Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 39.djvu/521

Rh distinguished, namely, the city of Gadara and the vicinage attached to it, not as a mere pomærium, but as a rural district.

2. He more fatally confounds the local civil government and its following, including, perhaps, the whole wealthy class and those attached to it, with the ethnical character of the general population.

3. His one item of direct evidence as to the Gentile character of the city refers only to the former and not to the latter.

4. He fatally confounds the question of political party with those of nationality and of religion, and assumes that those who took the side of Rome in the factions that prevailed could not be subject to the Mosaic law.

5. His examination of the text of Josephus is alike one-sided, inadequate, and erroneous.

6. Finally, he sets aside, on grounds not critical or historical, but purely subjective, the primary historical testimony on the subject, namely, that of the three Synoptic Evangelists, who write as contemporaries, and deal directly with the subject, neither of which is done by any other authority.

7. And he treats the entire question, in the narrowed form in which it arises upon secular testimony, as if it were capable of a solution so clear and summary as to warrant the use of the extremest weapons of controversy against those who presume to differ from him.

Our main question, then, is the lawfulness and innocence of the employment of the swineherds. The ethnical character of Gadara and of its district derives its interest from its relation to that main question. In my opinion, not formed without an attempt at full examination, there is no historical warrant for doubting that the swineherds were persons bound by the Mosaic law. In the opinion of Mr. Huxley, "the proof that Gadara was, to all intents and purposes, a Gentile and not a Jewish city, is complete." And, again, Gadara was, "for Josephus, just as much a Gentile city as Ptolemais." Utterly contesting these two propositions, I make two admissions: first, that one or more of the many and sparse references of Josephus may easily mislead a prepossessed and incomplete inquirer; and secondly, that in the territory of Gadara, and in various other parts of Palestine, it would be a mistake to look for a perfectly homogeneous population either Hebrew or Gentile.

Outside the text of Josephus, Prof. Huxley adduces but a single fact in support of his allegations concerning Gadara—the fact, namely, that its coinage was Gentile. But coinage is essentially, and is most of all in conquered a country, the work of the