CHAPTER III - POGROM II: JUDAEA CAPTA

(i)

The last pogrom was concerned with the birth of a nation. This one is concerned with its death. Israel died when Titus conquered Jerusalem in A.D. 70. Its Temple was destroyed and the Books of the Law were carried off to Rome.

We are tempted to say that a purpose of history was fulfilled. Israel had fulfilled its function. It had produced its Messiah, of whom the Temple was the symbol and the prototype. This Messiah was the fulfilment of the Law and the last of the Prophets. God now spoke through His Son. Calvary had replaced the Pasch and Rome was the New Jerusalem. But we can, at least, share the tears of Christ as he wept over the fate of His city.

If the counsel of Christ had been followed by the nation—“Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s”—Israel might well have continued and Jerusalem remained unbroken. The Gospel was preached by the Apostles within the framework of the Empire, and despite much persecution at the beginning Christianity triumphed eventually under Constantine, when Caesar rendered to God and God rendered to Caesar. Unfortunately Israel retained its notion that it was an autonomous theocracy and a people apart, while Imperial Rome, captured by the myth of its invincibility and supremacy, was equally adamant that Israel and its religion must be integrated into, and subordinated to, the concept of a universal empire.

Before we consider the Jerusalem pogrom it is instructive to see what the Romans thought of the Jews. They were, in Pliny’s words, “a nation outstanding in their contempt of idols”. Strabo said of them: “they dwell apart”. Tacitus described them as “obstinate in faith, quick to mercy among themselves, but towards all others they have a hostile hate ... they give neither adulation to kings nor honour to the Caesars”. They are exclusive, concludes Juvenal, “they will not show their ways to anyone unless he cherishes the same sacred things”. He mentions the case of a Roman who is converted to Judaism. This man is circumcised and despises his fellow Romans who are not Jews.

The seeds of pogrom are there. Caesar is a god. The Romans are the people of a god. They are unique and none can equal them. They are Herrenvolk, the race of supermen, but in the mirror of the Jews they see a reflection which tells them that God is greater than Caesar, that Jews are superior to Romans. The image is unbearable.

“Patience towards the Jews”, wrote Tacitus, “lasted until the procuracy of Gessius Florus.” This man was procurator in the Roman province of Palestine in A.D. 64. He was the last of a number of greedy procurators—one of whom was an apostate Jew—who had oppressed the nation in various ways. Florus was particularly unscrupulous—accepting bribes and not fulfilling his promises, plundering Temple funds and quelling the ensuing riots with cruelty and bloodshed.

The time was ripe for rebellion. Both Tacitus and Suetonius mentioned, as a major cause of the war, the popular belief in the advent of a Messiah who would liberate the nation from the yoke of Rome. The Roman garrison in Jerusalem was slain to a man. And when Cestius Gallus, Legate of Syria, led an army into Judaea, it was repulsed from Jerusalem and then defeated even more decisively than Varrus on the Rhine. The army lost an estimated six thousand men and the pride of Rome was mortally wounded. Pogrom burst into flame.

Intelligence was brought to Nero, who was then in Achaia. The best commander in the Roman army was commissioned to break the revolt. He was Vespasian, and he sent his son, Titus, to Alexandria to lead the Fifth and the Twelfth legions, while he himself went, at once, to Syria to raise mercenaries and mobilise available Roman troops.

In the spring of the year A.D. 67 Vespasian was ready to move. Under him were the crack legions of the Empire—the Fifth, the Tenth and the Fifteenth—together with a number of cohorts and mercenaries numbering roughly sixty thousand men. Against them was an ill-organised force, divided and at war within itself, with little armour, little provisions, few engines of war, and the conviction that they were the soldiers of God and that the hour of destiny had sounded for the nation. They had no allies—their own exclusiveness had seen to that—no support from the Jews of the Dispersion in Asia, in Egypt and in other places in the Empire. They faced the finest fighting force in the world.

The details of the campaign need not detain us. Little quarter was sought and little given. Despite internal civil war, that brilliant renegade Josephus led them with skill until he was captured. Vespasian reduced Galilee and Judaea and inexorably closed in on the capital. When he became Emperor he left his son Titus to conquer Jerusalem.

As Titus assembled his forces in preparation for the siege there was little unity in the capital. Both in Jerusalem and in the provinces there was a faction for peace and a faction for war. The war party was composed of younger Jews; the older and wiser ones being in favour of terms with the Romans and peace. The nation was torn in two. Bands of young Zealots prowled the country in guerrilla bands, whipped into frenzy partly by patriotism, partly by Messianism—they styled themselves Saviours of the Nation—partly by greed. Peaceful families were robbed and their houses burned under the pretext that they were traitors and selling out their country to the Romans. As the Roman campaign spread, the robber Zealots concentrated in Jerusalem, until, led by a maniac named John of Gischala, they massacred the High Priest and indulged in a pogrom of their own. Twelve thousand of the upper classes were murdered—“massacred”, said Josephus, “like a herd of unclean animals”. The issue of the pogrom was clear—join us or die.

In the last winter that Jerusalem was to know, there were no less than three factions warring with each other in the city. The Zealots had split into two antagonistic groups, one led by John, the other by Eleazar, who had quartered his band in the Inner Court of the Temple itself. As these fought with each other, pious Jews still attended the religious ceremonies, carried on at the altar, under a cloud of arrows and missiles from the forces of John. The ordinary people prayed in their piety that the Romans would soon come and deliver them from the tyranny of these lunatic factions who had long ago crossed the fringe of sanity. A third faction existed called the Idumeans, and nothing united the three bands except pogrom against those who would not fight against Rome.

At length, on April 14th in the year 70, the army of Titus reached the gates of Jerusalem, phalanx after phalanx of them, six deep, picked legionaries from the Alexandrian and Euphrates stations, comprising the Fifth, Tenth, Twelfth and Fifteenth legions, the flower of the Roman army.

As the army marched, the Temple in all its Herodian magnificence dazzled them with its size and splendour. Built on a rock it stood at an elevation of over five hundred feet, and when the sun rose over the Mount of Olives its golden pinnacles glittered and the sun was reflected on the ten doors in the gateway towers. Nine of the doors were over fifty feet high and were sheeted in gold and silver, and the tenth, the Beautiful Gate, was seventy feet high and made of Corinthian brass. The father of Tiberius Alexander, chief commander of Titus, had covered them with gold and silver.

While the first skirmishes were taking place the rival Zealots of John and Eleazar fought hand to hand on the steps of the altar of the Lord. But thereafter against the common enemy there was an uneasy truce. The damage, however, was done. During the civil war no attempt had been made to provision the city and it was in no position to withstand a prolonged siege.

As time went on John and Eleazar assumed the stature of tyrants to the terrified townspeople, who in the last days of the city felt that it was the end of the world. All day long the ballistae of the Roman besiegers hurled rocks down upon them and the earth shook as the engineers hammered away at the thick walls of the city with their rams. At any moment the Zealots would burst into their houses and torture and kill them in search of food. At length the starved townsfolk took to creeping out of the city at night in search of whatever food they could find. On these—who lived neither in the world of the Zealots nor in the world of the besiegers—Titus let loose the full fury of pogrom. They were ambushed, captured, scourged and crucified before the walls. Each morning as many as five hundred of these wretches were seen by the inhabitants writhing on their gibbets until there was no more wood for crosses.

Inexorably the Roman machine drove forward until only the Temple and the Upper City held out. In the Temple were the Zealots and about six thousand bewildered lay people who had listened to the ravings of a prophet, of whom there were many in those last despairing days. The prophet said that God wished all Jews to go to the Temple where He would work a miracle to save his people. It was, said other prophets, the darkest hour, the hour when the promised Messiah would undoubtedly come, a warrior hero to conquer the legions and make of Jerusalem the capital of a new empire.

But on August 10th, the anniversary of the destruction of the Temple by the Persians, disobedient legionaries set fire to the Temple. A few days previously a council of war under Titus had decreed that the Temple was to be spared as one of the wonders of the Empire. Titus himself pursued his maddened legionaries and bade them extinguish the flames. But in the full fury of pogrom they would not listen. The six thousand lay people were slain on the steps of the altar. As Titus and his officers gazed in awe at the Holy of Holies a mercenary set it on fire with a blazing beam. The mercenary gave as his defence that he was compelled by a god (“by a certain Divine Fury”, records Josephus¹).

The eagles of Rome were pitched on the smoking

ruins² and the treasures counted. So great were they that the gold standard in Syria plunged to half its value. But that was small in comparison with the loss of their Temple to the Jews. Something died in their hearts.

The Upper City capitulated after a time and this was followed by dreadful scenes of carnage. The aged and infirm, having no market value, were killed, the young were sent to the mines in Egypt, and numbers were kept for public display and amusement in the amphitheatres. The city was razed to the ground, except for three towers which were left to commemorate the victory. The Tenth Legion was left on guard over the ruins to prevent any Jews from returning, and Titus departed for Rome. On the way back—to commemorate his brother’s birthday—Titus flung two thousand, five hundred of his captives to the beasts and gladiators in the amphitheatre of Caesarea Philippi. The campaign had cost the Jews one million and a half lives and one hundred thousand of them slavery.

For a brief time in the dying city Titus had stood in the presence of the Unknown God. As the Holy of Holies was blazing he had seen the golden table, the seven-branched candlestick and the Books of the Law. These he had ordered to be saved and they were carried in triumph down the Appian Way and engraved on his triumphal arch in the Forum.

The Romans put up Palestine for sale to colonists, and, with a final twist of the knife, ordered that the Jews of the Dispersion should continue to pay the tax of two drachmas levied for Temple funds, in order to rebuild the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus. But the main fact is that Israel ceased to exist as a separate and distinct nation. It should by ordinary logic have ceased to exist, in virtue of its casualties and of its slavery, in virtue of the mass slayings in the amphitheatre to amuse their masters, the civilised savages, whose own retribution would richly come from the barbarians without their walls. The Roman Empire belongs now to the antiquary but the Jewish nation is back in Israel.³

(ii)

Although the nation had died with the fall of Jerusalem, its heritage enriched the Western world. Without Judaism, Christianity would not have been possible. God chose to speak through the Jewish prophets and reveal Himself to mankind, until, finally, He spoke through His Son. It is, of course, here that we find the specific difference between the Jewish and Christian religions. Nevertheless Christianity is the fulfilment and transfiguration of Judaism, symbolised for Christians in the miracle on Mount Tabor when Moses and Elias, the Law and the Prophets, witnessed the glory of the humanity of Christ. It was they who had witnessed so faithfully to man’s origin from the One God, and now they saw how mankind through Christ could be transfigured when it was redeemed.

To the Christian this miracle also symbolises the debt that is owed to Israel. In its darkest hours there was always a faithful nucleus who shielded the precious flame of God’s revelation against the pagan gods of conquering empires. Judaism is half of God’s revelation, the less important half, the Christian would say, but still necessary for the wholeness of that religion which comes from God. The revelation on Mount Sinai is not destroyed but fulfilled by the Sermon on the Mount. Calvary itself is not complete without Bethlehem, and if the first is the nation’s shame, the second is its glory.

On the point of Calvary clear thinking is necessary to determine the question of imputability. It is essential that we do so here, because the remaining pogroms take place in the Christian era and it is nearly always Calvary which is the excuse for pogrom. The imputability of the nation for the death of Christ was, in fact, the basis of an appeal to the newly constituted State of Israel to reopen the trial of Christ. To this appeal, made by an Amsterdam lawyer called Lobbe, there is no recorded reply.

The illegality of the trial of Christ is well known: the suborning of witnesses, the discrepancies in their evidence, the time of the trial before the morning sacrifice, the prejudice of the judges, the omission of witnesses for the defence, the passing of the verdict before the statutory time for consideration—all are known. Neither the tribunal nor the trial have a shred of justification.

Equally must we condemn the Gentile tribunal. Before Pilate, the symbol of Gentile supremacy, Christ is judged innocent yet condemned to crucifixion. Jew and Gentile are both responsible, although the degree of responsibility may not be the same for both.

We must beware, here, of blanket terms. When we say that the Jews were responsible what precisely do we mean by the universal—Jews!

When Christ was born there were colonies of Jews in all the Roman provinces. Harnack thought that they made up seven per cent of the whole population of the Empire at this time. Only a small fraction of this total number came into contact with Christ during the short period of His public ministry. His condemnation by the few in Jerusalem must be understood within this dimension.

To understand that condemnation we must examine the social structure in Jerusalem at that time. Passover was the feast of the birthday of the nation and Jerusalem attracted the lunatic fringe of the patriots, the Zealots. To this faction Christ would have little appeal. We have seen what they did during the Jerusalem pogrom. They were the nucleus of any revolt or rebellion. To them the Messiah was the warrior prince who would bow Rome to the dust—they were the contemporary equivalent of the Stern gang; the reductio ad absurdum of the national pride, Maccabees gone mad.

At the other extreme to these dynamic lunatics were the static and calculating priests. Their vehicle of power was their assembly—the Sanhedrin, the plenary court of justice, the main liaison between the Roman governor and the people, on the despotism of which there was no brake save an appeal to Rome. The two main factions were the dominating and more numerous Pharisees and the Sadducees. The vast number of ordinary, unlettered simple people adhered in fear and in respect to the Pharisees.

They were to be found in all public places, on the principle that their long prayers would encourage the people to devotion. They were conspicuously dressed, bearing a band of parchment inscribed with a text of the Law on their foreheads and another on the fringe of their garments.

They were men of power and men of money, complex legalists who spun a web of proscriptions and prohibitions about the original precepts of the Mosaic Law. Their main interest was in themselves and in preserving existing institutions—the Temple and good relations with Rome. All lost property went to them; they grew rich on the poll-tax levied on the first-born of every family, on the rate of exchange fixed by them whereby Roman coinage had to be changed into Jewish currency lest a Gentile image should be brought within the Temple, and on the taxes they levied on condiments.

The Sadducees were less ostentatious and less powerful, but they were feared. Their disbelief in punishment for crime in a future life made them exactingly severe in applying the full weight of the law to any breach of it. It was from them that the first persecution of the infant Church proceeded.

Both parties between them ruled the people despotically and absolutely. They were its leaders and upon them must fall the main responsibility for the judicial murder of Christ. But Pilate, too, has his share—“suffered under Pontius Pilate” is how the Creed pin-points it. The text in Matthew—“... and the whole people said: His blood be upon us and upon our children”—refers to the limited numbers who were at the foot of the Steps of Antonia, and merits the understanding of the Victim who prayed from His Cross that they might be forgiven, “for they know not what they do”. Perhaps the fairest summary of all comes from the two disciples at Emmaus who told the Stranger “how our chief priests and princes delivered him to be condemned to death, and crucified him”.

The part played by Scribes and Pharisees in ruining the spiritual health of the nation is particularly clear in the seven denunciations levelled against them by Our Lord. His first charge is that their formalism has blinded the public mind to His teaching; it has “shut the kingdom of heaven against men”.

Their zeal in making proselytes, He continues, gains them only a “child of hell twofold more than themselves”. The barren letter of the law is no food for a pagan’s soul.

He attacks their casuistry. Vows made on a gold offering to the Temple are valid; vows made on God’s altar are void. The conclusion is obvious. To them gold is more important than God.

Their greed now—the tithe-laws prescribed in Leviticus operate on each and every comestible plant. Nothing is forgotten or omitted, except the spirit of the law whose letter is so scrupulously enjoined.

Their formalism and hypocrisy come under fire. As long as the external show is maintained nothing else matters. They are like the tombs on the hillside whitewashed four weeks before Passover to warn pilgrims of the danger of contracting legal impurity by contact with them. The hypocrisy of the leaders is whitewash concealing corruption.

By such words Our Lord signed His death-warrant. “You are the sons of them that killed the prophets. Fill you up the measure of your fathers.” And they did.

Their way of life, their wealth, their respectability and their pride were all challenged—by word, as above; by deed, as when the Temple was cleansed and the moneychangers driven forth. But even these motives became disguised in Sanhedrin. “If we let him alone, all will believe in him and the Romans will come and take away our place [i.e. the Temple] and nation.” Caiaphas fed to these power-men the formula that hypocrites love: “It is expedient for you that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not.” No more had to be said. They could fool all of their people all of the time. Abraham, like Lazarus, could have risen from the dead to convince them, but they would have found a legal formula to explain it away.