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 JEWS

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JEWS

St. Paul's teacher, had more authority than ever be- fore. Yet the national party remained in an almost constant state of mutiny, wliile the Christians were persecuted by Agrippa. Upon Agrippa's death (a. d. 44), the country was again subjected to Roman pro- curators, and this was the prelude to the destruction of Jerusalem and the Jewsh people. Nearly all the seven procurators who ruletl Judea from a. d. 44 to 66 acted as though they sought to drive its population to de- spair and revolt. Gradually, the confusion became so great and so general as manifestly to presage the dissolution of the commonwealth. At length, in a. d. 66, in spite of all the precau- tionary efforts of Agrip- pa II, the party of the Zealots burst into an open rebellion, which was terminated (a. d. 70) by the capture of Jerusalem by Titus, the destruction of the Tem- ple, and the massacre and the banishment of hundreds of thousands of the unhappy people, who were scattered among their brethren in all parts of the world. According to Eusebius, the Christians of Jeru- salem, forewarned by their Master, escaped the horrors of the last siege, by removing in due time to Pella, east of the Jordan. Promi- nent among the Jewish writers of the first cen- tury of our era are Philo, who pleaded the Jewish cause at Rome before Caligula, and Josephus, who acted as Jewish Governor of Galilee during the final revolt against Rome, and described its vicis- situdes and horrors in a thrilling, and probably also in an exaggerated, manner.

(5) Last Day.s of Pagan Rome (A. D. 70-3S0). —Rome ex- ulted over fallen Jeru- salem, and struck coins commemorative

of the hard won victory. Antonio Ciseri, Chu

The chief leaders of the defence, a long train of heavily chained captives, the vessels of the Temple, the seven- branched candlestick, the golden table, and a roll of the Law, graced Titus's triumph in the imperial city. And yet three strong fortresses in Palestine still held out against the Romans: Herodium, Machsrus, and Masada. The first two fell in a. d. 71,andthethird, the following year, which thus witnessed the complete con- quest of Judea. For a while longer, certain fugitive Judean Zealots strove to foment a rebellion in Egypt and inCyrenaica. Buttheireffortssooncametonaught, and Vespasian availed himself of the Egyptian commo- tion to close for ever the temple of Onias in Ileliopolis. At this juncture, it looked as though t lie distinct groups of Jewish families were henceforth ilostincd to drift separately, finally to be absorbed by the various nations

in the midst of which they chanced to live. This dan- ger was, however, averted by the rapid concentration of the surviving Jews in two great communities, mostly independent of each other, and corresponding to the two great divisions of the world at the time. "The first naturally comprised all the Jews who hved this side of the Euphrates. Not long after the fall of Jerusalem and its subsequent misfortunes, they gradually ac- knowledged the authority of a new Sanhedrin, which, in whatever way it arose, was actually constituted at Jamnia (Jabne), under the presidency of Rab- 1)1 Jochanan ben Zac- cai. Together with the Sanhedrin [now the supreme Court (Beth Din) of the Western communities], there was at Jamnia a school in which Jochanan in- culcated the oral Law (specifically the Hala- cha) handed down by the fathers, and de- livered expository lec- tures (Hagada) on the other Hebrew Scrip- tures distinct from the wiitten Law (Penta- teuch). Jochanan's successor as the head of the Sanhedrin (a. d. SO) was Rabbi Gam- aliel II, who took the title of Nasi (" prince " : among the Romans, ■patriarch"). He also lived at Jamnia, and presided over its school, on the model of which other schools were gradually formed in the neighbourhood. He finally transmitted (A. D. lis) to his suc- cessors, the " patri- archs of the West", a religious authority to which obedience and reverence were hence- forth paid, even after the seat of this author- ity was sliifted first to Sepphoris, and finally to Tiberias.

The supremacy of "Rabbinism", thus firmly established among the Western Jews, prevailed like- wise in the other great community which comprised all the Jewish families east of the Euphrates. The chief of this Babylo- nian community assumed the title of Resh-Galutha (prince of the Captivity), and was a powerful feu- datory of the Parthian Empire. He was the su- preme judge of the minor communities, both in civil and in criminal matters, and exercised in many other ways a wellnigh absolute authority over them. The principal districts under liis jurisdiction were those of Nares, Sora, Pumbeditha. Nahardea, Nahar-Paked, and Machuza, whose rabbinical schools were destined to enjoy the greatest fame and inflvience. The patri- archs of the West possessed much less temporal au- thority than the princes of the Captivity ; and this was only natural in view of the suspicious watchfulness which Vespasian and Titus exercised over the Jews of

f yanta Felicita, Flon