It is almost needless to say that these arguments carry very little weight. The reader should note that Julian did not promise to rebuild the Temple, on his return from Persia, but Jerusalem. As that city was then standing, his meaning must have been, that he would restore it to its pristine magnificence. This would be a long and costly work, which might well require his personal presence. But he might commit the rebuilding of the Temple, the design of which was well known, to a deputy—an instalment, so to speak, of the greater work to follow. Nor can it be reasonably argued, that, because a man does not say that he put in force a design, therefore he did not put it in force.[263]
Whatever weight Lardner’s reasoning might carry is lost altogether, when we take into consideration the testimony of the contemporaneous historians, and those of the age immediately following. The first include Gregory Nazianzen, Bishop of Constantinople, John Chrysostom, Cyril of Jerusalem, Ambrose, and Ammianus Marcellinus; the second, Socrates, Sozomen, and Theodoret. All these record the main facts, viz., the repeated bursting forth of the fire, until the work was abandoned from the impossibility of persisting. Each adds some minor details, which do not affect the credibility of the occurrence itself.[264] The most important witness is Ammianus Marcellinus, a heathen and a personal friend of the Emperor. It will be better to give his account of the matter in his own words. ‘The Emperor was meditating,’ he writes,[265] ‘the restoration, at an unlimited expense, of the Jewish Temple, and had committed the care of the matter to Alypius of Antioch. When, then, Alypius was vigorously prosecuting the work, and the governor of the province was rendering him his help, frightful balls of fire breaking forth with continued outbursts near the foundations, again and again consumed the workmen, and rendered it impossible to approach the spot; and in this manner the element more obstinately (i.e., more obstinately than even the pertinacious persistence of the workmen) driving them away, the attempt was abandoned.’
In the face of evidence like this, he must be a hardy advocate who would maintain that the occurrence never took place.
But it may be contended that although it did take place, there was nothing in it of a miraculous character. It may be alleged,—
(1) That there was simply an earthquake, to which the whole was due.
(2) That there may have been an explosion of foul air, caused by the sudden opening of the vaults under the Temple. These had long been closed, and the noxious vapours, coming into contact with the workmen’s fires, exploded.
(3) That it is improbable that such a miracle would be worked, there being nothing in the rebuilding of the Temple which called for a miracle. Our Lord, no doubt, had declared that the Temple should be utterly destroyed, but not that it should never be rebuilt. Nor had Daniel (rightly understood), or any other prophet, ever said so.
(4) That the age in which the miracle is related to have taken place is one in which miracles are spoken of as having been of almost daily occurrence—some of them frivolous and childish to the last degree. In these no reasonable man can place any faith; and there is nothing to separate this miracle from them.
Let us consider these objections.
1. Earthquakes have always been of common occurrence in Palestine. Nor is it denied that an earthquake took place on the present occasion. But a simple earthquake will not account for the bursting forth of the fiery balls, as often as the labourers attempted to resume the work. No other earthquake ever exhibited these phenomena.