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Jerusalem, the City of Herod and Saladin
by Besant, Walter; Palmer, Edward Henry
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It is our object to write a book which may serve as a historical account, complete so far as it goes, of the principal events with which Jerusalem is concerned, from the time when its history, as connected with the Bible, ceases, till the present; that is to say, from the year A.D. 33 downwards. But it is difficult to take up the thread of the story at this date, and we are forced either to go as far back as Herod the Great, or to begin our narrative with the events which preceded the siege of Jerusalem by Titus. No date seems to us more ready to our hand than that of the death of Herod Agrippa. Even then we may seem beginning to tell a thrice told tale. The revolt of the Jews, their defeat of Cestius, the siege of Titus, are surely, it may be objected, too well known to require telling again. They are not well known, though they have been told again and again, and told with ten times the force, the vigour, the originality which we can put into these pages. But they are told here again because our central figure is Jerusalem. We have to show her first, in all her pride, the joy of the Jews, the visible mark of their greatness; and then we have to follow her through two thousand years of varying fortune, always before the eyes of the world,—always the object of tender pity and reverence,—always the centre of some conflict, the scene of some religious contention. Frequent as were the sieges of the city in the olden days, they have been more frequent since. Titus took Jerusalem, Barcochebas took it, Julius Severus took it, Chosroes, Heraclius, Omar, the Charezmians, Godfrey, Saladin, Frederick, all took it by turns,—all after hard fighting, and with much slaughter.
There is not a stone in the city but has been reddened with human blood; not a spot but where some hand-to-hand conflict has taken place; not an old wall but has echoed back the shrieks of despairing women. Jew, Pagan, Christian, Mohammedan, each has had his turn of triumph, occupation, and defeat; and were all those ancient cemeteries outside the city emptied of their bones, it would be hard to tell whether Jew, or Pagan, or Christian, or Mohammedan would prevail. For Jerusalem has been the representative sacred place of the world; there has been none other like unto it, or equal to it, or shall be, while the world lasts; so long as men go on believing that one spot in the world is more sacred than another, because things of sacred interest have been done there, so long Jerusalem will continue the Holy City. That this belief has been one of the misfortunes of the human race, one of the foremost causes of superstition, some of the pages which follow may perhaps help to show. But, in our capacity as narrators only, let us agree to think and talk of the city apart, as much as may be, from its sacred associations, as well as from its ecclesiastical history.
The fatal revolt of the Jews, which ended in the fall of their city and the destruction of their Temple, was due, among many other causes, to the teaching of Judas the Galilæan acting on minds inflated with pride in the exaggerated glories of the past, looking to national independence as the one thing needful, and wholly ignorant of the power and resources of the mighty empire which held them in subjection. Judas, himself in spirit a worthy descendant of the Maccabæans, had taught that Jehovah was the only King of the Jews, who were his chosen people; that submission to a foreign yoke involved not only national degradation, but treason to the lawful powers; that tribute, the badge and sign of slavery, ought to be refused at any cost. “We have no Lord and master but God,” was the cry of his party. With that cry he and his followers assembled to do battle against the world: with that cry on their lips they died. But the cry and its idea did not die; for from that time a fourth sect was among the Jews, more powerful than all the rest put together, containing the great mass of the people, who had no education to give them common sense, and whose ignorance added fuel to the flames of a religious enthusiasm almost without parallel in the history of the world. The Pharisees and the Sadducees still continued for a time in the high places; the Essenes still lived and died apart from the world, the Shakers of their time, a small band with no power or influence; but all around them was rising a tide destined to whelm all beneath the waves of fanaticism. The followers of Judas became the Zealots and the Sicarii of later times: they were those who looked daily for the Messiah; whom false Christs led astray by thousands; who thought no act too daring to be attempted in this sacred cause, no life too valuable to be sacrificed: they were those who let their countrymen die of starvation by thousands while they maintained a hopeless struggle with Titus.
When Herod Agrippa died, his son, who was only seventeen years of age, was in Rome; and, as he was too young to be entrusted with the conduct of the turbulent province of Judæa, Cuspius Fadus was sent there as Governor. He found that Agrippa had allowed the robbers who always infested the country east of Jordan to gain head. He put them down with a strong arm, and turned his attention to things of domestic importance. By the permission of Vitellius, the custody of the sacred robes had been surrendered to the High Priest. Cuspius Fadus ordered that they should be restored to the fortress of Antonia. The Jews appealed to Cæsar, and, by the intercession of young Agrippa, they carried their point, and retained the possession of the robes. Under Fadus, one Theudas, whom Josephus calls a magician, persuaded multitudes of the Jews to go with him to the Jordan, which he pretended would open its waters to let him pass. Cuspius Fadus sent out a troop of cavalry, who took Theudas alive, cut off his head, and brought it to Jerusalem. Under Cuspius, too, occurred a great famine in Judæa, which was relieved by the generosity of Queen Helena of Adiabene, the proselyte.[1]
Footnote 1:
The story of Queen Helena is told by Josephus, ‘Antiq.’ xx. 2, 3, 4, and in Milman, ‘Hist. of the Jews,’ ii. p. 200; and see also, for the whole of this period, Williams’s ‘Holy City,’ vol. i. p. 150 et seq.
When Fadus either died or was recalled, Tiberius Alexander, a renegade Jew, nephew of Philo, succeeded him for a short time. It is not stated how long he continued in power. His only recorded act is the crucifixion of two of the sons of Judas the Galilæan. In his turn Tiberius was replaced by Ventidius Cumanus, and the first symptoms of the approaching madness broke out. The fortress of Antonia commanded the Temple area, and communicated with the Temple itself by means of cloisters. On those days of public festivals when the fanaticism of the people was most likely to break out and cause mischief, a strong guard was always placed in Antonia, in full view of the people, to overawe them with good behaviour. Most unfortunately, on one occasion, immediately after the arrival of Cumanus, one of the soldiers of the guard expressed his contempt for the religious ceremonies by an indecent gesture. The rage of the people knew no bounds; they declared that Cumanus had himself ordered the affront to be committed. The governor bore their reproaches with patience, only urging them not to disturb their festival by riotous conduct. As, however, they still continued clamouring, he ordered his whole garrison to proceed to Antonia. Then a panic ensued. The mob, thinking they were about to be attacked by the soldiers, turned and fled, trampling on each other in the narrow passages. Many thousands perished in this way, without a blow being struck. And while they were still mourning over this disaster, another happened to them. Some of the very men who had raised the first tumult, probably countrymen on their way home, fell on and robbed Stephanus, a slave of the Emperor. Cumanus, obliged to punish this, sent soldiers to bring in the chief men of the village. One of the soldiers tore up a book of the Law with abuse and scurrility. The Jews came to Cumanus, and represented that they could not possibly endure such an insult to their God. Cumanus appeased them for the time by beheading the soldier who had been guilty of the offence.
The animosities of the Samaritans and the Jews were the cause of the next disturbances. The Galilæans always used the roads which passed through the Samaritan territory in their journeys to and from the Temple. Faction fights naturally often took place. In one of these, of greater magnitude than the generality, a good many Galilæans were killed: the Jews came to Cumanus and complained of what they were pleased to call murder. Cumanus took the part of the Samaritans, and actually went to their aid, after the Jews called in the assistance of a robber chieftain, and helped them to defeat the Galilæans. It is difficult to see what else they could do. Both parties appealed to Cæsar. Cumanus was recalled: his military tribune was beheaded, decision was given in favour of the Jews: all this, no doubt, was done with a full knowledge of the dangerous and the turbulent nature of the people, and with a view to preserving the peace.
Claudius Felix was sent in place of Cumanus, a freedman, brother of Pallas the favourite of the Emperor, magnificent, prodigal, luxurious, and unscrupulous. He found the country in the worst state possible, full of robbers, and impostors. These sprung up everyday, and were everyday caught and destroyed; no doubt most of them men whose wits were utterly gone in looking for the Messiah, until they ended in believing themselves to be the Messiah. These poor creatures, followed by a rabble more ignorant and more mad than themselves, went up and down the distracted country, raising hopes which were doomed to disappointment, and leading out the wild countrymen to meet death and torture when they looked for glory and victory. One of the impostors, an Egyptian, probably an Egyptian Jew, brought a multitude up to the Mount of Olives, promising that at his word the walls of the city should fall down, and they themselves march in triumphant. He came, but instead of seeing the walls fall down, he met the troops of Felix, who dispersed his people, slaying four hundred of them.
To Felix belongs the crime of introducing the Sicarii into the city of Jerusalem. Wearied with the importunities of the high priest, Jonathan, who exhorted him continually to govern better, or at all events to govern differently, and reproached him with the fact that it was through his own influence that Felix obtained his office, he resolved to rid himself of a friend so troublesome, by the speediest and surest method, that of assassination. The Sicarii were not, like the hired bravoes of the middle ages, men who would commit any murder for which they were paid. It appears, on the contrary, that they held it a cardinal point of faith to murder those, and only those, who seemed to stand in the way of their cause. Now their cause was that of the sect which had grown out of Judas’s teaching, the zealots. These Sicarii mingling with the crowd of those who went up to worship, carrying daggers concealed under their garments, fell upon Jonathan the High Priest, and murdered him.[2] This done they went on slaying all those who were obnoxious to them, even in the Temple itself. “And this,” says the historian, “seems to me the reason why God, out of his hatred to the wickedness of these men, rejected our city: and as for the Temple, he no longer esteemed it sufficiently pure for him to inhabit therein, but brought the Romans upon us, and threw a fire upon the city to purge it: and brought upon us, our wives, and children, slavery,—as desirous to make us wiser by our calamities.” And now the voice of discord was heard even among the priests themselves, who had hitherto preserved a certain sobriety. Between the chief priests and “the principal men of the multitude of Jerusalem,” a feud broke out. Each side had its followers: they cast, we are told, not only reproachful words, but also stones at each other. And the chief priests, robbing the threshingfloors and appropriating all the tithes to themselves, caused many of the poorer priests to die of want.
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