398 PECULIAR CONTROVERSIAL METHODS xi 



" Handworterbuch," for help out of my difficulty ; 

 but unfortunately without success. After speaking 

 of the martyrdom which the Jews, under Antiochus 

 Epiphanes, preferred to eating pork, the writer 

 proceeds : 



It may be, nevertheless, that the practice of keeping pigs may 

 have found its way into Palestine in the Grseco-Roman time, 

 in consequence of the great increase of the non-Jewish popula- 

 tion ; yet there is no evidence of it in the New Testament ; 

 the great herd of swine, 2,000 in number, mentioned in the 

 narrative of the possessed, was feeding in the territory of 

 Gadara, which belonged to the Decapolis ; and the prodigal 

 son became a swineherd with the native of a far country into 

 which he had wandered ; in neither of these cases is there 

 reason for thinking that the possessors of these herds were 

 Jews. 1 



Having failed in my search, so far, I took up 

 the next work of reference at hand, Kitto's 

 "Cyclopaedia" (vol. iii. 1876). There, under 

 " Swine/' the writer, Colonel Hamilton Smith, 

 seemed at first to give me what I wanted, as he 

 says that swine " appear to have been repeatedly 

 introduced and reared by the Hebrew people, 2 

 notwithstanding the strong prohibition in the Law 

 of Moses (Is. Ixv. 4)." But, in the first place, 



1 I may call attention, in passing, to the fact that this author- 

 ity, at any rate, has no sort of doubt of the fact that Jewish 

 Law did not rule in Gadara (indeed, under the head of " Gadara," 

 in the same work, it is expressly stated that the population of 

 the place consisted "predominantly of heathens"), and that he 

 scouts the notion that the Gadarene swineherds were Jews. 



2 The evidence adduced, so far as post-exile times are con- 

 cerned, appears to me insufficient to prove this assertion. 



