558 



JEWS. 



of the dead, and for the third time since our | 

 Saviour's prophecy, " the mountains were melted j 

 with their blood," their courage and faith endured. , 

 Not sixty years after, we find a patriarch at Tibe- 

 rias in this very region, whose authority was ac- 

 knowledged by all west of the Euphrates, while 

 the prince of the captivity still held his melancholy 

 state upon the eastern side. He, too, hud suf- 

 fered his share ; and at the very moment when the 

 Roman power was about to crush him, the acces- 

 sion of a new emperor drew off its armies, and 

 left his dominion like a ship-wrecked vessel, saved 

 by the sinking of the tide. In this patriarchate at | 

 Tiberias, there was no power but such as was con- I 

 ceded to it by public opinion ; but its legates ! 

 visited all the Jewish establishments in various j 

 lands, and received the tribute, which was regularly 

 paid. Such was the force of this Rabbinical do- 

 minion, that for a time, the prince of the captivity 

 submitted to its power. One of these patriarchs, 

 in the third century, was the author of the cele- 

 brated Mishna, or code of traditional law. The 

 western prince again recovered his ascendency, and 

 governed in Babylonia with the splendour of a 

 king. In the schools of his dominion, comments 

 were made on the law and the Mishna, which were 

 embodied in the Gemara ; the Mishna and Gemara 

 together make up the well known Babylonian Tal- 

 mud. This Rabbinical lore has been extremely un- 

 fortunate for the Jews ; it has weighed upon them 

 like a millstone, and prevented their entering the 

 lists of intellectual glory. In fact, all their appa- 

 rent prosperity at this time was a calamity, be- 

 cause it served to draw upon them the attention of 

 the world. 



The patronage or opposition of the emperors 

 could not do much to uphold the faint shadow of 

 a state which the patriarchate presented. It was 

 nothing more than a standard floating on a dis- 

 mantled tower. Both the patriarch and the prince 

 of the captivity seemed to be upheld by a feeling 

 of national pride, without any substantial author- 

 ity, and without any thing to sustain them in the 

 changes of the world ; so that even before the bar- 

 barians flowed in upon the Roman empire, the 

 patriarchate had gone down. The principality, 

 being out of the path of revolutions, escaped till 

 the tenth century, gladdening the hearts of the 

 Jews with the sight of its hollow glories, hut all 

 the while wearing away. We may say on the 

 whole, that the dark ages found the Jews nearly 

 where the fall of Jerusalem left them ; they had 

 not yet found a resting-place in the world. 



While the Jews were suffering every thing under 

 the Christian emperors, rather than give up the 

 least observance of their religion, the Samaritans 

 were more disposed to bow their heads to the 

 storm. They eluded the severe laws of Justinian, 

 by submitting to baptism as a matter of necessity, 

 and then quietly returning to the faith of their 

 fathers. We have never been satisfied with the 

 prevailing opinion, that the Samaritans are the des- 

 cendants of the idolaters (introduced by Esar- 

 haddon) who gradually adopted the religion of the 

 land. We do not think that scripture requires us 

 to believe that the ten tribes were so completely 

 rooted out. The Jews from their prescriptive 

 hatred of the rival house of Israel, always repre- 

 sented the Samaritans as Cutheans, but their evi- 

 dence must be admitted with caution in a case of 

 the kind. It is admitted that a remnant escaped ; 

 nd it would seem that it was large enough to keep 1 



up the old religion of the land. In our Saviour'* 

 time they were expecting the Messiah, and thougL 

 he was reserved in declaring to the Jews that he 

 was their expected king, he announced it without 

 hesitation to the Samaritans; and if he charged 

 them with " worshipping they knew not what," the 

 charge would apply with equal force to the Jews, 

 who believed in the sacredness of their temple 

 with the same superstition. It is singular, that after 

 the persecution of Justinian, they were almost lost 

 to history for ages, till at last, in the seventeenth 

 century, a remnant, like the mutineers of the 

 Bounty, were discovered on the side of their own 

 holy mountain. There they had looked securely 

 down upon the changes of the world, preserving 

 their ancient religion, and treasuring most of all 

 the scriptures in the Samaritan or old Hebrew char- 

 acter. The Jews during their captivity had bor- 

 rowed the Chaldean letters. From their corres- 

 pondence with Scaliger, in reply to his inquiries, 

 they seem to observe the law of Moses with more 

 strictness in many points than the Jews them- 

 selves. 



When the Mussulman crescent rose in the east, 

 it turned the tide of human affairs in favour of the 

 Jews. Mahomet was very desirous to make the 

 Jews his converts ; and as he acknowledged Moses 

 as a prophet, insisted upon circumcision, and made 

 the unity of God the chief doctrine of his religion, 

 they were disposed to favour him against the 

 Christians. They must have seen too, that his 

 armies were likely to prevail, led on by such chiefs 

 as Khaled, who, when advised to repose a moment 

 from the weariness of a day of battle, replied, 

 " There is rest enough in the world to come." But 

 Mahomet required too much of the Jews. He 

 wished to make them disciples as well as partisans, 

 and failing in his attempts, he became their enemy, 

 and persecuted them to the end of his days. But 

 they fared better with his successors, who required 

 no such impossibilities; and it was not without 

 satisfaction, that they saw Omar take Jerusalem 

 from the Christians. Even when he built the 

 mosque which hore his name upon the ruins of 

 their temple, they found consolation in the thought, 

 that the Christians were effectually humbled. 

 Some writers have thought, that a wide conspiracy 

 in favour of the Mahometans was formed among 

 the Jews ; but their character is proof enough 

 that they engaged in no such alliance. The natu- 

 ral union of interest and feeling was all that was 

 needed ; and we must say, though it is not to the 

 honour of human nature, that nothing hinds hu- 

 man hearts so firmly together as hatred to a com- 

 mon foe. 



The conquests of Mahomet set the whole world 

 in motion for several centuries. His successors 

 having acquired the thirst of adventure, were not 

 content with the quiet possession of Arabia and 

 Syria; they poured like a flood into Egypt, and 

 swept along the whole southern coast of the Medi- 

 terranean ; they then passed into Spain, where they 

 established an empire, and as if nothing could set 

 bounds to their enterprise, penetrated into the 

 heart of France. The Saracens also insulted the 

 declining majesty of Rome. But almost every 

 step of their desolating march was over a Chris- 

 tian nation ; the pride of the Christian world was 

 deeply wounded, and two or three centuries after, 

 we find the whole Christian world in motion along 

 the northern shore, to avenge the injuries of the 

 cross. The whole course of this revolving circle, 



