5 o6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



governors, wholly apart from the governed. To say that the 

 Gadarenes " adopted the Pompeian era on their coinage/' * out of 

 gratitude, must almost be a jest. If Pompey re-annexed Gadara 

 to the Syrian province,! it is most improbable that he should have 

 altered its laws respecting religion. Mr. Huxley supposes this 

 change was popular as a restoration of Roman authority. But, 

 had he consulted the text of Josephus, he would have seen it was 

 approved, because the cities were restored by him to the " Home 

 Rule " of their own proper inhabitants. 



I. The Revolted Jews. Mr. Huxley comes nearer to the 

 point when he touches the text of Josephus, J on which, indeed, 

 apart from the Synoptic Evangelists, we have chiefly to depend. 

 He deals with the passages found in the 18th chapter of Book II 

 of the Judaic War. Now, these passages are most dangerous and 

 seductive to those of his opinion, because, if severed from other 

 passages, they would prove his point : on one condition, however, 

 namely this, that we admit what is, indeed, his master fallacy, to 

 be sound in logic and in fact. 



He says * that the revolted Jews are stated by Josephus to 

 have laid waste the villages of the Syrians, " and their neighbor- 

 ing cities, and after them Gadara and Hippos." He then cites 

 from Section 5 the passage which states that Scythopolis, Aske- 

 lon, Ptolemais, and Tyre slew or put in prison great numbers of 

 Jews. " Those of Hippos and those of Gadara did the like ; as 

 did the remaining cities of Syria." And hereupon Prof. Huxley 

 assumes that his case is proved : causa finita est. 



And so, perhaps, it might be were we to adopt what I have 

 termed his master fallacy. That master fallacy is his assumption 

 as to the cleavage of the Palestinian communities. According to 

 him, all that was anti-Roman was Jewish or Hebrew, and all that 

 acted on the other side was Gentile. Where, as in Tyre or Ptole- 

 mais, the population generally is known to have been Gentile, 

 this assumption would, in the absence of evidence to the con- 

 trary, be a fair one. Such, in Mr. Huxley's view, was the case of 

 Gadara, where the Jews were only local immigrants, like the in- 

 habitants of a Ghetto. || But this is just what he ought to prove; 

 and it is not proved by showing either that those Jews who were 

 in revolt attacked a part of the Gadarite population, or that the 

 Gadarite population afterward did the like to some Jews among 

 themselves. For the whole text of Josephus testifies that the 

 Jews, as often happens in a case where foreign domination exists 

 over a people of high nationalism, were sharply divided among 

 themselves on the point of resistance. There were among them 



* Nineteenth Century, p. 973. * Ibid, on Bell. Jud., ii, 18, 1. 



t Josephus, de Bell. Jud., i, 7, 7. || Nineteenth Century, p. 974. 



% Nineteenth Century, p. 974. 



