The quenchless light

by Agnes C. Laut

Titus was at this time not yet Emperor; but among the Jewish writers, all rulers from Rome are referred to as Cæsar, or Emperor, or King. The Herods were really only deputies; but they were always called Kings. Titus was still a very young man and his leading general, Trajan, could not have been very much past his early twenties. In the most scandal-loving age Rome ever knew, very little has come down in history against Vespasian and his son Titus. Both men were essentially soldiers and cared little for the empty noise of triumph and kingship, though to keep the populace loyal Titus erected the Great Arch, under which more than 30,000 Jewish captives passed and on one side of which the Jewish Tables of the Law were represented. Vespasian and Titus built the Temple of Peace to celebrate the victory; but if you read Josephus carefully, it will be found this was more in concession to mob politics than to glory in triumph. It was to impress the seething East with fear of Rome’s power.

The attempt of the Nazarenes and the scribes to save the sacred scrolls is history, not fiction. Many old Hebrew scrolls mentioned in the Old Testament were lost forever at this time. There were the Book of the Covenant, the Book of the Law, the Book of the Wars, Acts of David, Samuel the Seer, the Book of Gad, David’s Seer—and seven other volumes not embodied by Ezra in Scripture, but known to the Jews. Among the lost scrolls there is a story told of the Book of Jasher of which an 1840 translation lies before me. This book is mentioned in the David wars, and several forgeries of Jasher appeared. It is said the genuine Jasher was brought from Jerusalem by Titus. When his officers went to plunder the city, one Sidrus found in a secret wall chamber in an ancient scribe’s house, a library of books among which sat the old scribe reading. Somehow, Jasher was carried by the Army officers to Seville and in 1613 it was printed in Venice.

That many old scrolls were carried to Spain either by the dispersed Jews, or by the Roman Army, there is no doubt; for after the expulsion of the Moors from Granada centuries later, thousands of such Hebrew volumes were burned in mistake for pagan Arabic. Intolerance and fanatic ignorance are dangerous weapons, whether ancient or modern.

As to the interpretation given to the Zodiac and to the prophecies by the Nazarenes in the Herod Tower the night of the fall of the Holy City—this is fiction; and had to be, for Gnostics, Essenes, Nazarenes, Sadducees, Pharisees, Theosophists, Ethiopian, Egyptian and Hindoo scholars all disagreed violently on what the signs of the Zodiac portended, or how the events proclaimed by the seers of old should be fulfilled. There isn’t any doubt at all that the prophecy of Jeremiah was being fulfilled literally before the very eyes of the watchers in the Herod Towers; but when you come to the winged chariots with wheels in Ezekiel—where the Eastern mystic would see the wheels as symbols of planetary chains, the western literalist would see a modern aeroplane coursing the clouds.

On one thing Eastern mystics and Western literalists would agree—the fall of Jerusalem marked the crash of the Old and the birth of the New. One Order had died. A New Order was born; and the old seeress voiced the expectation which is so rife even to-day that the sword will yet give place to the plowshare; that humanity shall pass to and is working towards a more spiritual sphere, where we may have what the scientists call a sixth cosmic sense and command the powers of water and air. Wireless waves give us the first inkling of this power.

The statement that “Israel burnt her children on the walls” to the Fire God is not fiction. It is true. It is to be found in the Bible; and within the last ten years jars have been dug up in Palestine where the bodies of cremated infants were so offered.

Space does not permit going into the mystic sign of a virgin in the Zodiac. We have only to remember the Zodiac came from the Far East; and so did the Persian magi to Christ’s manger. Another point worth noting; the Apostles, now grown aged, knew the Messiah’s kingdom was not to be an earthly kingship. They learned this very slowly, but the fall of the Holy City must have clenched forever the convictions.

There is another very interesting point here, which will be discussed more fully in the last chapter. The cry of the maniac on the walls is not fiction. It is fact. It will be found in Josephus. It is almost the very wording of the cries of despair in John’s Apocalypse. In John’s Vision are two references to the Temple as still standing; and this brings up the question, was the Apocalypse written long before John’s death and not somewhere round 90 A.D.?

Please note—there were bad earth tremors all over the world from 66 to 68, 69, 70 and 79, from Vesuvius to the Dead Sea. It was the last great eruption that took the lives of the three Herod descendants on Naples Bay; just as it was doubtless one of the earlier tremors that threw the great Temple door to the east open during the siege. This door was opened only once a year at the Passover.

There was a record that though Matthew passed through Cæsarea, where Philip’s prophet daughters dwelt, and through Jerusalem on to Egypt, a copy of his Gospel in Hebrew was first found in Cæsarea. This is discussed fully in the volumes already named on the apostolic days.