Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 39.djvu/545

Rh power" were friendly to the Romans. Are we then to suppose that it was the persons of Jewish "ethnical character" who favored the Romans, while those of Gentile "ethnical character" were opposed to them? But if that supposition is absurd, the only alternative is that the local civil government was ethnically Gentile. That is exactly my contention.

At pp. 973 and 976 of the Keepers of the Herd of Swine I have fully discussed this question of the ethnical character of the general population. I have shown that, according to Josephus, who surely ought to have known, Gadara was as much a Gentile city as Ptolemais; I have proved that he includes Gadara among the cities "that rose up against the Jews that were among them," which is a pretty definite expression of his belief that the "ethnical character of the general population" was Gentile. There is no question here of Jews of the Roman party fighting with Jews of the Zealot party, as Mr. Gladstone suggests. It is the non-Jewish and anti-Jewish general population which rises up against the Jews who had settled "among them."

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

More fatal still. But, once more not to me. I adduce not one, but a variety of "items" in proof of the non-Judaic character of the population of Gadara: the evidence of history; that of the coinage of the city; the direct testimony of Josephus, just cited—to mention no others. I repeat, if the wealthy people and those connected with them—the "classes" and the "hangers on" of Mr. Gladstone's well-known taxonomy—were, as he appears to admit they were, Gentiles; if the "civil government" was in their hands, as the coinage proves it was—what becomes of Mr. Gladstone's original proposition in The impregnable Rock of Scripture that "the population of Gadara, and still less (if less may be) the population of the neighborhood," were "Hebrews bound by the Mosaic law"? And what is the importance of estimating the precise proportion of Hebrews who may have resided, either in the city of Gadara, or in its dependent territory, when, as Mr. Gladstone now seems to admit (I am careful to say "seems"), the government, and consequently the law which ruled in that territory and defined civil right and wrong, was Gentile and not Judaic? But perhaps Mr. Gladstone is prepared to maintain that the Gentile "local civil government" of a city of the Decapolis administered Jewish law; and showed their respect for it, more particularly, by stamping their coinage with effigies of the emperors.

In point of fact, in his haste to attribute to me errors which I have not committed, Mr. Gladstone has given away his case.

He fatally confounds the question of political party with those of nationality and of religion, and assumes that those who