APPENDIX TO BOOK I SECTION I. THE SEVERAL BRANCHES OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE. § 1. Introduction. § 2. The JEWS OF JUDEA. § 3. The SAMARITANS-Their origin, character, opposition to the Jews, and present state. § 4. The DISPERSION-Origin and extent. § 5. The Babylonian Dispersion. § 6. The Syrian Dispersion. 7. Alexandrian Jews. 8. Jews in other parts of Africa. 89. Jews at Rome. § 10. Influence of the Dispersion upon the spread of Christianity. § 11. THE PROSELYTES. § 1. For the full understanding of the new ecclesiastical commonwealth, which was founded in Judæa on the return from the Captivity, and the relics of which survived even the destruction of Jerusalem, there remain certain topics, which could not be conveniently worked into the text. Among them are some of the highest importance, not only because of the direct allusions to them in the New Testament, but for the comprehension of the whole character of the Jewish nation at the time of Christ, and during the first period of the diffusion of Christianity. § 2. The Jews of JUDEA have formed the main subject of our narrative; and it is only necessary to remind the reader that the few Jews scattered among the heathen settlers of Northern Palestine were recognized as belonging to the commonwealth of Israel, in a manner strikingly contrasted with the exclusion and hatred of the Samaritans. § 3. THE SAMARITANS. Though so jealously rejected by the Jews, from the first moment of their return, the half-heathen Samaritans demand a place in Jewish history, from their position in the very centre of Palestine, and from their own high claims of rivalry with the Jews. The strangers, whom we have seen placed in "the cities of Samaria" by Esarhaddon, were of course idolaters, and worshiped a strange medley of divinities.1 Each of the five nations, says Josephus, who is confirmed by the words of Scripture, had its own god. No place was found for the worship of Him who had once called the land His own, and whose it was still. God's displeasure was kindled, and they were infested by beasts of prey, which had probably increased to a great extent before their entrance upon the land. "The Lord sent lions among them, which slew some of them." On their explaining their miserable condition to the King of Assyria, he dispatched one of the captive priests to teach them "how they should fear the Lord." The priest came accordingly, and henceforth, in the language of the sacred historian, they "feared the Lord, and served their graven images, both their children and their children's children: as 1 Old Test. Hist. chap. xxiv. did their fathers, so do they unto this day." This last sentence was probably inserted by Ezra. It serves two purposes: 1st, to qualify the pretensions of the Samaritans of Ezra's time to be pure worshipers of God-they were no more exclusively his servants, than was the Roman Emperor, who desired to place a statue of Christ in the Pantheon, entitled to be called a Christian; and, 2dly, to show how entirely the Samaritans of later days differed from their ancestors in respect to idolatry.3 Such was the origin of the post-captivity or new Samaritans, men not of Jewish extraction, but from the further East. Our Lord expressly terms them aliens. A gap occurs in their history, until Judah has returned from captivity. They then desire to be allowed to participate in the rebuilding of the Temple at Jerusalem. It is curious, and perhaps indicative of the treacherous character of their designs, to find them even then called by anticipation, "the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin,' a title which they afterward fully justified. But, so far as professions go, they are not enemies; they are most anxious to be friends. Their religion, they assert, is the same as that of the two tribes, therefore they have a right to share in that great religious undertaking. But they do not call it a national undertaking. They advance no pretensions to Jewish blood. They confess their Assyrian descent, and even put it forward ostentatiously, perhaps to enhance the merit of their partial conversion to God. That it was but partial they give no hint. It may have become purer already, but we have no information that it had. Be this, however, as it may, the Jews do not listen favorably to their overtures. Ezra, no doubt, from whose pen we have a record of the transaction, saw them through and through. On this the Samaritans throw off the mask, and become open enemies, frustrate the operations of the Jews through the reigns of two Persian kings, and are only effectually silenced in the reign of Darius Hystaspis, B.C. 519. The feud, thus unhappily begun, grew year by year more inveterate. It is probable, too, that the more the Samaritans detached themselves from idols, and became devoted exclusively to a sort of worship of Jehovah, the more they resented the contempt with which the Jews treated their offers of fraternization. Matters at length came to a climax. About B.C. 409, a certain Manasseh, a man of priestly lineage, on being expelled from Jerusalem by Nehemiah for an unlawful marriage, obtained permission from the Persian king of his day, Darius Nothus, to build a temple on Mount Gerizim for the Samaritans, with whom he had found refuge. The only thing wanting to crystallize the opposition between the two races, viz., a rallying point for schismatical worship, being now obtained, their animosity became more intense than eve The Samaritans are said to have done every thing in their power to annoy the Jews. They would refuse hospitality to pilgrims on their road to Jerusalem, as in our Lord's case. They would even waylay them in their journey; and many were compelled through fear to take the longer route by the east of Jordan. Certain Samaritans were said * 22 K. xvii. 41. 3 Josephus's account of the distress of the Samaritans, and of the remedy devised for it, is very similar, with the exception that with him they are afflicted with pestilence. 42 K. xvii. 24. Cuthæans, says Josephus, from the interior of Persis and Media. 5 ἀλλογενεῖς, Luke xvii. 18. And Jose phus's whole account of them shows that he 6 Ezr. iv. 1. to have once penetrated into the Temple of Jerusalem, and to have defiled it by scattering dead men's bones on the sacred pavement. We are told too of a strange piece of mockery which must have been especially resented. It was the custom of the Jews to communicate to their brethren still in Babylon the exact day and hour of the rising of the paschal moon, by beacon-fires commencing from Mount Olivet, and flashing forward from hill to hill until they were mirrored in the Euphrates. So the Greek poet represents Agamemnon as conveying the news of Troy's capture to the anxious watchers at Mycena. Those who "sat by the waters of Babylon" looked for this signal with much interest. It enabled them to share in the devotions of those who were in their father-land, and it proved to them that they were not forgotten. The Samaritans thought scorn of these feelings, and would not unfrequently deceive and disappoint them, by kindling a rival flame and perplexing the watchers on the mountains. Their own temple on Gerizim they considered to be much superior to that at Jerusalem. There they sacrificed a passover. Toward the mountain, even after the temple on it had fallen, wherever they were, they directed their worship. To their copy of the Law they arrogated an antiquity and authority greater than attached to any copy in the possession of the Jews. The Law (i. e., the five books of Moses) was their sole code; for they rejected every other book in the Jewish canon. And they professed to observe it better than did the Jews themselves, employing the expression not unfrequently, "The Jews indeed do so and so; but we, observing the letter of the Law, do otherwise." 9 The Jews, on the other hand, were not more conciliatory in their treatment of the Samaritans. The copy of the Law possessed by that people they declared to be the legacy of an apostate (Manasseh), and cast grave suspicions upon its genuineness. Certain other Jewish renegades had from time to time taken refuge with the Samaritans. Hence, by degrees, the Samaritans claimed to partake of Jewish blood, especially if doing.so happened to suit their interest. A remarkable instance of this is exhibited in a request which they made to Alexander the Great, about B.C. 332. They desired to be excused payment of tribute in the Sabbatical year, on the plea that as true Israelites, descendants of Ephraim and Manasseh, sons of Joseph, they refrained from cultivating their land in that year. Alexander, on crossquestioning them, discovered the hollowness of their pretensions. They were greatly disconcerted at their failure, and their dissatisfaction probably led to the conduct which induced Alexander to besiege and destroy the city of Samaria. 10 Another instance of claim to Jewish descent appears in the words of the woman of Samaria to our Lord, "Art thou greater than our father Jacob, which gave us this well ?" "—a question which she puts without recollecting that she had just before strongly contrasted the Jews and the Samaritans. Very far were the Jews from admitting this claim to consanguinity on the part of these people. They were ever reminding them that they were after all mere Cuthæans, mere strangers from Assyria. They accused them of worshiping the idol gods buried long ago under the oak of Shechem. 12 They would have no dealings with them that they could 8 Joseph. Ant. xviii. 2, § 2. 9 Joseph. Ant. xi. 8, § 6, ix. 14, §3. 10 Shechem (Eikua) was indeed their un τρόπολις, but the destruction of Samaria seems to have satisfied Alexander. 11 John iv. 12. 12 Gen. xxxv. 4. possibly avoid.13 "Thou art a Samaritan and hast a devil," was the mode in which they expressed themselves when at a loss for a bitter reproach. Every thing that a Samaritan had touched was as swine's flesh to them. The Samaritan was publicly cursed in their synagogues-could not be adduced as a witness in the Jewish courts-could not be admitted to any sort of proselytism—and was thus, so far as the Jew could affect his position, excluded from hope of eternal life. The traditional hatred in which the Jew held him is expressed in Ecclus. 1. 25, 26, "There be two manner of nations which my heart abhorreth, and the third is no nation: they that sit in the mountain of Samaria; and they that dwell among the Philistines; and that foolish people that dwell in Sichem." And so long was it before such a temper could be banished from the Jewish mind, that we find even the Apostles believing that an inhospitable slight shown by a Samaritan village to Christ would be not unduly avenged by calling down fire from heaven. 14 "Ye know not what spirit ye are of," said the large-hearted Son of Man, and we find him on no one occasion uttering any thing to the disparagement of the Samaritans. His words, however, and the records of his ministrations, confirm most thoroughly the view which has been taken above, that the Samaritans were not Jews. At the first sending forth of the Twelve," he charges them, "Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." So again, in his final address to them on Mount Olivet, "Ye shall be witnesses to me in Jerusalem and in all Judæa, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth." 15 So the nine unthankful lepers, Jews, were contrasted by him with the tenth leper, the thankful stranger, who was a Samaritan. So, in his well-known parable, a merciful Samaritan is contrasted with the unmerciful priest and Levite. And the very worship of the two races is described by him as different in character. "Ye worship ye know not what," he said of the Samaritans: "We know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews." 16 Such were the Samaritans of our Lord's day: a people distinct from the Jews, though lying in the very midst of the Jews; a people preserving their identity, though seven centuries had rolled away since they had been brought from Assyria by Esarhaddon, and though they had abandoned their polytheism for a sort of ultra Mosaicism; a people, who though their limits had been gradually contracted, and the rallying place of their religion on Mount Gerizim had been destroyed one hundred and forty years before by John Hyrcanus (B.c. 109), and though Samaria (the city) had been again and again destroyed, and though their territory had been the battle-field of Syria and Egypt-still preserved nationality, still worshiped from Shechem and their other impoverished settlements toward their sacred hill; still retained their separation, and could not coalesce with the Jews. Not indeed that we must suppose that the whole of the country called in our Lord's time Samaria, was in the possession of the Cuthæan 13 This prejudice had, of course, sometimes to give way to necessity, for the disciples had gone to Sychar (Shechem, Eikua) to buy food, while our Lord was talking with the woman of Samaria by the well in its suburb (John iv. 8). And from Luke ix. 52, we learn that the disciples went before our Lord at his command into a certain village of the Samaritans "to make ready" for him. Unless, indeed (though, as we see on both occasions, our Lord's influence over them was not yet complete), we are to attribute this partial abandonment of their ordinary scruples to the change which his example had already wrought in them. 14 Matt. x. 5, 6. 15 Acts i. 8. 16 John iv. 22 Samaritans, or that it had ever been so. "Samaria," says Josephus, 17 "lies between Judæa and Galilee. It commences from a village called Ginæa (Jenin), on the great plain, that of Esdraelon, and extends to the toparchy of Acrabatta," in the lower part of the territory of Ephraim. These points, indicating the extreme northern and the extreme southern parallels of latitude between which Samaria was situated, enable us to fix its boundaries with tolerable certainty. It was bounded northward by the range of hills which commences at Mount Carmel on the west, and, after making a bend to the south-west, runs almost due east to the valley of the Jordan, forming the southern border of the plain of Esdraelon. It touched toward the south, as nearly as possible, the northern limits of Benjamin. Thus it comprehended the ancient territory of Ephraim, and of those Manassites who were west of Jordan. "Its character," Josephus continues, "is in no respect different from that of Judæa. Both abound in mountains and plains, and are suited for agriculture, and productive, wooded, and full of fruits both wild and cultivated. They are not abundantly watered; but much rain falls there. The springs are of an exceedingly sweet taste; and, on account of the quantity of good grass, the cattle there produce more milk than elsewhere. But the best proof of their richness and fertility is that both are thickly populated." The accounts of modern travelers confirm this description by the Jewish historian of the good land" which was allotted to that powerful portion of the house of Joseph which crossed the Jordan, on the first division of the territory. The Cuthæan Samaritans, however, possessed only a few towns and villages of this large area, and these lay almost together in the centre of the district. Shechem or Sychar (as it was contemptuously designated) was their chief settlement, even before Alexander the Great destroyed Samaria, probably because it lay almost close to Mount Gerizim. Afterward it became more prominently so, and there, on the destruction of the temple on Gerizim, by John Hycranus, 18 they built themselves a poor temple. The modern representative of Shechem is Nablus, a corruption of Neapolis, or the "New Town" built by Vespasian a little to the west of the older town, which was then ruined. At Nablus, though in very mean plight, the Samaritans have a settlement still, consisting of about 200 persons. Yet they observe the Law, and celebrate the Passover on a sacred spot on Mount Gerizim with an exactness of minute ceremonial which the Jews themselves have long intermitted.19 Of the Samaritan Pentateuch we shall have to speak presently. 66 § 4. THE JEWS OF THE DISPERSION, or simply THE DISPERSION, was the general title applied to those Jews who remained settled in foreign countries after the return from the Babylonian exile, and during the period of the second Temple. The Dispersion, as a distinct element influencing the entire character of the Jews, dates from the Babylonian exile. Uncertain legends point to earlier settlements in Arabia, Ethiopia, and Abyssinia; but even if these settlements were made, they were isolated and casual, while the Dispersion, of which Babylon was the acknowledged centre, was the outward proof that a faith had succeeded to a kingdom. Apart from 17 B. J. iii. 3, §4. 18 Joseph. Ant. xiii. 9, § 1. 19 For accounts of their celebration of the Day of Atonement and the Passover, see Grove in Vacation Tourists, 1861, and Stanley's Lectures on the Jewish Church, Appendix iii. |