Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 39.djvu/524

508 Again, Gamala, on the Sea of Tiberias, adhered at this time to Rome; a little later we find it one of the last and most obstinate strongholds of Judaism against Vespasian, Further, Gabara, as I shall presently show, exhibited similar variations.

In truth, as Milman says, "every city was torn to pieces by little animosities; wherever the insurgents had time to breathe from the assaults of the Romans, they turned their swords against each other." It was in Jerusalem most of all that these bloody factions raged; they were exasperated by the arrival of strangers; the peace parties shed the blood of the warlike, and the war parties of the peaceful. In truth, such had long been the condition of that city, that Vespasian wisely postponed the commencement of his operations for fear he should extinguish the local feuds, which, as he saw, were wasting the strength of the rebels, and should compel them to unite together.

It is, then, quite conceivable that when Josephus says the revolted Jews burned some places and subjugated or kept down others in Gadaris, he means to speak of places where the peace party, which might be Jewish or not Jewish, predominated; and when he says the Hippenes and the Gadarenes acted against the Jews, he probably means that the Jews of the war party were put down by antagonists averse to war, though of their own race, as much as, and even possibly more than, by Gentile portions of the population. This, I have said, is a conceivable opinion. But, in order to justify what I have said of the argument of Prof. Huxley, I must show that it is an opinion not only conceivable, but warranted, and even required, by a consideration of the whole evidence on the record. That is the best conclusion, which best meets all the points of the case. The conclusion reached by Prof. Huxley leaves Josephus in hopeless contradiction to himself.

For I shall now proceed to show that Gadara or Gadaris, first, was an important center of Jewish population, by which I mean population subject to the Mosaic law; secondly, was a recognized seat of Jewish military strength; and thirdly, according to Josephus himself, acknowledged the law of Moses as its local public law, and was bound to obey it.

—Mr. Huxley places great reliance on the "classical" work of Dr. Schürer, which treats of the history of the Jewish people in the time of our Lord. And certainly a high tribute to it is due from him, as it seems to have supplied nearly all his material for the history and character of Gadara; except, indeed, the exaggeration of the terms in which