least degree given up, or even being able to give up, the kernel of its unique national endeavours, claims, and hopes, it had arrived, almost in the midst of the outward glory of the hagiocracy, at the worst and final necessity. To this it submitted in spite of its bitterness, and yet it seemed to render all its high demands and expectations absolutely incapable of fulfilment. Instead of the sovereignty of its God in everything and above everything, it had got the arbitrary power of a foreign all-dominating human sovereign. Instead of the heathen supremacy of Greece which it had shaken off a hundred years before with gigantic struggles, it had got the much more violent supremacy of Rome. Yet outwardly it was still a people, and in spite of all the oppressive vicissitudes of five hundred years, it had continually increased in strength and in self-consciousness; and now in the fresh glory of its peculiar science and literature, it felt with greater pride than ever that it was the people of God.'

V. THE DEVELOPMENT OF NATIONALITY, LITERATURE, AND SCIENCE IN THE LATER GREEK AGE.

It is a fact beyond doubt and of great significance for the final unfolding of the history of Israel, that the nucleus of the people, at any rate,-in spite of the great vicissitudes of its outward destinies, in spite of the increasing infusion of Roman elements, and the frightful dissolution produced by the tyranny of Herod, and in spite of its dispersion among the heathen which daily became more mischievous,-was still on the whole loyal and steadfast in the maintenance of its nationality, and did not permit any other object even now to lead it astray from its higher endeavours and its eternal hopes. The Asmoneans might lose sight more and more of what rose before the nation as its ultimate and highest goal; a Herodian dynasty which was in effect of alien birth, might shrink out of mere worldly prudence from publicly mocking its sacred objects and its faith in a higher divine destiny yet awaiting it; but even in its lower strata the nucleus of the people remained true. Through the bitter disappointments and the dark tyrannies of the last hundred years the spirit of the nation had lost much of its wholesomeness and rectitude, yet its secret heart still vibrated with the powerful new aspiration which the Maccabean days had generated.

Of this we have seen the proofs on the surface of the national history as it has been already explained. Not all the insolent

acts of the later Asmoneans, not all the altercations of the schools disputing for the leadership, not all the frightfully oppressive and crushing force of Herod and his coadjutors, could stifle the conviction that the community of God was destined to some other purpose in the world than that to which they wished to apply it. And this conviction was always stirring, whether in open utterance or in silence, in public tumults and risings, in despair and in hideous suppression, in the glorious doctrine of immortality which enabled the champion for his faith to rejoice in death, and in fact, as though to exhaust all possible sources, in the demand for simple subjection beneath the Romans. Men like Herod and his confidential agent Nicolaus of Damascus might lament in private, or even publicly before the emperor, over the perpetual love of disturbance and the stiff-necked pride of the Judeans, and regard such ineradicable faults simply as evils no less inexplicable than tiresome; but for this constant unrest there were only too good reasons, and it mocked at the complaints of all who had hitherto attempted to subdue it.

2

Still more powerful than the violent public outbreaks of discontent were the quiet counter-workings of the wit and the involuntary play of the imagination of the people. These were never still. The last prince Archelaus, for example, had taken to wife the beautiful Glaphyra, though she was formerly married to his brother and had had children by him. In so doing, he transgressed the law; and it was immediately related among the people that her beloved Alexander had appeared to her in a dream and severely reproached her for having dared after his death to take for her husband first of all the Libyan king Juba, and then even his own brother Archelaus; soon after this, it was added, she died. In no more moving and emphatic manner could the popular voice condemn this breach of the law on the part of its reigning prince.

It is true that between the heathen and those who were dispersed in the Greek or Roman empire or who came into nearer contact with them, there was kindled towards the expiration of this period over a wider and wider area the fire of an irreconcilable hatred. The wild outbreaks of this feeling could only with difficulty be restrained; on its obscure impulses much light has been already thrown. Among the number of these Judeans there were many whose own bent and

1 Cf. Jos. Bell. Jud. ii. 6, 2; Ant. xvii. 11, 3.

2 P. 439.

4.

3 Jos. Bell. Jud. ii. 7, 4; Ant. xvii. 13,

6

disposition were entirely heathen, and who only remained Judeans for the sake of external advantages. They only cared for Judeanism in contrast to heathenism in so far as it appeared to them in its freedom from idolatrous worship and from many other superstitions to lay down the same views which many free-thinking heathens regarded as true, and which the Greek philosophical schools were accustomed to teach. To this class belonged such men as Herod, his private secretary Nicolaus, and others like them. But the great mass still held fast to the ancestral faith, as it was then taught from Jerusalem as its centre for the benefit of the whole world. Regarding themselves, so far as concerned religion, as a people specially distinguished by God and elevated far above the heathen, with a glorious past and a still more glorious future, celebrating their peculiar usages with as much tenacity as publicity, and yet in commerce and trade desirous of making profit out of the heathen and eager in the pursuit of their worldly privileges and rights, they were incessantly goading on the suspicions and hostility of the heathen. The Judeans hate everyone, and are hated by everyone,'—such was the common saying at the end of this period among Greeks and Romans. Most of the Judeans were in fact clever enough not merely in religion, but in many of the affairs of life and government, to find out the weak points of heathenism, which was now rapidly sinking lower and lower. So long, however, as the ruling Pharisaic school, while requiring strictness in religion, demanded it only in matters of law and custom, Judean pride and sagacity in their opposition to heathenism were nothing but ever-flowing springs of provocation and animosity. That the true God and the true religion, with its constitution, its law, and all its sacred objects, were the everlasting refuge of Israel in the vicissitudes of years, and formed its perpetual superiority and privilege over all heathenism, remained the constant consolation of all pious minds. Under the blinding yoke of Pharisaic maxims, however, there were certainly but few in the midst of the Greeks and Romans who grasped the pre-eminence of Israel with such acuteness, confidence, and pride, and yet at the same time with such child-like simplicity, as the author of the book of Wisdom. The depression and want of spirit on the part of many of the most active minds, particularly after the total collapse of the Maccabean elevation, became so deep and

See in particular 3 Macc. iii. 7, 19; vii. 4; Jos. Ant. xiii. 8, 3; Contr. Ap. ii. 10.

2 See Wisd. of Sol. xii. 22; xv. 2 sq.; cf. i. 6.

lasting as even to make themselves felt in literature by standing abusive epithets of certain persons generally known as national enemies, such as Antiochus, and by other violent expressions of excited helplessness; while in earlier and better times the constant national enemies are at most characterised by some brief witticism, such as the uncircumcised.' The depth of the humiliation of which the nation was conscious in the course of this long period, and the intensity of the yearning with which, in its enforced inaction, it learned to wait for a grand permanent deliverance to come, did but habituate many people all the more to the idea of instantaneous and wonderful divine acts; and the marvels of the ancient history in the sacred books were now read with as much zeal as they were in their individual significance little understood. In no age consequently did the unhistorical spirit grow so rapidly and dangerously. It was now no effort to many writers to imagine and to describe how Heliodorus when on the point of desecrating and plundering the sanctuary had in a moment fallen down lamed, but had been cured again in an equally short space of time by the prayer of the high-priest; 2 or how Habakkuk had been transported with his repast by an angel from Palestine to Babylon in an instant, and in another instant had been carried back again; while the situation of Daniel's three friends in the fire in which they were to have perished is depicted soon after the composition of the book of Daniel in colours infinitely more glowing. The tremendous tension, however, and the violent convulsion of mind which is revealed in such conceptions and narratives, and to which the whole history of Israel rises with growing vehemence, further seeks an outlet in various ways in the most sudden and violent revolts, examples of which have been already cited.

So long, however, as there was a solid nucleus of the nation residing round about Jerusalem and in Galilee, labouring just like a regular people and cultivating the soil, the great majority of them being contented with their lot, less injury would be inflicted by these isolated excesses and more general dangers. Not yet had hatred from without so penetrated to the core of the nation, while it was engaged in tranquil labour

Violent epithets of this kind are chiefly found in the second and following books of the Maccabees; see also Dan. Apocr. iii. 32, and other passages. 22 Macc. iii.; 4 Macc. iv.

Dan. Apocr. xiv. 30-38; cf. a similar

instance in the case of Buddha and the Buddhists in the Journ. of the American Orient. Soc. iii. p. 65 sq.

Dan. Apocr. iii. 46-5, comp. with the canonical edition, iii. 22 sq.

undisturbed around its hearth, as to become unendurable. The contests of the schools with their one-sided efforts would easily, after raging for a time, slide off again, like the passion for destruction on the part of individual tyrants, from the calm and healthy dispositions of an ordinary man, provided he was still bound by pure love to a sure fatherland, and felt himself a member of a grand community which nothing could shake. Nor may we overlook the fact that in spite of all its wide dispersion the nation still possessed a solid nucleus with a country of its own, and with this retained the possibility of every higher development and of the reparation of its injuries. More than five hundred years had elapsed since its second settlement, and during all this time this steadfast centre had withstood every fresh storm, had sent down its roots deeper and deeper, and spread out its branches wider and wider. The national contentment, also, its ingenuousness, its humour and cheerfulness, were still, when times were at all endurable, on the whole unbroken.

-The most perfect means, however, of tracing the deepest movements of the national life of these ages are supplied by their literary remains. Even under circumstances which gradually became so extremely depressed and gloomy, literature developed itself with an activity and variety which increased as time went on. It flourished, as we must infer from distinct traces, not only in the holy land and among the Hellenists, but also among the eastern Judeans beneath the Parthian sway; though it must be added that none of these books, originally written in Hebrew or Aramaic, would ever have come down to us but for their power to outlast their own age, conferred on them by their being early translated into Greek, and being kept up by the Hellenistic culture, and still more by the Christian, which followed closely in its steps. All these works, it is true, bear, on the whole, to an even greater extent than those of the earlier periods of the third stage of the history, the stamp of close dependence on the older writings, which were regarded more and more comprehensively as holy; so completely did the nation feel, as its worldly position sank lower and lower, that it was dependent solely on the power and truths of the most enduring of its older works, and so exclusive was the connection of its noblest and most vigorous powers in life and action with the past. For this reason the inner deficiencies and imperfections of the general literature of the age become more and more apparent, especially after the terrible