Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 39.djvu/526

510 I confess that Dr. Schürer appears to me to have seriously misapprehended in some degree the spirit of this measure as well as the facts, when he says that it involved the abolition of whatever residue of political independence had thus long remained to Palestine, because Hyrcanus was now deprived of his temporal and confined to his priestly power. If we examine the matter according to the reason of the case, it was probably a great gain to the population to have the Mosaic law administered at its own doors by its own local leaders rather than by a priest-king sitting at a distance in Jerusalem. If we test it by the general spirit of the policy of this proconsul, we are led to suppose it friendly, because with it there was combined the rebuilding of some cities which had been overthrown. If we follow the authority of Josephus, we are bound to take it as a measure altogether favorable to Jewish liberties; for he says, "thus the Jews were liberated from dynastic rule, and remained under the government of their local heads" (ὲν ὰριστοκρατείᾁ διἢγν).

Since the text, as it stands, entirely overthrows the doctrine that Gadara was a Gentile city, the propounders of that theory can only meet their difficulty by altering it, although they must surely feel that the contradiction of two independent works is a remedy not daring only, but rather desperate.

But, independently of the confirmatory witness of a double text, Josephus can not have written Gazara, for, if he had done so, he would have committed the absurd error of contradicting himself in the very sentence in which he wrote it.

Gazara is not only "far on the other side of Jordan." We are dealing with the northeast of the country, and Gazara is in the extreme southwest. Josephus says expressly that Gabinius divided the country into five equal districts. Now the old kingdom of Judæa may be taken roughly as one third of Palestine. Samaria was probably excluded: even if it were not, the case is not greatly altered. For the emendation thus "pointed out" entirely overthrows the equality of the districts. It gives to Judæa three out of the five Sanhedrims, and, leaving Amathus for the country beyond Jordan, assigns to Sepphoris alone the Galilees and Decapolis, or a territory about as large as that given to the three southern centers conjointly.

It can hardly be necessary to observe that, besides this fatal objection, Gazara seems to be disqualified by its geographical remoteness near the southwestern border, and perhaps also by comparative historical insignificance.

The emendation, then, has to be committed emendaturis ignibus for self-contradiction; and the twice-repeated testimony of Josephus stands intact, showing that, shortly after the time of