS LIFETIME. 
 
 Our above expressed view of Jesus' indifference to all 
 ceremonial religion over against the concerns of his 
 Messiahdom, will find a manifest support in the recorded 
 conduct of his disciples as to Jewish religious observances. 
 That they were nurtured in his opinion of the comparative 
 insignificance of ceremonial religion at the then fancied 
 juncture of the partially inaugurated and soon fully to be 
 accomplished kingdom of Heaven, with himself as the cen- 
 tral figure, we have no doubt. For how else could their 
 various slights of Jewish observances, some of them Mosaic, 
 be accounted for.'' Wherefrom should it have come to 
 them that they deliberately made light of, or wholly put 
 aside, the one or the other ritualistic observance, if not 
 from the Master himself, and that in consequence of his 
 all-absorbing Messianic object.-* They had, for example, 
 broken the Sabbath by plucking ears, ere yet he had 
 brought forward the intricate points of argument in defence 
 of their action. From what motive or on what pretext can 
 they, belonging to observant families as they doubtless 
 were, be supposed to have treated the Sabbath so laxly, if 
 not from that Messianic, instilled on their minds in the 
 daily commerce with the Master.^ It is too evident that 
 the whole immediate environment of Jesus was pervaded 
 by his Messianic spirit and design, as well as by the opin- 
 ion that no serious concern must be had for anything but 
 for the Messianic kingdom and the narrow scope of the 
 natural religion of Messiahism. In this neither the Sab- 
 bath, nor the festivals, nor the fasts, nor surely the sacri- 
 ficial ritual, nor any outward ceremonial rite of Judaism 
 were included as obligatory, not to say, any observance of 
 the so-called oral Law, whether anciently traditional, or 
 later and periodically instituted by councils of schoolmen. 
 The Mosaic ritual was at the same time not explicitly and 
 
192 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 openly excluded from the line of religious practice. It was 
 only treated with the laxity which a sense of non-obliga- 
 tion engenders. As with Jesus, to use Keim's words who 
 infers from the necessity of his making the protest that he 
 did not come to abrogate but to fulfil (Matt. v. 17), *' the 
 Law had in his daily practical life retreated to the back- 
 ground" (1. c. iii. 324), so it had with the apostles. Or, 
 let us say with reference to another modern writer, 
 Hausrath, who agrees more directly with us as to laying 
 the main stress on Jesus' Messianic design having 
 engrossed his whole mind: As Jesus, "from the first, in 
 accordance with his preaching of the kingdom of God, put 
 aside those Jewish ordinances (the Sabbath observance, 
 fasting, and conversing with publicans and sinners ^^) as 
 things indifferent" (1. c. ii. p. 180), so did the apostles. 
 These men, unlettered though most of them were, had yet 
 a clear enough comprehension to be susceptible to the 
 insinuation of being emancipated, by ardent and sincere 
 adherence to the concerns of Messiahism, from the bulk 
 and burden of religious practices. Surely experience shows 
 at all times that it requires very little sagacity or learning 
 to catch the sense of those preachings, dispensing people 
 from ceremonial observances attended with exertion or 
 self-denial. When Keim, therefore, proposes that the apos- 
 tles "did not see this," namely, that "Jesus had in his inner- 
 most genius overstepped the limits of Judaism," and that "it 
 was left to Paul and John to fully develop the spirit of the 
 teaching of Jesus" (1. c. iii. 327-28), he is right as to the 
 latter assertion, and that so far, that none of the apostles 
 before Paul had decidedly renounced allegiance to the body 
 of Mosaism or dared to declare it abrogated. But he is 
 surely in error as to the apostles' inability of perceiving 
 that Jesus had overstepped the limits of Judaism. A child 
 of sufficiently matured mind noticing the contrast between 
 the religious precepts and practice that prevailed in the 
 average Jewish family, and the attitude regarding them 
 assumed by Jesus, could have promptly realized that cir- 
 cumstance. Keim corrects himself, though, in the same 
 volume (p. 343), when he says : "How earlj' the disciples 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISIORV. 193 
 
 of Jesus learned from intercourse with him free principles 
 and free practices, is shown by the complaints .... (Matt. 
 ix. 14; xii. 2; XV. I, 2, Luke v. 33). In fact, the general 
 appearance, demeanor, style of life and habits, were such as 
 had never been heard of in Israel for a teacher or a school." 
 
 All Jesus' concern was, indeed, his own Messianic king- 
 dom of Heaven, from his initial utterance (Matt. v. 17 sq.), 
 through the Sermon on the Mount (ib. vi. 33) and his entire 
 subsequent course, till his final ostentatious entry into 
 Jerusalem. Were the apostles not naturally infiltered with 
 the same uppermost notion and engrossed with the same 
 concern, subordinating to it not only all worldly care (comp. 
 Matt. vi. 25-34), but also all observance of practical Judaism? 
 It is, indeed, only their minds' absorption by the confident 
 expectation of Jesus bringing about the much longed-for 
 kingdom of Heaven with all its privileges and advantages, 
 that can account for their now putting a lax sense on this 
 ceremonial rite, now on that, and for their now entirely 
 setting at naught another. To what degree they were 
 indoctrinated with Jesus' denial of the Divine authority of 
 the Mosaic Law, as well as, perhaps, with his other pro- 
 phetical and Messianic dispensatory notions which we pro- 
 posed above, we would not presume to decide. There is 
 in any case sufficient testimony of their religious ceremo- 
 nial libertinism. 
 
 That Jesus' systematic opposition to the existing Temple 
 service with the vast range of other ceremonial obligations 
 directly or indirectly connected with and concentring in 
 the Temple, passed to his immediate disciples, there can be 
 no doubt. Not only does this antagonism run through the 
 whole of Jewish Christianity, but there is actually not the 
 slightest trace of the apostles having ever attended to any 
 rite pertaining to the Temple or to sacrifice, save the 
 Paschal ceremonial on the eve before Jesus' death, which 
 is, however, above p. 143, accounted for by his Messianic 
 purpose, but not by the ordinary sense of religiously legal 
 obligation. That they made no scruple to break the Sab- 
 
194 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 bath in the way stated in the gospels, is certainly a weighty 
 enough evidence of their religious libertinism. We may 
 justly infer that they made light of the festivals in the same 
 manner. 
 
 That they neglected the fasts is also authentically 
 attested ; Matt. ix. 14. Their defense by Jesus bears all the 
 features of genuineness. How they came to put them aside 
 is as easily explained as that they slighted the Sabbath. 
 We propose that ' the slight rested in both cases on 
 grounds of his Messianic claim. Although it was 
 only Jesus who, in both instances, argued with Messianic 
 references, and, besides, even he urged, in that of the 
 Sabbath neglect, the dispensatory virtue of his Messiah- 
 dom only in conjunction with other points of argument, 
 and that after the apostles had done the act for which 
 they were reproached by the opponents, it may yet justly 
 be supposed that in both they acted on opinions previously 
 gathered from the Master's instruction, and which they had 
 adopted in their own conscience. We hold that alike their 
 slight of the Sabbath and neglect of the fasts were owing 
 to the very same Messianic motives, which Jesus gave forth 
 in his arguments, that he as the Son of man was lord of the 
 Sabbath, and the other, that fasting was not befitting in the 
 presence of the Messianic bridegroom. These motives, we 
 maintain, they had assimilated in their minds a considera- 
 ble time before they plucked the ears on the Sabbath, or 
 were found to neglect the fasts and questioned by John's 
 disciples concerning it. For there can be no doubt that 
 Jesus primarily and repeatedly made all things relating to 
 his pretended Messiahdom, or which could be brought to 
 bear on it, subjects of discussions with his disciples. And 
 it is consequently but reasonable to suppose that he had at 
 some time previous to that Sabbath morning when the dis- 
 pute with the Pharisees occurred, reasoned with his dis- 
 ciples about his Messianic lordship, in order to relieve their 
 scruple on various things known to be forbidden on the 
 Sabbath ; and also that he held out to them, already before 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. I95 
 
 that inquiry of John's disciples, the consideration of the all- 
 ingulfing ecstasy which the presence of the bridegroonti- 
 Messiah must inspire, so as to shut out the gloom and 
 mournfulness of the fast. ^^ 
 
 The fasts were many in Israel. Not only was there the 
 great Fast of the Atonement day, Mosaically enjoined, and 
 that with the threat of "kareth" extermination for its viola- 
 tion, but there were four other Scriptural fast days, which 
 were surely by common consent generally observed during 
 the period of the second Commonwealth, viz., those of the 
 fourth, fifth, seventh and tenth month respectively, named 
 by the prophet Zechariah, viii. 19. They were com- 
 memorative of dire national calamities. What dates were 
 in Jesus' time fixed for the one or the other of them, can 
 here not be investigated. Suffice it to say that it admits 
 of no doubt, that the Israelites everywhere in Palestine 
 then kept them, as well as those of the pro-restoration 
 belief of our own times still observe them. That the 
 apostles neglected these and all other fasts, though perhaps 
 not that of the Atonement day, which may have had as 
 awful a hold of their conscience as of that of every other 
 coreligionist, appears from the expression of the question,, 
 "but thy disciples fast not" fib. 14). 
 
 By such neglect they had practically seceded from the 
 religious conception prevailing in Israel since antiquity, 
 that fasts (with prayer) are an efificient means of expiation 
 and atonement. We cannot here enlarge on this subject, 
 but will summarily state that from the many notices in the 
 Bible and the Apocrypha, as also from the Rabbinical 
 literature, fasts were a fixed religious institution in memory 
 of national catastrophes, for deprecating national, sectional 
 or only local scourges of any kind, and for imploring 
 Divine aid against any perils. 
 
 In the centuries on the customs of which the old Rabbin- 
 ical literature dilates, fasts for menaced or existing 
 scourges were published and enjoined by the ecclesiastical 
 
196 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 authorities. To resist them by non-compliance was, indeed, 
 no culpable act of religious recreancy. But it showed at 
 any rate a decided repudiation of the aforesaid religious 
 conception. 
 
 That in the time of Jesus all those occasional public fasts 
 were already a set custom, is not to be questioned. The 
 apostles can, from the above quotation, not be supposed as 
 having observed them. Nor can they, in view of the same 
 quotation, be reasonably assumed, as already remarked 
 before, to have paid any regard to those mentioned in 
 Zechariah. 
 
 It might be opposed that the above question of John's 
 disciples allows of an allusion to self-imposed private fasts. 
 These were doubtless also customary in those days. Not 
 only for perturbing dreams, but for conscious sins, and even 
 as supererogatory penances, we are, from respective state- 
 ments and intimations in the Rabbinical literature, war- 
 ranted to assume that private fasts had been in vogue in 
 Jesus' time. John's disciples, of the Essenian or an Essenian- 
 like ascetic sect, may by their Master have been taught to 
 undertake frequent fasts in connection with other exercises 
 of repentance, that the sins obstructing the arrival of the 
 kingdom of Heaven, to hasten which was his arduous aim, 
 would the more thoroughly be wiped away ; comp. Matt. 
 xi. 18. Jesus, on the other hand, having after following up 
 for a time the theoretic teaching of John, arrived at the 
 self-confident conclusion that he was himself the real 
 Messiah and the practical inaugurator of the Kingdom, — 
 incipient, but steadily growing under his hands, — could, as 
 it is to be surmised from his answer to those disciples, not 
 see the necessity of austere penances for the coming of the 
 Kingdom in the full bloom of glory. It was already 
 blossoming forth apace. To help on its maturity, his own 
 recommended ethical-religious method, unencumbered by 
 exterior rites, would suffice. Besides, as he is reported to 
 have argued against John's disciples ( ib. v. 15), he would 
 hold it inconsistent that "the children of the bride chamber 
 (the friends of the groom) mourn, as long as the bridegroom 
 is with them," by which title he, without any shadow of 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 1 97 
 
 doubt, meant to designate himself. Tl)is construction of 
 the remonstrance of John's disciples with him would indeed 
 be admissible, and perhaps commend itself in preference to 
 any other, were it not for the unambiguous words "but thy 
 disciples fast not," which allow of no other interpretation 
 than that they slighted all Jewish fasts, — that of Atonement 
 day perhaps excepted, as observed above. 
 
 That the disciples of Jesus had, while they were con- 
 nected with him, not any regular devotional exercises, 
 either, at least not until the time when they, according to 
 Luke (xi. i ), asked him, "teach us to pray," and received 
 in answer the advice recorded there also, would appear 
 as conclusive from this quoted passage. From it is surely 
 to be inferred that they had not been practicing the three 
 fixed daily devotions of the orthodox Jews, the ritual of 
 which had positively existed since centuries, nor those 
 initiatory to and closing the Sabbaths and festivals, nor the 
 many other doxologies established for various occasions 
 and events. 
 
 Neither is it at all certain that they, from the time forth 
 when he, according to Luke, proposed to them, in compli- 
 ance with their request, a certain formula, — the so-called 
 Lord's prayer, — adopted the latter instead of the traditional 
 Jewish ones, as having to answer all their devotional pur- 
 poses. That the later Christian church appropriated and 
 introduced it as the set devotional formula, is by no means 
 a convincing indication that his immediate disciples had 
 already adopted it. The relative gospel contexts surely do 
 not sufficiently warrant such assumption. For, as Keim 
 says ( 1. c. iii. 342 ), the words "after this manner" (Matt, 
 vi. 9) mean "thus briefly," and "in such a sense;" and 
 Jesus' directions are not, " do pray," but conditional, " when 
 thou praj^est" ( ib. 6). Keim urges, farther, that there 
 is no trace in the New Testament that Jesus instituted that 
 formula, which he holds to be genuine though as to its com- 
 position for the use of his believers: it was first named "the 
 legitimate and regular prayer" by Tertullian and Cyprian. 
 
198 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 If there was with the disciples of Jesus no ordinary Jewish 
 praying, can it be imagined that they wore phylacteries or 
 tassels, or afifixed ' mezuzoth ' at the entrances of their 
 houses, not to say, of the several apartments of them ? 
 As to the first-named of these rites Keim remarks (1. c. p. 
 343),. "the gospels know of prayers in the chambers, but 
 nothing of the phylacteries." The same may confidently 
 be asserted regarding the two other rites. For in the con- 
 sciousness of the true Israelites all those three rites ranked 
 about as equally important and sanctifying. They were 
 the "threefold cord," the combination of which is in the 
 Rabbinical literature designated a safeguard against sin 
 (B. Menachoth f. 43). 
 
 Of less consequence was indeed the disciples' omission of 
 hand washing before meals, at which the Pharisees are 
 said to have taken such deep offence, and which was, 
 according to Luke (xi. 38). peculiar to Jesus, too. For 
 however highly the Phariseic extremists, with whom 
 taharoth, " rules of ceremonial purity," were a foremost 
 religious concern, rated it, it was in truth, as to real relig- 
 ious merit, inferior to any of the aforenamed observances. 
 Moreover, we have shown in Note 41, that at the time of 
 Jesus the rite of hand-washing was, at most, in an incipient 
 state among the lay class, and its omission by the disciples 
 could therefore not have been made a subject of reproach 
 by his opponents. 
 
 However, from all the other points of exposition given 
 above, it should clearly result, that the apostles and other 
 votaries gathered round Jesus, had very little practical 
 Judaism about them. The year or two of Jesus' public 
 activity was almost solely taken up by his Messianic aims 
 and movements. Jewish religious observances came in, 
 whilst he was engaged in this his life's work, for a very 
 slim share of attention on his part. They were to him of 
 secondary consideration. And so they were to be and, we 
 insist, were, to the apostles, who are amply known to have 
 proved themselves so very responsive to his claims and 
 
 __i 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 1 99. 
 
 teachings of Messiahdom. An affinity of thought about 
 the latter gradually formed itself between teacher and 
 pupils, which must have prompted them to make all other 
 things subserve to it, in the same manner he did. 
 
 As to the Sabbath, too, they had, as already observed 
 above, undoubtedly familiarized themselves with the theory 
 of his Messianic power of emancipation or temporary dis- 
 pensation from its obligation, namely, that he was the 
 "lord of the Sabbath," already before he enunciated its 
 affirmation against the Pharisees. That they acted upon 
 this affirmation on more than one occasion with that laxity 
 of observance which its import and scope would convey to 
 their Messianically excited minds, may safely be presumed. 
 
 In this connection we will be permitted to give to the 
 reader another of our views, which he will hold at once 
 important and pertinent enough to be subjoined in this 
 place. We maintain that a distinction is to be made 
 between Jesus' address to the people at large who were 
 gradually to be gained over to and educated in his Mes- 
 sianic system, and the teaching to his narrower circle of 
 adherents. The latter he would, on Messianic grounds 
 bearing as well on the present as on the future, wholly 
 dispense from serious care about Jewish observances. In 
 the then imagined state of fast transition to the new order 
 of things, — the kingdom of Heaven with the rule of the 
 Messiah, resurrection, Judgment, and recreated world for 
 the tsadikim " righteous," — their engrossing care should be 
 turned to, and such things be done for, the preparation 
 towards it, as would be most expedient for making the 
 balance of Judgment dip in their favor, that they would be 
 allotted the privilege of entering that future world. The 
 close followers of Jesus would indeed, from every evidence 
 in the gospels, devote themselves with absorbing zeal to 
 the problem of the Kingdom with all its appurtenances of 
 doctrine and hope. For the uninitiated, however, that is, 
 those standing yet at some distance from, though fairly 
 susceptible to, the belief in his Messiahdom, a discreet 
 indulgence of their customary adherence to ceremonial 
 religion had to be devised and observed. In this way we 
 
200 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 can, e. g., account, on the one side, for the dispensation 
 from fasting which he saw proper to give to his disciples 
 (Matt. ix. 15), and, on the other, for his at least provisional 
 allowance for it in the Sermon on the Mount (ib. vi. 16). 
 The latter, we propose, was intended for outside hearers 
 who were yet ceremonially scrupulous and diffident to join 
 his band, for the notorious deviation from orthodox 
 Judaism that subsisted within it. The same explanation 
 may fairly be given regarding his stern and sharp repudia- 
 tion of the material Temple worship, as contrasted with 
 his provisional countenancing of sacrifice in the Sermon 
 (ib. V. 23, 24), and the often quoted advice to the leper, 
 ib. viii. 4. 
 
 And the same holds good to explain his fierce arraign- 
 ment of the Phariseic-Rabbinical traditions (ib. xv. 3 sq.), 
 and the opposite encouragement of the people to heed the 
 injunctions of the Phariseic teachers and sages (ib. xxiii. 3). 
 
 To divide his teaching into esoteric and exoteric 
 branches is by no means hazardous. It is not only perfectly 
 warranted by Matt. xiii. 11. (comp. ib. x. 27), but analogies of 
 this method are offered in the secular philosophies of 
 paganism, as well as in the pursuit of old Rabbinical 
 school-learning. 
 
 By this view we would not only have gained a mode of 
 harmonizing the partly conservative utterances of Jesus 
 about some ceremonial rites, with others showing his 
 antagonism to them, but also be able to trace more 
 justly the disciples' ceremonial indifference to that contin- 
 uous strain of Messianic reasoning, which is naturally sup- 
 posed to have been, within the confines of the narrower 
 circle, carried to as high a pitch as would correspond to 
 the overwrought thoughts of the Master and the feverish 
 mood of the disciples. The latter being continuously 
 trained in his all-absorbing Messianic teaching, and 
 initiated in its mysteries, would for this reason all the more 
 readily take to his mysterious dispensation of themselves 
 from ceremonial observances which he offered to them, as 
 long as they devoutly gave themselves up to the sole 
 spiritual occupation with the questions of his Messianic 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 20I 
 
 kingdom. And to them, too, we surmise, the claim of his 
 Messianic lordship over the Sabbath, uttered in the above- 
 discussed controversy, was at the point of time when it 
 occurred, not new any more. They had without doubt 
 privately heard it before, and were completely conversant 
 with it, so much so that they acted on its strength in the 
 way stated in the record of that controversy, in Matt. xii. i. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 THE SABBATH WITH THE DISCIPLES OF JESUS AFTER 
 HIS DEATH. 
 
 The Master had passed away. His execution had cast a 
 deep consternation in the hearts of his faithful apostles and 
 adherents. However, they were not left, or did not allow 
 themselves to be left, to utter despair. Though parted 
 from him in reality, they were united to him in sentiment. 
 If his suffering and parting were a bitter blow to their 
 sympathetic hearts, it was yet, on the other hand, as they 
 firmly believed, the stepping stone to the structure of the 
 Kingdom, which they expected soon to see fully realized 
 by the Master's coming again in glory and at the head of 
 angels. 
 
 The intelligence of his resurrection on the third day 
 coming to them from two of his female devotees (Matt, 
 xxviii. 8), made an end to their brooding over the hard 
 stroke visited on them, and set them thinking over the 
 
202 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 gradual verification of his various Messianic predictions. 
 Dejection thus gave way to hopeful reflections, and they 
 began to compose themselves again. Jesus himself had, 
 after being apprised of the Baptist's fatal end which pro- 
 duced in him the presentiment that his own could be 
 neither much different nor very distant (see Matt. xvii. 
 9-13, and comp. Luke xxiv. 6, 7), prognosticated his coming 
 resurrection to three of his apostles, and foretold it again 
 to all of them as to^happen on the third day (with refer- 
 ence, we suppose, to Hosea vi. 2), before his entry into 
 Jerusalem (Matt. xx. 19). This prediction the Son of man 
 had, as they believed, made good; see Matt, xxviii.6. It was 
 even tangibly proved to the eleven, as they fancied in their 
 overwrought spirits, when they had followed the advice of 
 going immediately to Galilee, where the resuscitated 
 Messiah would appear to them again (ib. v. 16 sq.). 
 
 His other prediction about himself, that he would be 
 sitting at the right hand of power (Matt. xxvi. 64, Mark 
 xiv. 62), — " power," Geburah, was also by the Rabbis of old 
 often used to denote the Deity, — was likewise beginning to 
 be consummated. For he was, as they believed, after that 
 appearance to them, " received up into Heaven and sat 
 down at the right hand of God " ( Mark xvi. 19 ; comp. as 
 to the same dogma, at a later period. Acts v. 31, vii. 55, 56 ). 
 All that yet remained to be fulfilled was, his second Advent, 
 which he had predicted to be in the clouds of Heaven 
 (Matt. xxvi. 64). 
 
 And it was to this future coming as the all-powerful 
 Messiah, so repeatedly taught them in his lifetime, that they 
 eagerly looked forward. The second Advent was as fixed 
 a persuasion with him, as was that of his future sitting on 
 the right hand of God, which he brought forward by the 
 application to himself of Ps. ex. i, which psalm, in passing, 
 he was particularly infatuated with, since he deduced from 
 it his own divine lordship, and, implicitly, his divine son- 
 ship, too (see Matt. xxii. 43-45) ; and as was, further, the 
 self-conscious exaltation of himself to the dignity of the 
 Messiah in his first or one of his first public sermons, by 
 applying to himself the words of Isaiah xlii., picturing forth 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 203 
 
 the destiny of the "servant;" see Luke iv. 16-21. Those 
 three points of Messianic dogma were interconnected. The 
 last-named was the starting-point, the other was the inter- 
 mediate, and preparatory to the first-named. 
 
 The resurrection and the ascension having, as they fancied, 
 come to pass, which preliminaries were in their minds 
 unmistakable phases of the developing Kingdom, the height 
 of which was to be the Master's coming again from Heaven, 
 they could partly console themselves for the bitter loss 
 they had endured in his personal withdrawal. Meanwhile 
 they were not entirely left to themselves. They were not 
 wholly abandoned by their Master. The belief was, that 
 he promised to be with them "alway, even unto the end of 
 the world" (Matt, xxviii. 20). Furthermore, his sorely 
 missed presence was, as the notion had formed itself 
 soon after his demise, supplied by the attendance of the 
 Holy Spirit which, as the pretense was, Jesus "hath poured 
 forth" from his celestial station (Acts ii. 33), and this not 
 only on the apostles, but on all that had joined or would 
 join (see ib. v. 38) the ranks of the believers. So much was 
 this, indeed, the prevalent presumption after his death, that 
 in Mark (xvi. 16-18), the promise is put in the mouth of 
 Jesus after his alleged resurrection, that all baptized 
 believers would subsequently become perfect thaumatur- 
 gists, competent not only to cure diseases and cast out 
 devils, but to speak in all thinkable languages, and also 
 proof both against the sting of serpents and the deadly grip 
 of poison. In addition, the mere laying of hands by the 
 apostles on baptized converts passed for having the virtue 
 of imparting to them the Holy Ghost (Acts viii. 17). 
 
 As to the healing effects of their thaumaturgic efforts the 
 supposition was, that they would be unfailing, provided the 
 person on whom the supernatural act was to be performed, 
 had faith in the name Jesus : for then, as is to be gathered 
 from the theory put forth by Peter (Acts iii. 16), the name 
 Jesus retroacted in making that person whole. 
 
204 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 That the spell in magical cures centered, let us here 
 observe, in the name Jesus, appears from various Jewish as 
 well as extraneous sources, see Jer. Sabb. ch. xiv.; Tosifta 
 Cholin ii.. and comp. Acts iv. 30, also v. 41. Therapeutic 
 marvels were the indispensable attendants of Messianic 
 agitations. They inseparably accompanied the cry of the 
 Kingdom, alike with John the Baptist and Jesus. The 
 same combination was enjoined by the latter on his apos- 
 tles (Matt. X. 7, 8), which they, indeed, faithfully discharged 
 during, and most extensively after, his lifetime. Even the 
 philosophical Paul could not dispense with miracles in the 
 course of preaching his gospel, see 2 Cor. xii. 12, Rom. xv. 
 19. In fact miracles, in especial therapeutic ones, were the 
 prominent characteristic of Christianity, throughout the 
 whole apostolic and postapostolic ages. 
 
 The apostles could, after the death of Jesus, best beguile 
 the dreary days of the personal separation from him, by 
 taking to the practice of those "signs of an apostle" (so in. 
 2 Cor. 1. c). They could pursue no more suitable occupa- 
 tion than this, to make the melancholy suspense concerning 
 his return from Heaven fairly supportable. And, what was 
 chiefest in the continuation of the Master's Messianic work, 
 they, could, with the aid of such miraculous performances, 
 propagate, like unto him in his lifetime, the belief in his 
 Messiahdom with the safest promise of success. Compare 
 Origen, Against Celsus, i. 46, who surely says the true 
 thing when he asserts: "The apostles could not without 
 mighty acts and miracles have induced those to whom they 
 gave new doctrines and precepts, to leave their paternal, 
 and embrace the new ones, with great perils to their lives." 
 
 This combined Messianic profession of preaching the 
 Kingdom and healing, they doubtless followed with ardent 
 endeavor, as soon as they had returned- from Jerusalem to 
 their native district, Galilee. And, we hold, this event 
 took place shortly after Jesus' execution. For Jerusalem 
 will, after the dire experience they had passed through, 
 not have appeared to them as a safe abiding place, if they 
 were to continue in the teaching of Jesus' Messiahdom. 
 This seems even to be intimated in Matt, xxviii. 7, 10. 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTOKV. 205 
 
 The true substance of the statements in these passages 
 seems to us to be, that the instinct of the women nearest 
 to Jesus, as well as the shocked sentiment of his immediate 
 family, suggested to the entire company that had espoused 
 his Messianic cause, to make for home again and await 
 there the progress of Messianic events. 
 
 This company will without doubt have soon begun to 
 establish themselves into a regular community or Church. 
 They consisted of Jesus' brothers and mother, and the apos- 
 tles (Acts i. 14; on the latter's names see Matt. x. 2-4, with 
 which compare John xxi. 2 and Acts i. 26), and the rest of 
 Jesus-believers attached to them, who were all of them 
 Galileans, too (see Acts i. 11, ii. 7). The number of this 
 whole first Christian body may not exaggeratedly have 
 been stated as being one hundred and twenty persons (ib. 
 i 15), considering that a good number of women had also 
 joined the Christian brotherhood (see Luke viii. 3, where 
 the company of Jesus is stated to have included three 
 women who are given by name, and "many others;" comp. 
 ib. xxiv. 10, also i Cor. ix. 5). Possibly there were "above 
 five hundred brethren," as Paul mentions (i Cor. xv. 6). 
 
 This Christian body most likely settled themselves in 
 the town of Capernaum, which had also been Jesus' fixed 
 central station of activity. That Galilee had a settlement 
 of Jewish Christians in the first third of the second century, 
 appears from a passage in the Midrash, which we will 
 adduce at a later point. Keim (1. c, v. 2) observes, too, 
 with reference to i Cor. xv. 6, and Acts ix. 31, that a Gali- 
 lean church consisting of Jesus' adherents from that pro- 
 vince existed in the apostolic period. We may in view of 
 these notices the more properly assume that the seat of the 
 first Christian church was Capernaum, and that this town 
 was selected, out of deference to the memory of the Master 
 who had made it his home, by the returning Christian com- 
 pany soon after his departure, as the resort and plantation 
 of apostolic Christianity. The settlement of the apostles 
 and other leading personages of the Palestinian Jewish 
 Christian church in Jerusalem occurred, we maintain, at a 
 later date. 
 
 (6; 
 
206 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 That the apostles and other early professors of Chris- 
 tianity were, after the death of Jesus, watched with intense 
 concern both by the representative schoolmen and the 
 ecclesiastic-judicial magistracy, suffers no doubt. Not 
 only was any new irritation of the Roman authorities by 
 Messianic stirring to be cautiously prevented, but the 
 apostolic propaganda, having assumed a character antagon- 
 istic to the fundamental principle of Judaism by the more 
 and more growing deification of Jesus, was to be met with 
 vigorous resolution. His divinity came, in consequence of 
 his own various relative claims uttered in his lifetime, and 
 in especial through his august pretension of being the Mes- 
 siah, the son of God (Matt. xxvi. 64. Mark xiv. 62, and 
 comp. Matt. xvi. 16, 17; xxii. 42-45), to be an article of 
 faith with his adherents after his death. Not only in Paul's 
 writings and the fourth gospel is Jesus elevated to the 
 quality of a superhuman individual,— in them he is even 
 exalted to the eminence of divine pre-existence. — but the 
 dogma of his being the son of God was held by all the 
 Jewish Christians. Even the P^bionites, though they denied 
 Jesus' sameness and consubstantiality with God. because 
 he was "begotten," have adhered to the title son of God. as 
 proper to him; see Epiphanius, Haer. xxx. 13. 16 and the 
 Clementine Homilies. 
 
 That passage in Matt, xxviii. 18, "All authority hath 
 been given unto me in Heaven and on earth," which is 
 surely a later interpolation, does yet serve as a sufficient 
 evidence of the construction put by the believers of Jesus 
 on his supernal state after his death. They conceived it 
 not alone as one of divine majesty, but of a most compre- 
 hensive divine sway. They attributed to him a divine 
 domination which, in their exuberantly admiring souls, 
 increased in magnitude with the increase of time. It grew 
 brighter, the more the remoteness of time had dimmed the 
 memory of his terrestrial life. That this was to the ortho- 
 dox Jews the most obnoxious and alarming pirt of the pro- 
 fession of Jesus' early apostles and adherents, is unquestion- 
 able. It was not the avowing by all the earlier Jewish 
 Christians of tlie dorma of his sitting on the riiiht hand of 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 20/ 
 
 God in itself that excited the profound and bitter antipathy 
 of the orthodox Jews against them. Whenever that dogma 
 was — if it ever was — abstracted from the additional notion 
 of his exercising a divine power in his sainted state, it 
 could not well have had a moment of Jewish religious 
 offence. In this case it could have been held no more 
 heterodox than was the saying of the Rabbis in the Talmud, 
 B. Sabb. f. 152, that "the souls of the righteous after their 
 death are kept nidden by God beneath his throne of glory." 
 Compare also Josephus, Wars iii. 8, 5. What made that 
 dogma so odious to the orthodox Jews was, that usually a 
 divine potency was along with its enunciation assigned to 
 Jesus. See especially Acts v. 31, where Peter designated 
 him Prince, Savior, and Remitt^er of sins; comp. also ib. x. 
 43, and the previous verse, where he re-asserts him as the 
 Judge at the coming resurrection. 
 
 Connected with and based on the quality of remitting sins 
 was, we suppose, the apostolic usage of the invocation of his 
 name at magical cures, which has already been noticed 
 before. Since these cures were the professional acts of the 
 apostles, such invocations must have occurred most fre- 
 quently of all their efforts at propagating their Christianity, 
 and consequently have most often given serious scandal to 
 the orthodox Jews and their authorities. Under the same 
 category came the speaking or teaching "in his name;" see 
 ib. iv. 18, and in other places. All this shows sufficiently 
 that a high degree of divinity was ascribed to Jesus already 
 at the earlier epoch of the apostolic church. This must 
 have had an appalling effect on the orthodox Jewish peo- 
 ple everywhere. They were to nothing more sensitive and 
 vulnerable than to the infringement of their monotheistic 
 principle. They were by nothing more deeply galled than 
 by the defection of any of their community from this vital 
 condition of their faith, — a faith which they v/ere at any 
 time ready to seal with their own blood. 
 
 On the reprimands, menaces and chastisements (on the 
 latter see Matt. x. 17, xxiii. 34; Acts v. 40 and comp. 2 
 Cor. xi. 24), which such deifying attitude of Jewish 
 believers in Jesus have called forth, we can here not 
 
208 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 expatiate. The conspiring causes of criminal inquisition 
 made against some, and of mortal doom executed on a few 
 other primitive Jewish Christians, we have surveyed else- 
 where. We will here only state in general that serious 
 collisions of the disciples of Jesus with orthodox Jews had 
 inevitably to ensue from their heretical doctrines. Even if 
 their conduct was not of a defiant or insolent anti-Jewish 
 nature, such, for instance, as were the assaults of the 
 impetuous Hellenistic Christian, Stephen, they must have 
 felt in their hearts a vehement sting at the mere profession 
 of those doctrines. 
 
 That collisions about Jewish religious observances too 
 will, even after the Master had departed, have occurred, 
 we may take for granted. ,For we hold that, in the main, 
 the apostles trod, as to them, in the steps of the Master. 
 Consequently we have to maintain that ceremonial rites 
 were to them, as to him, of a subordinate import, as com- 
 pared with the paramount cause of the Messianic kingdom 
 of HeaVen and the preparation towards it. He had taught 
 them their relative unimportance, and they would doubt- 
 less bring the lessons to bear on their whole line of con- 
 duct. We have already in previous chapters adduced and 
 discussed instances partly of their disregard and partly of 
 their levity as to the Jewish ritual and customs. That now, 
 after the removal of the Master, a change should have set 
 in in their sense and estimate of ceremonial religious 
 duties, is not probable. All that might be proposed in this 
 respect is, — and we will treat of this hereafter, — that they, 
 after the death of Jesus, became more observant of them 
 out of policy and prudent yielding to unpropitious circum- 
 stances. 
 
 Let us assert here that, in truth, they were and remained 
 Jews to the core as to the belief in the obligation of the 
 sacred sign of the covenant and seal of the national- 
 religious communion, circumcision. They held it so indis- 
 putable that they would even not receive any Gentile con- 
 verts as on an equal footing with themselves, who did not 
 submit to that rite and with it to that part of the Mosaic- 
 Jewish ceremonial, which had yet authority with them; see 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 209 
 
 Acts XV. I, 5. In the latter verse that insistance is, indeed, 
 ascribed only to certain of the Phariseic Christians. But 
 since its author attests himself the demand of circumcision 
 for Gentiles on the part of " certain men " who had come 
 from Judea to Antioch, which certain men were assuredly 
 no other than those sent by the head of the Christian 
 church, James (Gal. ii. 12), it is apparent that it was a 
 sentiment and principle of the entire body of the Jewish 
 Christians, and that consequently his statement in v. 5. 
 limiting it to "' certain of the sect of the Pharisees who 
 believed," is inaccurate. 
 
 The apostles were, too, as Baur urges ('Paul' i. 203), 
 equally as antagonistic to Paul for his antinomian teachings 
 among Jews and Gentiles in Grecian communities, as the 
 orthodox Jews themselves were. He deduces this not only 
 from Acts xxi. 21, but also from Gal. ii. 12, and. supports it, 
 further, by reference to the hostile feeling of the Ebionites 
 against him. He remarks there also (p. 204), that the 
 author of Acts himself presented against his will the his- 
 torical truth, that "the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem saw 
 in the apostle Paul an apostate from the Law, and a 
 preacher of this apostasy among both Jews and Gentiles." 
 
 The SabSath, also a sign of the Divine covenant and with 
 circumcision forming, in the consciousness of faithful Israel, 
 the two greatest fundamental rites of Judaism, the apostles 
 held in reverence, too. That is to say, they estimated it 
 as of that authority which, while they did not, as little as 
 their Master, hold it Divine, the reverend antiquity of its 
 origin, as well as the traditional conception of its being a 
 corner-stone of Israel's religious constitution, and its con- 
 tinuously manifest sacred import, almost absolutely brought 
 with them. With this consisted, on the other hand, 
 primarily because they did not hold it as having come from 
 God, that arbitrary deviation from its observance which is 
 directly recorded about them (see above). 
 
 The Mosaic festivals they no doubt kept also, though 
 certainly regardless of the sacrificial ritual ordained for 
 them. And, we may mention here, as little as they can be 
 supposed to have attended to t'ne offering of victims pre- 
 
210 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 scribed for individuals on the three pilgrimage feasts, so 
 little will they have cared about the non-sacrificial obla- 
 tions required to be brought to Jerusalem, such as the 
 so-called second tithe, the fruit of trees and vines in the 
 fourth year of their plantation, and the first-fruits, which 
 latter were portions due to the priests and were solemnly 
 borne into the city and Temple, their regular appointed 
 season being from Pentecost till autumn. (According to 
 Philo a sort of festival was made of the occasion at the end 
 of every fifth year.) That they will already in the first few 
 years subsequent to the death of Jesus have substituted for 
 the sacrificial Passover ceremonial on the eve of the four- 
 teenth Nisan, the sacrament of the Eucharist, is most 
 likely. The ( real ) apostle John who, by the way, has no 
 doubt contemporarily with Paul set himself industriously 
 to Jewish Christian mission-work among the Gentiles of 
 Asia Minor, as likewise Peter has, on his part, done at the 
 same period in Antioch and other cities of Syria, and even 
 in Corinth (see on this i Cor. i. 12), as, possibly, also in 
 Rome, seems, from various reliable notices (as to which the 
 writer refers to Hilgenfeld, 'The History of Heretics, etc./ 
 p. 601 sq., and to Baur, 'Ecclesiastical History, etc.,' p. 
 156 sq.\ to have introduced this rite, with the Mosaic date 
 of the Pascha, among those Asiatic churches. To it they, 
 indeed, clung immovably for many centuries afterwards. 
 Now if the Christian Pascha with the Mosaic date was 
 habitual with Gentile converts, much more justly may we 
 assume this date as unalterable within the apostolic Jewish 
 Christian church. Again, in this church there was doubt- 
 less observed the eating of unleavened bread at that 
 religious love-repast (see on the same observance by the 
 Ebionites, Epiphanius, Haer. xxv. 16, in Hilgenfeld, 1. c. p. 
 432), and, we presume, also during the rest of the seven 
 days of the feast, which there is every reason to believe 
 that they did not leave off celebrating in all after time, and 
 that fairly in accordance with the Mosaic appointment. 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY'. 211 
 
 On the whole, then, there can be little doubt that in the 
 apostolic sphere the feast of Passover was kept, as to date 
 and partly as to ceremonial rites, conformably to the 
 Mosaic import. 
 
 The feast of Pentecost, too, may at a very early date 
 have by the apostles been infused with Christian elements. 
 That they celebrated it, on the whole, for its being an 
 ancient Mosaic institution, appears from Acts ii. i. While 
 we can not lay much score by any of this author's reports, 
 it is yet quite possible that the alleged t-ffluence from the 
 sublimated Jesus of the Holy Spirit over the devout assem- 
 bly (ib. V. 33), put by him on the day of the first Pentecost 
 after Jesus' death, has at any rate the historical basis of the 
 ecstatic belief existing with those gathered together for 
 devotional exercises, that such imparting of the spirit did 
 really then take place. That they will thenceforth have 
 annually celebrated this pretended event on the feast of 
 Pentecost, we can readily believe. But we have at the same 
 time to hold firmly to the view that, strongly tinctured 
 with Christian bearing as that old Jewish feast had no 
 doubt become to them, they never attempted to remove it 
 from its Mosaic foundation. Both the Mosaic and the new, 
 Christian, purport may have been blended in their concep- 
 tion and usage; though, we farther incline to think, rather 
 with a preponderance of the Christian, because the Mosaic 
 could, for their opposition to the Temple ceremonial, offer 
 to them no clear motive for sacred observance. It is there- 
 fore possible that the Mosaic character of the feast con- 
 sisted with them merely in the perpetuation of its pre- 
 scribed date. 
 
 As to the feast of Booths, we have no reason for ques- 
 tioning its observance by the apostolic church, either. 
 Whether some Christian elements were mixed with it, we , 
 are not able to affirm, because every relative information 
 or indication is wanting. With regard to the feast of the 
 first day of Tishri, we may justly surmise that it shared 
 attention with the rest of the traditional Jewish solemn 
 
2 12 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 days. Whether they fasted on the Day of Atonement, on 
 this we reflected already before. The doubt of their having 
 done so in Jesus' lifetime may, as will hereafter appear, 
 not attach to them for the period after his death. 
 
 To these considerations we may add some indirect evi- 
 dence from the following places of Paul's Epistles. In Gal. 
 iv. 10, he arraigns those converts having relapsed into 
 Judaizing by the observance of solemn days and seasons. 
 In Coloss. ii. i6, he takes issue with him who would cavil 
 with his fellow-believer about his non-observance of "holy- 
 day, new. moon or Sabbath;" compare also Rom. xiv. 6. 
 Now the cogent consequence from those two places (the 
 Ep. Rom. is by some notable authors of our day held as 
 written to the Jewish Christians of Rome, and could 
 accordingly not be turned to account in the argument we 
 here propound) is, that if Gentile converts were observant 
 of the Jewish sacred days, much more must their teachers 
 from the Judaic church, the apostles or their agents, have 
 been observers of them. That Paul's reference should in 
 those passages have been exclusively to the Ebionites as a 
 class of sectarians, cannot be upheld, as we will by and by 
 demonstrate. Even if it had been, it would not invalidate 
 our argument. For the E^bionite missionaries^ whom Paul 
 may have held polemically in view, can have been no other 
 than those authorized and delegated by the leaders of the 
 apostolic church, who were themselves largely imbued with 
 Essenian doctrines, to preach the Jewish Christian gospel 
 to the Gentiles. 
 
 As to rules of religious purity the apostles can, for their 
 unquestionable opposition to the sacrificial ritual, not be 
 supposed as having been straightly guided by the relative 
 ordinances of the Mosaic code. In all instances of personal 
 impurity requiring sacrifice (see Lev. xii., xiv. xv.), or in 
 those for which the "water of separation" is prescribed 
 ( Numb. xiv. ), they will consistently have omitted these 
 rites. Still a reverent regard to many Mosaic propositions 
 of defilement they can fairly be expected to have had. We 
 advisedly say, many, and not. all, for we cannot imagine 
 that they will in their zeal of Messianic propaganda have, 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 213 
 
 for instance, shunned the touch of a leper or an innpure 
 woman, any more than their Master did. Nor could we 
 reconcile it in our mind that they should in their mission- 
 ary intercourse with pagans have avoided, even if they felt 
 such anxiety, every one of those pollutions termed as such 
 in the Pentateuch. Yet for all that there is reasonable 
 ground to believe that they will have looked to the Penta- 
 teuch as the general guide in matters of religious purity ; 
 see also our Note 34. While we concede this, we have 
 nevertheless to state it as probable, that alike in their doc- 
 trinal and practical course the Essenic rules of purity 
 predominated. Not that they would or could regularly, in 
 their public activity, carry into practice the extreme con- 
 ceptions of purity of that sect, which, as is well known, 
 left even the Mosaic ones behind. But there are certain 
 indications showing, that they had Essenic prepossessions 
 and will, therefore, whenever, as we remarked, their 
 Messianic missionary work did not interfere, have followed 
 out the Essenic rules of purity rather than the Mosaic- 
 Jewish. We will not, in evidence of this, quote Paul's 
 "Handle not.... nor touch" ( Col. ii. 21,22). For these 
 phrases admit as much of a direct Mosaic as of an Essenic 
 or Ebionite bearing. Indeed, Paul may there have alluded 
 to some respective prohibitions explicitly set forth in the 
 Pentateuch. But there are other pertinent indications for 
 it. We have in the before-cited Note endeavored to make 
 it probable, that three out of the four apostolic decrees had 
 pre-eminently an Essenic basis. And if we be permitted 
 to retrace the many injunctions of bodily purity in the 
 Ebionitic Clementine literature to the apostolic church 
 which, as may be set down for certain, prominently leant 
 on Essenism, we are all the more entitled to assert the 
 postulate, that within it the Essenic rules of purity enjoyed 
 a superior estimation. Was not, it may yet be observed, 
 the rite of baptism itself, so greatly exalted by the apostles, 
 originally a prominently Essenic or, at any rate, Essenic- 
 related symbol of regeneration.^ 
 
214 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 Connected with the rules of purity, alike in the spirit of 
 Mosaism and evidently also, to judge from the Clementine 
 Homilies (vii. 4, 8), in the thoughts of the Ebionites, were 
 the Jewish food restrictions. It is safe to presuppose the 
 same connection in the minds of the apostles. As to the 
 observance of those restrictions, the consequence is easily 
 drawn from those four decisions for proselytes to Chris- 
 tianity recorded in Acts xv. (see on this, Part First, p. 118, 
 and Note 34 of the present treatise), that they surely 
 abstained for themselves with horror from those kinds of 
 flesh named there as part of the resolutions of warning to 
 converts. For if the apostles ordered those points for con- 
 verts from paganism, much more must themselves have 
 heeded them. To those kinds may at once be superadded 
 the flesh of dead animals, which the Peter of the Clemen- 
 tines, too, joins to" the rest of restraints appointed for Gen- 
 tile converts (see Homilies). 
 
 True, our view is, that three out of those four apostolic 
 decisions were principally suggested by Essenic theories. 
 But there are apart from them other inferences and 
 accounts, showing forth the apostles' religious regard, in 
 general, to the Mosaic dietary prohibitions. We will pro- 
 duce such from some of Paul's Epistles, and from Acts. 
 
 In Col. ii. 16, Paul reprobates the temper of those con- 
 verts censuring their fellow- believers for not observing the 
 laws about "meat and drink." In Rom xiv. 2 sq., he like- 
 wise warns those "weak" enough in not indiscriminately 
 eating, out of religious scruple, every sort of food, against 
 criticising others already strong enough in their faith in 
 Jesus not to have to pay any regard to such distinction. 
 Now that Paul polemically alluded in those passages to the 
 Ebionites, as is the opinion of many modern writers, we 
 may readily allow. We may agree with them that in his 
 reflection on the question of lawful food in Romans, he 
 alluded to the Ebionite rejection of flesh-meat. Even in 
 his using, in.. V. 14, the epithet "unclean," he may have 
 thought of such Ebionite notion. Likewise may the before- 
 noted passage of Colossians have the same Ebionite bear- 
 ing. For the repudiation by the Ebionites of animal food 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 21^ 
 
 is variously and stronglj' attested ; that of wine, too, would 
 appear from the testimony of Epiphanius ( Haer. xxv. i6) 
 who reports, that they celebrated the annual sacrament of 
 the Eucharist by using water only ( instead of wine ). The 
 ascetic custom of combinedly avoiding flesh-meat and 
 fermented liquors they had in common, if not with their 
 Jewish Essenic stock, — for whether such rules subsisted 
 with the Essenes is matter of dispute among various learned 
 authors of the present day, — at least with the Buddhists 
 ( according to Koeppen, ' The Life of Buddha,' in Bunsen^ 
 'The Angtrl Messiah'). Yet apart from the consideration 
 that there is no conclusive intrinsic evidence that Ebionite 
 allusion is to be traced in those passages, for we hold it 
 quite as possible that Paul thought, in those Epistles, of 
 meats and drinks offered to idols, and meant to pass on the 
 non-sectarian, generally Jewish notion, that they pollute 
 the eater (meats and drinks offered to idols were Rabbin- 
 ically reckoned equal to " sacrifices of the dead," and not 
 only interdicted for eating, but for any use whatever ; see 
 B. Abodah Zarah f. 30 ; they were also considered pollut- 
 ing the human body, some Rabbis declaring their impurity 
 of the same degree with that of a corpse ; see ib. f. 32 and 
 Cholin, f. 129), and this in view of his standpoint of indif- 
 ference concerning idol-meat vented in i Cor. viii., — we 
 have, even if that sectarian Ebionite allusion be allowed, at 
 all events to insist that it cannot have been exclusive in 
 those entire passages. This becomes plain from the cir- 
 cumstance that Paul reflects in one same strain in the 
 Colossian Epistle on the observance of " feast, new moon 
 and Sabbath," and likewise in Romans on the regard for 
 " days." Surely no one will be stolid enough to give out 
 those sacred and solemn days as peculiar to the Ebionite 
 sect. Nor can it for one moment be supposed that it was 
 solely Ebionite propagandists who taught Christian neo- 
 phites to observe them. No, indeed. Any Jewish Chris- 
 tian teacher, with the exception of the Paulinists, will have 
 made it his aim to propagate their observance among new 
 converts. The bearing in these passages of Paul's Epistles 
 as to sacred days can accordingly be no other than a gen- 
 
2l6 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. ; 
 
 erally Judaic one. From this it clearly results that, even if i 
 
 Paul's remarks on religious eating restraints were person- ^ 
 
 ally aimed at certain Christian zealots who chanced to be j 
 
 Rbionite sectarians, he nevertheless had, in putting them | 
 
 down together with those on the sacred days, before his ; 
 
 mind at large the national Jewish scruple about all those j 
 
 ordinances of the Mosaic-Jewish religious ritual. It vexed ' 
 
 him, as we must judge from his relative objections, that j 
 
 they were persistently being transplanted into Gentile : 
 
 Christianity by Jewish Christian emissaries, who came i 
 from the seat of the apostolic church. His opposition was, 
 
 we conclude, by far not so much to Ebionite sectarians as, | 
 on the whole, to the Judaizing propaganda carried on by 
 
 the determination of that church. In the latter, then, we \ 
 
 infer for our purpose from Paul's polemics, the Mosaic eat- { 
 
 ing laws must have been treated with religious regard, or \ 
 
 its emissaries could not have urged their observance on | 
 
 Ge)itile converts, or on converts at all. i 
 
 We will yet adduce some other indications of such religi- j 
 
 Dus regard having subsisted in the apostolic church. Let I 
 
 us first notice Peter's alleged dispensation from Mosaic I 
 
 food injunctions by a voice from Heaven (Acts x. 13). ! 
 
 We may without hesitation reduce it to the significance of i 
 
 self-dispensation, accompanied perhaps, — if there is at all j 
 
 any historical ground to that entire story, even when | 
 
 stripped of the vision related there, — by the delusion of ; 
 
 himself, before he set out on the missionary journey to the i 
 
 preponderantly pagan city, Caesarea, that the divine spirit j 
 
 privileged him to indiscriminately partake of the meats j 
 
 prepared by pagans. For our immediate purpose we j 
 
 assert, that that account shows incontrovertibly, that Peter \ 
 was at least until then observant of the relative Mosaic 
 
 prohibitions. Farther, it is to be deduced from that very | 
 
 author, that at the same conjuncture all of the apostles and j 
 
 their church held to them religiously: for they are said to j 
 
 have taken Peter to task for his trespass (ib. xi. 1,3). | 
 
 Allthis holds good on the supposition that Peter had ^ 
 
 indeed violated Mosaic eating prohibitions on the occasion , 
 
 of his visit to Cornelius, or on any other. But there are, in i 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 21/ 
 
 fact, serious doubts about the respective reports that he 
 did so. Acts is not in the least authentic. Its tendency 
 is to make of Peter a Pauline universalist and partial 
 repudiator of Mosaism (see especially ib. xv. 9), and of 
 Paul a true or at least a fair respecter and observer of it. 
 Its author has possibly taken the motive for that fantastic 
 account rendered in ch.x.,from the noted passage of Paul's 
 Epistle Gal. ii., improving it for his object in the way he 
 did. As to Paul's own statement in the Epistle, while we 
 are far from calling in question the substantial occurrence 
 as brought out by him, we would yet propose that there is 
 no necessity whatever for construing it into bearing any 
 other sense than merely that he saw Peter eat in the com- 
 pany of Gentiles. What he ate must for this reason not 
 have been Mosaically prohibited food. That Paul charged 
 him with it, does not signify that his reproach rested on 
 fact. He may have simply judged on the impression which 
 the superficial notice of his eating in the society of 
 Gentiles made on him. But by so eating and yet at the 
 same time abstaining from impure meats, his trespass was 
 merely against the Essenic-Ebionite canon (see Clem. 
 Hom. xiii. 4), or the Phariseic-Rabbinical rule, but not 
 against a Mosaic inhibition. Putting the case even that 
 Peter did at Antioch actually take some illicit freedom 
 with regard to certain Mosaic eating prohibitions, we have 
 at all events Paul's own testimony that at that point of 
 time the observance of them was the indispensable norm 
 within the body of the Christian church. For he presents 
 Peter and others as having "drawn back" from the Gen- 
 tiles, that is, from their tables, after the arrival of the 
 Jerusalemite deputation sent by the head of the church, 
 James, through fear of being detected by them eating 
 unlawfully. 
 
 It is readily seen from all the foregoing that in general, 
 a religious regard to the Mosaic food laws, amalgamated 
 with the respective Essenic precepts, was a fixed norm 
 with the primitive apostles. They adhered to them to 
 such a degree, that they would not only hold themselves 
 
2r8 THE SABBATIi IN HISTORY. 
 
 liable to them, but, as we believe, impressed the same 
 liability on all those converts to Christianity aspiring to a 
 full communion with them. Nevertheless, we can perceive 
 the possibility that the missionary intercourse of some 
 apostles and sundry agents of theirs, had gradually brought 
 about a certain relaxation as to some of those laws, to which 
 they, ascribing no Divine authority to any of them at all, 
 would attach only an inferior importance. They may in 
 mixing with pagans for objects of conversion have soon 
 ascertained that it was impossible to be any longer so 
 observant as they could be and were among themselves, in 
 their secluded, uncolliding Palestinian homes. In the first 
 place may hunger have often urged them to relax this or 
 that ritualistic food restriction (comp. Acts x. lo). Again, 
 it must have seriously thwarted the end they pursued; 
 which was, to win converts from among the pagans, had 
 they persistently refused to join in any of their meals, or 
 been critically particular as to every dish served on the 
 tables at which they attended. Such a demeanor would 
 have had a decidedly repulsive effect on would-be converts. 
 It is therefore plausible that they will have indulged some 
 latitude about the observance of the food laws, when con- 
 versing with Gentiles on Christian missions. Moreover, it 
 is quite probable and at the same time agreeable with our 
 general view of the Jewish Christians, from Jesus onward, 
 to presume, that the apostles or any Jewish-descended pro- 
 fessors of the new faith were at no time, even previous to 
 their Gentile mission work, very scrupulous about the 
 Mosaic-Jewish food laws, at least those which did not rank 
 with them as of unquestionable religious value. Was it at 
 all to be expected that they were so scrupulous, when we 
 have to judge of them as depreciating the authority of the 
 entire Mosaic ritual from the common Jewish orthodox 
 acceptation of directly Divine, to angelic or merely human.'* 
 And, let us amplify the question, was, in view of this fact, 
 a scrupulosity about any ceremonial rites, even those which 
 the)^ on the whole, yet prized religiously^ to be at all 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 219 
 
 expected from them r That they did so depreciate the 
 authority of the Law, we not only assert on the general 
 supposition of disciples ordinarily following their master, 
 but there is valid Rabbinical and other testimony for it. 
 
 From the passage in the Talmud quoted above p 149, 
 and which is indisputably historic, it appears that the 
 Mineans recognized only the Ten Commandments as 
 Divine or angelic. We affix the latter clause, because that 
 Talmudical relation is not explicit enough, allowing the 
 interpretation that the Mineans regarded them, and them 
 only, as directly promulgated by God, as well as the other, 
 that even the Decalogue was enunciated by angels, and 
 not by the Deity himself; see our Excursus B. The latter 
 apprehension would be more adequate as concerns the 
 Jewish Christians who, as was also illustrated above, limi- 
 ted the Decalogue, while nominally reverencing it as such, 
 practically to a Hexalogue. It is not reasonable to sup- 
 pose that this reduction to the range of Six Comrrland- 
 ments would have been attempted by any, who attributed 
 an immediate Divine authority to the entire Decalogue. 
 
 Now as to those Mineans there is in our view, indeed, no 
 •direct evidence that Jewish Christians were solely meant 
 by this title in that context. Essenes and other like 
 heretics, particularly Gnostics of Jewish descent, might, too, 
 have been included. Even men of the type of Philo — the 
 spiritual father of Gnosticism — who, while they were out- 
 wardly observant Jews and also sincere in their religious 
 practice, had yet fallen away from the orthodox conception 
 of all the Mosaic laws being immediately commanded by 
 God, as well as from the pure and stern monotheistic doc- 
 trine of God alone, without any intermediate spiritual 
 powers, having providentially acted and enacted laws, as 
 represented in the plain words of the Pentateuch, would 
 by the ancient Rabbis have promptly been denounced as 
 Mineans; see Excursus B. Yet for all that we are justified 
 in prominently, if not primarily, detecting in that term and 
 its connection in the aforementioned Talmudical passage, 
 
220 THE SAB 3 ATI I IN HISTORY. 
 
 Jewish Christians. For of them, and the Gentile Christians 
 following them, we know also from other sources that they 
 held, and dogmatically and unhesitatingly pronounced, the 
 nominal Decalogue as the Law proper. 
 
 To continue our above argument we have further to urge, 
 that scrupulosity as to that or any other part of the Mosaic 
 ritual Law was not to be expected from Jesus' disciples for 
 this other reason, that their enthusiasm for the Kingdom 
 endured unabated after his death, occupying their minds, as 
 we presume, to such a degree that only a moderate atten- 
 tion, and one insignificant in proportion to that principal 
 Christian cause, could be spared for ritualistic duties. Be- 
 sides, all the other Messianic-prophetical notions which we 
 produced above as presumably prevailing on Jesus to treat 
 ceremonial observances with indifference, are likewise fairly 
 supposed as having passed to his disciples. All these ele- 
 ments may have concurrently met in the minds of the dis- 
 ciples, and brought forth a certain ceremonial laxity, the 
 same we discerned in their habits in the lifetime of their 
 Master. With this consisted well their avowed adherence 
 to, and even ordinary practice of, those portions of the 
 Mosaic ritual named above, and, perhaps, to some more 
 ceremonies to which their minds were religiously partial. 
 But, we are to maintain, they valued, for the most part at 
 least, only their essence, and were not much concerned with 
 the way of their observance, established of old and by aid 
 of tradition. Farther, they practiced them, or most of them, 
 not with the common Jewish-religious sentiment at heart, 
 but with an intent of their own ; not because they felt 
 themselves bound in their conscience to thereby discharge 
 religious duties owed to God who had himself enjoined 
 them, but from a capricious motive of choice and prefer- 
 ence, how pure and reverent soever it might generally have 
 been. Religious arbitrariness, however, never fails of cre- 
 ating sooner or later an inconstancy, prone to turn into 
 careless relaxation, when the problem of expediency inter- 
 venes, of whatever nature thi", may be. In the case of the 
 disciples the expediency, we are ready to admit, bore, for a 
 large part, a kind of spiritual or ideal mark. But it doubtless 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 221 
 
 interfered all the same with the regular and prompt exercise 
 of their Jewish religious duties. At all events it is clear 
 that all those combined moments of dogmatic dissent 
 which we brought forward before as having operated on 
 their minds, must, if they continued to exist with them 
 after Jesus' death, have considerably, nay essential]}-, de ■ 
 tracted from their practical, serious attention even to the 
 limited Jewish ritual which they had yet upheld. 
 
 Those, therefore, who with the Author of ' Supernatural 
 Religion' pronounce the apostles after the departure of 
 Jesus as observant Jews with the distinction onl}' of their 
 being Jesus-believers, are widely astray. That Author 
 advances: "At the death of Jesus the Twelve remained 
 closely united to Judaism ... .They were simply Jews 
 believing that Jesus was the Messiah. . . , and if the influ- 
 ence of Paul enlarged their views upon Fome minor points, 
 we have no reason to believe that they ever abandoned 
 their belief in the continued obligation of the Law. Paul 
 never succeeded in bringing his elder colleagues over to 
 his views." Now, let us say, he is surely correct in the 
 latter assertion, also partially in the other, tiiat they 
 "remained closely united to Judaism." For, in ver}- deed, 
 they never renounced allegiance to Judaism. They never, 
 for all we can gather from the extant sources, openly spoke 
 with disdain, or pretended to the abrogation, future or 
 present, of the Mosaic economy, as Stephen and Paul 
 respectively did. But that their union to Judaism was a close 
 one, we have decidedly to negative. Their ceremonial 
 religious conduct was at no time since their attachment to 
 Jesus conformable to the established Judaism, nor was their 
 faith the untarnished monotheistic one of the body of the 
 Jewish people. Surely, they were not considered by the 
 true Jews as merely harmlessly dissenting from them on 
 the problem of Messiah. They were, on the contrary, 
 classified by the Rabbis as IMineans — an opprobrious desig- 
 nation generic for heretics, and this almost uniformly irk 
 
 (7) 
 
222 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 view of their known or strongly suspected ditheistic or 
 polytheistic beliefs. With that title the professors of 
 Christian doctrines were already branded, as we propose 
 in our work on the Mineans, at a rather early date. 
 
 The Rabbinical doctors legislated against the intercourse 
 with them under that title, as well as they had them doubt- 
 less included — whether prominently or only equally with 
 other heretics, cannot be determined — in the formula of 
 irtiprecation issued about the earlier part of the second cen- 
 tury, C. E. The cause of this was, we hold, mainly the 
 various proclamations by the Jewish Christian sectaries of 
 the divine qualities of Jesus. 
 
 Were the Twelve, then, "simply Jews," with the only 
 divergent mark of the belief in Jesus as the Messiah ? By 
 no means. They were schismatics, with aims and tenden- 
 cies subversive of the pure Jewish Monotheism, and at the 
 same time with a religious practice, resistant to a large 
 portion of the Mosaic ritual, inasmuch as they unquestion- 
 ably opposed sacrifice and all the appertaining or con- 
 nected observances, and lax in many other ceremonial 
 rites, but the initiatory one and probably, besides, the pre- 
 cepts of religious purity with the inclusion of food restric- 
 tions which, mixed up with Essenic or Ebionite theories as 
 they presumably were, they were most apt to heed, in the 
 ordinary course of their communal life, with the minute- 
 ness peculiar to those sects. 
 
 Baur, ' Paul,' i. p. 204, maintains, too, that the Jewish 
 'Christian community — his observations are on the period 
 vas late as the trials of Paul under the procurators Felix 
 and Festus — were not greatly differing from the rest of the 
 Jews, and merely distinguished from them by their own 
 Messiah-belief. Now if after all that has been set forth in 
 this and previous chapters, a claim of Jewish orthodoxy is 
 yet to be put up for the disciples of Jesus, we have to 
 insist that the religious test by which they must be tried to 
 be found thus qualified, can assuredly be no other than that 
 of an extra-Jewish critic, trained in the Pauline faitlvsys- 
 tem. But as far as we are able to judge of the true Jews 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 223 
 
 who were their contemporaries, we are most safe in assert- 
 ing that from their pious standpoint those Christians were 
 not ranked along with themselves as orthodox, but stigma- 
 tized with the title of heretics. 
 
 On what grounds should the apostles have been held or- 
 thodox Jews ? Had, perhaps, their appearance in the Tem- 
 ple, that is, on Solomon's porch (Acts v. 12; comp. ib. ii. 
 46), v/hich porch was situated on the east of the outermost 
 court (see Keim, 1. c, and Ewald, Hist, of Israel, vi. 360), 
 indicated such orthodoxy.'' Zeller, in his 'The Contents 
 and the Origin of Acts,' observes concerning the various 
 assertions in Acts of the apostles' attendance in the pre- 
 cincts of the Temple, that "we have the more reason for 
 giving credence to them, as the Acts declares the primi- 
 tive apostles and their church as rigidly adhering to the 
 Mosaic Law ; xv. and xxi. 20 sq." But, we have mainly to 
 object, the testimony of a writer whose whole composition 
 is, as is practically done by Zeller, pronounced a sheer ten- 
 dency-work, can be of very little historical merit. If he 
 invented from his own mind in so many instances, he must 
 consequently be expected to have done so yet in a few 
 more. Again, we have to ask, what of it, if they really 
 appeared habitually on that porch, at times even at the hour 
 of prayer ? First, we affirm, their meeting was, judging 
 from the context of the relative reports of Acts, primarily 
 or solely for performing their miracles and for " teaching and 
 preaching Jesus Christ " (see ib. v. 42), and not for devo- 
 tions. Secondly, the apostolic hours of prayer, or stations, 
 as they were afterwards called, were, from relative indica- 
 tions (see ib. x. 9, iii. i ; also TertuUian, 'On Fasting'), 
 entirely different from the Jewish hours of devotion. That 
 their prayers were, thirdly, not those of the established 
 Jewish ritual, has already been said above. Fourthly, let 
 us ask, could the apostles' appearance on that porch, even 
 if it had been purposely for devotional exercises, have 
 impressed the orthodox Jewish observers as an evidence 
 that they were Law-abiding, when they otherwise knew 
 them as so averse to the national Temple service ? 
 
224 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 Let it again be stated in this place, — we have set it forth 
 at length in another published essay of ours. — that a fair 
 measure of reverence for the Temple as the fixed national 
 Jevvisii centre of Divine service, consisted in the minds of 
 the Essenes and the Ebionites (see on the latter, Clem. 
 Horn. ii. 17, 22), as well as of Jesus and all the Jewish 
 Christians, with an utter disdain for the sacrificial service 
 actually conducted in it. We maintain in that disquisition, 
 that the antinomian and antinational tendencies must be 
 held apart from each other in our judgment as well on 
 Jesus as on all the Jewish Christians. From this point of 
 view, we urge, the anti-Temple utterances of Jesus have to 
 be considered. The same distinction of the sentiment on 
 Israel's national sanctuary as such, from that concerning 
 the established ritual carried on therein, is to be upheld 
 for his disciples, to whom, doubtless, the Master's view on 
 the Jewish Divine service passed as an unalterable dogma. 
 Only Stephen and Paul and such like philosophizing 
 Hellenists who were opposed to every hand-made temple, 
 could not well have cherished any reverence for Israel's 
 Temple in Jerusalem, even only in the abstract, that is, 
 disjoined in thought from its sacrificial worship. 
 
 We have, then, to reject the argument from the apostles' 
 appearance in the Temple, put forth in favor of their Jew- 
 ish orthodoxy, as unavailing. We aver that such appear- 
 ance could, in any case, not have the virtue of redeeming 
 them, in the sight of true Jews, from the odium of heterodox 
 innovation and pernicious doctrinal heresy, which they had 
 otherwise drawn on themselves. 
 
 More in harmony with our view which we have evolved 
 with authentic statements and indications, as well as by 
 way of inference, is the following sentiment of Keim (1. c. 
 iii. p. 328): "The first apostles were not absolutely faith- 
 ful to the Law; compare only Peter, in Gal. ii. 12, and also 
 the transgressors of the Law, even James, in Josephus, Ant. 
 XX. 9, I." He allows this in the face of his previous 
 remark, that the apostles " did not see that Jesus had in 
 his innermost genius overstepped the limits of Judaism." 
 On this latter assertion we have already passed above. 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 225 
 
 We insisted there, that their comprehension in respect of 
 the emancipation from the burden of ceremonial obser- 
 vances was by no means less capable than that of Paul and 
 John, whom he credits with "fully developing the spirit of 
 the teaciiing of Jesus." As to the same author's before- 
 cited references to Epistle Gal. and the Antiquities of 
 Josephus, to prove that the apostles were wanting in abso- 
 lute faithfulness to the Law, we have, too, to direct the 
 reader's attention to the opinion we advanced on them in 
 the respective places of the present treatise. He could 
 certainly have added many more direct or inferential indi- 
 cations that the apostles were, on the whole, lax in the 
 practice of even those Mosaic-Jewish ceremonial rites 
 which they, in substance, professed as valid for themselves 
 as born Jews, and kept embodied in their new, Christian, 
 usage. 
 
 Let us here, as we are to produce the sum-total of the 
 estimation and practice of Jewish ceremonial rites by 
 Jesus' disciples after his death, pause awhile and meditate 
 on the possibility, that our conclusions brought out by 
 critical methods have been drawn too sternly. We are 
 conscientiously aware that we owe justice to persons of 
 antiquity no less than to our own coevals. Nay we hold 
 that they, being removed from the scene on which they 
 might vindicate themselves from our perhaps one-sided 
 and strained criticism, deserve even a larger measure of 
 considerate judgment than those who, because living, have 
 ample opportunity of righting themselves before our critical 
 tribunal. 
 
 That the aphorism, " like master like pupil," is on 
 general grounds applicable also to Jesus' disciples, is not to 
 be questioned. Nay it would seem that it holds of them 
 all the more appropriately, as we know that the later 
 Ebionites made use of Jesus' own respective saying, — 
 though in a different sense from the one in which he had 
 propounded it, — " It is enough for the disciple that he be 
 as his master" (Matt. x. 25 ; see Epiphanius, Haer. xxx. 26, 
 and our Part First, p. 123). This was the mode of reason- 
 ing with the Ebionites to defend their strict adherence to 
 
226 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 the rite of circumcision against those Christians who 
 opposed it. Let us say that it is but fair to infer that they 
 resorted no less to the same apologetical argument with 
 regard to their fulfilling other Mosaic religious precepts 
 according to the Master's custom. While we are only 
 informed of that sort of argumentation being employed by 
 the Ebionite sect, it may be assumed confidently that not 
 only they, but all the Palestinian Jewish Christiahs, strove 
 to follow, in their outward religious practice, in the wake 
 of Jesus. Accordingly we would have to maintain that 
 they followed him not only afifirmatively, but also nega- 
 tively, that is, as to the discriminations he made between 
 what he held obligatory and what seemed to him indiffer- 
 ent or objectionable; and also, that they fully embraced and 
 put into practice all Jesus' theories on the ceremonial law, 
 those independent of Messianic notions as well as those 
 relating to them. 
 
 Yet all this is only an anticipation, however strongly and 
 solidly it rests on relative indications or inferences, as also 
 on the directly provable analogous fact, that Jesus' super- 
 natural claims too were amply adopted by the disciples. 
 For if it is indisputable that they made his teaching about 
 himself their own, is it not most likely, too, that they 
 espoused also his various position on Jewish religious rites, 
 as we have illustrated it in previous chapters .-* And is it 
 not in especial likely that, as regards his Messianic dispen- 
 satory pretension, its effect continued with them fresh and 
 vigorous, in proportion to the undiminished glowing Mes- 
 sianic enthusiasm that filled their souls even after his 
 death ? — a circumstance that was also brought forth above. 
 
 All this granted, it is none the less well and fair to view, 
 in this our inquiry into the outward ceremonial religious 
 attitude of the disciples after Jesus' death, the availability, 
 in their favor, of another aphorism : "Circumstances alter 
 cases." Let us see whether, in the totally changed con- 
 dition in which they were placed after his departure, there 
 may not have been created motives for a more observant 
 course — the ineradicable, constitutional Christian opposi- 
 tion to sacrifice and its connected rites always excepted. 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 22/ 
 
 Before we essay to investigate this problem, let us again 
 remember that the teaching time of Jesus was but one or 
 at the most two years, viz., between 33-35 C. E. (so KeimJ. 
 It might accordingly be going too far to expect from that 
 short space of time of the disciples' connection with him, 
 a real elaborate and extensive system of practical religion 
 that could suffice them in all later conditions and com- 
 plexities of life. Not even for a thorough tuition in all the 
 details of the Messianic religion, such as we ascribed to 
 him above, might that limited period have been adequate. 
 And this in particular, when we farther consider, that he 
 had from the start of his public career met with or involved 
 himself in frequent polemical struggles that grew more 
 vehement as time went on : so that a successful leisure, 
 even only for the private instructions to be imparted to his 
 disciples, cannot be maintained for any time of his public 
 labor. Moreover, a feeling of perturbance about his own 
 fate, too, must, since the imprisonment of his cognate 
 southern preacher of the Kingdom, John the Baptist, have 
 been pungently preying on his mind. With this perturb- 
 ance, while it did not prevent him from continuing 
 resolutely and even at all hazards, his Messianic activity, 
 could yet not consist that intellectual composure in which 
 alone a teacher may advantageously mould his manifold 
 ideas into a compact, well rounded system. The excited 
 days he passed through were, then, little favorable for 
 explicit . elucidations on problems of religious practice. 
 To be sure, it could, on the other hand, not take the dis- 
 ciples long to learn from him the general lesson of the 
 relative unimportance of outward Jewish religious rites, in 
 the transitional state in which he represented the world to 
 be in his time. This lesson they could quickly and readily 
 succeed in comprehending. Yet we believe at the same 
 time, that not only were his particular utterances on this 
 or that law or custom, put forth on sundry occasions, for 
 the most part only fragmentary and desultory, but they 
 could naturally not be sufficient for every future state and 
 phase of life that lay in his time in obscurity, and could not 
 possibly be forecast. When they were therefore, after his 
 
228 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 departure, left to themselves and without the teacher to 
 whom they might turn for instrujtion in all questions of 
 conscience, they must many a time have been perplexed 
 as to the proper decision to be made on points of religious 
 practice. On these the Master's reflections were only occa- 
 sional. Their memory could therefore have retained only 
 a p.umber of stray utterances that lacked systematic 
 arrangement anJ completeness. It results that, when in 
 their altered condition new questions of such a character 
 turned up on which the Master had not expressly given his 
 opinion, they were compelled to strain their memory for an 
 analogy that would approximately cover the new case, 
 whatever it might be, and assist them in being as conform- 
 able as possible to his view and wish. At times, however, 
 even the utmost taxing of their memory will not have 
 availed them to recall an analogy that would aid them in 
 finding an authentic thread, by seizing and following which 
 they would be able to realize an identity with his spirit. 
 In such instances, then, in which either no direct reference 
 to the Master's own precepts could be made, or no analogy 
 from his lifetime be discovered for their guidance, they 
 were urged to take up with the verdict of their own mind. 
 This will, it is fair to presume, have on the whole been a 
 strenuously aimed accommodation to the liberal, ceremoni- 
 ally unincumbered Messianic religion of Jesus; butit^ay, 
 on the other s'de, have also been considerably tempered 
 by the pressure of unfavorable circumstances, by which we 
 know them to have been unremittingly confronted. 
 
 Such circumstances existed all along since Jesus' death. 
 His tragic fate itself must have struck a deep terror in their 
 breasts. They saw, from his precipitous end as well as 
 from the previous fatal doom visited on the Baptist, how 
 perilous Messianic movements were in the Jewish land, 
 from south to north. The execution of Stephen for his 
 resistant and defiant denunciations of the existing Jewish 
 worship and institutions, as well as the persecution of other 
 Hellenistic Jewish Christians with and after him, must, too, 
 have had an overawing effect on their minds. They them- 
 selves were from the Master's departure forth continually 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 229 
 
 subjected to close surveillance and inquisition, if not per- 
 secution. They became more and more singled out as 
 heinous suspects for assigning divinity to Jesus, which 
 conflicted so irreconcilably with pure Jewish Monotheism. 
 This cloud of suspicion overhung them thickly and was, 
 indeed, never dispelled. Furthermore, severe visitations 
 befell some of them in Agrippa I.'s reign. It may therefore 
 be fairly supposed that from the latter epoch forward, they 
 made up their minds to a more cautious and wary way, 
 alike in their Messianic profession and mission, and in 
 their outward religious conduct. Their Messianic avowal 
 and propaganda may from thence not have been so clam- 
 orous, nor their Jewish religious practice so lax any more, 
 as before. 
 
 This supposition holds, if not of the bold apostles Peter 
 and John (comp. Acts iv. 13) and of James the Just, who 
 succeeded the ill-fated apostle James in the presidency of 
 the mother-church and fell himself a victim to hierarchal 
 violence, at least of the majority of the apostles and the 
 generality of the Palestinian Jewish Christians in the 
 apostolic age (see also Strauss, Life of Jesus, i. 295, who 
 suggests that the terrible fate of Jesus and Stephen pro- 
 duced the "effect of Jesus' followers abandoning the dan- 
 gerous position which he had occupied, and retreating 
 several steps, etc." He advances this as a certain conclu- 
 sion. We on our part give it, however, only as a possibility. 
 Nor do we date this possible retrogression from the epoch 
 named by him. We rather propose for it the time of 
 Agrippa I.'s persecution). This view will surel}' appear yet 
 more acceptable, when we bear in mind that those votaries of 
 Jesus must have realized more and more that there was no 
 trifling with the overwhelming power standing over against 
 their little band. They must by degrees have become 
 aware that, if they wished to retain the seat of the church 
 in Jerusalem, they must cautiously abstain from any scan- 
 dalizing of the Jewish public, either by defiant breaches of 
 Jewish ordinances, or by an ostentatious deification of the 
 Master. The formidable arm of the supreme magistracy of 
 the Jewish nation could, as they must have felt more and 
 
230 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 more, crush and annihilate them at any moment, if they 
 newly attempted any headlong provocations of the inner- 
 most religious sentiments of all its orthodox people. True, 
 the right over life and death was in those days taken from 
 the Synhedrin and reserved to the Roman procurators (see 
 Ant. XX. 9, I ; John xviii. 31). Yet there is no doubt what- 
 ever that that supreme court could at any time and in any 
 case, except in one like Paul's, obtain easily the procura- 
 torial sanction for a sentence of death against a Christian 
 delinquent, if it was minded to pass it and have it inflicted. 
 To presume that the then still powerful Jewish Senate, the 
 prominent doctors of the Law, and their many influential 
 disciples, together with the bulk of the Jewish lay people, 
 were afraid of the few hundred Christians, is, to say the 
 least, most absurd. Different it is with the danger the rep- 
 resentatives of the Jewish nation really apprehended from 
 the spread of the new doctrines of the renegade church. 
 It was too obvious and imminent not to notice and be 
 alarmed at it. But they were, we contend, alarmed only 
 insomuch, as their purpose was to do no bodily harm to the 
 adherents of Jesus. Else the danger could have been 
 removed by a few decisive strokes. 
 
 As far as the Roman rulers and people at large were 
 concerned, they would surely have been most ready to lend 
 their strong help to viojent persecutions of the Christians, 
 if the Jewish people had been inclined to such severe 
 measures in the period after Agrippa's death. For it is 
 well known and variously verified that the Romans hated 
 the Christians intensely, and that, mainly, for their 
 Messianic doctrine and belief. Their name alone con- 
 stantly suggested to them a mutinous spirit and disposi- 
 tion. For Christian meant " kingly," and this implied ta 
 them the tendency to rebel from the all-powerful empire ; 
 see our First Part. Note 20, and Tacitus, Annals, xv. 44, 
 who, in speaking of the Christians as "hated for their 
 vices" and as animated by the " hatred of mankind," seems 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORV. 23 1 
 
 to allude chiefly to their characteristic name and their doc- 
 trines about a Messiah-king, whom they not only believed 
 to have come, but fervently expected to come again ; com- 
 pare also Ep. Pet. ii. 12, iii. 16. 
 
 It is questionless that the Jewish people and their Senate 
 had autonomy and power enough left to them to the last 
 days of their State, to plague and punish the Christian 
 schismatics, if these continued to excite their intolerance 
 by any demonstrative negation of and assault on the 
 Jewish creed and ritual. This it is to be surmised the 
 Christian believers of the Palestinian church realized more 
 and more. It is therefore not amiss to suppose that they, 
 after the time of Agrippa's persecution, gradually left off 
 their former temerity as to Jewish religious conduct and 
 became more observant than they were since their connec- 
 tion with Jesus. 
 
 Possibly this at first insincere policy of greater caution, 
 developed by degrees into a fairly conscientious mode of 
 Jewish observance. While the change was not spon- 
 taneous, it can yet be conceived that the persecutions they 
 underwent, and the animosity that prevailed against them, 
 struck their conscience to the quick, and made them grad- 
 ually bethink themselves better. By degrees they may 
 have subsided into more sober judgments on their Jewish 
 religious obligations. Their veneration for the Master, it is 
 true, did not diminish aught after his departure. It 
 assumed, on the contrary, more and more deifying dimen- 
 sions. Their Messianic enthusiasm lost, neither, any of 
 its fever height after his personal withdrawal, but continued 
 to be very strong and all-absorbing. Yet there is no rea- 
 son why the many serious obstacles which they continually 
 encountered during the early growth of the church, should 
 not eventually have turned their former inconsiderateness 
 as to all things lying outside the Messianic scheme, which 
 had outrun their prudence as well as their sense of obliga- 
 tion as born Jews, into a more thoughtful regard for their 
 native religion and its ceremonial precepts. 
 
232 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 Those more sober jucgments may, moreover, have 
 gained greater substantiality in view of the circumstance, 
 that the Master's living word and actual example were no 
 more with them, by leaning on which they could formerly, 
 in his lifetime, feel themselves compensated in their con- 
 science for various ceremonial shortcomings. " The " bride- 
 groom " whose presence had to them such convincing and 
 reassuring dispensatory authority, had personally gone 
 from among them, so that direct dispensations could no 
 more be got from him. This may have worked a thorough 
 change in their attitude toward the Jewish ceremonial and, 
 together with the before-noted other adverse causes that 
 operated on them, urged them to return and settle down to 
 a more strict observance of it, the same in which they had 
 been bred up in their parental homes. What they had 
 valued slightly or treated with levity in the short interval 
 of their personal alliance with Jesus and yet some time 
 thereafter, may from that later period on which we sug- 
 gested before, h^ve again been regarded by them with a 
 fair sense of obligation. What they had abandoned in 
 their early immediate Messianic excitement, they may 
 later have re-adopted as really compatible with their Mes- 
 siah-belief, and as obligatory on themselves. 
 
 All this we advance, however, as a mere hypothesis, with 
 the purpose, as stated above, to be as fair as possible in our 
 judgment on the early Jewish Christian sect. The fact 
 remains nevertheless, that the indications to the contrary 
 are heavily on the other side of the balance. 
 
 As regards the Sabbath, while there can be no question 
 that the apostles and other Jewish Christians of their age 
 kept it, in the main, holy, we are yet not inclined to admit 
 promptly the premise, that they may after Jesus' death 
 have retrograded to the Jewish orthodox way of observing 
 it. Not only in view of the various moments put forth 
 above to illustrate Jesus' impugning of the genuine Jewish 
 conception of the authority and obligation of the Sabbath, 
 and the apostles' partial levity concerning it which they 
 evinced while connected with him, are we reluctant to con- 
 cede that premise. But, aside from tjjese points of con- 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 233 
 
 sideration, we think ourselves entitled to conjecture, on the 
 ground of a Rabbinical passage to be reproduced imme- 
 diately, that the customary Jewish reverence for the Sab- 
 bath was, as time advanced, even more and more lessened 
 within the Jewish Christian church. We will let the reader 
 judge for himself of its admissibility for argument and 
 proof in this question. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 THE JEWISH CHRISTIANS RIDE ON ANIMALS ON THE 
 SABBATH (?). 
 
 In the Midrash Rabboth on Ecclesiastes, ch. i., we read : 
 "Hanina, the nephew. of Rabbi Joshua, went to Kephar 
 Nahum (Capernaum, the old Jesus-town). There the 
 Mineans (Christians) preformed a magic cure on him.^^ 
 They brought him riding (or made him ride) on a donkey 
 on the Sabbath. Coming to his uncle. Rabbi Joshua 
 (whose residence and school was in Pekiin; see B. Synh. f. 
 32), the latter applied an ointment to him, and he got 
 well. He then told the nephew : 'Since the wine of that 
 wicked one has been stirred in you, you dare not stay any 
 longer in the holy land.* " 
 
 The whole of this narration sounds genuine. The occur- 
 rence set forth in it belongs to the period of either Trajan's 
 or Hadrian's reign. Now we are well aware that there is 
 no direct warrant for concluding back from this later period 
 
234 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 to the earlier of the nascent Jewish Christian church. 
 Nevertheless, since we had all along in this treatise to 
 nnaintain, on the whole, the principle of continuity as to 
 religious theory and practice from the public life of Jesus 
 throughout the earlier ages of Christianity subsequent to 
 him ; and. farther, since we know Jesus to have been 
 so antagonistic to Phariseic-Rabbinical injunctions, — the 
 •so-called traditions,— we may not propose amiss that the 
 levity of riding on animals on the Sabbath dates back to 
 the earliest professors of Christianity. 
 
 Its prohibition was one of the Sabbath restraints, Rabbin- 
 ically denominated Shebuth or Sheboth, meaning " rest." 
 The ancient Jewish sages imposed many such restrictions 
 on the people to serve as hedges, preserving them the more 
 securely from the temptation to such infractions of the Sab- 
 bath as are real labor, that is, either the kind expressly 
 forbidden in the Pentateuch, or coming by traditional rules 
 of Scripture interpretation under the head of the general 
 command, "thou shalt do no manner of work." It seems 
 that riding on animals was, since the earliest times of the 
 second Commonwealth, regarded as the gravest of all the 
 Shebuth-restraints. The Talmud (B. Betsa f. 36), in dis- 
 cussing the cause of this prohibition, propounds first, that it 
 was instituted by the sages to prevent the severer trespass 
 of exceeding the Sabbath-limit of two thousand cubits 
 (see our Part First, p. 17), but rejects again this proposi- 
 tion, deciding that it was a measure intended to ward off 
 the trespass of cutting a twig off a tree and using it as a 
 whip. From whatever cause it may have been forbidden 
 by the sages, thus much we know for certain, that it passed 
 with olden Rabbinism universally for a most grievous 
 violation of the Sabbath. It was provably treated as such 
 already in the Maccabean period, and very probably since 
 the days of the ancient Sopherim " Scribes." As to the 
 Maccabean period, we may adduce the following Talmud- 
 ical relation to substantiate our statement: "Rabbi Elazar, 
 the son of Jacob, states (as by authority), that a Jewish 
 Senate may inflict judicial penalties for transgressions of 
 Jewish observances, though not prescribed in the Mosaic 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 235 
 
 code, and that for the purpose of erecting by it a fence to 
 its direct commands. As an instance in point may serve, 
 that once, in the time of the Syro-Greeks, a Jewish man 
 rode on horseback on a Sabbath and was brought to the 
 Senate for trial, who passed and executed on him the sen- 
 tence of death by stoning. This was done, not because the 
 offender was really liable to such punishment, but for the 
 urgency of the then circumstances" ( B. Yebamoth f. 90). 
 Rabbi Elazar's report of such rigid proceeding in the 
 troubled days of the Maccabean uprisings, when Hellenizing 
 apostasy had made such pernicious inroads upon Judaism, 
 and filled the pious with deep alarm about the future of 
 Israel's pure Monotheism, is in itself very acceptable. It 
 gains yet the more probability when we compare with it a 
 passage of the Midrash ( Rabb. Gen. ch. Ixvi.) which bears, 
 in the main, the stamp of unquestionable authenticity. It 
 is said there: "Jakum of Tseroroth (the notorious 
 Alkimos ), the nephew of Jose ben Joezer,''^ was riding on 
 horseback on a Sabbath, when they carried before him the 
 beam on which his nephew was to suffer crucifixion. 
 Jakum said to the latter (mockingly) : ' Look at the horse 
 which my lord (King Demetrius who had conferred on him 
 the high-priesthood) has given me to ride on, and look at 
 thine which thy Lord (God) has prepared for thee, etc!'" 
 While there is, perhaps, in this relation the anachronism 
 of putting crucifixion as the mode of execution carried out 
 at that conjuncture, which really belonged to a later, 
 Roman, period, there is otherwise every reason to believe 
 that the occurrence narrated there is historical in substance. 
 It shows forth the habit of the frivolous Hellenists in the 
 dismal days in which Alkimos was high-priest, to deeply 
 offend the sentiments of the pious Jews by publicly riding 
 on the Sabbath day. Like that degenerate ecclesiastic, 
 there were no doubt many other triflers with Judaism who 
 paraded the thoroughfares on a Sabbath high on horse, 
 boldly demonstrating their irreligious license. Such state 
 of things, intolerable to the pious, may have induced them, 
 after they had gained the ascendency over the renegades, 
 to decree capital punishment on all those who would not 
 
236 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 cease disregarding the Sabbath in that offensive manner, 
 though they committed thereby no breach of the Mosaic 
 enactment, for which alone mortal punishment was legally 
 provided. The precedent stated by Rabbi Elazar in the 
 above-cited Talmudical passage, is accordingly easily refer- 
 rible to a tradition, one of the historical backgrounds of 
 which was the narration of the Midrash in point. 
 
 However this may be, we are at all events warranted 
 in assuming that riding on animals in public on the Sab- 
 bath, was already in the times of the Syro-Greek dominion 
 held as a most reprehensible obliquity and dishonor of that 
 sacred day. The same applied to every one of the high 
 festivals. They shared all restraints with the Sabbath, 
 except those of labor in preparing the meals of the day. 
 The threads of such vigorous condemnation of that exer- 
 cise on the holy days reach, we suppose, back to the days 
 of the earlier Scribes. 
 
 An analogous instance of austere perception of the religi- 
 ous regard due to the holy days, may confirm this supposi- 
 tion. There was a serious dispute on the permissibility of 
 the rite of the laying on of hands on the victims offered by 
 individual Israelites on the festivals, kept up for a period 
 of about one and a half centuries, between either of the 
 several presidential pairs of the national school of Jewish 
 learning in Jerusalem, who lived and succeeded one 
 another during that period. It lasted from the time of the 
 above-noted Jose ben Joezer till that of Shammai and 
 Hillel and the divided schools of these two sages. It was 
 only through the interference of Baba ben Buta — himself a 
 Shammaite, but later convinced of the error of his school — 
 that Hillel's opinion was authoritatively adopted as the 
 correct one, to be followed in all the future ritual practice 
 ( Jerus. Chagigah, ii.). This opinion was, that the rite 
 might and should be performed on the festivals : for, he 
 reasoned, any sacrifice Mosaically ordained for a certain 
 day must necessarily have the virtue of vacating it as to all 
 rites pertaining to it ( B. Betsa, f. 20). This view of Hillel 
 was consonant with his other, and one, by the way, that 
 made his name so famous and his station so prominent in 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 237 
 
 Judea, — that a sacrifice prescribed for a " fixed season " 
 cannot but make the Sabbath restraint recede before it 
 ( B. Pesachim, f. 66). Thus he argued to dispel the 
 scruples of his contemporaries about killing the Passover 
 victim, if the fourteenth Nisan happened to fall on a Sab- 
 bath day. 
 
 W'e have to keep in mind that the laying on of hands on 
 living animals was only prohibited by the sages and classed 
 under the name of " Shebuth," coming, according to the 
 commentator Rashi in B. Betsa, f. 19, under the category 
 of " making use of animals," the same as riding on them 
 does. And yet, so profound was the awe of the Mosaical 
 holy days, and the apprehension lest they might be pro- 
 faned by that rite, that it took so long a space of time — 
 from Jose to Hillel — to overcome the objection of its 
 possible unlawfulness, though it were performed on such 
 victims as had to be offered up entire, being thus an act per- 
 taining exclusively to Divine worship. This proves con- 
 clusively what a severe sense was in the remoter ages of 
 the second Commonwealth put on the use of animals on 
 holy days, even when they would not do any labor them- 
 selves, which alone involved an infraction of the Sabbath 
 law ( in accordance with Exodus xx. 10). 
 
 The riding on animals correlated, according to that 
 commentator, with the laying on of hands as regards the 
 ceremonial offence involved in the act, was doubtless as 
 early as this rite considered a serious violation of the holy 
 days, though neither could be classified as labor in a 
 Mosaical import. 
 
 If the riding was in public, it was unquestionably consid- 
 ered a still greater ofTence. For not only was it a leading 
 view with the olden Jewish teachers, that any irreligious 
 act done openly, in the sight of piously observant core- 
 ligionists, was intensified by the scandal thus committed 
 against their individual religious susceptibilities, as well as 
 the affront thus offered to the paternal, Divinely instituted 
 religion itself. But the appearance of a Jewish person 
 bestriding the back of an animal on a sacred day, and 
 traversing the streets and quarters where a general solemn 
 
 (8) 
 
238 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 quietude prevailed, will, besides, have the more forcibly 
 roused the indignation of the pious brethren who beheld 
 him, because they must have been impressed by it, that the 
 perpetrator was of a defiant mind, and prompted by the 
 base motive of showing ostentatiously, that he had cast 
 behind his back all reverent recognition of the day. 
 
 These several notions on the use of animals on Sabbaths 
 and holy days were without question transmitted through 
 successive ages, as we find them embodied in the Rab- 
 binical literature. Consequently, we judge, has such a 
 transgressor, all through those ages, drawn on himself the 
 utmost detestation of every orthodox coreligionist. 
 
 If, therefore, our proposition above advanced, that Jewish 
 Christians made no scruple of publicly riding on the Sab- 
 bath dav, can be accepted as probable, there can be no 
 doubt that the true Jews, holding such an act a real and 
 serious violation of its obligatory rest, will have spurned at 
 them the more for their setting at naught, additionally to 
 their other notorious levity, an observance that had such 
 great moment with them. 
 
 Let us yet mention that to about the same period with the 
 before-discussed narrative of the Midrash on Ecclesiastes, 
 belongs the apostasy of Elisha ben Abuyah, the Gnostic 
 heretic, by the Rabbis nicknamed Acher, that is, one fallen 
 away to alien and false religious belief and worship ; see on 
 him also our Excursus B. We will in this place produce a 
 notice of his disregard of the Sabbath, exhibited by the 
 same frivolity as we premised to have marked the Jewish 
 Christians. Our conjecture that one motive may have been 
 common to both, we will bring forward by and by. 
 
 To dilate on that Rabbinical doctor's heresy would carry 
 us beyond the bounds of our present purpose. We do 
 it in our larger, utipublished work, in the division: 'The 
 Gnostics as Mineans.' Here we must confine ourselves to 
 the brief assertion, that he leant strongly on Gnostic dithe- 
 ism or diarchy, or had actually turned Gnostic. His Gnostic 
 bias was probably created by reading Mineic works, that is, 
 those of the Platonic philosophers, and, in particular, of the 
 many Christianizing Gnostics flourishing in his day. 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 239 
 
 It is said in Jerus. Chagigah, f. yy, that he once on a 
 Sabbath passed on horseback the school of Rabbi Meir, in 
 Tiberias. This Rabbi was his intimate friend and former 
 pupil. On being told that Elisha had passed the place, he 
 suddenly broke off his discourse and went out to meet him. 
 He overtook and followed him some distance out of town. 
 Before parting he entreated him to retrace his steps of 
 apostasy and return to true Judaism. Elisha replied that 
 he could not possibly do it, for he had heard once, when 
 riding on horseback on a Sabbath which happened at the 
 same time to be Atonement day, an oracle announcing to 
 him the verdict, that he was irreclaimable and abandoned 
 by God. 
 
 This account cannot here be scrutinized and tested on its 
 historical merits. True, without doubt, we remark, appears 
 to be the mention in it, that he was habitually slighting the 
 Sabbath by holding cheap the customary restraint of riding 
 on this sacred day. For the Talmud relates, besides, 
 previously, that it was he who, during the Hadrianic per- 
 secution, when the Jews were by the Romans compelled to 
 break the Sabbath by labors done for them, schemed to see 
 his wretched compatriots coerced into positive violations of 
 the Sabbath law, whenever they attempted to evade them 
 by some mechanical shifts which they had contrived in 
 their pious anxiety and awe of the Sabbath. It may, in 
 view of such Rabbinical representations of Elisha's char- 
 acter, be safely affirmed as historical, that he was sharply at 
 odds with the traditional observance of the Sabbath. We 
 at least hold it inconceivable that olden Rabbinism should 
 have coupled his name so directly and repeatedly with 
 circumstances of dishonor to the Sabbath, had there been 
 no foundation for it in authentic tradition. 
 
 Now it is quite possible, we hold, that Elisha came to 
 value the Sabbath slightly by his Gnostic speculations that 
 landed him on the verge of the heretical notion, that the 
 supreme, good God was distinct from the Creator and Giver 
 of the Mosaic Law. If the latter proceeded from an inferior 
 Deity, then the Sabbath could claim no superior sanctity 
 or, at anv rate, no inviolable obligation. This conclusion 
 
240 
 
 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 would readily be made on such a supposition. By it, more- 
 over, he would little by little be led to a levity in the 
 observance of the Sabbath, such as is noted about him in 
 the Talmud. 
 
 Possibly there was some affinity in this regard between 
 him and the Jewish Christians. These may, consistently 
 with the implicit denial by their Master of the Divine 
 authority of the Sabbath law, have held it of little con- 
 sequence to treat it in some respects with that license, born 
 of the thought that they were any way not liable to God 
 for its violation. As one mark of such license may be 
 accounted their regardless riding on animals on the Sab- 
 bath, which, while it was no labor Mosaically prohibited, 
 passed yet in the minds of the orthodox Jews for a most 
 frivolous slight of the high honor due it from " the children 
 of the covenant." 
 
NOTES. 
 
 ^* Even Keim, by-the-by the most learned, profound and 
 comprehensive modern historian of the life of Jesus, who 
 in various passages of his voluminous work tries hard, yet 
 most inconsistently and therefore unsuccessfully, to sustain 
 the pro-nomian position of Jesus (comp. iii. p. 113 ; 315 ; 
 323, 24 ; 427 ; 362, 63, and chiefly his summary in vi. p. 
 401 ), cannot help detecting in that re-asserted opposition 
 of Jesus to the law of divorce, a repudiation of Moses. We 
 have here a concession by the foremost critical writer on 
 Jesus, that the latter had in the instance in point really and 
 decidedly seceded from Mosaism. Space does not permit 
 us to argue with him on his assertion that Jesus " arrived," 
 in that instance, " for the first time at the point of repudiat- 
 ing Moses" (v. p. 30). What we will have to dwell on as 
 to our present purpose is, his proposition, on p. 31 : "Here 
 was a point discovered on which he could in fact be 
 indicted before the Sanhedrim." 
 
 Keim does indeed not mean, that the repudiation of 
 Moses as such made him liable to be capitally tried by the 
 Jewish high court. Nor would there be the slightest 
 shadow of a warrant for an assumption like that, could we 
 even think him capable of entertaining it. For neither the 
 Pharisees nor the Sadducees would ever presume to elevate 
 Moses to the dignity of a divine-like, prophetical being, 
 such as the Essenes professed him to be. It was only this 
 philosophico-ascetic sect that made a blasphemer of Moses 
 punishable with death (see Josephus, Wars, ii. 8, 9). That 
 this was, on the one hand, due to their overwrought Neo- 
 Pythagorean reverence for the teacher Moses, which rever- 
 ence, in passing, we discover likewise in Philo, who calls 
 him now all-great, now all-wise, and, again, most sacred, 
 and, on the other, to their anxious caution lest the primacy 
 of that greatest and "true prophet" (so he is designated 
 in the Clementine Homilies) might be questioned and 
 infringed on by the rival claim of any one of their own 
 order, which had itself bred so many would-be prophets, 
 and the sacred and secret books of which contained with- 
 out doubt so many precepts and predictions of their own 
 illustrious, prophetically inspired lights, we incline to hold, 
 
242 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 rather than seek for the motive for such severity of legis- 
 lation in their religious reverence for the Law itself. For 
 we know from some of their otherwise Jewish heterodox 
 doctrines, that this could not have been the case. 
 
 No, Keim was not so extreme as to connect the indict- 
 ment of Jesus with his repudiation of Moses, from the view 
 of the disparagement of his person. He had, on the con- 
 trary, in mind his own peculiar construction which he later, 
 in vol. vi. p. 46, puts on the accusation brought against 
 Jesus, of "seducing the people," adopted by him from Luke 
 xxiii. 2, 5. This accusation of being a Mesith, " seducer," 
 he lets there arbitrarily precede the actual deposition of 
 the testimony of the witnesses, mentioned in Matt. xxvi. 
 60, 61. The charge implied in that criminal term is to 
 him, that he was *' an inciter to disobedience to the Mosaic 
 ordinances." 
 
 Now that the Synhedrin could not have tried him on 
 the charge, nor surely convicted him of the crime, of being 
 a ' Mesith,' for mere incitation to ceremonial transgressions, 
 might the accusations even have been drawn, as he gives it 
 on p. 47 of the quoted volume, from the " rich mine of the 
 strong earlier-uttered invectives against the hierarchy as a 
 whole," should be known to a learned writer like him. The 
 relative penal provision on the strength of which Jesus could 
 have been criminally tried on the charge of being a Mesith, 
 sets forth directly a seduction to false worship ( see Deut. 
 xiii. 7, sq., and Mishnah Synhedrin f. ^7), and not to "dis- 
 obedience to the Mosaic ordinances." (As to our own 
 account of the provisionally supposed criminal charge of 
 seduction laid against Jesus, by a legal inference drawn 
 from his contempt for the established Temple worship, we 
 have to refer the reader to our above-cited dissertation on 
 the Essenes, in which this subject is discussed " ). 
 
 And yet, while we have to confute Keim's sarcastic 
 reflections as impertinent in the question of the charge of 
 religious seduction brought against Jesus, we cannot refrain 
 from suggesting that his anti-Mosaic utterances and, partly, 
 practical course, may not only have hastened his arraign- 
 ment before the Synhedrin, but even been judicially 
 charged against him, though no mention of it is made in 
 the gospels. 
 
 And here we will express a view, which will at least 
 throw some light on the obscure New Testament narra- 
 tions of the capital incrimination not only of Jesus, 
 
 * See Excursus C. 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 243 
 
 but also of other Christian men after him, in the same cen- 
 tury, a view which is, moreover, associable with our asser- 
 tion, with which we started our present treatise, that Jesus 
 denied the Divine authority of the Law. 
 
 It is possible, we hold, that his anti-Mosaic utterances 
 have drawn on him a charge of blasphemy which, though 
 Rabbinical tradition has not handed it down in the relative 
 penal rubric in the Mishnah, Synhedrin f 55, 56, may yet 
 have passed as a capital felony with both the Pharisees and 
 the Sadducees, alike within and without the Synhedrin. We 
 mean that blasphemy, on which the statute appears in 
 Numbers xv. 30, 31: "But the soul that doeth (aught) 
 presumptuously, . . . the same reproacheth the Lord ; 
 and that soul shall be cut off from among his people. 
 Because he hath despised the word of the Lord, and hath 
 broken his commandment, etc." Now while the later 
 Rabbinical interpretation of this somewhat indefinite 
 statute was, that it was either directed against the 
 polytheist and idolater, or against the same blasphemer of 
 God of whom Lev. xxiv. 15, 16, treats, (see B. Kerithoth, f. 
 6), there is, on the other hand, a sufficient warrant from 
 another place in the Talmud (B. Synhedrin, f 99), showing 
 definitely that it was as well, and we believe rather com- 
 monly, employed to cover cases of antinomian heresy, gen- 
 eral or particular. The sentence of the Mishnah (ib. f. 90), 
 " He who declares that the Torah is not from Heaven 
 ( God), has no share in the world to come," is there sub- 
 stantiated in the name of previous teachers by reference to 
 that Mosaic statute. In another relation, also credited 
 there to antecedent teachers, even he is denounced as a 
 " despiser of the word of God," Avho denies the Divine 
 authority of only one verse of the Pentateuch, nay even of 
 Rabbinical injunctions derived, by the established rules of 
 interpretation, from its text. On this last exaggerated 
 clause we need indeed not reflect here. For not only have 
 the Sadducees never consented to and accepted as 
 obligatory such derivative Rabbinical ordinances, even the 
 Pharisees themselves have not pushed their exaltation of 
 the "institutions of the Sages," or of the periodical cere- 
 monial restraints of Rabbinical councils, to such an extreme, 
 as to hold transgressors of them, or deniers of their obliga- 
 tion, liable to mortal punishment, by virtue of the statute 
 in question. They will never have raised their own 
 injunctions to the dignity of the " word of God," so that a 
 despiser of them could become guilty of real blasphemy, 
 and incur the penalty prescribed for it in that statute. That 
 the Talmud mentions once a single case from the Macca- 
 
244 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 bean period of infliction of capital punishment on the vio- 
 lator of a Rabbinical Sabbath restraint ( B. Yebamoth f. 90, 
 and Synhedrin f. 46), a case which we discuss at another 
 point of this treatise, does by no means contradict our 
 assertion. It confirms, on the contrary, as all exceptions 
 witness to existing rules, the order prevailing among the 
 Pharisees, that only those offenses were to be capitally 
 punished, which come within the province of Mosaic pro- 
 visions. To deviate from it would have been an anti- 
 Mosaic innovation, of which those pious and devoted Jews 
 could certainly not make themselves guilty. The less so, 
 since they would by it have opened the door to the Sad- 
 ducean method of inflicting penalties from personal discre- 
 tion, which method the Pharisees so positively marked as 
 heretical (see Megillath Taanith ). That single case must 
 accordingly have been unwarranted in the minds of the 
 Phariseic doctors at large. It was doubtless only a meas- 
 ure of a momentary impulse and excessive zeal at a certain 
 juncture, at which frovvard irreligiousness prevailed among 
 a certain class of the community. This view is evidently 
 held by the olden Rabbis, too; see the cited passages of the 
 Talmud. The above-quoted Talmudical saying which com- 
 prises heretical opponents of Rabbinically derived decisions 
 under the title of " despisers of the word of God," must, 
 then, be pronounced as an extravagant theory, and can at 
 best only mean, that such men are deserving non-judicial 
 reprin and, or, at the most, a light punishment, but not the 
 penalty provided in that statute. 
 
 Different it is, however, with the other part of that say- 
 ing, relating to the enactments and general contents of the 
 Mosaic code. The proposition that deniers of their Divine 
 origin came under the head of such "despisers," and were 
 to be accounted blasphemers, must by no means be 
 regarded as a mere theory of Rabbinical doctors. There is 
 the strongest probability that it rested on a settled norm 
 transmitted from former ages, in which grave religious 
 offenders were actually incriminated, by the authority of a 
 powerful Senate. We maintain that such a norm^ based on 
 the statute in question, actually existed in the times of the 
 Synhedrin, and that antinomian heretics were called to 
 account and criminally tried on the strength of it, by this 
 judicial body of the jfeivish land. 
 
 At what period of Jewish history the Synhedrin may 
 have first made a practical application of that statute 
 against open assailants or derogators of the Law. can no 
 more, be ascertained. That the Christian schismatics 
 should have called it forth for the first time, we cannot 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 245 
 
 think. For the apo: tatizing Hellenism, in the Maccabean 
 times, was certainl}' serious and grievous enough to have 
 demanded a rigid interference on the part of the religious 
 authorities of the land, and also the practical enforcement 
 of that statute, provided it was employed in a really penal 
 sense. Nor must the special legislation against Mineans, — 
 presumably Jewish Christians, though Essenes and kindred 
 sectaries could as justly have been included in that desig- 
 nation, as we set forth in our work on the ' Mineans,' — 
 which is reported in B. Abodah Zarah f. 27, and confirmed 
 as historical by external literature, viz., the prohibition of 
 intercourse with them, etc., induce us to suppose that that 
 statute, too, was, by way of special enactment, first called 
 into requisition with the rise of Christianity, to be used as 
 a judicial weapon for dealing with this new heresy. For 
 that legislation belongs to a more advanced age of Chris- 
 tianity, about the latter part of the first century, when the 
 destructive antinomianism of Paul and his consummate 
 deification of Jesus (see Epistles Eph. and Col.; Phil. ii. lO; 
 Rom. X. 12. 13), as also the intrusion of overbold Gentile 
 Christians into the Church, had cast a bitter dismay into 
 the hearts of the faithful Jews, and when, further, the pre- 
 tension of miraculous cures in the name of Jesus by every 
 Christian who claimed to have the Holy Ghost with him, 
 had more and more increased, and threatened to make 
 dangerous inroads upon the illiterate part of the Jewish 
 people. 
 
 With much less justice could the teaching of Abbahu, 
 the learned Palestinian Rabbi of the third century C. E. 
 (see B. Abodah Zarah f. 26), that "the Mineans, dilators, 
 and apostates need not be tried before the high court " 
 ( this is, we contend, the real meaning of the words " we-lo 
 maalin; " there is to be supplemented, * le-beth din' or 
 Mirushalaim ' ), be brought to bear on our point, as being 
 an analogy of a special legislation concerning Christians. 
 For it was merely a decision of an apparently private 
 character, and belongs, moreover, to the later time when 
 Gentile Christianity had been habitually manifesting a 
 furious hostility not only to the Jewish religious ceremo- 
 nial, but to the Jewish nation as such. Nor is it so very 
 certain at all, that Christians alone are to be understood 
 there by the term Mineans. 
 
 We have to remark, further, that Maimoni's dogmatic 
 systematizing in his commentary on Mishnah Synhedrin 
 xi. 3, can be of no direct avail in the question before us. 
 
246 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 He has there only worked out Talmudical statements and 
 sentiments, coming as they do from different epochs of later 
 history, which do not warrant an historical conclusion 
 being made from them for the times of early Christianity. 
 
 We will, nevertheless, reproduce the substance of his 
 casuistic reasoning, for we have in view the object of making 
 it appear the more probable, that the respective theories he 
 advances there in a combined form, re-echo fundamentally 
 and rather accurately the disposition of the ancient ortho- 
 dox Jews towards those who denied the Divine authority of 
 the Mosaic Law, or assailed or exposed any of its appoint- 
 ments. 
 
 Respecting the sentence of the Mishnah quoted above, 
 that " a denier of the Divine authority of the Law has no 
 share in the future world," Maimoni propounds, that " this 
 class of unbelievers are kopherim "renegades," and deserve 
 death the same as the atheists or those disputing the 
 existence of Moses ( as the deliverer of the Divine com- 
 mands). Such men have broken a.vay from Judaism, and 
 stand without its pale." They are to him ' Mineans,' who 
 have by their apostasy forfeited their lives. 
 
 May we not justly, according to all that we know of the 
 orthodox Jews of antiquity, assume that this representation 
 of Maimoni, though drawn and condensed from the later 
 theorizing Talmud, was approximately the standard by 
 which the legal religious authorities in the time and cen- 
 tury of Jesus guided themselves, and that they may have 
 adopted as their judicial norm for dealing with antinomians 
 that statute of Numbers xv. 30, 31, by which such delin- 
 quents might be treated and tried as blasphemers } 
 
 We may, further, find some support to this supposition 
 in the comment which a prominent Rabbi of the Hadrianic 
 and Bar Cochba period, Eliezer of Modin, made upon the 
 sentence of this statute : " Because he hath despised the 
 word of the Lord, and hath broken his commandment." 
 He observes on it : " He who profanes the holy things 
 ( sacrifices ), reviles the festivals ( that is, the Sabbaths and 
 holy days ; for the former are included in the term 
 moadoth " festivals," as is clear from Lev. xxiii. 2, 3 ), and 
 breaks the covenant of Abraham, our ancestor, though he 
 have many counterbalancing deserts, is worthy of being 
 cast out of the world." (This reading seems to be the 
 original ; see Sifre, Numb. sect. 112. The enlarged version 
 in the Mishnah of Aboth, iii. 15, appears to us inauthentic). 
 
 Now while we are not so dogmatic as to regard this 
 post-Synhedrial exegesis of a Rabbi of the second century 
 as the exact norm translated into judicial practice by the 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 247 
 
 former high courts, — although it is, on the other haiid^ 
 possible that that doctor's youth reached back to the time 
 when the Synhedrin yet existed in Jerusalem, and he 
 accordingly spoke from the remembrance of his own 
 anterior notice of its real practice, — we are nevertheless 
 perfectly warranted in asserting, that he has by his com- 
 mentation sounded the keynote of the pious Israelitish 
 sentiment. What to him was a mere theoretical estima- 
 tion of the relative offenders' liability to capital punish- 
 ment, —since the capital jurisdiction of the Jewish Senate 
 was assuredly out of the question at the time when he 
 uttered that exposition, — was, we suppose, in the period of 
 the Synhedrin's actual and, later, pretended power of life 
 and death, that is, till the last days of the Jewish State, a 
 real cause for a legislative infliction of it. 
 
 Sabbath and circumcision were since the cessation of 
 sacrifice undoubtedly held as the most important and 
 sacred rites of Judaism. This can be proved as well from 
 multifarious Rabbinical, as from external sources. In the 
 Temple times sacrifice was pre-eminently ranked with 
 those two rites. As the sacred provision for constantly 
 procuring expiation and atonement, its rite was commonly 
 esteemed of paramount import. As to sacrifice, we have 
 indeed to note, that in that Rabbi's lifetime the exegetical 
 observations made on it were no more of any practical con- 
 sequence. For it had ceased since the ruin of the Temple, 
 the only remnant of it having been the ordinance concern- 
 ing the bechor "first-born animal," which was respected as 
 of perpetual validity, the ex-priests receiving the animal,, 
 indeed, as their obligatory portion. He can therefore 
 scarcely be understood as having alluded, for practical 
 objects, to this mere remnant of the former extensive sacri- 
 ficial ritual. Yet we must not for one moment assume that 
 the discontinuance of sacrificial offerings had interfered 
 aught with or diminished his reverence for them. It was 
 with him as with all other pious and devoted Israelites as 
 intense and fervent after the destruction of the Temple, as 
 it ever was before this national catastrophe, and this at 
 once from their reverent valuation of the respective Divine 
 ordinances and their strong, unbounded hope of the speedy 
 restoration of the Temple. Are we consequently not 
 entitled to deduce from Rabbi Eliezer's exposition, especi- 
 ally since his lifetime was surely not very remote from the 
 period of the flourishing Temple service, that he inter- 
 preted by it the ground-sentiment of all pious Israel of the 
 past, and no less of their judicial religious representatives, 
 the national council ? Is it not perfectly plausible that the 
 
248 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 supreme tribunal of the nation will in the days of its power, 
 have rigidly avenged any direct and open " profanation of 
 holy things," which that Rabbi designated as a delinquency 
 worthy of death ? 
 
 What he meant by such profanation is, we aver, not the 
 infraction of the appointed time and place of sacrifice, both 
 of which were Rabbinically included in the ordinance of 
 Lev. xix. 8 (see B. Zebachim f. 28), or its defilement, 
 which three trespasses, judging by the representations in 
 the Rabbinical literature, have likely passed as the princi- 
 pal ones among the many which rendered sacrifice " abom- 
 inable," nor any delinquency incurred by any other of the 
 various conditions of ceremonial abomination, so much as 
 the express opposition to aqd obvious antagonistic neglect 
 of sacrifice. For not only do the parallel propositions in the 
 Rabbi's declaration point to the latter-named meaning, but 
 the analogy, for example, of the phrase " profaning the 
 Sabbath," which everjnvhere in the old religious literature 
 denotes an actual breach of its law by forbidden labor, 
 compels us to assume that he had before his mind an apos- 
 tasy from sacrifice, at once by avowed opinion and exhib- 
 ited disuse. Such a profaner of holy things or of sacrifice, 
 together with the reviler of festivals and the violator of the 
 rite of the Abrahamic covenant, Rabbi Eliezer, then, 
 esteemed worthy of being cast out of the world. May we 
 not infer from this, that the judges composing the Synhe- 
 drin of the past held the same view, and practically made 
 such antinomianism a capital offence, too .-* 
 
 If we should hesitate to presume this of its Phariseic 
 members, since the later Rabbinical codes offer no evi- 
 dence of such penal construction of the statute, and, fur- 
 ther, since that sect was withal distinguished by a mild 
 legal disposition, is it not at any rate easily supposable 
 that the Sadducean members interpreted it in such sense 
 and purport, denouncing religious delinquents of those 
 descriptions, as well as others whose anti-Mosaic demon- 
 strations were held grievous enough to call for a deterrent 
 visitation, as blaspliemers, equally punishable with the blas- 
 phemers of the name of Jehovah .' And may we not, 
 therefore, fitly suppose, too. that the Synhedrin instituted 
 an indictment for blasphemy against Jesus for his antino- 
 mian utterances and acts, proceeding in this penal course 
 upon the authority of that statute, although there is no 
 mention in the gospels that this was a direct issue at his 
 trial .' 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 249^ 
 
 A further support to our view, and one which is of no 
 little moment to us, we find in the Synhedrial punishments 
 inflicted on some Jewish Christians after Jesus, some of 
 which at least must be recognized as historical. Let us 
 start with Stephen, whose incrimination fell one or two 
 years after the death of Jesus. The penalty of death vis- 
 ited on him was stoning, as is recorded in Acts, vii. 58. 
 The charge preferred against him was, speaking against 
 the Temple and the Mosaic laws ( ib. vi. 13, 14). That this 
 double offence was treated as blasphemy, as Hausrath 
 (1. c.) asserts, we could by no means allow, if that kind of 
 blasphemy were to be understood which is set forth in Lev. 
 xxiv. 16, and which the codified Rabbinical treatise of 
 Synhedrin ( vii. 5 ) has, as we are compelled to presume, 
 preserved as the only crime of this denomination for which 
 capital punishment is prescribed. Unless Stephen's judges 
 can be supposed as having indicted him capitally on the 
 same indefinite grounds on which the enraged priests, 
 prophets, and common people declared the prophet Jere- 
 miah worthy of death ( Jer. xxvi. 8, 9), we cannot see how 
 the charge of blasphemy for the attack upon the Temple 
 and the Law could have been sustained against him, pro- 
 vided, at the same time, that we adhere to the view col- 
 lected from that Rabbinical treatise, that no other derelic- 
 tion fell under the head of capitally punishable blasphemy 
 than that stated in the quoted place of Leviticus. 
 
 Now that the supreme tribunal of the Jewish nation can 
 not be thought, at that advanced period of systematic 
 jurisprudence, to have resorted for their guidance to that 
 old mob precedent, will readily be admitted by all. Baur 
 (' Paul,' i. p. 52 sq.), too, has vindicated that Jewish court 
 of justice from the imputation of mob irregularity and defi- 
 ance of legal form. He even rejects on this account, 
 among some other reasons advanced there, the statements 
 of Acts vii. 57, 58, as ungenuine. His conclusion is, that 
 the whole affair was merely a tumultuous popular insurrec- 
 tion againt Stephen, to which he fell a victim by stoning. 
 Now while we will not dispute the possibility that a multi- 
 tude of Jews exasperated at the " trenchant public utter- 
 ances " of that pugnacious Hellenist, should have taken 
 justice in their own hands and attempted to avenge 
 on him pre-eminently either his attack on the Jewish 
 national worship, as Baur maintains, or his threat of the 
 entire abolition of the Mosaic Law by the returning 
 Jesus, — though lynch justice was at no time during the 
 judicially regulated second Commonwealth popular with 
 the Jews, and they were ordinarily most jealous for any 
 
250 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 capital cause being tried according to the fixed forms of 
 law (see Ant. xiv. 9, 3 ).''' — we yet could not understand 
 why the penalty chosen by them was stoning, unless we 
 attribute it to his final exclamation by which he apotheo- 
 sized Jesus ( ib. 56). This may indeed have been held as 
 blasphemy by his executioners, for the implied imputation 
 to the Deity of having a progeny or a second in the being 
 of the risen Jesus. Yet it is a fact, that the charge of such 
 blasphemy was not included in the testimony of the wit- 
 nesses. Their evidence turned only on the two above- 
 named points ( ib. vi. 13, 14). We, then, have to ask, for 
 what purpose were these two offences charged against him, 
 if not with the view of visiting ihem with capital punish- 
 ment, if they were really committed .-* And when we fur- 
 ther inquire, under what Mosaical category did they come, 
 what will we decide,.'* 
 
 That it should have been seduction, is out of the ques- 
 tion. For this applied only to him who attempted to lead 
 away others to the worship of alien gods, which attempt is, 
 however, not provable from the respective sources as hav- 
 ing been made by Stephen. Even if we should assume 
 that the accusing party worked out such a charge by the 
 aid of the same association which we have provisionally 
 laid down for the cause of Jesus ( see our essay on the 
 Essenes ), namely, that Stephen had taught others to fol- 
 low Jesus, as being the son of God, which suasion might, 
 indeed, have been construed as seduction to false worship, 
 it is yet to be objected, that there is no indication whatever 
 in the records that he ever did publicly teach such doc- 
 trine. Since, therefore, the charge cannot have been that 
 of seduction, we have to look for another statutory provis- 
 ion which could easily have been employed in Stephen's 
 case. This we find readily, in accordance with our view 
 held forth above, in the statute of Numbers xv. 30, 31. By 
 it Stephen's transgression was amply covered. Having 
 been an assaulter of the Temple, he was surely to be treated 
 as a " despiser of the word of God." In this word of God — 
 the Mosaic Law — was not only frequently enunciated 
 the dwelling of God in the national sanctuary, but was also 
 contained a large portion of the ritual of sacrifices and 
 other sacred offerings constituting its worship, all of which 
 precepts were implicitly reviled by Stephen in his open 
 assault upon the Temple. Again, as a most decided "despiser 
 of God's word" he assuredly proved himself by his insinu- 
 ation, that Jesus would, at his Parousia, change the entire 
 
 * See also Exour.'(us D. 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 25 I 
 
 Mosaic dispensation. This defiant disparagement of the 
 whole system of the Mosaic religion, in which he really 
 was the "precursor and prototype of Paul "(so Edward 
 Zeller ), was certainly a flagrant blasphemy in the eyes of 
 the orthodox Jewish hearers. That they actually held it 
 as such a felony, is reported by the author of Acts himself 
 (ib. vi. II, 13). 
 
 Such an impious attack must have wounded the inmost 
 affections of the faithful Jews. It was the rankest heresy 
 that cculd be uttered. It sacrilegiously negatived one of 
 the most essential principles of the Jewish belief, viz., that 
 the Mosaic economy was in all its parts of Divine authority. 
 As it was impossible to conceive that, what God had once 
 coipmanded, could at any time be repealed, the cogent 
 conclusion from Stephen's heretical discourses was, that he 
 denied the Divine origin of the Law. 
 
 If the objection should be made, that the author of Acts 
 made out the witnesses as false, we reply, that Stephen's 
 speech itself, as reproduced by him, incontestably shows 
 that the charge as to the Mosaic Law was genuine and true. 
 For let us inquire, how does he therein represent the Law .-* 
 As revealed by God } By no means. He designates it as 
 " lively oracles " (not as " dibhre elohim chayim," to accord 
 entirely with Jeremiah xxiii. 36, but merely as " debharim 
 chayim"), and those communicated by an angel (ib. vii. 38) 
 or by angels (v. 53) — a heterodox notion, which likewise 
 occurs in Paul's Ep. Gal. iii. 19. This notion was in itself 
 to the orthodox Israelites a downright blasphemy. It was 
 yet increased and intensified by the threat of the imminent 
 abolition of the Mosaic Law, which Stephen had uttered, 
 according to the testimony of the witnesses. It may, then, 
 readily be assumed that the executioners, if they were 
 laymen out of the multitude, — which hypothesis of Baur 
 we can however not accept, — had recourse to the discipline 
 which the Synhedrin presumably used to apply against 
 public assailants of the Mosaic Law, namely, the statute of 
 Numbers forming the subject of the present dissertation. 
 Let us yet state here that, notwithstanding the above- 
 noted objection of Baur against the representation, in Acts, 
 of Stephen's trial by the Synhedrin, and several other more 
 or less weighty objections made by him and other critics 
 against the whole relative account, we yet fully believe in 
 his execution by the sentence of that high court. As the 
 execution itself is left unquestioned even by such critics as 
 Baur and Zeller, we are inclined to regard some details of 
 the narrative that render a judicial trial very doubtful, as 
 an addition by the late Pauline author of that work (there 
 
252 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. '■ 
 
 I 
 
 is according to Zeller no trace of its existence before the i 
 year 170 C. E. ), rather than surrender the prosecution of | 
 Stephen by the Synhedrin as unhistorical. Since it is pos- \ 
 sible that the affair happened after Pilate had been recalled j 
 (whether the latter event occurred in 36 or 37, is disputed), i 
 and the new procurator had not yet appeared on the scene 
 of his official activity, we can well conceive that the pre- ; 
 ponderantly Sadducean Synhedrin improved the interval 
 to proceed exemplarily against that religious offender. 
 
 As to Baur's further objection rhat the Synhedrin had 
 then no autonomy for executing a capital sentence, and 
 that " this supreme spiritual tribunal must certainly have 
 had sufficient fear of the Romans to pay some attention to 
 legal form," we reply, that the analogy of the execution of 
 James the Just, by the younger Hanan, the son of the 
 ancient high-priest, Hanan, in the year 63, sufficiently jus- 
 tifies the assumption of a like speedy judicial interference, 
 in the absence of the governor appointed, in the cause of ! 
 Stephen. 
 
 The affair may, as Hitzig ( Geschichtedc:; Volkes Israel,. 1 
 quoted by Keim 1. c. vi. 227, 28 ) proposes, have occurred j 
 under Caiphas' successor, Jonathan, wnose hasty and harsh I 
 Sadducean legal justice impelled him to use the opportune j 
 interval between Pilate's departure and the arrival of his j 
 successor, Marcellus. And it may, too, in passing, as the 
 same author suggests, have been by reason of that act of I 
 judicial usurpation of the high-priest, that he was after- 
 wards deposed by Vitellius (Ant. xviii. 5, 3), as likewise 
 the before-named later high-priest, Hanan, the younger, 
 was removed for the same abuse of power. 
 
 Having, by the foregoing argument, as we hope, suffic- 
 iently educed from the capital indictment of Stephen for 
 his impious assault upon the Tem.ple and the Law, a sup- 
 port to our view, that the Synhedrin of old made any 
 public derogating attack upon the entire or only a part of 
 the Mosaic Law a capital offence, we will continue our 
 observations on the other judicial persecutions of some 
 early Jewish Christians after Stephen, to strengthen it yet 
 more. But instead of directly turning to the problem of 
 the execution of the apostle James the Less, which was 
 nearest in time to that of Stephen, we will at once attach 
 the accusations against Paul, as being more akin to those 
 brought against his congenial precursor, Stephen. 
 
 That Paul was in his polemics against the Mosaic Law | 
 much advanced on Stephen, should be observed before we \ 
 go on in the consideration of his offences. Stephen had,. i 
 in his speech, deferred the change of the Law to the time 1 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 253 
 
 of the returning Jesus. Paul, however, declared it already 
 abrogated. His leading doctrine of justification by faith 
 in Jesus, which he boldly derived from Gen. xv. 6, moved 
 him more and more onward in his opposition to the Mosaic 
 religion. Not only did he, like Stephen, proclaim the het- 
 erodox opinion, that the Law was given by angels, and not 
 directly by God, he even reduced the Law below the level 
 of equality with the " promise," — the associate doctrinal 
 term of his main theory, — in the notorious contrast set 
 forth in his Epistle to the Galatians, iii. 16-20 (see on this 
 Baur, ' Paul,' ii. 196 sq.). He, further, positively and 
 repeatedly declared the whole Mosaic dispensation as una- 
 vailing towards acceptance with God (Gal. ii. 16; Rom. iii. 
 20); as having multiplied transgressions ( Rom. v. 20); and, 
 in fine, as being abrogated by Jesus and through his death 
 (^ Gal. iii. 13; Col. ii. 14; Eph. ii. 15 ). 
 
 As to special commands of the Law, he certainly opposed 
 violently the chief one, the initiatory rile-, which signal- 
 ized in the consciousness of Israel, and no less in that of 
 all the rest of the Jewish Christians, himself and a few 
 Hellenistic followers only excepted, the participation in 
 the covenant of God made with Israel's ancestor, and 
 stamped each Israelite a ben berith " child and member of 
 the covenant." This opposition he put forth not only in 
 the question of the admission of Gentile converts to the 
 Christian community, but for Jewish converts as well 
 ( Gal. v., and see Baur 1. c. ). Nay, he preached against 
 circumcision even among Jews; Acts. xxi. 22 (Edward 
 Zeller finds in Gal. iii. 10 and v. 2 sq., the Pauline doctrine, 
 that none who adhered to Law and circumcision had any 
 share in the kingdom of the Messiah). In the place of the 
 ancient covenant Paul had devised a new, universal one 
 (Gal. iii. 17), that should embrace all nations having faith 
 in Jesus. This covenant was to him the /froj/nst" msni'j to 
 Abraham : " in thee shall all nations be blessed " ( Gen. xii. 
 3, being so rendered in Gal. ib. 8), which promise — 
 enlarged by him by-the-by with the aid of a disconnected 
 phrase in Gen. xiii. 15. so as to represent it as not alone 
 being made to Abraham, but also to his seed, which seed 
 was to him none other than Jesus himself ( Gal. iii. 16 1 — he 
 lets be centred in Jesus, and in his believers made one 
 with him. In this covenant-promise, he teaches, every one 
 from all the nations is to share, if he has faith in JesuK. 
 
 His judgment on Sabbaths, festivals, and eating laws, in 
 Cor. ii. 16, 17. compared with Gal. iv. 911, certainly shows 
 his utter disregard for those Mosaic-religious institutions, 
 
 • (9) 
 
254 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 as far at least as their obligation on his converts was con- 
 cerned. Even the eating of idol-meat — that gravest abomin- 
 ation in the sight of Jews, as well as Jewish, and, later, 
 Gentile Christians — he declared to be an indifferent thing 
 for firm Christ-believers ( i Cor. x. 27 ). 
 
 His sentiment on the Temple worship was doubtless 
 about equal to Stephen's, see Acts xvii. 24, and comp. 2 
 Cor. vi. 16, also Acts xxi. 28, and our Note 34. [ The state- 
 ment in Acts xxi. 23 sq., also that of his taking a vow, ib. 
 xviii. 18, and the double mention in this work of Paul's fes- 
 tival journeys, which would appear as standing out to the 
 contrary, inasmuch as he is in those accounts more or less 
 directly made to reverently value and adhere to the Temple 
 ritual, are either ungenuine and mere productions of its late 
 author, whose Pauline apologetic tendency is maintained by 
 the best critics of our da}'; or, if they should have to pass for 
 historical, they must be pronounced as imputing to Paul a 
 *' contemptible hypocrisy." by which he stood incomparably 
 more condemned than Peter ( if Peter's action — see Gal. ii. 
 12 — implied at all a transgression): for he would then, aside 
 from the undeniable violent attempt at undermining and 
 destroying practical Judaism in the whole course of his 
 teaching, be condemnable also for the grossest inconsist- 
 ency in professing at one time things as true and oblig- 
 atory, which he would at another disparage or negative. 
 Such inconsistency, it may yet be noted here, is not 
 unlikely in him, though, judging by his own assertion in i 
 Cor. ix. 20, and, again, by his solemn declaration at his 
 alleged trial before the governor, " believing all things 
 which are according to the Law, etc." (Acts xxiv. 14), — 
 provided, of course, that he understood by the L iw which 
 he pretended to have all along been observing, the Mosaic- 
 religious ritual, and not the few moral precepts which 
 Christianity had adopted from Mosaism, — which declara- 
 tion is so strikingly at variance with the renrrorseless 
 polemics he carried. on against the Mosaic Law during his 
 missionary travels, whereby he so sorely scandalized alike 
 the Jews and those Jewish Christians outside his own small 
 following]. 
 
 The cast of his theological doctrine about Jesus, too, 
 largely exceeded, as to the intense deification of the latter, 
 the notion which the primitive apostles and the Jewish 
 Christians in general entertained about his divinity. Is it 
 then to be wondered at, that the Asiatic Jews accused him 
 as a teacher of apostasy (Acts xxi. 28) .■' His assaults upon 
 circumcision and the Law made in Grecian communities, 
 had doubtless become known to the Hellenistic Jews resid- 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 255 
 
 ing at Jerusalem. These had, besides, frequent occasions 
 of personally noticing his antagonism to the Mosaic Law 
 ( see Acts ix. 29 ; this passage is by Baur, ' Paul,' i. ii i sq , 
 declared inauthentic, however). 
 
 His antinomian assaults are further attested by the state- 
 ment in Acts xxi. 21, that the body of the Jewish Christians 
 themselves were scandalized over the report, that he M'as 
 "teaching all the Jews which are among the Gentiles to 
 forsake Moses, saying that they ought not to circumcise 
 their children, neither to walk after the customs." The 
 implication of this statement in vv. 20, 21 is, as Baur sug- 
 gests, that he would have to fear the worst even from the 
 Jewish Christians. How much the more must not the 
 Asiatic Jews, and, through their information, the rest of the 
 orthodox Jews of Jerusalem, have been exasperated at that 
 greatest foe of their ancestral faith and forms of religion ? 
 
 That the Asiatic Jews have really brought the charge 
 mentioned ib. xxi. 28 against Paul before the Synhedrin, — 
 presided over though not by Ananias ( ib. xxiii. 2), if the 
 son of Nebedeus be meant (see Jos. Ant. xx. S. 2). but 
 most likely by Ishmael, the son of Fabi ; see Ant. xx. 8, 8, — 
 may safely be accepted as substantially historical, to be 
 gleaned out of the vast mass of accessory and additional 
 matter reaching from that passage of Acts to the end of ch. 
 xxvi. That he could not have stood " before the high 
 council on a charge of violating a temple by-law," as 
 Hausrath (1. c.) somewhat contemptuously and superficially 
 remarks, should, after all that we have premised, be readily 
 allowed by every thinking reader. No, he stood before the 
 Synhedrin charged with being a teacher of religious 
 apostasy, to be "judged after the law" ( ib. xxiii. 3 ; comp. 
 xxiv. 6), and that, as it would further appear from xxiii. 
 27-29, capitally. 
 
 The accusation laid against him is, in a more general- 
 izing and, as we hold, less reliable form, repeated ib. xxiv. 
 5, 6. The main charge seems to have centred in his teach- 
 ing and offending against the Law and the Temple ; see ib. 
 xxi. 28, and comp. xxv. 8. 
 
 ( As to the additional charge of speaking against the peo- 
 ple, ib. xxi. 28, this could surely not have been accounted a 
 capital offence. But that it was well founded, appears from 
 the following. He positively rejected, in Ep. Gal., the 
 merit of circumcision as the condition of Israel's preroga- 
 tive over other nations. In his argument he aimed to 
 establish the bare level between Jews and Gentiles. The 
 highest point of this his position is reached in Ep. Rom., 
 which was in the main addressed to the Jewish Christian 
 
256 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 church of Rome. In it he aimed radically to disabuse its 
 members of their sentiment of primacy over the Gentiles ; 
 so Baur, 1. c. In a sense, his speaking against the people 
 may even be found implied in his polemics against the 
 Law. For in Eph. ii. 14, 15, he propounds the theory of 
 the breaking down of the partition wall between the Jews 
 and Gentiles, which he explains as identical with the aboli- 
 tion of the Law ). 
 
 Now as regards those chief points of accusation, we 
 have to ask, on what penal grounds were they based ? As 
 a Mesith " seducer" in the Scriptural sense, he might in- 
 deed have been arraigned, and was perhaps so arraigned in 
 Greece, before the tribunal of the proconsul Gallio; see 
 Acts xviii. 13. For he not only proclaimed the ordinary 
 Jewish Christian dogma of the divine Sonship of Jesus, he 
 even raised him to the proportion of " Lord," Kurios 
 (Jesus had already virtually applied this title to himself, in 
 Matt. xxii. 44, or rather its Hebrew equivalent, "adon;" it 
 was yet left to Paul to identify his Christ even with the 
 Jehovah of the Hebrew original, in Rom. x. 11-13), who 
 should be " called upon " by his believers ( i Cor. i. 2; Rom. 
 1. c), and worshipped (Phil. ii. 10, 11). Nay he exalted 
 him to the dignity of "Creator of all things " (Col. i. 16; 
 I Cor. viii. 6) and '"Ruler over all" (i Cor. xv. 24 sq.), 
 acknowledging still, it is true, the supremacy of God. 
 ( Compare our relative remarks in Excursus B.) Yet we 
 find no evidence in the respective accounts that such 
 charge was really brought against him in Jerusalem. There 
 is, then, no other alternative left than to assume that his 
 cause was antinomianism, his indictment resting on the 
 statute in point, of Numbers xv. 30, 31, by which his guilt 
 could be defined as blasphemy. His derogating (and pro- 
 faning) of the Temple was already in itself, in accordance 
 with what we observed above, a "despising of the word of 
 God," apart from his having committed this latter offence, 
 in its general sense and in the most aggravating degree, 
 by his radical teaching of the abolition of the whole Law 
 through Jesus. 
 
 This consummate antinomianism was a most decisive, 
 crushing blow, aimed at the jealously cherished belief of 
 Israel in the Divine authority of the Law. By it he exposed 
 himself to the penalty of death, the infliction of which the 
 preponderantly Sadducean Synhedrin, in its high function 
 of punishing offences against God, claimed, as we suppose, 
 to be its judicial prerogative, because Holy Writ had 
 adjudged kareth "extermination" for such despising, which 
 penal sanction there is no evidence whatever that the 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 257 
 
 Sadducees had not intrepreted in the sense of execution 
 by the hands of the legally constituted high tribunal of the 
 Jewish nation (compare on this the sequel), especially since 
 Leviticus xxiv. 16 had, in ordaining such execution for the 
 direct blasphemy of Cod, offered to them an available 
 analogy. 
 
 That he escaped that penalty, because the procurators 
 of those days and their subordinate officials cared nothing 
 for the religious heresy charged upon a Jewish offender 
 (see Acts xxiii. 29), as long as no political misdemeanor 
 could be urged and proved against him (comp. ib. xxi. 38), 
 is well known. 
 
 A little later, in 62 or 63 C. E., James, surnamed the Just, 
 and brother to Jesus, was put to death by sentence of the 
 Synhedrin convened by Hanan, son of the elder Hanan or 
 Elchanan, as he is named in the Tosifta. [Whether this 
 James was Jesus' brother or only relative, on this the 
 modern writers are not agreed. Doellinger, ' First Age of 
 Christianity,' identifies him with the apostle who was the 
 son of Alphaeus or Clopas, and calls him the cousin of 
 Jesus. See also Renan, ' Les Apotres,' p. 42 Strauss, 
 1. c. i, p. 260, maintains that he was Jesus' real brother. 
 This writer is, moreover, let it be said in passing, the 
 only one of all the theological scholars known to us, 
 who does not separate the two James. He was without 
 -doubt decided in this identification by Ep. Gal. i. 19, where 
 the personage commonly taken for the apostle James, who 
 was martyred under Agrippa I., is designated "the Lord's 
 brother." This stands out, indeed, against the ordinary 
 acceptation as authorized by Eusebius' Church History. 
 This ecclesiastical writer treats of them as of distinct per- 
 sons, speaking in ii. 9, of " the apostle James, the brother of 
 John" (both the sons of Zebedee), and in ii. 23, of " James, 
 the brother of the Lord." The former is known as one of 
 the three leading apostles — the three pillars, as Paul styles 
 them (Gal. ii. 9). He was most likely the leader of the 
 earliest Church; see ib. 12, Acts xv. 13, xxi. 18. The latter 
 passes in Church history as a later saint, and is supposed 
 to have become the head of the Church after the death of 
 his namesake, the apostle.] 
 
 In those troubled days in which the fanatical Sicarii, in 
 their fiery hatred of the Roman supremacy, had caused so 
 •much disorder (see Ant. xx. 8, 10)^ and Messianic pre- 
 tenders had all along kept the Roman authorities in suspi- 
 <;ion of rebellious attempt? ( see our Note 20, and especially 
 Acts xxi. 38 ). it is not strange that a pontifex of the family 
 of the Sadducean tyrant, Hanan the elder, should have 
 
258 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 summarily proceeded against the head of the young Chris- 
 tian church, who may have been more profuse than the rest 
 in unguarded language concerning the second coming of 
 Jesus as the Messiah. Hegesippus, in Eusebius. Eccles. 
 Hist. ii. 23, does indeed make James proclaim, while placed 
 upon a wing of the Temple, that Jesus " was about ta 
 come on the clouds of heaven," — a testimony to Jesus 
 which he had doubtless frequently spoken forth, and 
 which had, as that writer reports in the same place, practi- 
 cally aroused a tumult at the time of which he speaks, so- 
 that the rulers became fearful of the " danger, that the 
 people would now expect Jesus as the Messiah." Or it 
 may be, that that pontifex singled him out as a terrifying 
 example, for being the representative of that body of Jews 
 whose chief dogma was, the past and future Messiahdom of 
 Jesus. Says the Author of " Supernatural Religion," iii. 
 120, seq.: "There can be no doubt of the reality and 
 universality of the belief, in the Apostolic Church, in the 
 immediate return of the glorified Messiah and 'speedy end 
 of all things.'" That the primitive Apostles, also Paul, 
 fervently cherished such expectation, is evident from i Ep. 
 John ii. 28, iii. 2 ; Apocal. xxii ; Ep. James w. T.^ \ i Ep. 
 Peter iv. 7, 13, and comp. Acts ii.; i Thess. iv. 15, seq, v. 
 23 ; see also 2 Ep. Peter iii. Nor can we doubt that the 
 Jewish Christians made no secret of this doctrine. There 
 is all likelihood that they openly and loudly avowed it. 
 Now as to this intense Messianic expectation it is very 
 probable, that the Sadducean ruler had strongly and bitterly- 
 resented it from political motives alone. It bore too 
 decidedly on the delicate relations of the Jewish people to 
 the Roman authorities, affecting directly his own interests, 
 as also the existent national establishments generally. Nor 
 is it at all unlikely that he with his other Sadducenn col- 
 leagues had taken grave offence at the Christian resurrec- 
 tion-belief, which was so closely connected and so 
 expressly urged with that doctrine. Yet all this may not 
 have appeared to Hanan a sufficient cause for instituting a 
 judicial prosecution against James, the chief of the Jerusa- 
 lemite Church. He therefore, we suggest, brought that 
 general charge against him, which Josephus reports, that 
 of Law-breaking ( Ant. xx. 9, i ). [ To the Greek term 
 employed by Josephus, " antinomianism " corresponds. 
 The older Rabbis stigmatized a Law-breaker either as 
 Epicurean, ( see Sifre.. Numb. 112) or, more frequently, as 
 Mumar "turned away from the Law." The latter title was 
 denounced as well for a partial as for the entire apostasy 
 from the Law. If it was of the gravest nature, a failing 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 259 
 
 away to polytheism or idolatry, then the stigma was usually 
 ' Min ' — the etymology of which term we discuss in our 
 work on the Mineans. For Min the Rabbis used at 
 times the scornful name ' Sadducee,' because the Sadducean 
 sect too were by them held as real heretics]. If this 
 accusation was no mere pretence, but had some foundation 
 in the fact of a real offence or offences, we may look for it 
 in his Essenic antagonism to the sacrificial Temple 
 worship. James was unquestionably a sectarian Ebionite, 
 or Christian Essene. Whether or not the partial Essenism 
 of Jesus and the Ebionism of James, his brother, may be 
 tracked to their parental family ( Essenes lived in every 
 city ; see Wars, ii. 8, 4), of whom Hausrath, ' N. T. Times,* 
 ii. 130, asserts that "their tendency towards strictness can 
 be recognized in the Essenic-coloured ascetic life of Jesus* 
 brother, James" (which view, put into our own words — for 
 we apprehend the Essenes as an heterodox sect — would be 
 equal to this, that the family professed heretical Essenism), 
 thus much is at any rate sufficiently well attested, that 
 James was an adherent of the Ebionite sect. Hegesippus 
 states about him, that " he drank neither wine nor fer- 
 mented liquors, and abstained from animal food." 
 
 This was surely a pronounced trait of Ebionism. Aside 
 from this individual peculiarity, we have to declare it as 
 indisputable, that the leading spirit of the entire primitive 
 Jewish Christian church, presided over first, as it is sup- 
 posed, by the apostle James, and then by James the Just, 
 was prominently Essenic. The F2ssenic disregard for the 
 goods of this world and the communistic system, were not 
 only constitutional in it, but would even without this 
 organic peculiarity have naturally been produced by the 
 belief of those Jewish Christians in the speedy end of the 
 then world (see Renan, ' Les Apotres,' p. 64). 
 
 We discover, further, a remarkable trait of affinity of 
 that Church with the Essenic sect in the well-known 
 decrees of its earlier council, headed by the apostle James; 
 see Acts xv. This council is there reported to have laid 
 down four points of precept for the admission of Gentile 
 converts into the Christian community. Their genuineness 
 has indeed been called in question by several modern 
 critics of note. We cannot here estimate their various 
 opinions and arguments. The conclusion we, on our part, 
 have reached concerning them is, that they are authentic 
 so far, — but only so far, — that the council of the Jerusa- 
 lemite Church issued them as a norm for the conversion to 
 the new creed of those Gentiles, who would not submit to 
 the initiatorv rite and with it to the observance of that 
 
260 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 range of Mosaic laws held incumbent on every Christian. 
 They were devised in about the same manner, as the so- 
 called seven Noachian precepts were introduced by the 
 orthodox Jews for the reception of those Rabbinically 
 designated ' Gere Toshab,' or, as they were also, though 
 less frequently, named, the ' God-fearing,' from the Gentiles. 
 As little as these attained, by the acceptance of the seven 
 precepts, to the perfect title of 'sons of the covenant,' and 
 in especial to the privilege of unimpeded intermarriage 
 with born Jews, so little, we hold, were those converts to 
 Christianity, for whom the four decisions of the apostolic 
 council were framed, ever intended to be regarded as fully 
 and equally incorporated members of the Jewish Christian 
 community. It is this comparative authenticity alone that 
 we can accord to those decisions. Yet, on the other hand, 
 we strongly incline to maintain for them this degree of 
 authenticity, rather than totally reject them as unhistorical, 
 as to the period to which they are credited, as Renan, Baur 
 and others have done. For they not only occur three 
 times in the s-^me work ( Acts xv. 20, 29, xxi. 25 \ and 
 recur, in the main, in the later Ebionite production, the 
 Clementine Homilies, vii. 4, 8 ( which work, even if we may 
 not regard it with Clement of Alexandria as the authentic 
 record of Peter's preaching, is at any rate a true exposi- 
 tion of Ebionite views and regulations ), as directions 
 given by Peter for the conduct of the Gentile Christian 
 converts of Tyre and Sidon ; but their entire tenor and 
 internal interconnection seem to us to point unmistakably 
 to Ebionite principles, prevailing with rhe three " pillar 
 apostles," one of whom, James, was the chief of the primi- 
 tive Church. 
 
 Now to consider those four decrees as the " ensemble of 
 Noachian precepts" (so Renan; they are enumerated in B. 
 Synhedrin f. 56). would in our opinion be going too far. 
 We own the resemblance of the former to some of the 
 latter. Their intent may even, on the whole, be construed 
 as identical in both. But since four out of the seven pre- 
 cepts do not at all occur in the apostolic decrees, viz., rob- 
 bery (theft), murder, blasphemy, and Mosaic judicial laws, 
 we cannot take them as a direct imitation and embodiment 
 of these requirements for Gentile converts handed down by 
 Rabbinical tradition. 
 
 We prefer to assume that the apostolic council in 
 devising those four decrees, acted entirely independently 
 of those seven precepts. This would appear to us clearly 
 already from Peter's before-noted direction for Gentile con- 
 verts, in the Clementine Homilies. He adds there the warn- 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 26 1 
 
 ing against eating dead flesh and that of strangled beasts — a 
 prohibition not enumerated among those seven precepts, 
 but which is yet prescribed for proselytes in Lev. xvii. i5- 
 He, further, in the direction for Tyre, enjoins on the con- 
 verts the abstention from " all unclean things," the same 
 " which the God-fearing Israelites have heard," that means, 
 all or at least most of the ordinances of religious purity pre- 
 scribed in the Mosiac code, of which he names in particular, 
 in the admonition for Sidon, washing after coition, and 
 menstrual female purifications; compare Lev. xv. i8, 19. 
 From this it is evident that the Peter of the Homilies was 
 not guided by the Rabbinically transmitted regulations for 
 proselytes, but framed his own, partly on the model of the 
 Pentateuch, and partly on the ruling principles of the 
 Ebionite sj'stem. Like him, we hold, was the real apostle 
 Peter, as also John and James, determined in the fixation 
 of the four rules, not by the Rabbinical tradition, but on 
 the one side by a direct reference to the respective Mosaic 
 ordinances, and on the other by the prevailing doctrines of 
 the Essenic sect. 
 
 These four rules appear to us as bearing pre-eminently 
 an Essenic stamp, that is, a demonological relation. We 
 cannot here attempt to illustrate how much of the dualism 
 of the Essenes and the Apocryphal literature had already 
 got hold of the thought of Jesus. But we have to assert as 
 immediately to our purpose, that at all events the minds of 
 the chief apostles were, jud.ging by three out of the four 
 decrees for proselytes, preoccupied with those dualistic 
 notions. 
 
 We take on ourselves to affirm, that the interdiction of 
 idol-meat, flesh of strangled animals, and blood, points chiefly 
 to Essenism. As to idol-meat, it is to be remarked that 
 alike the Genlile and Jewish Christians of the first centuries 
 condemned and abhorred it as the "table" or " repast of 
 the demons" ( a stigma that took its rise, perhaps, from the 
 Septuagint in Isa. Ixv, ti); see Origen, Against Celsus, 
 viii. 30 ; Clem. Hom. I. c ; i Cor. v. 21. That the two other 
 injunctions have also a demoniacal bearing, may be gathered 
 from the declaration of Origen in that place : " What is 
 offered to idols is offered to demons, and man devoted to 
 God must not become a companion at the table of the 
 demons. We should, further, abstain from strangled meat, 
 because the blood which it is said is the food of demons, is 
 not separated ; that we may not pirtake of the food of the 
 demons." 
 
262 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 That the apostolic framers of the four decisions enter- 
 tained about the same sentiment on the three aforenamed 
 of them, we have no doubt. It was pre-eminently, we hold, 
 Essenic demonological impressions that prevailed on them 
 to enact those three injunctions for Gentile converts Their 
 theosophic abhorrence of every sign and vestige of spirit- 
 ual association or contact with the devils, was mainly active 
 in their legislating in that manner. 
 
 We are at the same time far from denying that the 
 fundamental tone of the sentiment of those apostolic legis- 
 lators was the common Jewish one of those days. The 
 ordinary intense Jewish antagonism to every form of pagan 
 worship rested as well on the conception that the gods of 
 the heathens were no-gods, as that they were evil spirits; see 
 Deut. xxxii. 17; Ps. cvi. 37, and in especial the Septuagint 
 in several places. The enactment of the three ordinances 
 in question was accordingly properly Jewish and unsectarian 
 in the outlines, inasmuch as it laid down as indispensable 
 the total renunciation of every trace of heathenism. Even 
 in the fourth, the negation of heathen ways may readily be 
 found stipulated. For the moral profligacy and corruption 
 among the heathens of those centuries was wide-spread and 
 deeply settled, and had become most intolerable and shock- 
 ing to the pure minds of godly Jews; compare the very 
 frequent connection of idolatry with fornication as peculiar 
 to heathendom in the vast Rabbinical literature. The term 
 "porneia" of that fourth ordinance certainly corresponds to 
 the last-named vice, which, in the original generic Jew- 
 ish designation, "zenuth." includes doubtless incest and 
 unlawful marriages (the "gilui arayoth" of the Rabbinical 
 literature.). 
 
 Yet for all that we cannot fail to discover an Essenic 
 predisposition in the apostolic enactment of the three 
 ordinances in question. Their combination obviously 
 involves both a polemical reflection on the demons of the 
 heathens and an extravagant apprehension of their existence 
 and power, which the bulk of the Jewish nation, for all the 
 demonological notions infused into their minds in the cen- 
 turies of the second Commonwealth, did positively not 
 share. We have not the slightest evidence that the ordi- 
 nary Israelite of those days rejected the eating of blood 
 from a religious horror in a demoniacal sense, such as we 
 have to impute to the framers of the four apostolic decis- 
 ions with regard to two of them. The generality of the 
 Jews surely abhorred blood only for the Mosaic reason, 
 that "blood is the soul." 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISIORY. 263 
 
 In support of our proposition that those three decisions 
 had principally a demoniacal bearing, may yet be urged the 
 repudiation by the Ebionites of animal flesh. They account 
 for it themselves by reference to evil spirits, and the vorac- 
 ity of these after the blood of animals. In the Clementine 
 Homilies we meet with three difterent accounts for their 
 rejection of flesh-meat ; see ib. viii. 16; xii. 6 and 12 (still 
 another is given by Epiphanius, Haer. xxx. 18, but it is 
 scarcely historical.). We advert principally for our present 
 purpose to the last-noted passage of the Homilies. In it 
 Peter sets forth the eating of animal flesh as first introduced 
 by the giants — the bastards born of fallen angels and women 
 of the earth ; see Gen. vi. 2. " They." it is said there, " not 
 being pleased with purity of food, longed after the taste of 
 blood. Wherefore they first tasted flesh." About the same 
 sentiment is expressed in the book of Enoch, vi. 4-6. It is 
 mainly from the occurrence of this sentiment in both 
 works that Hausrath, ' N. T. Times,' i, p. 166, concludes an 
 affinity of thought between the Essenes and other mystics, 
 whose tendencies were similar to those of the apocryphal 
 author of Enoch. We, on our part, vc^ould base on this cir- 
 cumstance the supposition, that among the various theo- 
 sophic classes of ancient Judaism, whether the Essenes or 
 their Christian cousins, the Ebionites, or the mystics of the 
 Apocrypha generally, the notion prevailed, that the use of 
 animal flesh is to be abominated chiefly for the blood it 
 contains and for the necessity of shedding it to obtain the 
 flesh, blood being considered as the food of the demoniac 
 beings of the legend of Genesis. 
 
 By this mystical apprehension the apostolic prohibitions 
 of strangled meat for converts on account of blood, and of 
 blood itself, are easily explained. These two prohibitions 
 have, then, the same relation as that of idol-meat. 
 
 It will now, we expect, appear very plausible to the 
 reader that Ebionism or Essenism inspired the enactment 
 of those three conjoined apostolic decrees. Should he evqn 
 have any hesitation to regard the leaders of the primitive 
 Church, prominently the apostles James and Peter, as real 
 Christianized Essenes, he will at least recognize with us in 
 that enactment the adopted spirit and tendencies of 
 Essenism. From this we may be permitted to draw the 
 farther conclusion that, as the rejection of animal flesh and 
 of sacrifice was, as Zeller, ' The Philosophy of the Greeks,' 
 iii. 2, points out, always combined in the theory of the 
 ancient ascetics, and, further, as such combination is posi- 
 tively and variously attested of the later Ebionites who, as 
 well as the earlier, sprung from the Essenes, or, at any 
 
264 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 rate, adopted the doctrines of this sect, the opposition to 
 the sacrificial Temple worship was peculiar to all those 
 early Jewish Christians who manifested an Essenic or 
 Ebionite affiliation or leaning. If then, as we suggested, 
 dualistic Essenism underlies the three out of the four 
 apostolic decrees, we may safely account the three apostles 
 Peter, John and James, the last-named in particular, who 
 was the chief of the council in which they were enacted, as 
 direct antagonists of the Temple ritual from that sectarian 
 predisposition alone, aside from the other consideration, 
 which should always be kept in mind, that they must have 
 strenuously aimed to imitate the example of their Master, 
 who was a very decided opponent of it. 
 
 And in like manner, but with yet stronger probability, 
 we may infer that James the Just, Jesus' brother, was a pro- 
 nounced antagonist of sacrifice. For of him does Hegesip- 
 pus directly assert, that he rejected animal flesh. With 
 such rejection that of sacrifice was doubtless allied in his 
 mind and teaching. 
 
 A clue would, then, be offered to the real cause for which 
 he was tried and condemned to death by stoning by the 
 Synhedrin of the high-priest Hanan. We may fairly sup- 
 pose that, as a stanch Ebionite, he repeatedly, openly, and 
 vehemently inveighed against the prevailing worship of 
 the Temple. That rigorous Sadducean president of the 
 high court, we further surmise, availed himself of the tem- 
 porary freedom from Roman surveillance, to visit on the 
 assaulter that capital punishment which the Synhedrin 
 had already in former times, as we take it, been inflicting 
 on violent antagonists of the established Temple ritual and 
 the Mosaic institutions generally, and that in pursuance of 
 the statute of Numbers xv. 30, 31. By it James could be 
 indicted for blasphemy^ and condemned to that mode of 
 execution which the law. Lev. xxiv. 16, had provided for 
 direct blasphemy of the name of Jehovah, the difference of 
 the species of crime not interfering, as we believe, with 
 that Sadducean pontiff, so long as the same denomination 
 could be seized upon to meet his case. To the offence of 
 assaulting the Temple service, Josephus alluded, it may be, 
 in the account he gives of James' persecution. That offence 
 can be understood by the charge of " Law- breaking," 
 brought by the high-priest himself^ against him and other 
 offenders ; see also our Excursus C. 
 
 We must indeed, in our effort at strengthening our argu- 
 ment of antinomian assaulters having by the Synhedrin 
 been prosecuted as real blasphemers, not pass over the 
 account ofHegesippus who mentions nothing of the charge 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 26$ 
 
 of Law-breaking, but lets him be martyred for his Jesulogi- 
 cal Messianic testimony. The penalty of stoning which he 
 reports as having been inflicted on James, would at the 
 first glance, judging by his entire description of the case, 
 point only to the deification of Jesus a.s the cause of his 
 incrimination. This deification could, in fact, have brought 
 on him the charge of blasphemy that came under the 
 statute of Lev. xxiv. 16. To meet this objection from the 
 account of Hegesippus, we su^^gest it as probable, in view 
 of Josephus' statement and our own previous argumenta- 
 tion, that the felony of "despising the word of God ' formed 
 at least part of the accusation, and that, if Hegesippus' 
 report can claim to be genuine, he was arraigned for both 
 species of blasphemy, that of which the aforementioned 
 ordinance of Leviticus treats, and the other described in 
 Numbers xv. 30, 31. Not only is this probable, but we 
 would, by this explanation, yet gain the advantage of 
 harmonizing both the accounts of Josephus and Hegesippus. 
 
 The deification of Jesus for which, in conjunction with 
 his antinomian blasphemy, as we now proposed, the Syn- 
 hedrial judges may have awarded the penalty of death 
 against James, is attested by the latter writer who attrib- 
 utes to him the declamation of the Christian dogmatic 
 phrase, current then as before, that Jesus was " now sitting 
 in the heavens, on the right hand of great Power " ( God ); 
 comp. Acts vii. 55, 56. This exaltation of Jesus was no 
 doubt severely resented by the orthodox Jews and penally 
 avenged by the authorities, since it was ordinarily attended 
 by express epithets of deification. It was yet aggravated 
 by the.Ebionite antagonism to the Mosaic institution of 
 sacrifice, which we imputed to him before. 
 
 A trial for antinomian blasphemy by the statute of Num- 
 bers XV. 30, 31, likewise in conjunction with the accusation 
 for blasphemy of Jehovah by the Christian assertion of the 
 dogma of the divine sonship of Jesus, might be suggested 
 also in the cause of the apostle James, the son of Zebedee, 
 who suffered death under Agrippa L. the grandson of 
 Herod, about the year 44 C. E., were we not informed in 
 Acts xii. 2, and in Eusebius, 1. c. ii.9, — the latter reporting 
 from Clement's seventh book of the 'Institutions,' — that he 
 was beheaded. 
 
 We demonstrated above the apostle's Essenic sectarian- 
 ism or leaning. It is therefore not too much to suggest 
 that he as well as James the Just, exhibited an open and 
 aggressive opposition to the sacrificial Temple service. As 
 a valuable support to this supposition we mention the Ebi- 
 onite tradition based on a book bearing the apostle James' 
 
266 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 name, that he " spoke against the Temple and sacrifice, 
 also against the fire on the altar " — quoted by Hilgenfeld, 
 History of Heretics, etc., p. 431. It was thus he could 
 have drawn on himself the accusation of being a " despiser 
 of the word of God," and consequently a " blasphemer." 
 With it there might have been associated the charge of blas- 
 phemy, and perhaps also of "ditheism" ( abodah zarah ), for 
 publicly professing Jesus, in speeches as well as at perform- 
 ances of miraculous healings which were always attempted 
 "in the name of Jesus," as the son of God. While this 
 must in theory appear as probable, it is yet to be objected, 
 that the punishment with which the apostle's offence was 
 visited, would not tally with our supposition. He was 
 decapitated. This penalty he could not have incurred for 
 antinomian blasphemy, or for blasphemy at all. It is, 
 moreover, to be remarked that, considering ihe apostle's 
 cause by itself, it would appear that the proceeding against 
 him was not at all by the ordinary tribunal, the Synhedrin, 
 but that he fell a victim to the arbitrary act of the king 
 Agrippa. See Renan, ' Les Apotres,' p. 201, who says: 
 " The affair was not presented a;; a religious one. There 
 was not an inquisitorial trial held before the Sanhedrin. 
 The sentence was pronounced by virtue of the arbitrary 
 power of the sovereign, as it had been the case with John 
 the Baptist." 
 
 When we contrast both proceedings, the one against the 
 Baptist by Herod Antipas. and the other against the apos- 
 tle James by his nephew, Agrippa, and hold in view that in 
 both instances decapitation was decreed, it will indeed 
 seem quite possible that both autocrats acted on their own 
 discretion and independently of the Synhedrin. Likewise 
 seem both to have been mainly actuated in their fierce 
 resentment and decision, by political motives. Possibly 
 the cry of the impending return of Jesus as the Messiah — 
 the continuous anxious watchword of every Christian since 
 his death — had jarred too dismally on the sensibilities of 
 king Agrippa. in particular in view of the exciting effect it 
 must have produced on his illustrious patron, the emperor 
 Claudius. This emperor's vehement intolerance to Messi- 
 anic movements is set forth above, pp. 58 and 98 sq. 
 
 Decapitation was withal, judging by Rabbinical tradi- 
 tion, a very rare mode of execution with the Jewish legisla- 
 tive authorities ; see Mishnah Synhed. ix. I sq. Its repeated 
 infliction by Roman officials in Palestine, on the other hand, 
 suggests the idea, that those Herodian rulers had copied 
 that method from their Roman masters. (See on Theudas' 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 267 
 
 decapitation, perhaps yet in the same year, 44 C. E., by the 
 procurator Fadus, Ant. xx. 5, i, and on the same punish- 
 ment of a Roman soldier bv Cumanus, a few years later, 
 ib. 4). 
 
 Accounting thus for the proceedings against the apostle 
 James by the individual determination of king Agrippa, 
 we would have to eliminate his case from those instances 
 adduced for our leading argument, viz , that the statute of 
 Numbers xv. was the Mosaic legal enactment, upon which 
 the Synhedrin based their title of criminally prosecuting 
 antinomian Jewish Christians. While this would in no 
 way invalidate it, we would yet prefer, if possible, to range 
 James, the apostle's, cause with the others discussed before. 
 We venture indeed to attempt it, the foregoing contrary 
 points notwithstanding. Agrippa, we propose, may nor 
 have proceeded against him exclusively from political con- 
 siderations. Nor is it unlikely that he had at least some 
 Synhedrial coadjutors in bringing him to justice. The action 
 against him may, then, have pirtly at least borne an 
 authoritatively judicial character. And the provocation to 
 it, too, may partly have lain in what was construed as 
 blasphemy, alike anti-monotheistic and antinomian, in the 
 manner explained above. 
 
 That Agrippa's action may not have been entirely politi- 
 cal, but caused by religious motives as well, might be 
 assumed from the extent of his persecution of Christians. 
 For not only the apostle James suffered it at his hands, but 
 also Peter was designed by hi m as a victim. In view, then, of 
 his severe attempts on more than one leading personage of 
 the new Christian sect, the supposition will not appear too 
 remote, that the charge of religious delinquency was 
 strongly co-active in the cause of James, the apostle, too. 
 ( Baur's remark, that Peter's unexpected release was per- 
 haps due to Agrippa's notice, that his execution of the 
 apostle James was after all not so popular as he imagined, 
 is as noteworthy as it is acceptable. Here we hold it per- 
 tinent to produce yet the important opinion of the critics 
 Schneckenburger. Zell^r, ana Baur, that Agrippa's perse- 
 cution of the Jewish Christians towards the end of his 
 reign was the first of its kind since the death of Jesus, the 
 previous one, started with Stephen, not having affected an}- 
 other than Hellenistic Christian schismatics). 
 
 To resume the main thread of our argument, we contend 
 that the statute of Numbers in question was well fitted to 
 be used as authority for penal proceedings against anti- 
 nomian offenders As such were surely considered the 
 Essenes with their opposition to sacrifice, and also the 
 
268 THE SABBATH IiN HISTORY. 
 
 Jewish Christians sharing this opposition. That the Syn- 
 hedrin will, in order to deal rigidly with such " despisers of 
 the ^vord of God " — and as well with other defiant assaulters 
 of the Law or parts of it — have resorted to that statute, is, 
 while not directly provable, most probable at least. We 
 hold that it was brought to bear and put in practice in the 
 several prosecutions of Jewish Christians, from Jesus to 
 James the Just. 
 
 The objection that no record of the judicial executiorv 
 of that statute against criminally arraigned antinomian 
 Christians is extant, cannot count for anything. How many 
 reliable accounts of the real judicial practice of the Syn- 
 hedriii since the time of Jesus have been preserved at all ?' 
 What do we know for sure about the actual method of 
 trials and course of proceedings in those days of Sadducean 
 supremacy and majority.'' As to the relative expositions 
 and traditions delivered to us through the later Rabbinical 
 literature, we may lay it down as indisputable that they are, 
 in the main, nothing but self-made and scholastically 
 evolved theories on points of judicial law. The Sadducean 
 Temple nobility with the president of the council from their 
 own rank and party, may, for all we know, have followed, in 
 the prosecution of Christian schismatics, either their old, at 
 one time abolished, but possibly, on the restitution of their 
 power, again revived " code of decisions," or devised new 
 rigid measures by way of more or less direct derivations 
 from Mosaic provisions of judicial law. They may, more- 
 over, have acted very arbitrarily in cases of antinomian 
 inquisition — a supposition to which one is easily led by 
 comparing the mode of execution of the apostle James 
 (provided the Synhedrin was connected with the infliction 
 of his doom), decapitation, with that of Stephen and James 
 the Just, which was stoning. That the later Rabbinical 
 rubrical enumerations of points of criminal law were for the 
 most, or, at least, a large part, mere theories, which cannot 
 have been the actual standard by which the Synhedrin 
 judged when in power in the first century, may be proved 
 from the following. 
 
 Jesus' trial and condemnation practically took place on 
 the first day of Passover. So the Synoptics report, espe- 
 cially Matthew, concerning which Evangelist we quote 
 Strauss' view (A New Life of Jesus, ii. 3 14), that if he "did 
 not hesitate to assert that Jesus was condemned and cruci- 
 fied on the first day of Raster, we may fairly be satisfied 
 with his statement." Now it was well known that there 
 was a Rabbinical canon, that no trial should be held on the 
 Sabbath or any holy day ( Mishnah, Betsa, f 36). That 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 269 
 
 Rabbi Akiba should by that proposition in Tosifta Synhe- 
 drin xi. 7, " and they bring them to death on the feast," 
 have intended to contradict and upset that canon, is a most 
 erroneous opinion of some writers. It is maintained by 
 the before-quoted Strauss ( 1. c. p. 312). Even the erudite 
 Jewish author, Ur. Joel, fathers and elaborates it in 'Blicke, 
 etc' ii. 62 sq. He would account for Akiba's disregard of 
 the established rule, by what he alleges as his acquaintance 
 with the precedent set in the case of Jesus. The knowl- 
 edge of it, he affirms, cam6 to him through the report of 
 the Synoptics, since "the evangelical books were known in 
 this ( Rabbinical ) circle." He lets Akiba generah'ze from 
 this single precedent, and extend the permissibility, nay 
 the obligation, of execution on the holy da\' proper, to a 
 number of delinquents. 
 
 But all this is nothing but airy sophistry, wanting every 
 solid support. We on our part presume to vouch, that 
 Rabbi Akiba never thought of countenancing a breach of a 
 holy day proper by the execution of a criminal, such as is 
 imputed to him by reference to that passage in the Tosifta. 
 Nor, we insist, will he have antagonized the established 
 prohibition of holding court on Sabbaths and holy days 
 (see the aforecited Mishnah), so that he could, as Joel pre- 
 tends, be supposed to have found and declared the trial and 
 condemnation of Jesus on the first day of Passover as per- 
 fectly in order, and at the same time as forming a prece- 
 dent, justifiable to be copied in subsequent legislation. 
 That Akiba should have had such a divergent, liberal view 
 is utterly impossible, especially in regard to capital cases, 
 in which it was besides prescribed, to have two recording 
 clerks for \vriting down the whole proceedings of the court 
 ( B. Synh. f. 34 ). That no ancient Rabbi can be conceived 
 to have approved writing on a sacred festival, admits of no 
 question whatever. To harmonize therefore that scholastic 
 utterance of Akiba in the Tosifta, with his otherwise 
 unquestionable orthodox position on all points of Jewish 
 law and custom, we have to explain it to refer not to the 
 real holy day, but to the half-holy days of Passover and 
 Tabernacles, which intervening days were Rabbinically 
 designated " regel," too. As to the Feast of Weeks, it is 
 easy to suggest that Akiba, if he included this festival at 
 all, thought of the six days following it. on which the execu- 
 tions enumerated in that passage might take place. For 
 these six days which together with the Shabuoth day itself 
 made up a week, were for ritual objects accounted as 
 appendages to this festival ( comp. Moed Katan, iii. 6). In 
 
 lOJ 
 
270 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 the case of the execution of a delinquent set for the 
 Shabuoth season, Akiba may accordingly have intended to 
 propose, that it has to take place during the six supple- 
 mentary days belonging to the festival. 
 
 Reverting now to the before-mentioned point that Jesus' 
 trial occurred on the first day of Passover, it will not seem 
 necessary to assert, that in it no regard was had to the 
 Rabbinical rules that were, in the manner explained before, 
 to be affected by it. Nor is it likely that in his case the 
 other Rabbinical canon, "no condemnation without pre- 
 vious warning," was complied with. At any rate, there is 
 no mention that such warning was given him. But this 
 was positively a disregard of the precept, that no one should 
 be executed or even corporally punished, without such pre- 
 vious warning. It was a most weighty one with the Rabbis 
 of old. The clemency of the Pharisees — on it, see Mishnah 
 Synhedrin, f. 40, and B. Maccoth f. 7 — had devised all sorts 
 of humane pretexts to evade the carrying out of the stern 
 letter of the Mosaic penal law. To it was also due the 
 institution that no judicial punishment should be inflicted, 
 without that a proper dehortation .was before given to the 
 delinquent. We are yet to observe that possibly, in the 
 ■cause of Jesus, even the Phariseic doctors did not deem a 
 ■dehortation necessary, since he was no doubt regarded as 
 a Chaber, " an instructed person " (distinguished from the 
 vulgar), always supposed to know what is unlawful, with- 
 out any expostulation with him concerning the matter in 
 question (see on this B. Maccoth f. 9); or that, if the 
 criminal charge laid against him was seduction, the ques- 
 tion of previous warning was waived even by these doctors, 
 because, according to the Talmud, the rule had prevailed 
 that to a 'Mesith' no such consideration is, for the eminent 
 gravity of his trespass, to be accorded ( see B. Synhedrin, 
 f. 80). On the other hand, it is to be noted that we possess 
 no authentic proof, that such distinctions had already been 
 made or gained legal recognition at the early period in 
 which Jesus lived, even among the Phariseic party. 
 
 There are some other divergences from Rabbinism that 
 could be mentioned as striking us in the accounts of the 
 proceedings against Jesus. We will here only yet point 
 out the rule, stated in the Mishnah Synh. f. 32, that no 
 decision must be rendered in any capital case on the same 
 day of the trial. This was surely not kept in Jesus' 
 trial. 
 
 All these foregoing remarks tend to show conclusively, 
 that to judge from the literarj' discussions and decisions on 
 points of criminal law preserved in the Talmud, back to the 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 2/1 
 
 real practice followed by the Synhedrin when it had a 
 Sadducean majority, as was the case in the first Christian 
 century to the end of the Jewish State, is in the highest 
 degree unwarranted. The Sadducean rulers in the council 
 were either not aware of, or paid no heed to, the various 
 theoretical devices for evading rigid judgment, which the 
 Phariseic schools had brought forward. This holds good as 
 well with regard to the incrimination of Jesus as of the 
 other accused Jewish Christians. 
 
 To object dogmatically, therefore, that, because the 
 extant codifications of judicial law, coming as they do from 
 Rabbinical doctors of a later age, furnish no analogy for 
 certain Synhedrial proceedings, that may yet, on the other 
 side, be set down with perfect propriety as prevailing with 
 those Senates composed mostly of Sadducees, is unreason- 
 able, indeed. Our proposition, then, that Jesus, Stephen, 
 Paul, and the two James were incriminated for the blas- 
 phemy of "despising the word of God," and sentence of 
 death was passed on them by a Sadducean majority of the 
 Synhedrin in accordance with the statute in question which 
 treats of such offence, will not in the least be invalidated 
 by the fact, that the Rabbinical rubrication in the Mishnah 
 does not contain any provision of judicial punishment for 
 antinomian blasphemy, the Rabbis having uniformly inter- 
 preted ' kareth ' — the penalty denounced in that statute — 
 as to be inflicted by God and not by any temporal power. 
 Who, we have to ask, can bring forth any evidence that the 
 Sadducean judges, in their lofty and stern conception of 
 the Synhedrin being the substitutes of the Deity for carry- 
 ing out his Law, did not presume to act as its competent 
 avengers themselves, and decree and execute with their 
 own hands the " extermination," which was the Mosaic, 
 and, consequently, Divine, judicial verdict enunciated for 
 antinomian heresy ? And this in especial, since, as already 
 observed before, they might refer for a warrant to the 
 enactment of Leviticus xxiv. i6, appointing death by ston- 
 ing as the penalty for the crime of the same denomina- 
 tion ? 
 
 It may here be added that not only can we not reliably 
 conclude from judicial ordinances laid down in the Mish- 
 nah, back to the actual norm of procedure maintained by 
 a previous, largely Sadducean Synhedrin, we must even not 
 be too positive in our inferences from them to the course 
 followed by former Phariseic Synhedrists themselves, in 
 those days, namely, when they happened to be in the 
 majority, or only in a strong, determining minority. We 
 will adduce only one out of several instances to demon- 
 
272 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 strate the incongruity of later Rabbinical theory with ear- 
 lier Phariseic practice. In the Mishnah, Synh. vi. 4. it is 
 directly asserted that Simeon ben Shetach, who as presi- 
 dent of the Synhednn had eighty witches hanged on one 
 day in Askalon, acted against the established custom of 
 trying only one criminal case a day. He differed, too, 
 from the view held by the " wise doctors " mentioned in 
 that Mishnah, who maintained that women should not be 
 hanged at all. We may state in addition, that he dissented 
 from the later Rabbis also in this respect, that he put those 
 witches to death by hanging, while the Mishnah at least 
 had recognized stoning as the mode of execution of witches 
 ( Synh. vii. 4). When we find such practical divergences 
 of older Phariseic courts of justice from later Phariseic-Rab- 
 binical judicial institutions as embodied in the code of the 
 Mishnah, how can we use the latter as authority for ascer- 
 taining the crirrinal practice of the Sadducees in the days 
 when they were in power .'' It is an indisputable fact that 
 we know very little about the criminal justice of this sect. 
 It is well-nigh enveloped in obscurity. To resort, then, to 
 later Rabbinical theories as proofs for settled judicial 
 norms prevailing in the Jerusalemite Synhedrin of anterior 
 times, must seem impertinent to the inquirer after true 
 historical facts. 
 
 To convince the reader that we are not alone in holding 
 such view, we will mention Weiss' relative discussion in 
 his "Dor Dor, etc.," i. p. 151. He declares it evident from 
 diverse instances, that the legal concepts and canons of 
 Rabbis of the post-Synhedrial times can by no means be 
 set down as representing those of the anterior Synhedrin, 
 when the senate was invested with real jurisdiction and 
 punitive authority. He refers there to the trial of Herod 
 for the slaying of Hezekiah (see Jos. Ant. xiv. 9, 4). Surely, 
 he argues, there were not observed in this case the Rab- 
 binically delivered judicial rules, that a delinquent must be 
 forewarned by the two accusing witnesses, and he himself 
 must verbally admit to them his knowledge of the liability 
 to death for the particular crime against which he was 
 warned, else the penalty of death cannot be carried out 
 against him. For, he asks, how can it be supposed that 
 there were then two men found in the whole of Galilee, 
 who had courage enough to stand up and give evidence 
 against the powerful tetrarch of this province .-' 
 
 As another instance of the incongruity of later Rabbini- 
 cal judicial theories with the practice of the former Syn- 
 hedrin, Weiss quotes a case of execution by burning to 
 death of an adulteress from a priestly family (by the enact- 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 2/3 
 
 ment of Lev. xxi. 9). attested as an actual occurrence by a 
 Rabbi of the earlier period, — the latter part of the first cen- 
 tury C. E. The way in which this doctor reports the 
 execution to have been managed, conflicts with that theo- 
 retically adopted by the other Rabbis, and which is indeed 
 laid down as the norm in the Mishnah (see B. Synh. f. 52 
 and 53). 
 
 With this author's congenial view we will close this dis- 
 sertation, hoping that its leading idea of the practical 
 application by the Synhedrin of the statute of Numbers 
 XV. 30, 31, in cases of antinomian heresy, will meet if not 
 with the unqualified assent, at least with the appreciation 
 of the thinking, critical reader. 
 
 ^•^ Even Keim, who strains himself to the utmost to rep- 
 resent Jesus' position in reference to the La^v half-conserva- 
 tively, concedes that "the moral precepts dominate in the 
 Sermon on the Mount, even in Matt. v. 33, 37, just as they 
 do in the controversy ib. xv. 3 sq.. and in the speech to the 
 young man, ib. xix. 17; comp. also ib. xxii. 34 sq." We 
 agree with him on the domination of the moral precepts, but 
 have to assert it as being exclusive of all ceremonial 
 laws. This he himself almost directly admits towards 
 the end of his work, in vol. vi. p. 401, where he says : 
 ■"The Law . . . had long lain on the ground as breaches 
 made by his prowess. This he has accomplished by laying 
 stress merely on the moral truths of the Law and disposing 
 of the Old Testament like one who has authority." 
 
 ^°A considerable number of celebrated critics, quoted by 
 Keim, 1. c. iii. 322, regard these two verses as a later Jewish 
 Christian, anti-Pauline interpolation. 
 
 ^^ This estimation occurs also in Ecclesiasticus, xxix, ii, 
 12, only that no reference is there made to the future world. 
 
 ^^ It is true, Jesus gave the cry of repentance, at times at 
 least, the turn, not of actual sorrow for real religious and 
 moral delinquencies, but of a change of mind from being 
 insusceptible to the belief in his Messiahdom, to espousing 
 his cause with that reliance which he gave out to be so fully 
 justified by his miraculous works. In the same sense he 
 even uttered his reproach against the disbelievers in John 
 the Baptist ; see Matt. xxi. 32. Yet for all this we see that 
 he invariably made use at least of the term repentance as 
 the nominal subject of his utterances. By so doing he but 
 entered upon the commonly prevailing notion, that the 
 realization of the Messianic hopes depended on it. 
 
 ^^That Jesus should not have held an absolute end of 
 heaven and earth in the times of Messiah, as Keim 1. c. iii, 
 p. 301 contends, we can not approve. M itthew xxiv. 3, 35, 
 
274 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 are too decided evidences to the contrary. Furthermore, 
 Jewish tradition had too confidently derived this view and 
 belief from Isa. Ixv. 17 and Ixvi. 22, and also the Christianity 
 after Jesus had too firmly grasped it (see Rev. xxi. i; 2 Peter 
 iii. 13), to suppose that he regained strange to or discounten- 
 anced it. The less so when we bear in mind, that the second 
 Isaiah was apparently his favorite for his own Messianic 
 inquiries. Alone the adoption and employment of the 
 phrase in question in the noted passage of Matthew, which 
 recurs again ib. xxiv. 35, is sufficient evidence that he was 
 well conversant and even impregnated with the popular 
 Jewish notion of the destruction and recreation of the 
 world in the Messianic period. 
 
 ^^We would conjecture that even in Matt. xi. 13 the 
 word heos " until," is a false Greek translation of the original.. 
 This particle of time gives an intolerable sense. It is much 
 rather supposable that the original had the Hebrew or 
 Chaldaic preposition "le" attached to the name of John, or 
 to yemoth "times,"' in connection with this name. As an 
 example corresponding to the original reading we here 
 suggested, may serve the Talmudical sentence, kol 
 hannebhiim lo nisnabbeu ela limoth hammashiach, " all the 
 prophets prophesied only for the times of Messiah" ( B. 
 Synh. {. 99). The particle "le" in such a construction 
 denotes "for" or "toward." The Greek translator, we 
 surmise, misunderstood this particle, and rendered it with 
 'heos.' That by substituting le, "for," the context gains a 
 much better sense, is clear. Jesus wished, then, to convey- 
 that the olden prophets pointed to the period of John, 
 whom he introduces in the following verse 14, as Elijah 
 revived. He may accordingly have referred in mind, in vv. 
 13, 14, to Malachi iii. 23. 
 
 "^^The gospel accounts of controversies held by Jesus 
 with Scribes and Pharisees are on the whole very suspicious. 
 While occasional collisions and altercations with some pious 
 sages of the Jewish people have doubtless occurred, we 
 cannot accept as authentic the representation of a syste- 
 matic conflict with them, such as the gospels put forth. 
 
 As worse than suspicious, even as ludicrous, we must 
 declare the report of a commission of Scribes and Pharisees 
 being purposely deputed by the Jerusalemite authorities to> 
 the Galilean abode of Jesus, to inquire into the cause, why 
 '* his disciples neglected the tradition of the elders " in not 
 washing their hands before meals (Matt. xv. ). 
 
 Not wishing to argue here on the production by the later 
 and less reliable Luke and Mark of Jerusalemite doctors or* 
 the scene of Jesus' Galilean ministry, in instances in which 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 275: 
 
 Matthew mentions nnerely Pharisees and Scribes (comp. 
 Mark iii. 22 with Matt. xii. 24; and especially Luke's 
 "Pharisees and doctors of the Law fronn all Galilee, Judaea 
 and Jerusalem." v. 17. [see on the latter also Keim, 1. c. iii. 
 215] with "certain of the Scribes" in the corresponding: 
 account of Matthew ix. 3), we will confine ourselves to a- 
 reflection on the above relation of Matthew. 
 • Is it conceivable, we ask, that an authoritative embassy 
 of Scribes and Pharisees came all the way from Jerusalem — 
 it was at least a three days' journey ; see Josephus, Life, 
 sect. 52 — to investigate Jesus' attitude regarding one 
 Phariseic-Rabbinical custom, the washing of hands before 
 meals .'* 
 
 Had the commission been fur a general investigation of 
 his public activity' and teachings, we might credit it. 
 Especially if, as Keim proposes, it took place towards the 
 close of the Galilean activity, and previously to his journey- 
 to Jerusalem, late in the autumn of 34 C. E. At this junc- 
 ture many grave objects calling for a serious inquisition 
 ha'd accumulated against him. But that the authorities of 
 Jerusalem should have held it important enough to dispatch 
 an embassy of inquisitors to Galilee for the apostles' omis- 
 sion of hand-washing, which was merely a late Phariseic- 
 Rabbinical observance, is for us impossible to believe. We 
 have, despite Keim's unquestioned acceptance of it as 
 "certainly and manifoldly attested" (1. c. iv. p. 17), to 
 reject it as most inauthentic. 
 
 The more so when we hold in view, that in Jesus' time 
 the rite of hand-washing before eating can hardly have been^ 
 commonly adopted by the Jewish people, so that its neglect 
 by Jesus' disciples might be reproved by the Rabbinical 
 authorities as a religious dereliction. There is a well 
 warranted relation preserved in the Talmuds ( B. Sabb. f. 
 14 ; Jer. Sabb. f. 3). that Hillel and Shammai, the scholarchs- 
 of Jerusalem in Herod's time, established the rule that 
 priests should have to wash their hands before eating their 
 consecrated food, the Terumah, even if they were not con- 
 scious of being defiled by any contact with unclean things. 
 It was one of the many preventive restrictions, peculiar to 
 the punctil'ous Phariseic Rabbinism, that laid such superior 
 stress on Levitical purity. That it must needs have taken 
 some time before this rule of the scholarchs could gain a 
 fairly wide acceptance, even among the priests of the Phari- 
 seic sect, may safely be anticipated. And that the Sad- 
 ducean priests who were doubtless in the majority, will 
 not have allowed themselves to be dictated to on that 
 point by Rabbinical authorities whose statutes they other- 
 
270 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 wise, on the whole, discountenanced, admits of no question, 
 either. There is every reason to assume that, after it had 
 once been firmly established, some austere casuists in the 
 schools of Jeiusalem — the names of the authors are not 
 transmitted — proposed that the same restriction which 
 those scholarchs had enacted for priests, should prevail 
 with lay people as well. They too should observe it before 
 eatingr their meats, though profane and not really requiring 
 such scrupulous care. 
 
 Whether the motive for this later ordinance was a rever- 
 ent regard for holy things, namely, as it is set forth in B. 
 Cholin f. io6, to inure the priests, seeing that ablutions were 
 required even of laymen before eating their profane meats, 
 to be the more exact in regard to the rite of hand-washing 
 for their consecrated portion; or whether it was urged by 
 a mere pious rivalry with the priests and the intent of 
 observing the same rule of purity as was ordained for them, 
 this much must at all events be allowed by all, that it can- 
 not have been passed long before Jesus' activity, if at all 
 before his time. For the view we advanced above on the 
 original restriction, that from the theoretical legislation to 
 the general practical introduction of a rite, a considerable 
 time must elapse, surely holds no less as to the second. 
 Accordingly it will not be amiss to aver, that very few of 
 the Jewish lay people knew of this second restriction, which, 
 by the way, passes in the Talmud as a " statute of the 
 Wise" (B. Cholin f. io6). The custom became, it is true, 
 general at a later tim.e. But at the period of Jesus it had 
 positively not become so yet. It may not even have been 
 enacted anterior to or even during Jesus' lifetime, so that 
 we could expect it to have then been observed by the 
 Jewish people at large. 
 
 How, then, could Jesus' disciples and he himself have been 
 made subjects of recrimination for its neglect ? Further- 
 more, if the hand-washing before common meats was, as 
 the Talmud suggests (see above), instituted for habituating 
 the priests to greater exactness of purity with their own 
 consecrated meats, it is even possible that in Galilee, where 
 there were no priests (see Rashi in Nedarim f. i8), the 
 necessity of such legislation did not appear at all, and that 
 consequently the rule that had its origin in Jerusalem, 
 gained no acceptance in that province, in Jesus' or at any 
 other time. And if the Rabbis and other pious people of 
 Galilee emulating them, did not know anything of it, or. at 
 any rate, saw no necessity of observing it, were, we ask. the 
 fishermen and other unlearned folks who formed Jesus' 
 narrower and wider circles, expected to know and heed it .'* 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 2// 
 
 Again, let us say. if at a discussion in a later Babylonian 
 academy the authority of the rite of hand-washing for com- 
 mon meats was freely questioned, because it was thought 
 contradictory to the original Shammaic and Hillelic ordi- 
 nance which was expressly passed for priests only (see B. 
 Chagigah f. i8; comp. also Tosifta Berachoth vi. 3: "en 
 netilath yadayim lecholin "), is it reasonable to suppose that 
 any one in Jesus' time, when the additional Phariseic restric- 
 tion could at best have but recently been introduced, was 
 authoritatively called to account for omitting it ? 
 
 It is true, that a case of violent inquisition for the rejec- 
 tion of this rite, is reported in the Mishnah as having 
 occurred within the province of Judaism itself. A Rabbi, 
 Elazar ben Chanoch, is said to have been excommunicated, 
 probably by Gamaliel II., the scholarch of Jamnia, who held 
 this office from about 80 to 120 C. E., for disputing the 
 obligation of hand-washing before profane meats (Aduyoth 
 V. 6). But it has to be borne in mind that not only may 
 such excess, due to the vehement temper of Gamaliel and 
 other peculiar circumstances which cannot here be set forth, 
 have been the only one perpetrated within the old Rab- 
 binical jurisdiction as regards that rite, but, mainly, that 
 stern measures of legal interference of this later time can- 
 not be held out as an indication, that the same severe 
 procedure or even only verbal reprobations on the part of 
 the religious authorities, were entailed by the opposition to 
 that rite at the much earlier period in which Jesus lived and 
 taught. For in the latter's time the rite can at best, as 
 ^e have shown above, have been in a state of incipient 
 acknowledgment by the Jewish people. Persecution for 
 its neglect can therefore not possibly be set down as having 
 occurred so early. 
 
 We admit that a rigorous enforcement of the rite was 
 attempted by Phariseic-Rabbinical authorities at the more 
 advanced time when the first gospel was written. The 
 author of Matthew — he wrote according to Hausrath, ' N. T. 
 Times,' ii. p. 106, during the Jewish war; according to 
 Strauss, 'New Life of Jesus,' some time after the destruc- 
 tion of the Temple — may have noticed in Jewish society 
 cases of inquisition for the omission of that rite. Wishing 
 to add another point of collision between the Master and 
 the much berated Pharisees, this Evangelist would copy, as 
 may be supposed, from those instances which he witnessed 
 in his own time, and transfer one of them back to Jesus. 
 
278 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 To antedate one of those occurrences with such combina- 
 tion, so as to set the Pharisees of Jesus' time in the worst 
 possible light, was no matter of conscience with that gospel 
 writer, 
 
 ^^ It must at the first sight certainly appear strange that 
 the Pharisees are in the gospels represented as being such 
 rigorous Sabbatarians, while we know that the Sadducees 
 and Essenes were yet stricter in the Sabbath observance. 
 As to the latter it is attested at least by Josephus, that they 
 were more punctilious in it than any other class of the Jewish 
 people (Wars, ii. 8, 9). In illustrating their Sabbath rigor 
 he says : " They not only get their food ready the day 
 before, that they may not have (or, be tempted) to kindle 
 a fire on that day, etc." If this account means anything as 
 peculiar to the Essenic sect, — for surely all the other Jews 
 would consider kindling fire on the Sabbath as grave a 
 violation as the Essenes, — it can mean only that with them 
 all vessels had to be removed from the heating apparatus 
 before the Sabbath, and were not permitted to be left there 
 for keeping the food warm during the day. 
 
 In this respect they exceeded indeed the Sabbath scru- 
 pulosity of the Pharisees. For these were indulgent 
 enough to allow for the comfort of having warm food on 
 the Sabbath day. The third and fourth chapters of the 
 Mishnah of the Sabbath treatise — if we may conclude back 
 from this later Rabbinical compilation to the custom of the 
 Pharisees in Josephus' time — show their mild position in 
 that regard. Both the sterner school of Shammai and the 
 moderate one of Hillel appear to have been agreed, that it 
 was permissible to put pots with eatables on cooking 
 apparatus before the beginning of the Sabbath, and leave 
 them there for use during the day, as long as there was no 
 fear that one might be tempted to rake up the unconsumed 
 fuel, with which the fire was made and kept up on Friday. 
 Likewise were evidently all the Rabbinical doctors of one 
 mind on the permissibility of keeping food warm by wrap- 
 ping such material around the vessels as would best preserve 
 the heat : only that no material should be used that would 
 increase the heat by the process of condensation. 
 
 It is thus plainly seen that the Rabbis — and they were 
 on the whole identical in religious views and practices with 
 the learned Pharisees of Josephus- were by no means so 
 extreme in the Sabbath observance as the Essenes. Their 
 view was, that the day should be distinguished by substan- 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 279 
 
 tial comfort. The day should not be one of mortification 
 of the body, but of serene delight. They therefore sought 
 out different devices by which comfort and delight might 
 be attained without any infringement of the law. 
 
 The mystical Essenes, on the other hand, dissented from 
 such view. They held it perhaps an impairment of their 
 most significant 'Hebdomad' (compare also Philo's fre- 
 quent descanting on the number Seven in connection with 
 the Sabbath ) to disturb the mind on the Sabbath by the 
 sensuous occupation of looking after the nourishment of 
 the body, and providing for a meal that would become 
 more palatable by a certain suitable temperature and 
 attendance. Nor were the Pharisees so extreme as these 
 ascetics, with regard to handling vessels on the Sabbath. 
 Josephus attributes to them that " they dare not remove 
 any utensil from its place" (ib.). That the historian knew 
 from his own experience and observation that the Pharisees 
 were not so strict as all this, is already clear from the con- 
 trast by which he sets forth this Essenic restriction. We 
 certainly do not know exactly how the Phariseic authorities 
 of his time had legislated concerning the handling and 
 removal of utensils on the Sabbath. The decided relaxa- 
 tion regarding this point which is reported in B. Sabbath f. 
 123, as having been suggested by the Rabbis of the second 
 century C. E. can, for the continuous variation of legisla- 
 tion upon it which is mentioned there, not be taken as a 
 standard by which to judge of the respective view and 
 practice that prevailed among the Phariseic doctors of 
 Josephus' time. Yet thus much is certain that, however 
 strict they may then have been as to the matter in ques- 
 tion, their severity did not equal the Essenic which 
 Josephus delivers. We may take it for granted that the 
 Pharisees would never countenance such restrictions as 
 could accomplish no religious ends, at the same time when 
 they would deprive the Israelite of the feeling of serene 
 delight and comfort, which was to be, in the Phariseic-Rab- 
 binical mind, the concomitant of Sabbatic rest. 
 
 After the foregoing citations and arguments, the query 
 may pertinently be put: Why are the Pharisees so promi- 
 nently marked out in the gospels as austere and minute 
 observers of the Sabbath, whereas the Essenes had notably 
 a much stricter view of its law, and it should consequently 
 be expected that Jesus collided with them at least as well 
 on questions of its observance ? In answer to it we would 
 say, that the Essenes, being a retired, contemplative folk. 
 
:280 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. : 
 
 i 
 
 aimed at evading every polemical encounter as much as j 
 
 might be, even in cases in which their own sense of the | 
 
 sanctity of life was provoked by any contrary conduct of i 
 
 coreligionists from the other sects. 
 
 As to Jesus himself who was without any doubt partially ' 
 imbued with Essenism, he too will, we can readily under- 
 stand, have purposely avoided every dogmatical conflict ' 
 with them. Whether or not his points of doctrinal contact ; 
 with them exceeded those of contrast, this may in any case 
 be asserted with confidence, that there are many close i 
 doc'trinal relations with them discernible in the essence of < 
 his teachings. This spiritual accord, though only partial, 1 
 would surely prevail on him to eschew every dispute with 
 members of their sect on any subject of religious practice. ; 
 This accord, too, explains easily the absence of reports of ' 
 polemics between him and this sect on questions of Sab- i 
 bath observance, concerning which he differed with them 
 so essentially, as is apparent to every one setting off his : 
 interpretation of it against the most rigorous one enter- ] 
 tained by them. -■ 
 
 The congeniality between Essenism and primitive Chris- 
 tianity so manifoldly attested, may withal be regarded as ^ 
 the cause why no disputations have come down to us as ' 
 having occurred between one another, even in instances, 
 such as slights of the Sabbath, which called for sharp rebuke 
 by such strict observers as the Essenes were. It is this i 
 congeniality, too, that goes far to account for the circum- ; 
 stance, that Essenic sectaries are never brought into the 
 arena by the Evangelists. This circumstance must inevita- ; 
 bly attract the notice of every thinking person. It is surely i 
 as curious as it is significant. To us it signifies, by reason 
 of abundant indications to support our notion, the congeni- 
 ality of the body of the pristine Christians with that sect. ' 
 There is indeed nothing that might explain the absence of i 
 collisions in the N. T. writings between both classes or any 
 allusions to the Essenic sect, so well as this our point of ; 
 view. 
 
 Here it seems to us opportune to cite the respectij'e inter- 
 esting remarks of Bunsen, " The Hidden Wisdom," etc.: ' 
 " The mysterious fact that the Essenes are not mentioned j 
 at all in Scripture is best explained by the assumption, I 
 that in the first century of our era they were more or less { 
 identified with the Christians." | 
 
 As to the Sadducees, they too will, from the following, I 
 
 appear as more rigorous in regard to the Sabbath law than ' 
 
 the Pharisees. Though they doubtless disregarded many, if : 
 not all, Rabbinical rules of Sabbatism (Shebuth), as well as, 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 28 F 
 
 perhaps, the Rabbinical division of Sabbath labor into thirty- 
 nine chief occupations (aboth) with their correlative deriv- 
 ates (toledoth), and no doubt rejected also the Rabbinical 
 institution of the imaginary combinations called Erubh, by 
 which artificial devices the punctilious Pharisees claimed to 
 renew the Sabbath limit of 2,000 cubits from their local 
 terminus, as also to create a dispensation for carrying 
 things from one precinct to another (see on this Geiger, 
 'Sadducees and Pharisees,' p. 21), we are yet warranted in 
 declaring them stricter in guarding the Mosaic Sabbath law 
 from violation than the Pharisees were. Their standpoint 
 was the direct Mosaic one, as it resulted from the literal 
 sense of the respective commands. They rejected as not 
 obligatory all the traditional accretions of Phariseism, 
 existing in the form of new observances or preventive regu- 
 lations. They were e. g. opposed to the Temple rites, on 
 the feast of Tabernacles, of "libation of water" (nissuch 
 hammayim), and the circuits made round the altar of burnt- 
 offerings with willow branches, which were shaken in the 
 hands of the bearers (wherefor the rite was called " chibbut 
 arabhah;" see Graetz, Monatsschrift, Nov. 1887), and put up 
 at the sides of the altar after the circuits were over. 
 
 In their stiff literalism they would accept no Phariseic 
 addition to the written ritual. This alone had obligatory 
 authority with them. Consequently they repudiated also 
 those two rites, neither of which was prescribed in the 
 Torah. They would though, as a rule, not omit them when 
 they were officiating themselves as Temple functionaries. 
 For they had to fear the indignation of the masses of the 
 people who were Pharisaic in religious belief and usage, if 
 they designedly left them off. Yet their theoretical oppo- 
 sition to them they never concealed. And occasionally it 
 may have happened, as we have an account at least of one 
 ostensible slight committed with the water-libation (see B. 
 Sukkah f. 48 ', that they gave it even a practical expression. 
 
 Their protest against the use of willow branches in the 
 Temple on the feast of Tabernacles they exhibited spe- 
 cially by contending, that the rite must by no means take 
 place on a Sabbath on which any one day of the feast might 
 fall. Not even on the seventh, on which the solemnity 
 reached its height by the discharge of seven circuits, should 
 it be allowed (see B. Sukkah f. 43). The grounds on which 
 they based their view were supposably no other than that 
 the handling of willow branches was unlawful on the Sab- 
 bath, because they were an article set apart for use on 
 working days only ("muktse," according to the Rabbinical 
 terminology, which restriction they apparently held ia 
 
282 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 common with the Rabbis). This shows certainly a much 
 keener apprehension of the Sabbath restraint than the 
 Pharisees had. To these the " chibbut arabhah " ranked as 
 high as any other of the Temple rites, before which the 
 Sabbath law had to give way. They regarded it, we sup- 
 pose, as an act "needful for the service of God" (tsorech 
 Gaboah), and to be therefore performed on the Sabbath, 
 like the entire sacrificial ritual of the holocausts ordained 
 in the Pentateuch for this day (Numb, xxviii. 9. 10). 
 
 The Sadducees, on the other hand, distinguished between 
 those Temple rites prescribed in the Law for the Sabbath, 
 and others that were only traditional. To the former were 
 counted the perpetual holocausts of the morning and even- 
 ing, together with two additional ones for the morning 
 (Numb. I.e.); the incense offering, directly ordered for 
 every day, and certainly inclusive of the Sabbath ( Ex. xxx. 
 7, 8 ); and the attendance on the lights of the candlestick, 
 also distinctly understood from Exodus 1. c. as obligatory 
 on every day. It was to the Sadducees self-evident that 
 all the labors required for those parts of the ritual — and 
 there was, indeed, a considerable number of manual opera- 
 tions otherwise prohibited on the Sabbath connected with 
 the victims of the morning and evening — should be done on 
 the Sabbath, because they were integrant parts of the 
 Divinely instituted worship. The traditional rites, however, 
 could with this sect not avail to make the Sabbath law 
 recede before them. The same -principle upon which they 
 opposed those rites in general, namely, that God has not 
 ordained them in his written Law so as to be obligatory 
 on the Israelites, was, we suppose, applied in their refusal 
 to permit their execution on the Sabbath, if this implied a 
 breach of its law. 
 
 We hold it even uncertain whether the\' allowed circum- 
 cision, or the Passover ritual, on the Sabbath. For though 
 these were most prominent Mosaic institutions, there was 
 yet no provision in the Law that they should take place 
 also on the Sabbath. This becomes the more probable 
 when we compare the Karaite inhibition of the same rites 
 on the Sabbath ( see Fuerst, ' Histor}' of Karaism,' i. p. 
 132). The Karaites were the doctrinal kin of the Sad- 
 ducees. And though we may not be perfectly warranted 
 to conclude from those later Mosaic literalists to the earlier 
 literal legalists, the Sadducees, with regard to every custom 
 and doctrine, there is yet all likelihood that the Karaites 
 had a tradition from their doctrinal parents on the. two 
 before-mentioned points of religious usage. 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 283 
 
 Let US adduce another instance illustrative of the Sab- 
 batic rig-or of the Sadducees. They were evidently empha- 
 tically opposed to the Phariseic custom of cutting the first- 
 ling-sheaf on the eve of the Sabbath, as it was invariably 
 customary with the Pharisees, it the second day of Pass- 
 over — the Omer-day — fell or. the Sabbath. According to 
 the Sadducean interpretation of the relative Mosaic text the 
 sheaf-ceremony had al\va3's to take place on the day after 
 the weekly Sabbath, as likewise the feast of Weeks had 
 always to be on a Sunday. Accordingly, their time of cut- 
 ting th(^ ceremonial sheaf never clashed with the Sabbath 
 observance. It was always at the close of the weekly Sab- 
 bath. The Pharisees, however, holding fast to their inter- 
 pretation of the Scripture text by which the day for offer- 
 ing the sheaf was the second day of Passover, on whatever 
 week-day this might fall, absolutely allowed its cutting 
 even on the Sabbath eve, if that day of the feast began with 
 it. The man appointed for reaping the ceremonial sheaf 
 had to call out demonstratively three times, "on this Sab- 
 bath ?'\ if the second day of the feast happened to fall that 
 way. This was done in a spirit of polemics and refutation 
 aimed at the Sadducees, who insisted on Sunday being the 
 invariable, lawful sheaf-day ( Mishnah, in B. Menachoth 
 
 From the challenging phrase "on this Sabbath.?' we 
 infer that there were constant carpings between the two 
 sects as to the permissibility of cutting the sheaf on the 
 Sabbath. The Sadducees, we suppose, decidedly declared 
 it a sinful labor and a needless profanation of the day, 
 since the Torah does not order it done immediately on the 
 night previous to the oblation, were it even that the 
 Scripture text admitted of the Phariseic perception. 
 
 We readily concede that in this case there was a great 
 deal of sectarian animosity mixed up with the stern rever- 
 ence for the Sabbath. Yet the opposition which the 
 Sadducees made, bore at least the outward aspect of such 
 reverence. Moreover, it certainly appears from all the 
 other foregoing propositions that they had a very austere 
 perception of the Mosaic prohibition of labor, surpassing, 
 as to the letter of the Law at least, that of their antagonists, 
 the Pharisees. 
 
 Why then are the>' not even once mentioned and held up 
 as Sabbatic extremists in the N. T. writings, the same as 
 the Pharisees, with whom Jesus or his apostles collided ? 
 We can account for it only by the circumstance, that the 
 Sadducees were the Temple party whose intercourse with 
 
284 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 the populace was very rare. Jesus and his followers sup- 
 posably met very seldom with any of that aristocratic class. 
 Whereas the learned Pharisees were scattered all over the 
 land. Their precepts were followed by the unlearned bulk 
 of the Jewish people, though in some instances not com- 
 pletely in accordance with the standard of exactness to 
 which they had raised them for tiiemselves. The gener- 
 ality of the Jewish people were especially strict in the 
 observance of the Sabbath. As it is once remarked in the 
 Talmud : "While Israel — the am ha-arets "common peo- 
 ple" — are to be suspected in matters pertaining to the 
 observance of the Sabbatic year, they are irreproachable as 
 to the proper heeding of the Sabbath restraints." The 
 laymen did, then, not lag behind the learned in Sabbatic 
 strictness. Phariseic or Phariseically trained and habit- 
 uated Sabbath observers, Jesus will consequently have 
 encountered in every town or village of his own native dis- 
 trict, too. And it was such who would unremittingly 
 resent any open breach of the Sabbath law, whether the 
 written or the traditional. Of the Sadducean party, how- 
 ever, he may never have met one during his Galilean 
 activity. The passage in Matt. xvi. i, 12, naming Sadducees 
 together with Pharisees, we have to declare as inauthentic. 
 This does indeed not imply that Jesus must, whilst he lived 
 in Galilee, have been unacquainted with the doctrines pro- 
 fessed and the position occupied by the Sadducees. No, 
 indeed. We have on the contrary every reason to suppose 
 that he learned about them at his previous stay at the 
 Jordan, with John the Baptist ; see them mentioned in con- 
 nection with the latter. Matt. iii. 7. Yet personal disputes 
 with representatives of that sect he cannot be thought to 
 have had till the latter part of his public career, when he 
 entered the province of Judea and the city of Jerusalem. 
 Even here he seems to have had but one doctrinal contro- 
 versy with them. It was that about the resurrection, which 
 the Sadducees denied (Matt. xxii. 23 ?q.). This controversy 
 was probably started by them, as Geiger has rather ingen- 
 iously suggested (Judaism and its History, I. p. 118), 
 because "he had emphasized the resurrection so decidedly 
 by asserting the imminence of the future world, the kingdom 
 of Heaven." Let us observe here in passing, that this is 
 not at all an unlikely motive for the Sadducean opposition 
 to him, though it was by no means the only one. It may 
 even be that the persecution of other early Jesus-believers 
 was partly owing to the latent rancor which the Sad- 
 ducean sect cherished against them, for openly and con- 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORV. 28$ 
 
 tinuously putting forth not only the resurrection of their 
 Master, but the earnest and eager expectation of his second 
 coming, at which period the general Messianic resurrec- 
 tion would occur. 
 
 On this occasion of discussing the Sabbatic standpoint 
 of the Sadducees, it will be pertinent to annex some 
 information on the Sabbath observance of the Dositheans, 
 a Samaritan sect. It is known that the Sadducees and 
 Samaritans had some sectarian doctrines in common. Both 
 denied resurrection. With regard to the Pentateuch it is to 
 be noted, that the former repudiated all traditional observ- 
 ances and statutes, attributing obligation but to those of 
 the written Law. [ See Josephus, Ant. xiii. lo, 6; 
 i6, 2, and compare Geiger's partially adverse stand- 
 point in "Urschrift, etc." p. 133 sq. Their maxim was^ 
 for all we can gather from the envious Rabbinical sources^ 
 that a doctrine, rite, or statute must be Mosaical (" mii> 
 hattorah," or contained "battorah"). if recognition and 
 obligation are to be claimed for it. Their agreement with 
 the Pharisees on some points of Mosaic textual expositions 
 does not affect the accuracy of Josephus' assertion]. The 
 Samaritans had a similar position in reference to the Penta- 
 teuch. They recognized it only as sacred Scripture, reject- 
 ing all the other books of the Jewish canon as not having 
 this character. In view of this doctrinal kinship between 
 the Sadducees and the Samaritans, it will certainly seem 
 appropriate to mark in this place the perception of the 
 Sabbath law by a sect belonging to the latter nationality. 
 Dositheus, a Samaritan reformer, — represented by Origen, 
 'Against Celsus,' as a Messiah-pretender of the apostolic 
 age, previous to Simon the Magician, but in the Clementine 
 Homilies and the Apostolic Constitutions, as a false apostle„ 
 contemporary with Simon, — is by the first-named writer,. 
 in his other treatise, * On the Principles' (cited by Hilgen- 
 feld, 1. c. p 157), reported to have interpreted the injunction 
 of Exodus xvi. 29, " abide ye every man in his place, etc.",. 
 that it exacts a perfectly still, motionless condition. " Every 
 one,'' he expounds, " must remain in the same place and 
 position in which he is found on the Sabbath, till evening, 
 that is, if sitting, that he keep sitting, or if lying, that he 
 maintain this posture all day." 
 
 Abulfeda (14th century), in his Samaritan Chronicle, 
 asserts of the Dositheans, that they held it unlawful on the 
 Sabbath to drink from brazen or glass vessels, or to feed or 
 water domestic animals : food and water must be placed 
 before them before the Sabbath begins. 
 
 (11) 
 
^286 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. ; 
 
 ^^ Hausrath, 'Hist, of N. T. Times,' does not distinguish i 
 as to the time of both controversies. He names them j 
 together with the disciples' neglect of fasting and the con- ! 
 versing of Jesus with publicans and sinners (Mark i. 35-39), \ 
 as having brought on the open opposition to him by the 
 Rabbis of Capernaum. As in the opposition to his ministry ; 
 the officials of Antipas had a common interest with the 
 Pharisees, that writer further advances, that he was by this 
 circumstance driven out of Capernaum (Mark iii. 7), and 
 "his life was from that time a wandering one." 
 
 *^ The " deuteroproton " of Luke vi i, which is in our 
 English version rendered " on the second Sabbath after the , 
 first," is not yet sufficiently explained. Keim finds Sea- ; 
 iiger's interpretation, that it meant "the first Sabbath after ■ 
 the second day of Easter" (Passover), as the most probable 
 of all. 
 
 ^^ Graetz, History, iii. third edition, makes a short cut ■ 
 of the relation in Matt. xii. 1-8. He declares the entire 
 narration as a Pauline tendency-interpolation. For, rea- 
 sons he, " if, as it is given out in v. 8, man is lord of the Sab- ; 
 bath, then the Sabbath is on the whole abolished." But, we ' 
 protest (see our text), Jesus did in that verse not at all i 
 express a general human view, but an exaggerated Messi- 
 anic one about himself. Graetz adheres to the notion, | 
 that Jesus "did not at all irritate the existing Judaism. j 
 Consistently with it he must pronounce all antinomian I 
 passages credited to Jesus, interpolated ! So does he, j 
 indeed, declare the passage in which Jesus exalts himself 
 above the Temple (Matt. xii. 6). In keeping with that 
 notion is also his peremptory judgment, that "the authen- I 
 ticity of the Sermon on the Mount is more than suspicious," : 
 mainly because " it partly conveys Jesus' intention of oppos- 
 ing his own new doctrine to the Law." ^ 
 
 "*" Keim, 1. c p. 365, interprets the meaning of this sen- 
 tence, that he wished to say, "here is a higher dispensator 
 for the disciples than the temple is for the priests." ; 
 
 "*' In his claim of supernatural power in healing the sick I 
 and the possessed, Jesus proceeded on the pretension of ; 
 his divine-like Messiahism. By virtue of this he presumed 1 
 to have the faculty to forgive sins, and thus remove the ' 
 cause of the disease. [ 
 
 Bodily ailments and maladies as well as suffering in gen- 
 eral, were in ancient Judaism mostly regarded as afflictions ' 
 'for sin, or at least as Divine visitations for some object of 
 discipline. The causal interconnection of sickness and sin 
 naturally evolved from passages of the Pentateuch, such as ! 
 Ex. XV. 26. xxiii. 25, Lev. xxvi. 14-16, Deut. vii. 15, xxviii. 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 287 
 
 15, sq. It is again markedly expressed in Isa. xxxviii. 17. 
 And it has, further, been sagaciously supported by a Rabbi 
 of the third century, from the parallel occurrence of both 
 terms in Ps. ciii. v. 3 ( B. Nedarim, f. 41 ). The ground- 
 sentiment of the majority of the Rabbis of antiquity seems 
 to have been, hakkol bide shamayim "all things are with 
 and come from God," that is, are disciplinary dispositions 
 of God. Diseases, all sorts of them, are included. Even 
 those distempers originating, as it was believed, from 
 stellar (fatalistic), or elemental ( accidental ), or even from 
 magic influences (such as the evil eye, or the fiendish work 
 of witches and demons), point to God as the first design- 
 ing and dispensing Cause. This is the gist of Talmudical 
 passages like those of B. Baba Metsia f. 107 ; Ketuboth f. 
 30; Nedarim f. 49 ; Baba Bathra f. 144; Cholin i.J, and 
 others. In the last place a Rabbi is even credited with the 
 extravagant sentence, that *' no one bumps his finger but 
 it is so decreed in Heaven." In the name of the same 
 Rabbi there is frequently produced in the Talmud the say- 
 ing : "All things are dispensed by God, only affections of 
 the body entailed by exposure to cold (and hot) air are 
 purely casual," that is , independent of God's disposition. 
 
 (There is surely no consistency in the two quoted sen- 
 tences of the same Rabbi. But they were evidently not 
 intended to be strictly dogmatic. The Rabbi was happy 
 to have found for each a corresponding Scripture accom- 
 modation, from which he could interpret either. This 
 sufficed him for exhibiting his sayings as brilliant pieces of 
 Scripture exegesis. That others should ever refer to them 
 with a doctrinal view, was supposably far from his mind). 
 
 It may yet be mentioned that other Rabbis did evidently 
 not agree with him on the hypothesis, that suffering from 
 exposure to cold or heat is not ordained by God ; see B. 
 Ketuboth 1. c. It may, farther, be pertinent to observe 
 here that it is on the whole most difficult to positively 
 decide how the generality of the learned Jews have, in the 
 few centuries before and after Jesus, thought and believed 
 concerning the various casualties and ills which flesh is 
 heir to. While we prefer to assume from a number of Rab- 
 binical passages, that those doctors disavowed the theory 
 that bare accidents could, independently of God's Provi- 
 dence, cause bodily injuries or sickness. — and this would be 
 in keeping with Scripture that characterizes even accidents 
 as Divine causations ; compare chiefly Ex. xxi. 13, — we are 
 yet, on the other hand, confronted by contrary Rabbinical 
 sentiments, also embodied in the Talmud. In Jer. Sabb. f. 
 14. the following is proposed: "In ninety-nine cases out 
 
288 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 of a hundred, it is not God's interference to which fatal 
 bodily injuries and suffering are due, but mere accident, 
 si5ch as the effect of the evil eye. self-exposure to excessive 
 cold or heat, or other indiscretions, referrible to man 
 alone." 
 
 Jesus had evidently assimilated in his mind the pre-emi- 
 nently Jewish view, that bodily suffering is inflicted by God, 
 and that with a disciplinary purpose, chiefly in punishment 
 of some offence committed against him. That sickness is the 
 result of sin, — this idea underlies his argument in Matt. ix. 5, 
 6. See also Keim 1. c. iii. 214, who says regarding the case 
 produced there : "Jesus looked upon his illness as the result 
 of sin," and quotes as recurrences of this sentiment, Matt, 
 xii. 45, Luke xiii. 2, ii, John v. 14, ix. i. (We have to note, 
 however, that the last-named passage shows only its preva- 
 lence with Jesus' disciples, not with himself. He, on the con- 
 trary, disabuses their mind of the notion that the blindness of 
 the man in question was due to sin). As a religious theory it 
 was apparently in accord with the pious perceptions of his 
 Jewish contemporaries, or, at any rate, of most of them. 
 He only gave it an obnoxious turn by applying it to his 
 pretension of being able to forgive sins, in his presumed 
 capacity of the Messiah. As such, he conveyed in his 
 argument, he could surely cure diseases. Their cause — sin 
 — being once removed by the use of his supernatural power 
 in dispensing pardon, the effect — sickness — must be lifted 
 of itself. It was surely not difficult for his orthodox hearers 
 to get at the drift of his argumentation. 
 
 As to his pretension of healing the possessed, that is, 
 casting the evil spirit or spirits out of the victims on whom 
 they had fastened themselves, this too had in his mind a 
 Messianic bearing. By compelling the fiends, by the force 
 of the spirit of God within him (see Matt. xii. 28), to leave 
 the body, and thus beating Satan and diminishing his fatal 
 sway, he claimed to pave the way to the kingdom of God 
 and the exclusive rule of the Spirit of God, or, as it is indi- 
 cated in V. 28, to have actually brought on that kingdom. 
 See Hausrath, * N. T. Times,' ii. p. 190, who observes on the 
 expostulation in Matthew ib.: "It is his opinion that the 
 casting out of devils by the Spirit of God proves the actual 
 advent of the kingdom of God, and this assumption Jesus 
 supports by the farther reference, that his breaking into 
 the house of the strong man — the devil — clearly shows that 
 the strong man had been previously bound, and that con- 
 sequently the kingdom of the devil had come to an end." 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 289 
 
 ^* To accurately determine in such passages of Rabbini- 
 cal free and easy exposition or narrative, whether the term 
 Minean was to denote a pagan, — Roman or other, — or a 
 Gentile Christian, will forever be a futile attempt. The 
 Rabbinical relations were put down or transcribed with 
 utter indifference to historical correctness. We have there- 
 fore to use the greatest caution in utilizing them. 
 
 How difficult it is to reach an authentic conclusion as to 
 the meaning of Minean employed in the Rabbinical nomen- 
 clature, will appear from the following. Immediately after 
 that colloquy between Akiba and Tinnius Rufus, the Mid- 
 rash contains a dispute on the validity of the rite of cir- 
 cumcision, alleged to have been had between a Rabbi of 
 the second century C. E. and a * philosopher.' The objec- 
 tion which the latter raised to it was, that " if God wanted 
 circumcision, it cannot be seen why he did not command 
 it already to Adam ?" From the juxtaposition of both the 
 colloquy and this dispute we should judge that the 'philoso- 
 pher' was likewise intended for a cultured or philosophically 
 educated Roman, such as the governor Tinnius Rufus. And 
 surely would we in the premises, from the title ' philoso- 
 pher' which the olden Rabbis so often used interchange- 
 ably with ' Minean,' be justified to detect such a one in that 
 personage. Yet when we, on the other hand, learn from 
 external literature that the same argument attributed in 
 the Midrash to the philosopher, was in substance, as it will 
 appear by and by, frequently employed by Gentile Chris- 
 tians, we are at once determined to change our opinion 
 and assume, that the personage styled there philosopher, 
 was a Gentile convert to Christianity. We consequently 
 become even further disposed to conjecture, — though there 
 is no intrinsic cause for calling in question the arguments 
 attributed in the Midrash to Rufus in his colloquy with 
 Akiba ; see also above p. 82, — that the narrator in that 
 Rabbinical compilation of free and easy expositions had 
 even in relating this colloquy no other impression on his 
 mind, than the one which had come to him from actual 
 hearing, or from the known fact, that Gentile Christians were 
 used to attack both the Sabbath and circumcision with 
 arguments such as he reproduced there. The reason why he 
 connected Tinnius Rufus with arguments against the Sab- 
 bath, though he may have mentally alluded to Gentile 
 Christians, is easily suggested to have been, because that 
 governor was traditionally known as a frequent disputant 
 on Jewish ritualistic and doctrinal subjects. By introduc- 
 ing him there as a questioner on the Sabbath, there would 
 
290 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 be gained the advantage of variation in tiie narratives. In 
 reality, however, he may have alluded in his mind, in this 
 instance as well as in the subsequently produced invective 
 against circumcision, to Gentile Christians. 
 
 That this class frequently used the above-stated argument 
 against circumcision, appears from Justin's Dialogue with 
 Trypho, ch. xix. There, it is true, the objection differs some- 
 what in form from the one quoted above from the Midrash. 
 It reads: "If circumcision were needed, God would not have 
 created Adam uncircumcised." But this difference is unes- 
 sential. The attack is substantially the same in both argu- 
 ments. The validity of circumcision is in both accounts 
 disputed on the ground, that God had not made it a law 
 with the first man of Scripture. See also Otto's commentary 
 in loco, who cites TertuUian, Cyprian, and Lactantius, as 
 having reasoned in the same strain as Justin, in their 
 polemics against the rite of circumcision. 
 
 ^^ Hausrath, in ranking here the intercourse with pub- 
 licans and sinners with the rest of Jewish ordinances, 
 betrays a superficiality which we can only indulge in a 
 Christian writer unacquainted with the old Rabbinical 
 literature. There is, to our knowledge, not the slightest 
 trace in that literature of an ordinance as to commerce 
 with publicans. Nor is there a specific one to be found on 
 the commerce with sinners. 
 
 Regarding the publicans, — a term used in the New 
 Testament versions that would, however, be much more 
 correctly rendered with the generic name tax-officials, — 
 this averse notice only has come down to us, that they 
 were hated by the ordinary Israelite for their frequent 
 extortions, peculations, and other irregularities committed 
 in their office. Whether Jewish or pagan, they were com- 
 monly associated in the thought of the Israelite, of the 
 Phariseic sect and principles at least, with robbers ; see 
 especially Mishnah B. Baba Kamma f. 113. They arc at 
 times even named in one category and strain with high- 
 waymen ; see ib. f. 114, and Sifra f. 91. 
 
 That, besides, the heart of the truly religious aud patriotic 
 Israelite chafed and even revolted, at once on religious 
 and economical grounds, at the several kinds of oppressive 
 tribute imposed since the Roman institution of the census, — 
 three kinds are named in the Pesikta, sect. Shekalim f it: 
 gulgoleth "capitation-tax," arnona (read, annona) "land- 
 tax," and demos, the nature of which is hard to decipher 
 from the name, which has possibly come down in a muti- 
 lated form, instead of telos " toll " ( the last we presume to 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 29I 
 
 conjecture in spite of the authenticated frequent use by the 
 ancient Rabbis of the term "demos" in various signifi- 
 cance), — is reasonably set forth by Hausrath in the same 
 work. 
 
 Even Jesus who, as the gospels bear witness, freely^ 
 associated with tax-officials, and had even an apostle,. 
 Matthew, from this class, implicitly admitted their corrupt 
 ways ( Luke iii. 13 ), classifying them even directly under 
 the generic stigma of sinners (Matt. ix. 13). 
 
 Nay, it seems to us that he had at the early part of his 
 public life detested them as much as every other orthodox 
 Israelite. For, in the Sermon on the ^Nlount, he names 
 them in one strain of speech in the category of Gentiles, 
 that is, pagan polytheists ; see Matt. v. 46, 47. ( Luke has 
 in this parallel, v. 32, "sinners" in place of either publi- 
 cans or Gentiles). And even in the last days of his career, 
 when he had already habitually been befriending them, he 
 riamed them yet together with harlots ( ib. xxi. 31, 32). 
 This shows, that, though he then doubtless counted a num- 
 ber of publicans in the ranks of professors of his ]\Iessiah- 
 dom, as must appear from his awarding to them the prece- 
 dence as to entrance into the Kingdom above the "chief 
 priests and elders " of the Jewish people, he could, from the 
 fact of their generally known and admitted corruption, not 
 help combining them at least with fornicators. The 
 natural conclusion from this juxtaposition of publicans with 
 harlots would even appear to be that, notwithstanding the 
 conversion of a number of publicans to the belief in his 
 Messiahdom, the idea of their being as a class confirmed 
 sinners, irrepressibly suggested itself to his mind and 
 speech even so late as that. This conclusion would result 
 from the bare circumstance of the harlots being placed by 
 the side of the publicans. The former must at that con- 
 juncture have been harlots still, or he would have desig- 
 nated them, as reformed and redeemed persons, under a 
 different name, or at least with a vindicating epithet. So 
 must the publicans, despite his efforts at gaining over a 
 number of them to his Messianic creed, have then as a class- 
 practically been as corrupt as they ever were before. 
 
 With the generic name 'sinner' the critics of Jesus had,, 
 according to Luke xix. 7, branded also Zacchaeus, the 
 chief of the publicans, with whom he had gone to lodge. 
 
 How it came that the tax officials were named and even: 
 identified with sinners, and in what general or special 
 sense the Hebrew equivalent of this appellation wa."; 
 employed by orthodox Jews in speaking of them, is diffi- 
 cult of exact definition. Graetz (iii. third ed.), distinguish- 
 
292 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 iiig three different lower and despised classes to which 
 Jesus addressed himself in his public career, viz., the sin- 
 ners, the custom officers and publicans, and the ig^norant 
 from the populace, sugf^ests that those tax officials had "on 
 account of abetting the Roman interests turned their back 
 to the Law, and led a dissolute life." Where he collected 
 this information, he does not state. We, on our part, 
 would, to account for the combination and identification of 
 publicans and sinners in the gospels, hazard the following 
 conjecture. 
 
 We presume that in the days of Jesus the orthodox 
 teachers or even laymen nicknamed those of the common 
 people who were marked by. habits of lawless violence or 
 of defiant violation of religious laws, haryone. This word 
 they probably adopted from the Greek ' barys,' Hebraizing 
 it by affixing the ending ' on.' In two places of the Talmud 
 (B. Synh. f. 37, Taanith f. 23) they are represented as 
 impenitent religious and, doubtless, also moral recreants, 
 and in a third place as a viciously vexatious set (B. Berach. 
 f. 10), with whom the learned and pious would have no 
 intercourse, nay, on whom they would often imprecate that 
 God might take them from the world. Some, again, were 
 charitable enough either to pray to God that he may cause 
 them to repent, or to use personal suasion by which they 
 hoped to bring them to their senses and a change of their 
 evil conduct (see the quoted passages). In a fourth place 
 of the Talmud (B. Gittin f. 56) even the zealots in the rev- 
 olutionary war against the Romans are designated baryone. 
 That they have drawn forth this stigma from the Rabbis 
 who were mostly for peace and submission to the Romans, 
 already during that war, should convincingly result from 
 the introductory part of this last Talmudical relation, 
 which bears a thoroughly historic stamp. 
 
 Now from all these passages combined we conclude that 
 the 'baryone' were in the first centuries of the common 
 era the synonyms for those abandoned sinners from the 
 populace, who had not only rudely set at defiance the relig- 
 ious ceremonial of Israel, but also made no scruple to annoy 
 and exasperate their pious and decent neighbors by differ- 
 ent violent demonstrations, or even occasionally to assault 
 their propertj' and even persons. That they thus awakened 
 the deep execration of all the righteous Israelites, and 
 received from them that odious title in return, is not to be 
 wondered at. We propose that it was this kind of violent 
 sinners which the Pharisees ranked both in their thought 
 and speech with the hated tax-officials, since these, too, 
 passed with them, for their violent and fraudulent practices, 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 293 
 
 as equal to robbers. And we further surmise that both 
 the publicans and sinners stood coupled in the original of 
 Matthew respectively as " mochesin " and " baryone." The 
 translator of this gospel into Greek, meeting with the lat- 
 ter name which was neither Hebrew nor Chaldaic, but was 
 adopted from the Greek to signify coarse and fierce relig- 
 ious and moral outlaws, found himself in a quandary how to 
 render it, and resorted to the next best equivalent that 
 should express the currently Jewish stigma. The generic 
 word hamartoloi " sinners " occurred to him as such, and he 
 put it down as the most suitable. While we give this as a 
 mere conjecture, we yet claim for it a greater merit than can 
 consist in Graetz's tracing the word sinners used with pub- 
 licans in the gospels, to ' abaryanim,' as denoting " viola- 
 tors of the Law." We do not believe, from the very rare 
 occurrence of this later Hebrew word in the Rabbinical lit- 
 erature, that it had gained currency with the learned of old 
 to brand with it Judaic Law-breakers. Why not rather 
 think of the pure Hebrew word "reshaim" or " posheim," 
 as corresponding to those sinners .'' The word reshaim was 
 currently used by the ancient Rabbis as the opposite of 
 tsadikim " righteous," or kesherim " worthy." Graetz's 
 further proposition that those sinners were " such as had 
 been expelled from the Jewish society for religious trans- 
 gressions," is destitute of all warrant. 
 
 If our above conjecture should be deemed too hazardous, 
 we advance yet another original Jewish concept, as possi- 
 bly embodied in the hamartoloi "sinners" of the gospels. 
 We allude to the am ha-arets "common people," or. as the 
 olden Rabbis were used to employ this term, an individual of 
 the common people, — provided, of course, that these were 
 already in Jesus' time despised by the learned for levity as 
 to questions of religious purity, the tithes, and the Sabbatic 
 year. Space forbids us to treat at length of the interrela- 
 tions of the "am ha-arets" and the learned, in the several 
 centuries before and after our era. It would be of great 
 interest at once to the Jewish and Christian intelligent 
 world, if a competent writer undertook to furnish a lucid, 
 critical description of them. We will here briefly state 
 that it is quite possible, that the common people were 
 already in Jesus' time signalized and shunned by the Phari- 
 sees as suspects with regard to those three points. 
 
 Whether the rule existed already then, that the clothes 
 of an am ha-arets defile a Pharisee ( Mishnah, Chagigah ii. 
 7), to the extent that he would, after coming in contact 
 with them by touching, suspending, carrying them, or by 
 sitting, lying, standing, or leaning on them, be religiously 
 
294 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 polluted till evening, both in person and as to his own 
 clothes, we do not know. The reason why the clothes of 
 the am ha-arets should be impure to a Pharisee, is in the 
 Talmud stated to be, that his wife might in her own defile- 
 ment have sat on them. Naturally this rigid restriction 
 must have prohibited any close intercourse and meeting by 
 a Pharisee with an am ha-arets, even in a public place, not 
 to say, at the table. Jesus, having doubtless been held and 
 treated as a " Chabher," — this as well as the term " Chasid " 
 was the distinctively honorable title of a Pharisee or Phari- 
 seic doctor of the Law, in the mouths of the later Rabbis at 
 least, — would accordingly have properly been censured for 
 sitting down to eat with any of this unlettered class. 
 
 Again, we meet with a relative restriction in the Tal- 
 mud, called forth by the suspicion cast on the am ha-arets 
 for wanting a sufficient seriousness as to tithes. It is : 
 "One must not make converse with an am ha-arets. for 
 fear he would at length give him to eat things from which 
 the tithes had not been separated" (Nedarim f 20). Yet 
 there is no certainty about the existence of this injunction 
 in Jesus' time, either. 
 
 Now, though we cannot adduce any direct evidence from 
 the Rabbinical literature that, on account of various more 
 or less grave suspicions of ceremonial levity resting against 
 the unlettered Jewish people, a decided and open antago-- 
 nism to these prevailed with the learned already at that 
 early period, we are warranted to infer it from relative 
 gospel accounts. That the Pharisees were then most austere 
 concerning rules of ceremonial purity and the widely rami- 
 fied tithing, is clear from various statements produced by the 
 evangelists; see especially Matt, xxiii. 23, 25. From this 
 it is fair to conclude that the common people will, at least 
 as to the intricate rules of purity, not have succeeded, even 
 if they had a mind to, to come up to the stern demands of 
 purification as exacted by the Pharisees. These will con- 
 sequently have been impelled to keep aloof from them as 
 much as possible. The association with them was unavoid- 
 ably fraught with a continuous doubt of religious purity and 
 apprehension of defilement. That they regarded them as 
 'sinners' with whom no Chaber should sustain company, is 
 therefore not impossible. This stigma may, then, have 
 been fastened on the common people in the time of Jesus, 
 so that reference was made to them in the reproaches of 
 the Pharisees about his close association with them. 
 
 A third interpretation of the 'sinners' whom Jesus had 
 befriended, is yet possible. It is well known that the sick 
 were in the gospels often represented as sufferers on 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 295 
 
 account of sin. In Luke vii., a Pharisee takes exception to 
 Jesus allowing himself to be attended by a female 'sinner/ 
 in the manner set forth in vv. 37, 38. This woman was 
 perhaps known to the Pharisee as afflicted with a disorder 
 like that mentioned in Matt. ix. 20. In this case her touch 
 was ceremonially polluting, and the Pharisee had, from his 
 religious legal standpoint, a perfect right to call Jesus to 
 account for that attendance. Some men and women with 
 such like physical disorders, whose impurity fell partly 
 under the head of direct Mosaic inhibitions, or were partly 
 rigidly construed by the Pharisees from the respective texts 
 of the Pentateuch, may many a time have addressed Jesus 
 with the entreaty to cure them. The healing involving at 
 the same time the forgiving of the sins in punishment of 
 which the bodily affliction was believed to have been 
 visited, it may fairly be supposed that the sinners, named 
 as such with publicans or separately, were meant to be that 
 sort of diseased people. 
 
 ■'" Jesus wished to set forth by the illustration in Matt. ix. 
 I";, merely the inconsistency of allowing mournful senti- 
 ments to intrude themselves on Messianically transported 
 and exulting souls, such as he implicitly represented those 
 of his disciples to be. The two similitudes following in vv. 
 16 and 17, Jesus chose with the view of strengthening the 
 illustrative force of the main contrast, in the previous verse, 
 of groom and gloom. He aimed by them to impress more 
 vividly on the criticising disciples of John the impropriety 
 of mixing opposites in the sentiment and usage of life. 
 The illustration in v. 15, should characterize the nuptial 
 feast and the fast as sharp opposites. The two subsequent 
 ones were meant to be nothing but similar instances of 
 striking contrast. He added them as corollaries in the 
 fluency of speech, to show yet more convincingly the cor- 
 rectness of his and his followers' position. That he should 
 have propounded them with any doctrinal purpose, as 
 Canon Farrar opines in his 'The Life of Christ,' ch. xxiv.^ 
 is unwarranted. This author proposes that the two meta- 
 phors in vv. 16 and 17, were to point the dogma, that " the 
 new spirit was to be embodied in wholly renovated forms ; 
 the new freedom was to be untrammelled by obsolete and 
 meaningless limitations ; the spiritual doctrine was to be 
 sundered forever from mere elaborate and external cere- 
 monials." 
 
 All this is a mere waste of words, and another example 
 of that author's pompous and profuse diction on the one 
 hand, and, on the other, of his fixed effort at the apotheosis 
 of Jesus with regard to any of his sayings and acts. It is 
 
296 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 surely going too far to find every metaphor used by Jesus 
 pregnant with the deep meaning of " spiritual doctrine." 
 To contrast old and new by the simile of new wine" put in 
 old skins and the reverse, was evidently common among 
 the olden Jews. See Pirke Aboth iv. 27, where the " new 
 skin full of old wine " is to convey the moral, that one's age 
 ought not to prejudice us for or against him in our judg- 
 ment on his knowing faculty ; for there is often found a 
 youthful person with profound understanding and insight, 
 clearly settled views, and a large fund of well assimilated 
 objects of knowledge, whereas many a full grown or 
 aged one is deficient even in that wisdom, which the 
 experience of many years is expected to impart. The 
 meaning in this simile is, indeed, totally different from that 
 used by Jesus. But the Jewish habit of employing this kind 
 of homely metaphors for contrasts, is not the less shown 
 forth in that Rabbinical sentence. The kindred one attrib- 
 uted to Jesus suggested itself to him in the same way, 
 namely, through common Jewish usage. Such and the like 
 metaphors were readily and easily formed by reflecting per- 
 sons in a country, where wine-growing was such a promi- 
 nent pursuit. There is nothing exceptional in the senten- 
 tious application of them. Nor is there any hidden allu- 
 sion to Jesus' own spiritual doctrine to be detected in the 
 one employed by him in his reply to John's disciples. 
 
 ^^ The phrase used here for the performance of the magi- 
 cal cure is, "abad milla." It occurs in the same sense also in 
 B. Synhedrin f. loi. It means essentially, in the Rabbin- 
 ical phraseology, to ' do a thing that cures.' The ancient 
 Rabbis employed it also for bleeding, — a surgical operation 
 the sanative virtue of which they held so very effectual ; 
 see B. Sabbath f. 129. In the Midrashic passage under 
 notice, as well as in that of Synhedrin 1. c, the use of a 
 formula of exorcism is doubtless to be understood by that 
 phrase. The Minean curers — those, namely, of the Chris- 
 tian sect, for there were Essenic ones as well — were Chris- 
 tians of Jewish or other descent, against the medical treat- 
 ment by whom a Rabbinical prohibition had been passed ; 
 see B. Abodah Zarah, f. 27. Its chief cause was, we hold, 
 because they employed the name of Jesus as a divine being 
 in their healing practices and exorcisms; comp. Jerus. 
 Sabb. ch. xiv. We treat of all this at large in our work on 
 the Mineans, in the division, ' The Christians as Mineans.' 
 
 ^" This sage, Jose, was one of the presidential pair of the 
 theological school of Jerusalem in the Maccabean times. 
 He was one of the sixty Scribes — interchan.geably called 
 <^iasidim in i Maccabees — who were singled out of the 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 297 
 
 rest of the suppliant delegates pleading before Bacchides 
 and the Jewish high-priest, Alkimos, for justice and peace, 
 to suffer death on one same day ( i Mace. vii. 12-17). It 
 is indeed quite possible that his unscrupulous and pitiless 
 nephew, this same Alkimos, derided him in the manner 
 mentioned in the Midrash. He had when high-priest, as it 
 is said in 2 Mace. xiv. 3, "defiled himself willingly in- the 
 times of the intermixture" (namely, with pagans). He 
 had also maligned the adherents of Judas Maccabeus to 
 Demetrius (ib. 6). His uncle, Jose, was his extreme 
 opposite in piety. As a " Chasid of the priesthood" (see 
 B. Chagigah f. 16), he was austere as to ceremonial purity, 
 and surely also very strict in all other Jewish observances. 
 He may, too, have frequently rebuked his nephew for his 
 loose, Hellenizing manner of life. This may have aroused his 
 indignation, which it is to be supposed that he vented on 
 his uncle on the day when he was to suffer martyrdom 
 with the rest of the doomed Scribes, in the mocking way 
 described in the Midrash. Alkimos' appearance on horse- 
 back on the Sabbath, as related there, we may safely com- 
 bine with the affair reported in the before- quoted first book 
 of the Maccabees. He may then have been high on horse 
 in the attendance of the Syrian commander, and designed 
 to make that mockery doubly sensitive to his uncle, by the 
 offence he would give him by such demonstrative disregard 
 of the Sabbath : all this, we surmise, to wreak his venge- 
 ance on the rigorous uncle for his former reprobations of 
 his wanton Grecianizing departure from orthodox Judaism. 
 
EXCURSUS A. 
 
 Strauss ( A New Life of Jesus, i. 291 sq.), who does on the 
 •one hand not own an Essenic, that is, ascetic and dualistic 
 standpoint of Jesus, is yet strongly inclined to discover in 
 these instances a spirit of set opposition to the ceremonial 
 service of the Temple : first, that he is not reported to have 
 ever taken part in the Jewish sacrifices, with the exception 
 of the Paschal lamb ; secondly, that he acted, as he did, in 
 the Temple (Matt. xxi. 12 sq. and parallels) ; and, mainly, 
 that the witnesses had testified his disparaging utterance 
 about it ( Matt. xxvi. 61). He further supposes, with refer- 
 ence to this utterance, that " it might very easily be the 
 case. . .that the Jews understood only too well the expres- 
 sion of Jesus about his reforming purpose, and that in this 
 (viz., the purpose of rejecting the material worship of the. 
 Temple* and commending and, perhaps, attempting to intro- 
 duce a spiritual one instead) lay the ground of the accusa- 
 tion against him and of the condemnation of him." Keim, 
 History of Jesus, vi. 20, contends with reference to John iv. 
 21, that the latter sentiment is a late, unhistorical assertion, 
 and that — -Stephen and Mark notwithstanding — Jesus never 
 announced the definitive end of the national worship. In a 
 Note there he suggests that Mark xiv. 58, is copied from 
 Acts vii. 48. 
 
 This hypercritical judgment can, however, not stand the 
 test of historical inquiry. Jesus' antagonistic attitude to 
 the established national worship of the Jews, is too well 
 attested for any one to challenge the historicity of his dis- 
 paraging threats of its cessation or overthrow. We have, 
 in our text, adduced incontrovertible proofs of this antag- 
 onism. Let us here bring forward yet another point par- 
 ticularly worthy of note, and which furnishes a very strong 
 additional evidence of it, though only circumstantial. It is, 
 the obvious systematic transmission of it, as though of a 
 typical mark of heredity, through the entire Jewish and Gen- 
 tile Christian literature, the earlier as well as the later. 
 The opposition to sacrifice being peculiar to, and significant 
 of, the entire body of Christian sectaries of the apostolic 
 and post-apostolic age, it unmistakably points to the 
 ■original head as its doctrinal author. 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 299 
 
 That Jesus had really uttered the denunciation with which 
 he was charged by the witnesses (see above), or "one simi- 
 lar in import" (so Edward Zeller), would first of all appear 
 from its repetition by Stephen, a year or two after Jesus' 
 death, in the form reproduced by the witnesses against 
 him : " this Jesus of Nazareth shall destroy this place," viz., 
 at his Parousia. Admitting even provisionally with Zeller 
 and Baur, that the entire narrative of Acts vi. 9 to vii. 60. 
 is unhistorical, and the bare fact of Stephen's execution 
 alone indisputable, are we not at all events justified to trace 
 in Stephen's speech at least the tradition of the disparage- 
 ment by Jesus of the Jewish national Temple service, which 
 the Pauline author of Acts utilized .'' 
 
 That this tradition differed in form in its various repro- 
 ductions, as will be seen from the following, can surely not 
 detract aught from the merit of our view, that the opposi- 
 tion to the Temple service was continuous in Christianity 
 from Jesus onward. 
 
 Let us now survey the course of this tradition. The 
 Hellenist Stephen, or the author of Acts speaking in his 
 name, has given forth his relative diatribe in the above- 
 noted narrative of Acts. It is to be remarked, however, 
 that he has not correctly echoed Jesus' sentiment about the 
 Temple. Jesus never thought of assailing the Temple 
 as such, that is, as the central institution of Israel's worship. 
 He held it in awe, — as we have set forth in another paper 
 published a {^v^ years ago, — opposing only the sacrificial 
 rites carried on in it. Whereas Stephen's attack is directed 
 against the hand-made Temple, the natioi^.al-religious 
 edifice, as such. H? condemns Israel and with them Solo- 
 mon himself, for rearing a structure called house of God, 
 for worship, as well as for rejecting the holy Spirit that had 
 spoken through Isaiah (see ib.). 
 
 Of about the same tenor as Stephen's may have been 
 Paul's teachings against the Temple, of which the Asiatic 
 Jews accused him (Acts xxi. 28). He propounded at least 
 the same sentiment of "God not dwelling in temples made 
 with hands " (ib. xvii. 24). God dwells to him in the temple 
 of theheart (2 Cor. vi. 16). 
 
 These Hellenists have, then, evidently gone in their 
 assaults upon the Temple much beyond Jesus, whose 
 thought was not so fir swiyed by philosophical specula- 
 tions, that he should have disdained to employ the Scrip- 
 tural expression of God dwelling in the Temple (see Matt. 
 xxiii. 21). Yet we may, on the other hand, lay it down as 
 reasonably certain, that they would not have made such 
 polemical onslaughts against it, had they not found a war- 
 
300 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 rant for it in Jesus' authenticated antagonistic attitude 
 towards it. As little as we can believe that Paul would 
 have dared to fiercely derogate and declare as abolished the 
 whole Mosaic Law, had he not found the outlines for such 
 assumption and some single facts of opposition to it in 
 the life and teaching of Jesus, as known to him from extant 
 accounts, so little can we disconnect the Hellenistic Jewish 
 Christian attacks on the Temple from the kindred ones 
 made before by Jesus. 
 
 But this opposition was not characteristic of Hellenistic 
 Jewish Christianity alone. It was avowedly one of the 
 cardinal points of heretical doctrine with the Ebionite sec- 
 tion as well, and prominently so. 
 
 It deserves especial notice that their reverence for the 
 Master was unsurpassed by any sect that ever followed a 
 leader or head. They referred to Jesus and to his spoken 
 word and example, in every question of tenet and usage. 
 In their well-known implacable opposition to sacrifice they 
 adverted to him, too. The later members of this sect, to 
 which the author of the Clementine Homilies unquestion- 
 ably belongs, quoted him as authority not only against sac- 
 rifice, but once even, in the manner of the before-named two 
 Hellenists, Stephen and Paul, against the notion that God 
 was in the Temple (Hom. iii. 49-56). Jesus having to this 
 sect been the " true prophet," his directions had in all ques- 
 tions to be sought, and were actually sought, by them. 
 This was, in truth, a dogmatic rule with them. 
 
 Now it may be said that the Ebionites, in their 
 intense Essenic detestation of animal sacrifice, may not 
 have shrunk from many exaggerations relating to Jesus' 
 real position towards the Temple service. This is possible, 
 indeed. Yet for all that is it to be conceived that their 
 reference to him at all as to his hostile attitude to it, 
 was unfounded and false .-* By no means is such suppo- 
 sition admissible. The real affinity, which may perhaps 
 rightly be called consanguinity, that existed between them 
 and Jesus, the Master, at once precludes it. 
 
 We have positively to aflfirm that for all the eclecticism 
 with which Jesus entered into the body of the Essenic 
 views, doctrines, and customs, with which he familiarized 
 himself either at his stay with the Baptist (even Strauss 
 who very decidedly rejects, 1. c. p. 292, an Essenic doctrinal 
 opposition of Jesus to sacrifice, suggests on p. 265 ib. that 
 "Jesus might have learned much from him"), or by reading 
 some works of that sect, which, while its members were 
 bound by oath to the greatest secrecy about their sectarian 
 books (Jps., Wars ii. 8, 7j, could yet not hinder novices who 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 3OI 
 
 left their monkish retreats after the first year, from carrying 
 away with them some copies, and making that use of them 
 which they deemed practicable (comp. Hausrath, N. T. 
 Times, i. p. 165), — it admits of no doubt that he stood in real 
 spiritual sympathy with Essenes and other theosophists of 
 similar principles and tendencies. 
 
 That Essenism was, further, well represented in the early 
 Church, will be difficult to dispute. Not only Epiphanius 
 dates the existence of the Ebionites — the Christian Essenes 
 — to the apostolic age ( Haer. xxx.), but Paul's polemical 
 references in Ep. Col. ii. seem to Baur (Paul ii. 28) and 
 others, to point to the same sect. Even Ewald, who 
 adheres yet to the notion by which the learned Frankel, 
 too, was captivated, that the Essenes were distinguished by 
 a heightened legalism (see Hist, of Israel, vii.), is of the 
 opinion that there entered into the young Church, in Paul's 
 missionary period, a number from this sect, by which cir- 
 cumstance was brought forward a new influential form of 
 Christianity, viz., Christian Essenism. Allusion to devotees 
 of this new Essenic faction he finds in i Cor. vii., Rom. 
 xiv. 2, Col. ii., and suggests also as likely in 2 Cor. x-xiii. 
 
 On the marked Essenic traits of James the Just, Jesus' 
 brother, and even of the previous James, the apostle, both of 
 whom were leaders of the early Church, the former having 
 repudiated flesh meat and the latter having, as we tried to 
 demonstrate in Note 34. in the three out of the four apostolic 
 .decrees, implicitly coincided in such repudiation, which, 
 again, was sympathetically connected with the rejection of 
 sacrifice, we refer the reader to that same Note. These 
 striking features of early Christianity, showing forth, here 
 directly and there indirectly, a decided, uncompromising 
 opposition to sacrifice, point, to our mind, unmistakably to^ 
 Jesus as its author and champion within Christianity. From 
 his mouth the disciples undoubtedly inbibed it. And stren- 
 uously, too, we hold, they transmitted and propagated it 
 within the fold of the crescent Church. 
 
 That also the Nazarenes had adopted Jesus' antagonistic 
 attitude relative to sacrifice, we may take for granted, from 
 our safe apprehension of this sect as close adherents of the 
 Jesus-religion, and withal on the ground of systematic con- 
 tinuity from the Master. 
 
 [12) 
 
EXCURSUS B. 
 
 Religious philosophy as the seat of which we are used to 
 regard Alexandria, had, in the century of Jesus, and doubt- 
 less already in the two previous centuries, occupied itself pre- 
 eminently with clearing Scripture by speculative methods 
 of the anthropomorphic personalism of the Deity, which the 
 plain letter of its numerous passages would convey. We 
 may divide the theories of the Jewish theosophists on this 
 problem into three classes. The one was Philo's, which we 
 will illustrate immediately. The other that adopted by 
 the Hellenistic Jewish Christians of the type of Stephen 
 and Paul, and also by some Gentile Christian Gnostics. 
 The third that of the Ebionites, of the kind to which the 
 author of the Clementine Homilies belonged, who 
 declared all anthropomorphic expressions and, besides, 
 those parts of Scripture incongruous with his religious 
 philosophy, as spurious. 
 
 I. philo's position. 
 
 Philo was both as to his metaphysical, theistic specula- 
 tion and that upon the authority of the Law, in striking 
 variance with the simple orthodox standpoint held by the 
 non-philosophical, pious Jews of his age. We will here set 
 forth both his relative views, though the former does not 
 directly bear on our present subject. It will yet essentially 
 aid us in characterizing that celebrated Alexandrian Jew- 
 ish philosopher. 
 
 Philo has by his conception of God as the Absolute, and 
 as being totally abstracted from the finite world and out of 
 any direct relation to it, practically volatilized almost the 
 entire purport of the Mosaic dispensation. His specula- 
 tive system rested mainly on the then dominating 
 Platonism. But he called to aid also the Pythagorean 
 numbers and other notions of this philosophical school, as 
 well as various Stoic concepts. The name of his Logos — 
 standing for divine Reason or Word — was as well as some 
 other of his theories borrowed from the Stoic sect. His 
 aim was to adapt the Hebrew Scripture to the flourishing 
 Greek philosophy and harmonize both with each other by 
 the way of allegory, just as the renowned medieval philoso- 
 pher, Maimoni, attempted, in his " Moreh Nebhuchim," to 
 clothe Mosaism in the then stylish garb of Aristotelism and 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 303 
 
 Neo-Platonism. To remove from Scripture interpretation 
 all traits and traces of human-like action of God, and to 
 insure God's absolute unchangeableness and utter distance 
 from the material world, was the task he, the same as other 
 Jewish religious philosophers before and after him, had set 
 himself to. In order to it he invented, or rather utilized, 
 the philosophical theory of dynameis "divine powers," 
 evolved from, and kept in a certain continuous reflux to, 
 God. These divine powers were to him the intermediate 
 agents between the Creator-Father and the world and 
 mankind. The Logos was the highest of them, — the idea 
 of ideas, the archangel, — in a word, their original complex. 
 God used this Logos, Philo theorizes, in creating the world 
 ( Alleg. iii. 31 ; On the Cherubim, xxxv ; Confus. of Lang., 
 xiv., end ). While other celestial powers had assisted God 
 in making man (Creation of the World, xxiv.), the Logos 
 remained yet the chief organ of God's creation. He was 
 nearest to God, and his direct image. He was the Father's 
 "first-born son " ( On Dreams, xxxvi ; On the Tilling of the 
 Earth, xii.), or his " eldest son " ( Conf. of Lang. xiv.). He 
 was assigned the highest rank and function of all the divine 
 powers, — the rank of the archetypal world-mind and great 
 governor of the cosmos, " being in a manner its God " ( On 
 the Creation, xxiii.) 
 
 This latter quality is, indeed, somewhat reduced again in 
 ' On the Tilling of the Earth,' xii., where he characterizes 
 the Logos only as superintendent, next to the supreme 
 governor, God. Yet a very high degree of divinity Philo 
 nevertheless reserved to the Logos. This appears most 
 readily from the Fragment preserved by Eusebius, in which 
 he is pronounced the " second God." The genuineness of 
 this passage is borne out by another in Allegories, ch. 
 Ixxiii., where Philo speaks of the Father of all as the " first " 
 God, and of the Logos as inferior, yet sufficient to be the 
 ordinary, imperfect man's divinity. If this is not a real 
 sublimation of the Logos to a substantial sameness, nor 
 even a nominal identity, with God, but merely an hypostasis; 
 especially since, as Schmidt, 'Libellus, etc' argues, the 
 angels too are by Philo denominated Gods : it can yet not 
 be gainsaid that such daring speculative attempts were 
 fraught with serious perils to true Monotheism. 
 
 No matter that Philo was not strictly consistent in the 
 divine personification of the Logos, representing him about 
 as often as the abstract Reason-Word of God, as he 
 attributes to him a distinct, substantial existence. He per- 
 petrated none the less a grievous departure from orthodox 
 Judaism in those places where he does personify him. Even 
 
304 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 where he presents the Logos only in the character of God's 
 Reason, the impression he gives us is, that this Reason is 
 in some manner dissociated from God. And surely is such 
 departure noticeable in his proposition, that service is due 
 the Logos next to God (see Gfroerer, 'Prim. Christ.,' i. p. 
 272, end). Above all must his suggestion be pronounced 
 an irreconcilable departure, that those "having knowledge 
 of the one God are properly called sons of God," — meaning 
 thereby, as will appear from the following, the knowing 
 ones or Gnostics. True, he has immediately after restricted 
 the sweep of this theory, saying that none may so far have 
 attained that perfect wisdom and goodness which yields 
 that title. Nay, from his further remark, that one should 
 at least endeavor to be adorned with the name "son of the 
 Logos," we should judge that he meant, that no ordinarily 
 aspiring wise man (be he even of Philo's philosophical 
 acumen and ethical refinement ! ) can well succeed in reach- 
 ing the state in which he may justly bear the name "son of 
 God." But has he not at all events allowed the possibility 
 of reaching it, how late soever in a wise and holy man's life 
 this might be .-' Has he not, by avowing that virtually a 
 man out of thousands may reach it, — deducing this even 
 from a pretended Scriptural indication, — opened the door 
 to claimants of it, whose grade of perfection would not only 
 rest on the lofty self-consciousness of the individual, but on 
 a popular assenting and sanctioning vote .>' [For further 
 information of the reader about Philo's theory on the ideal 
 man, we refer to Allegories, Ixxiii., where he brings forward 
 the sentence that "the imperfect ( i. e. the average aspirers 
 after wisdom and goodness) may be content with having 
 the name of God ( identical with the Logos) as their God ; 
 it is only the wise and perfect who can have the 'firs^' 
 (that is, God, the invisible Father of all) as their God." 
 Compare also Migration of Abraham, ch. xxxi., where the 
 Logos is assigned to the imperfect man as his divine guide, 
 until iie have achieved the " highest wisdom," when he, hav- 
 ing caught up with the Logos himself, will be his peer, and 
 " both together become attendants of the All-guide, God."] 
 That such theories advanced, we own, with great rever- 
 ence to the God of Israel, but nevertheless impairing his 
 character as rendered in Scripture, must have been held as 
 heterodox by all Palestinian orthodox Israelites who should 
 have heard them, will readily be conceded. That his 
 "divine powers" must have appeared to them as strongly 
 tinctured with a sort of compromise with the ethnical 
 polytheism, is likely enough. At any rate must he by his 
 Logos-doctrine have laid himself open to the suspicion of 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISIORV. 305 
 
 ditheism or diarchy, in the same manner that the later 
 heresiarch, Elisha ben Abuyah, was suspected of ditheism 
 for his Gnostic attachment and the construction of the 
 IMetathron of Jewish mysticism — the cognate of the Logos, 
 comp. Philo's Migration of Abraham, xxxi., towards end, 
 with B. Synhedrin, 38, 3, towards end — into a second God ; 
 see on this B. Chagigah, f. I5- We know that Philo was 
 all along emphatically affirming the unity of God, whom he 
 has, moreover, in divergence from Plato, positively hypos- 
 tasized and exalted above the latter's God, who was merely 
 the Idea of the good ; see on this Schmidt, as above, and 
 comp. DoelHnger, "Gentile and Jew," etc. But his theoso- 
 phy nevertheless partook as much of pagan philosophy as 
 of Jewish religious belief. He made such vast conces- 
 sions to the former, that it can never be claimed for him 
 that he was an exponent of the pure Jewish Monotheism, as 
 bodied forth in Scripture and conceived by his orthodox 
 contemporaries. He was assuredly, if not the only one, at 
 least one of the theoretical originators of Gnosticism, that 
 proved so baneful alike to Judaism and Christianity. And 
 we truly believe that, had his theosophical theories come 
 to the cognizance of the orthodox Palestinian authorities, 
 he would have promptly been denounced by them as 
 heterodox and branded with the stigma of ' Minean,' his 
 outward pious conformation to traditional Judaism and 
 fervid Jewish national attachment notwithstanding. 
 
 That in a system like Philo's, in which God's rigid 
 abstractedness from the material world was taught with such 
 emphatic assertion, and the great-power, Logos, devised to 
 be the active link between God and men, a legislation for 
 Israel by Jehovah had very little or no room at all, is thus 
 easily recognizable. Indeed has he accorded direct promul- 
 gation by God only to the Ten Commandments. The rest of 
 the Mosaic enactments were to him enunciated directly by 
 Moses. They were "divine oracles," it is true. But they 
 were such only by virtue of inspiration. For, as he urges 
 with reference to the delivery of the Decalogue, "let no 
 such idea ever enter your mind that God was himself utter- 
 ing some kind of voice." Those oracles he divides into 
 three classes : the one, in which Moses acted as interpreter 
 of God, delivering the decisions himself, though the 
 Pentateuch attributes this act to God ; the second, put in 
 the form of questions and answers between God and Moses ; 
 the third, constituting by far the largest body of precepts, 
 which were " delivered by Moses in his own character as a 
 
306 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 divinely prompted lawgiver, possessed by divine inspira- 
 tion " (On the life of Moses, xxiii.), or, as he gives it at 
 another place, " the lawgiver, who is a prophetic spirit " 
 (On the Festivals, vii.). 
 
 It is only to the Decalogue that he awards a sort of really 
 divine authority. Its revelation was accomplished, he pro- 
 poses in * On the Ten Commandments,' ch. ix., by a new 
 creation. God brought forth an " invisible sound "in the 
 air, animate with a "rational soul." This "sounded forth a 
 voice like a breath passing through a trumpet." It was a 
 "visible voice,'' as he sets forth in ' On the Life of Moses,' ch. 
 xxvii., " which affected the eyes of those who were present 
 even more than their ears." These eyes were, however, 
 not those of the body, but " of the soul," as he asserts in 
 'Migration of Abraham,' ch. ix., pressing there, moreover, 
 the literal sense of some figurative expressions of the 
 Pentateuch for his purpose of illustrating, that the voice 
 of God giving forth the Ten Words was not one of a 
 material nature, but "a most exceedingly brilliant ray of 
 virtue, not different in any respect from the source of 
 reason." The gist of all these reasonings is, that on the 
 occasion of the delivery of the Ten Words it was the 
 rational soul specially created by God, that communicated 
 them to the rational souls or minds of the then assembled 
 Israelites. The revelation of the Decalogue was, then, a 
 totally immaterial act. And it was too the only portion 
 of the Mosaic code that " God had uttered without the 
 intervention of the prophet " (comp. ' On the Life of Moses,' 
 1. c). 
 
 II. 
 
 Another class of religious philosophers of the days of 
 Philo and Jesus, attributed all the announcements and 
 commands of the Mosaic code to angels. This angelic 
 authority was resorted to from the same motive that 
 animated Philo, — to avert from the supreme God every 
 anthropomorphic and anthropopathic imputation. Philo, 
 however, had yet for all his denial of the immediate Divine 
 authority of all the Mosaic laws but the Decalogue, rever- 
 ently ascribed at least an indirect divineness and religious 
 obligation to all of them. He had, for all his love for 
 allegory which he had elevated above the material meaning 
 of the letter of the Law (calling the former the soul and 
 the latter the body), urged with sincere piety the practical 
 observance of all of them, warning seriously against their 
 omission in the proud self-sufficiency, which the wise might 
 feel in the speculative process of symbolical interpretation. 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORV. 307 
 
 An entirely different set were those who assigned the 
 whole Mosaic legislation to angels. In the case where 
 angels were given out as the real authors, the unalterable 
 obligation of its laws was surely out of the question. One 
 of these men, Paul, had, indeed, come to teach the total 
 abrogation of the Mosaic Law. There was consistency, too, 
 in such negative position. For, why should commands 
 coming from angels have binding force for men who have 
 rational souls like them, though of some degrees below 
 theirs? Among that class are to be numbered Stephen 
 and Paul, as also some of the Christianizing Gnostics of 
 Samaritan, Jewish, and Gentile descent. 
 
 Stephen gives out " the angel " as having spoken to Moses 
 on Sinai, imparting to him the " living words" for Israel 
 (Acts vii. 38). This angel was doubtless to represent the 
 " Elohim " in Ex. xx. i. In v. 53 of the same chapter 
 Stephen reproaches all Israel, alike of the past and the 
 present, with disobeying the Law which they received 
 "according to the commands of the angels." The plural 
 is here probably used because he alludes to all the ordi- 
 nances of the Law, and not only to the Decalogue ; they 
 being manifold, may have been thought by him as having a 
 variety of angels for authors, or, at least, promulgators. 
 Corresponding to Stephen's phraseology is that employed 
 by his doctrinal successor, Paul. In Gal. iii. 20, he reflects 
 on the Law as " commanded (or appointed) by angels, in 
 the hand of a mediator" (i. e. Moses). 
 
 L^nderlying these expressions was indubitably the philo- 
 sophical notion, that God must not be degraded to the rank 
 of human-like lawgivers. His enunciation of commands as 
 represented in the Pentateuch, had consequently to be cor- 
 rected into the perception, that they had an angelic origin. 
 The philosophical theorists who brought out that notion 
 may, we suggest, have drawn a support for it from the 
 peculiar translation by the Septuagint of the last part of v. 
 2, ch. xxxiii. of Deuteronomy into : " from his right hand 
 angels with him." This was indeed a radical alteration of 
 our transmitted Hebrew text. We are at a loss to account 
 for it, or even only to guess at the corresponding words 
 which the sages composing the Greek version had in their 
 own original text. This decided variance of the Septuagint 
 had yet not struck the Grecian Jewish philosophers of those 
 latter days as anything abnormal and strange. For to 
 them the Hebrew original was mostly a sealed book, and 
 the Septuagint version the all-sufficient, venerable oracle. 
 Well can it, then, be supposed that they discovered in that 
 translation a confirmation of their anti-anthropomorphic 
 
308 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 apprehension, that it was only spirits, and not God him- 
 self, who imparted to Moses the sacred enactments. [ We 
 deem it proper to refute at this place the opinion of those 
 modern writers who rank the passage of Josephus. Ant. xv. 
 5, 3, with those others purporting to represent angels as 
 promulgators of the Law. Josephus reproduces there a 
 speech delivered by Herod before a Jewish multitude, in 
 which he among other things exalts the dignity of ambassa- 
 dors, arguing: "we ourselves having learned the most 
 excellent of our doctrines and the most holy things con- 
 tained in our laws ' through angels from God.' " It is posi- 
 tively a gross error to think here of real angels. Herod 
 merely alluded to prophets as ambassadors of God, being 
 such either by direct appointment, or by m^ans of inspira- 
 tion ; compare on the latter. Against Apion, i. 7. We hold, 
 farther, that if the word " laws " in that speech is to be 
 taken strictly, in the sense of Mosaic, the speaker may 
 have referred to Moses and Aaron and, possibly, to other 
 pious ancestors anterior to them, whose utterances are 
 recorded in the Pentateuch, and this in the point of view 
 of their having been messengers of God ; compare Ps. cv. 
 17, 26. If Scripture at large be meant by the term " laws," 
 then, we propose, all the accredited prophets occurring 
 therein are readily suggested as objects of that allusion 
 made by Herod. The same meaning oi propJiets we assign 
 to the "angels" in Ep. Hebr. ii. 2. Not that this Pauline 
 epistolator was not capable of bodying forth the heterodox 
 philosophical notion of angels having been the promulga- 
 tors of the Mosaic Law. By no means. But the context 
 does not require such construction being put on the word. 
 Contrasting that passage with ch. i. verse 1 1, we find it more 
 reasonable to suppose that he referred there to prophets, 
 too, as having delivered the divine appointments to the 
 Israelites. The prophets, then, he called angels, in the 
 sense of messengers of God to men.] 
 
 We will now produce some corresponding views on the 
 origin of the Mosaic Law, held by Gnostics properly so 
 called, that is, those Christianizing religious philosophers 
 whom the Church denounced as execrable heretics. It is 
 well known that they assumed more than one God, lower- 
 ing the Demiurgus (Creator, or, rather. Fabricator or 
 Fashioner) of Plato and Philo to a degree below the supreme 
 God, the Father. We cannot here enter in detail on the 
 question of how much of Gnosticism there was virtually 
 adopted by Paul in view of his supernal Christ, or by Philo 
 with regard to his highly exalted Logos. We will only say 
 in brief, that Philo has at all events never transferred the 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 3O9 
 
 title Demiurgus from God to the Logos. Whereas Paul 
 held forth his Christ as the Creator proper of all things, 
 visible and invisible, by the side of the " invisible God," in 
 Col. i. 16; comp. I Cor. viii. 6. (Possibly, however, Paul 
 attributed to his Christ, the Son, even in the former pas- 
 sage, no more than the same dignity which Philo did to his 
 Logos, — that he was the instrument of the creation of this 
 world. Not only does the contradistinction he employs in 
 the latter-quoted passage admit that he pointed out such 
 a perception ; but Philo, in his "Allegories," i. 13, and 'On 
 the Cherubim.' xxxv., offers an analogy by which that sup- 
 position gains a fair support. Philo distinguishes there 
 between "hypo" and " dia," in connection with the Divine 
 creation. His view, taking the one passage with the other, 
 is, that the latter preposition is expressive of immediate 
 production by God, whilst the former denotes only God's 
 causation. Similarly may Paul have meant to convey by 
 "dia autou " in the just quoted passages no other idea than 
 that Christ was the instrument of the creation, and by " ex 
 hou " in Cor. 1. c. no other than what Philo implies 
 in "hypo" as relating to the Creator-Father, viz., that he 
 was the cause of all things). Thus he had no right to 
 inveigh, in Tim. vi. 20, against the false Gnosis as com- 
 pared with his own, which he claimed to be the only true 
 one ; see i Cor. viii. 7. For, strictly considered, there was 
 very little difference between the Gnostics so called, who 
 were decried as heretics for holding a Creator distinct from 
 the absolute Principle, God, and himself He too invested 
 his Christ with the title of Creator, — though at the same 
 time nominally avowing the "one God, the Father" (Cor., 
 as before). 
 
 Now as to those Gnostics we will say, that Simon 
 of Gitta, in Samaria, nicknamed the Magician, who 
 is by the Church fathers treated as the originator of 
 heretical Christianizing Gnosticism, is by Hippolytus, Ref. 
 Haer. vi. 14, credited with asserting, that "the angels who 
 created the world, made whatever enactments they pleased." 
 The origin of the Mosaic Law was thus attributed to angels. 
 To this Samaritan school of Gnostics belong Menander, 
 Saturnilus, and Basilides, all of whom held about the same 
 doctrine. The two last-named, flourishing in the earlier 
 part of the second century C. E., assumed next to the first 
 Principle, God, seven world-making angelic gods, one of 
 whom was the God of the Jews and of the Hebrew Script- 
 ure. Basilides called this Divinity the Archon (or, as 
 
310 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 Hippolytus represents it, one of the two Archons, of whom 
 the first ruled from Adam to Moses, and the second from 
 Moses onward). To all of these Gnostics the Mosaic 
 enactments were of angelic origin. 
 
 Of Jewish Christian Gnostics who had embraced the same 
 view, Cerinthus is to be mentioned. He was schooled in 
 Alexandria, and flourished in Asia Minor in the latter part 
 of the first century C. E. According to a number of mod- 
 ern Church authorities he was the first of the real heretical 
 Gnostics. He taught that the material world was created 
 by angels, and that the God of the Hebrew Scripture, at 
 the same time the God of Israel, was one of them. Some 
 ancient Church writers state about him, that he held angels 
 in general as the authors of the Mosaic Law. 
 
 There is in this connection to be noted a Gentile Chris- 
 tianizing Gnostic of Marcion's school, Apelles. Marcion 
 was notoriously the fiercest of all the enemies of orthodox 
 Christianity, alike the Jewish and Gentile portion of it. He 
 assumed two co-eternal and opposite principles, the supreme, 
 good God and the Demiurgus — the latter imperfect and the 
 God of the Old Testament, which Testament he contempt- 
 uously rejected besides. Jesus he set down as a mere sem- 
 blance, but Christ 3:6 the revealer of the new Deity, the true, 
 supreme God, the Father. Apelles was his most promi- 
 nent disciple. He aimed to soften the harsh dualism of the 
 master by making of the Demiurgus a celebrated angel, 
 brought forth by the supreme, good God. He also taught 
 a third God or superior angel, of fiery nature, who was the 
 God of Israel and of the Law ; see Hilgenfeld, Hist, of 
 Heret., etc., p. 536. 
 
 In all the above instances the theory is maintained that 
 the Mosaic dispensation came from angels. Greatly differ- 
 ent from one another as the general doctrinal positions of 
 all those personages were, there is yet one common original 
 cause to be upheld for that theory — that God must be 
 regarded as totally divided from the world of sense, and as 
 having no contact and communication with men. 
 
 III. 
 
 A specimen of a third position on the origin of the Mosaic 
 Law is held forth in the pseudo-Clementine literature. It 
 is of Ebionite origin, of about the middle of the second 
 century C. E. The polemics set forth therein is supposably 
 in the main directed against Marcion, yet partly also 
 against Paul, and this in a disguised and indistinct con- 
 junction with the above-named arch-heretic, Simon of 
 Gitta. Baur, " The Christian Gnosis," classes the pseudo- 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 3 II 
 
 Clementine system, too, under the name of Gnostic, rang- 
 ing it as the Judaizing form of the (Christian) Gnosis. 
 Ebionism, that is. Christian Essenism, is in modern days 
 admitted to be the ground-tone of those writings. 
 
 In the Homilies God is stanchly defended as the 
 real, onlj' Creator. Rigid Monarchist as their author 
 was, he would not, like Philo, introduce the Logos or the 
 Wisdom as the instrument in creating the world. For 
 polemical argument's sake, it is true, he once averred that 
 Wisdom — a half-impersonated divine power of the kind of 
 Philo's Logos — assisted God in creating man. But on the 
 whole he adhered to the orthodox Jewish standpoint in 
 regard to the creation of the world. He pronounced the 
 four elements — the original component parts of this world 
 — as generated by God. Unlike the Platonic Philo who 
 held matter pre-existent, he, on the contrary, avowed it 
 originally created by God. For it was to him not at all 
 incongruous with the sublime idea of God, to believe him 
 coming in contact with matter. 
 
 Yet for all this firm monotheistic attitude, he was most 
 radically heterodox as to the authority and venerableness 
 of the Pentateuch and Scripture in general. He put up 
 a distinction between a primitive religion which was 
 even anterior to Adam, and the later Mosaic. The 
 Mosaic religion he declares as a mixture of true and false 
 things. The true things are, he argues, "from the tradition 
 of Moses." He was a true prophet and the prophet of 
 truth. (Prophecy is, by the way, extremely exalted by 
 our author, in a genuine Pythagorean-Essenic manner.) 
 He was continuously possessed of the spirit of God, as were 
 Adam, Noah, Enoch, Abraham, Isaac. Jacob, and, after 
 these, Christ, in whom, again, the prophetical Spirit of all 
 of those saints was collectively united. 
 
 Moses, he further theorizes, gave the law of God, "by 
 the order of God and with explanations," without writing, 
 to seventy men, to be handed down to posterity. [It is 
 curious to note the " mystery of initiation " by which, 
 according to the alleged letter of Peter to James attached 
 to the Homilies, those seventy men were in the mystical 
 Essenic-Ebionite sphere represented to have received that 
 law. They had to stand by the living water, it is asserted 
 there (water was so loftily rated by the Ebionites, because 
 they claimed that it received its motion from the Spirit, 
 and this, again, had his origin from God), and " not to 
 swear, for that is unlawful, but to adjure and say : ' I take 
 to witness heaven, earth, water, in which all things are 
 comprehended, and in addition to all these, the air also which 
 
312 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 pervades all things, etc' " This impresses us, in passing, 
 as having been the usual Essenic adjuration, in the place 
 of oaths prohibited with them. ] But after Moses was 
 taken up, it was written by some one, " the wicked one 
 having dared to work this." (By the wicked one the evil 
 Spirit is meant, to whom, as our authors further doctrine 
 was, God had assigned the rule over this world and also the 
 punitive jurisdiction over men.) It was not written by 
 Moses. For how could he himself have noted down that 
 he died ? About five hundred years after him the Law was 
 found lying in the Temple, and about five hundred years 
 more it was carried away and burnt in the time of Nebuch- 
 adnezzar (compare as to the latter notion the apocryphal 
 Fourth Book of Ezra, xiv. 2i, where this holy man is made 
 to reply to God : " For thy law is burnt, therefore no one 
 knows thy deeds of the past or of the future."). 
 
 How much of all this fantastic theory belonged already 
 to the earlier Ebionites, is very difficult to trace out. In 
 substance, we incline to think, it reaches back to them. 
 And we farther believe, that the Essenes were not alien 
 to it, either. 
 
 As to the written Mosaic Law which our author pro- 
 nounced as containing confusedly true and false things, he 
 put, concerning its true and genuine parts, in the mouth of 
 Peter the affirmation, that " God had a written law from 
 Moses to the present times" (Hom. xviii. 3). These parts 
 were to him, then, in a sense. Divine. They were in his 
 mind presumably the Decalogue (minus the third com- 
 mandment, to be sure), and all those other Mosaic precepts 
 which the Essenes had held obligatory, modified though to 
 the religious views and practice of Jesus. 
 
 The direction of Jesus, the prophet and teacher, our 
 author religiously maintains, is wJioUy to be followed. It 
 was, in general, that one should use his own judgment as 
 regards Scriptural sayings, — an imputation to Jesus which 
 he attempts to verify by his (alleged) admonition : " Be ye 
 prudent money-changers." Jesus, he argues, had himself 
 admitted the existence of false things in Scripture. He 
 bases this assumption on Matt. xxii. 29, where his reading 
 was : " Not knowing the true things of the Scriptures," 
 instead of the canonical, " not knowing the Scriptures." 
 This, he contends, is further proved by the circumstance, 
 that Jesus had once declared, " I am not come to destroy 
 the law," and that he had yet appeared to be destroying it. 
 By this seeming contradiction the prophet-teacher, Jesus, 
 intimated, so he concludes, that the things which he did 
 destroy had not belonged to the Law. 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 313 
 
 And now our Ebionite author goes on to prove from 
 Jesus' utterances, what the respective true and false parts 
 of the Mosaic Law are. That sacrificial ordinances were 
 not included in its original composition, he tries to support 
 by Jesus' saying: "The heaven and the earth shall pass 
 away, etc." (Matt. v. 18 ), arguing therefrom that, as sacri- 
 fices had ( at his own time ) actually ceased, they must not 
 have formed part of the Law of the God-inspired Moses, 
 but been added later. To show that the sacrificial ritual 
 was interpolated, he refers, besides, to Jesus' saying in 
 Matt. ix. 13. 
 
 Against the insinuation that God swears, instances of 
 which occur in Scripture, he produces Jesus' admonition : 
 " Let your j'ea be yea, etc." Against the Scriptural imputa- 
 tion that God tempts, he holds out Jesus' assertion ( not to 
 be found though in the extant gospels): "The tempter 
 is the wicked one." False things in Scripture are to him 
 also the representations, that Adam was ignorant, or a 
 transgressor of God's command, for he was, in his view, 
 •'the sinless, true prophet of God;" or that Noah got drunk; 
 that Abraham had three wives, and Jacob four, two of 
 whom, besides, sisters; that Moses slew a man, or once 
 accepted advice from an idol-priest, etc. 
 
 False are to him, in fine, any statements of Scripture 
 attributing to God, directly or by implication, any evil or 
 want of foreknowledge, ignorance, reflection, repentance, — 
 all of which misconceptions must positively be cleared off 
 from man's apprehension of the Deity. 
 
 According to all the foregoing, we have to judge that the 
 volume of the Mosaic code of our Ebionite author, after 
 being purged of the many portions which were to him 
 ungenuine, had very diminutive proportions, indeed. And 
 so there were likewise, in his system, very few of the ritual- 
 istic laws, to which he assigned a truly Mosaic origin and 
 Divine inspiration and, consequently, perpetually obligatory 
 force. Which these were, this we cannot discuss here. 
 
 Concerning the primitive, unwritten law of God. our 
 author has not left us entirely in obscurity as to what 
 he had decided to be such. He meant by it that law, 
 "illustrated by God's creation," namely, that "there is 
 one God and Creator whom man has to love and fear, and 
 for whose sake he has to be righteous and kind to his 
 fellow-men, as thereby he honors God's image : man." 
 This is evidently the moral law of the natural religion. 
 That he construed the primitive law as such, we deduce 
 especially from a passage in Hom. viii. 10, where he pro- 
 poses : "God having made all things well, and having 
 
314 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 handed them over to man... , appointed a perpetual law 
 to all, which neither can be abrogated by enemies, nor 
 is vitiated by any impious one, nor is concealed in any 
 place." That this perpetual law was to him no other 
 than the moral, appears yet from another point of his 
 Homilies, viii. 27: "the will of the righteous One is, that 
 you do no wrong ; that is, murder, hatred, envy and such 
 like." 
 
 EXCURSUS C. 
 
 To supplement our proposition advanced in that disserta- 
 -tion, we will remark that it was not at all alien to the Sad- 
 ducean party to judicially proceed against accused persons 
 by way of deduction from Mosaic ordinances, and of logical 
 combination. For all their noted literalism which, accord- 
 ing to Megillath Taanith, they applied also in cases falling 
 under the head of the Mosaic retaliation laws, they yet 
 used their own discretion in interpreting various judicial 
 appointments of the Mosaic code, going at times even 
 beyond the rigid letter of the Law. This does not only 
 appear from the chapter of that Megillah in which the Sad- 
 ducean codified "book of decisions" is characterized as con- 
 taining classified sections for cases requiring capital 
 punishment, "for which they could, however, not bring 
 forward any evidence from the Torah ; " but is attested by 
 the following instance which may be regarded as typical of 
 their whole juridical course. 
 
 Josephus relates in Ant. xiii. 10, 6, the conflict of John 
 Hyrcanus with the Pharisees ; see the details there. We 
 find in that representation the Sadducees disposed to 
 inflict capital punishment for an offence to which, how- 
 ever, the Law had attached no penal visitation; see Exodus 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 315 
 
 xxii. 27. This instance does not only clearly exhibit the 
 Sadducees as "very rigid in judging offenders above all the 
 rest of the Jews" (Ant. xx. 9, i ), but even as arbitrary 
 tyrants in judgment. 
 
 What wonder, then, that the Pharisees rejoiced and 
 established a feast for the day on which they succeeded, 
 under the queen Salome Alexandra, in abolishing the 
 Sadducean "book of decisions .'' " It was doubtless replete 
 with self-construed points of judicial law, and contained in 
 particular many provisions of severe penalties even on 
 those transgressions, to which the Mosaic code had annexed 
 no deterrent threat of penal visitation. Possibly that 
 Draconian book was re-introduced when they, after Herod 
 had slain the Synhedrin, regained more and more the 
 ascendency and certainly the majority in the national 
 senate, in which indeed they sustained themselves from 
 thence till the latter days of the State. (At the time of 
 Herod's trial before the Synhedrin, this body were yet for 
 the most part, it seems, composed of Pharisees. This may 
 be inferred from the ultimate assent of the whole Synhedrin 
 to the opinion of the Pharisee, Sameas, that Herod was 
 liable to the penalty of death ; see Ant. xiv. 9, 5 )• 
 Especially can such revival of that book be presumed from 
 the time when the political government was ultimately 
 taken entirely from the hands of independent Jewish rulers, 
 and exercised by imperially appointed procurators. With 
 this epoch the Sadducean power and prestige in the Syn- 
 hedrin must have markedly increased, probably suffering 
 no essential diminution even in the few years of the reign 
 of Agrippa I. 
 
 It is consequently also possible that the severe judg- 
 ments inflicted on some Jewish Christians after Jesus, 
 were chiefly due to the excessive rigor the Sadducees 
 exhibited in the execution of penal laws. For, as to the 
 Pharisees in the national council, it occurs to us that, what- 
 ever participation is, according to the N. T. sources (see 
 Matt. xxi. 45, 46 ; xxii. 15, 16; xxvii. 62), to be assigned to 
 them in the doom of Jesus, they manifested in all other 
 accusations of Jewish Christians that judicial moderation 
 and leniency which are variously attested of them. Jesus' 
 cause with its complex nature of aggravation, alike Jewish 
 religious and Jewish national, or rather political, may have 
 appeared to the Phariseic members of the Synhedrin too 
 exceptional, not to co-operate with the Sadducean majority 
 in his prosecution. Apart from that objective aggravation, 
 Jesus had given the Pharisees ample cause for personal 
 •offence, nay animosity, against him. For he had unspar- 
 
3l6 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 ingly and unrelentingly been venting his scorn and abuse 
 against them as a class in public, whereby their minds 
 must have been odiously excited and imbittered against 
 him. In the causes of all the other accused Jewish Chris- 
 tian professors after him, however, it may reasonably be 
 supposed that they exhibited the spirit of mild judgment, 
 for which they are known from authentic sources. 
 
 That they did possess and ordinarily bring to bear this 
 quality, is testified in many places of the extensive Rab- 
 binical writings, as well as by the notable account of 
 Josephus, in Antiquities, xiii. lo, 6. We propose, in the 
 following, to adduce two more relative points of confirma- 
 tion. 
 
 First, we refer to Gamaliel's reported interference in 
 behalf of the apostles at the conjuncture of their alleged 
 second persecution (Acts v. 17-42). As to the criticism on 
 this whole account, we have to direct the reader to Baur 
 and Edward Zeller in their respective treatises, 'Paul' 
 and ' The Contents of Acts.' These authors put forth very 
 strong arguments against the genuineness of Gamaliel's 
 speech, one of which is the glaring anachronism regarding 
 Theudas. There is, indeed, no gainsaying the mythical char- 
 acter of that entire narrative of Acts. And yet it strikes 
 us as proper — to negatively use Baur's verdict — that "Gama- 
 liel should not be given up." We mean, not wholly. We 
 aver that it is not at all unlikely that the apostles were, not 
 only twice but even more often, brought to Jewish justice 
 to answer for their wonder-working in the ' name ' of Jesus, 
 and otherwise for teaching their doctrines about him. 
 Accordingly, though criticism finds the relative report pro- 
 duced in Acts deformed by repellent mazes of fiction and 
 exaggeration, its essence at least commends itself to our 
 acceptance. We hold, therefore, that it is safe enough to 
 retain as authentic the bare notice of Gamaliel's interces- 
 sion, which may be put down as having occurred at some 
 meeting of the Synhedrin before which the apostles were 
 cited : so far at least, that he put in for them a determined 
 advice of ' nolle prosequi,' and this from his moderate sec- 
 tarian tendency in judgment. 
 
 As to Zeller's objection to assuraing such moderation in 
 Gamaliel, on the ground of the general hostile attitude of 
 the Pharisees toward Jesus, it is, we suggest, easily lifted 
 by our above remark, that the cause of Jesus was an excep- 
 tional one. His other objection that, as Paul who was a 
 disciple of Gamaliel had, before his conversion, persecuted 
 the Christians, it cannot be perceived that this teacher of 
 his was so tolerant as he is represented in the account of 
 
THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 317 
 
 Acts, is very slender, indeed. Is it conclusive, we ask, that, 
 because Paul acted the myrmidon for the Sadducean high- 
 priest and other ex-high-priests of the same persuasion 
 (see Acts ix. i, 21), he must have learned his lesson of per- 
 secuting the Christians from his teacher Gamaliel.'' If it 
 were, we would surely also be entitled to draw from the 
 fact — if it be at all a fact — that he had formerly attended 
 the latter's school, the ultimate consequence that his later 
 fierce antagonism to the Mosaic Law had its mainspring in 
 the theories propounded by the same theological instructor. 
 But that such consequence would be the height of absurdity, 
 will readily be allowed by every judicious reader. 
 
 Our second point of confirmation of the reputed judicial 
 fairness and clemency of the Pharisees, we educe from 
 Josephus' relation of the condemnation of James the Just 
 and some others, in Ant. xx. 9, i, which we have already 
 before surveyed at length as to James. This relation is to 
 us most worthy of serious notice. It offers, if rightly con- 
 strued and understood, another important testimony that 
 the Pharisees were indeed possessed of that noble quality. 
 On the criticism of Baur and Zeller, both of whom assume 
 in it a Christian gloss, it is beside our present purpose to 
 enter. What we wish to bring out here is, that Josephus 
 meant by those who reprobated the sanguinary act of the 
 Synhedrin convened by the high-priest and president, 
 Ananus, no other class than the Pharisees. He says ( we 
 give it in our own translation, having to reject Whiston's 
 on grounds to be hereafter stated): "But those who 
 seemed the most equitable of the citizens, and exact with 
 regard to the laws, bore that matter ill, etc." The Greek 
 original of " exact " is " akribeis." This epithet appears to 
 us to point unmistakably to the Pharisees. Josephus uses 
 the noun of the same etymological stem when speaking of 
 this sect in Ant. xvii. 2, 4, as " valuing themselves highly 
 on the exactness as to the Law of their fathers," and does 
 so likewise in ' Life,' sect. 38, when he characterizes Simon, 
 the son of the before-noted Gamaliel, as being " of the 
 Phariseic sect, who seem to be distinguished from the other 
 people by the exactness in the ancestral customs" (or 
 " laws"). In view of this double recurrence of this epithet 
 in connection with the Pharisees, we reckon it most proba- 
 ble that it prevailed in Josephus' mind and was, as it were, 
 stereotyped with him in his reflections on this sect. The 
 same combination, we assume, he had before his mind when 
 
 (13) 
 
3l8 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 speaking of those "exact with regard to the Laws,'' who 
 condemned the action of Ananus' court. It was the Phari- 
 sees whom he here thought of. They, were, indeed, best 
 marked bj^ their exactness in the laws. 
 
 Yet this exactness is not, as Whiston renders it, in Life, 
 with " accurate knowledge," and in Antiquities, with "exact 
 skill," but an exactness alike in the understanding and 
 practice of both the written and oral laws of Israel. We 
 even prefer to think that the point of view of the exact 
 religious practice of the Pharisees predominated in Josephus' 
 mind on noting the peculiarity of this sect. For they, in 
 truth, stood out for their punctiliousness in religious observ- 
 ances, in especial those of ceremonial purity, the tithes, and 
 the Sabbatic year. But whether or not he alluded rather 
 to their exactness in the observance of the Jewish cere- 
 monial, thus much is sure beyond any shadow of doubt, 
 that it at least formed part of his thought when reflecting 
 on the Pharisees. It is accordingly imperative not to con- 
 strue that epithet in the only meaning of exactness in the 
 knowledge of Israel's laws, as Whiston erroneously does. 
 What we have yet to notice as most curious in this trans- 
 lator, is his awkward and misleading version in the passage 
 at issue, in Ant. xx. 9, i. He gives it : "But as for those 
 who seemed the most equitable of the citizens, and such as 
 were the most uneasy at the breach of the laws, they dis- 
 liked what was done." Evidently is the second clause of 
 this translated sentence to carry the sense, that the persons 
 spoken of were a different class from the equitable ones of 
 its first part. Yet the Greek original does not in the 
 remotest way intimate the purport which Whiston has 
 imputed to it, viz., " the most uneasy at the breach of the 
 laws." All Josephus' respective words in the original are : 
 " exact with regard to the laws." There is actually no 
 mention of " the most uneasy at the breach." 
 
 To resume, we would suggest, especially on the strength 
 of the just reviewed remarkable passage in Josephus, that 
 the Pharisees were in all the inquisitory cases of Jewish 
 Christians after Jesus — save, perhaps, in those of Hellenistic 
 defiers — not minded to severe measures being employed 
 against them. And with the Pharisees, that is, the pious 
 doctors of the Law and their disciples, who were in the 
 apostolic period, as likewise afterwards, mainly divided 
 into the schools of Shammai and Hillel, we may safely 
 range the bulk of the Jewish people. For the same his- 
 torian delivers also this information, that "the Pharisees 
 have the multitude of their side " (Ant. xiii. 10, 6). 
 
EXCURSUS D. 
 
 The summary treatment of the apostates in the time of 
 the Syrian persecution by Mattathias and his son Judas, 
 cannot well be held out as counter-proofs. For in those 
 days of the remorseless rule of idolatrous Syria, in which 
 the religious susceptibility of the pious was, for the 
 enormous national-religious infidelity that had crept into 
 the Jewish community, driven to the sorest tension, a regu- 
 lar institution of proceedings by the legally constituted 
 courts was scarcely to be expected ; though there is, on 
 the other hand, no evidence whatever that the zealous 
 leaders and pious avengers had not, in the chastisement of 
 those malefactors, acted by authority and concurrence of 
 the Senate. That such a supreme council existed in that 
 period, is to be gathered from 2 Mace. iv. 44 ; compare also 
 ib. xi. 27, and, for the reign of Antiochus the Great, Ant. 
 xii. 3, 3- 
 
 Of a different character is, however, the proposition in 
 the Mishnah. Synhedrin ix. 6, that against certain trans- 
 gressors individual religious zealots — of the type of 
 Phineas ; see Numb. xxv. 6-8 — may get up to visit on them 
 a prompt infliction of death. One of the offences named 
 there as coming under this head is, blasphemy of God, 
 aggravated by a resort to polytheistic sorcery. 
 
 It appears to us as very probable that the author of the 
 Mishnah has incorporated this proposition, which at the 
 first glance contradicts the traditional leniency of judgment 
 of the Pharisees (Ant. xiii. 10, 6), as a transmitted point 
 of law, having for its historical background the days when 
 those who had assumed the title Kannaim " zealots " were 
 flourishing. 
 
 Waiving the question as to the exact point of time when 
 these zealots, the revolutionary haters of the Roman 
 government, as whose head Judas of Galilee is known in 
 history, first adopted this their title, we may state thus 
 much for certain that it was largely in vogue with the 
 increase of those revolutionists styled Sicarii. This was 
 under the procurator Festus ; see Josephus, Ant. xx. 8, 10. 
 Yet the existence of the zealots as a set of desperate 
 anti-Roman insurrectionists is surely to be put on a much 
 earlier date. Now as to those Sicarii who were without 
 doubt only a faction of the " zealots," we have to say that 
 
320 THE SABBATH IN HISTORY. 
 
 their many acts ot extreme violence were, judging by the 
 account of Josephus (Wars vii. 8, i). committed only against 
 those of their countrymen supposed to be willing and ready 
 to tamely submit to the Romans. Their view, also stated 
 by that historian, was, that such were false brethren, " not 
 differing at all from foreigners" (heathens). In their intense, 
 exorbitant patriotism they denounced all such temporizing 
 fellow-religionists asNochrim, "heathen foreigners." Their 
 ultimate motive, misdirected as it surely must appear, was 
 to avenge what they held to be a national apostasy, which 
 at the same time implied to them — really or only pretend- 
 edly — a religious apostasy, a fraternization with the " sons 
 of alien gods" (comp. Mai. ii. ii). 
 
 According to the foregoing we may reasonably assume 
 that the author of that Mishnah had in view and re-echoed 
 an occasional lynch practice resorted to in the excited days 
 of terror which those Sicarii had caused. Possibly he 
 thought of the whole period of the Gaulonite revolutionists, 
 that is, from the second decade of the first century C. E. 
 till beyond the ruin of the Temple, along which time 
 exemplary lynch law, in the cases enumerated there, was 
 held applicable. 
 
 That reminiscences of actual occurrences of this kind of 
 self-assumed justice underlie that Mishnah, would appear 
 to us from its additional mention of priestly lynch law, 
 though, too, only in the form of a proposition. This certainly 
 points to the Temple times. The author must accordingly 
 have referred to the period in which the Synhedrin flour- 
 ished as the constitutional supreme power of the nation. 
 There are, then, even from this period, looming forth some 
 indications of self-constituted power of single religious 
 zealots to inflict death on certain offenders, reflecting tem- 
 porary departures from the norm of regular Synhedrial 
 trials ! 
 
 Whether by the "zealots" of the Mishnah the real Sicarii 
 of Josephus are meant, or in general merely Phineas-like 
 enthusiasts for the purity of religion, at any rate will the 
 supposition that occasional lynch justice was not entirely 
 foreign to the Jews of the first century C. E., find a fair 
 support by that Rabbinical paragraph. 
 
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