Page:Jewish Encyclopedia Volume 2.pdf/45

13 THE JEWISH ENCYCLOPEDIA

13

Apoplexy Apostasy

[Gratz, "Gesch. der Juden," 3d ed., iii. 600]). This equivalent to " Hellenists " according to Cassel,

The "Pastor of Hernias" ("Similitude," viii. 6, §4; ix. 19, § 1), which is based on a Jewish work,

"Revue des Etudes Juives,"

says that " repentance is not open to apostates and blasphemers of the Lord and those who betray the servants of the Lord." The same idea is expressed in Tosef., Sanh. xiii. 5: "The doors of Gehenna are forever closed behind heretics, apostates, and informers"; with which compare Epistle to Heb. iii. 12, and Apocalypse of Peter 34. It is a remarkable fact in the history of Christianity that, according to Acts xxi. 21, Paul was accused before the council of James and the elders of having taught the Jews Apostasy from the law of Moses; for which reason the early Christians, the Ebionites, "repudiated the Apostle Paul, maintaining he was an apostate from the law " (Irenseus, "Against Heresies," i. xxvi.). It was probably due to the influence of Pauline ChristianPaul Called ity that " many of the Grecians, " as an Josephus (" Contra Ap." ii., § 11) tells, Apostate, "had joined the Jews, and while some continued in their observance of the laws, others, not having the courage to persevere, departed from them again." The destruction of the Temple, which put an end to the entire sacrificial worship, was the critical period of Judaism, which, while greatly increasing the numbers of Pauline Christianity, gave other Gnostic sects an opportunity of winning adherents. In the Maccabean period the blasphemer that stretched out his hands toward the Temple announcing its doom (II Mace. xiv. 33 et seg. compare I Maec. vii. 34 et seg.) was sure to meet the divine wrath. Now many sectaries or Gnostics (Minim) had arisen "who stretched out their hands against the Temple " (Tosef., Sanh. xiii.5; R. H. 17a; compare II Mace. xiv. 33). Moreover, when the last efforts at rebuilding Temple and state ended in

is



avofioi (see

xli.

268).

a denier "), in Sanh. 39a, of the Law, ib. 106a, of the God of Israel (B. M. 71a) of the funda-

(c) "1213

("



mentals (B. B.

a rebellious transgressor in Israel"), (e) TQX 'a-HID CHSt? (" one who has separated from the ways of the Jewish community") (Seder 'Olam R. iii.; R. H. 17a; Tosef., Sanh. xiii. 5). "No sacrifice is accepted from the Hul. 5a; Yer. Lev. R. ii. apostate" (Sifra, I.e. Shek.i. l[46i]; "nor have they any respite from eternal doom in Gehenna" (R. H. 17a; see especially Sifre, Bemidbar 112 to Num. xv. 31). These expressions all probably date from the Maccabean time, when to such men as Jason and Menelaus the words of Ezek. xxxii. 23, 24, were applied: "they who caused terror in the land of the living, and they have borne their shame with them to go down to the pit." The Apostasy of these two men (II Mace. v. 8, 15) being a desertion of both their national and religious cause, filled the people with horror and hatred, and their fate served as a warning for others. The outspoken hostility to the law of the God of Israel on the part of the Syrians involved less danger for the kernel of the Jewish people than the allurements offered in Alexandria by Greek philosophy on the one hand and Roman pomp and power on the other. Here the tendency was manifested to break away from ancient Jewish custom and to seek a wider view of (d) {jJOE" VB'lS ("

166).





"De Migratione Abrahami," xvi.), while the tyranny of a Roman prefect like Placcus, who forced the people to transgress the Law, seems to life (Philo,

have had no lasting effect (Philo, " De Somnis," ii., § 18). Comparing the proselytes with the Apostates, Philo Apostates, says ("On Repentance," ii.): "Those

Alexandrian

who join Israel's faith become at once temperate and merciful, lovers of truth and superior but those to considerations of money and pleasure who forsake the holy laws of God, the apostates, are

intemperate, shameless, unjust, friends of falsehood and perjury, ready to sell their freedom for pleasures of the belly, bringing ruin upon body and Philo's own nephew, Tiberius Julius Alexansoul. " der, son of Alexander the Alabarch, became an apostate, and to this fact he owed his high rank as procurator, first of Judea, then of Alexandria becoming afterward general and friend of Titus at the siege of Jerusalem (Schurer, "Gesch." i. 473-474). Against the many Apostates in the time of Caligula the third book of the Maccabees loudly protests for Gratz ("Gesch. der Juden," 2d ed., iii. 358, 631) has almost convincingly shown that it was written While the faithful Jews for that very purpose. who denied the royal command and refused to apostatize from their ancestral faitli were rescued from peril and reinstated as citizens of Alexandria, the

Apostates were punished and ignominiously put to death by their fellow-countrymen (III Mace. ii. 32, 19-57, vii. 10-15) and the declaration was made that "those of the Jewish race who voluntarily apostatized from the holy God and from the law of God, transgressing the divine commandments for vi.



the belly's sake, would also never be well disposed toward the affairs of the king.



disastrous failure and in the persecution of the law-observing Jews, many Apostates of the new Christian converts became informers against their brethren in from Judaism, order to insinuate themselves into the favor of the Romans. This naturally increased their mutual hostility, and widened the gulf between the Synagogue and the Church. The prayer that the power of wickedness as embodied in heathenism might be destroyed (which destruction was believed to be one of the signs of the coming of the Messiah) was at this time transformed into an execration of the Apostates and slanderers "(Birkat haMinim, " Ber. 28* Yer. Ber. iv. 3, p. 8a Justin, " Dial, cum Tryphone," xxxviii.). As a typical apostate,

Christian





who, from being a great expounder of the Law, had become an open transgressor, a teacher of false doctrines, and a seducer or betrayer of his coreligionists, the Talmud singles out Elisha ben Abuyah, known as Aher, "changed into another one." The many traditions about his life, which became an object of popular legend, agree in the one fact that his Gnosticism made him a determined antagonist of the Law at the very time when Roman perseAher the cution tested Jewish loyalty to the Apostate, utmost; and consequently he is represented as having heard a divine voice ("batkol") issue from heaven, saying: "'Return, ye backsliding children, and I will heal your backsli-