The Early Christians in Rome

by H. D. M. Spence-Jones

And these precious writings, and the wonderful body of rule and tradition, oral and written, which had gathered round them, the Halachah and Haggadah of the Scribes, collected during the previous four or five centuries,—these were saved from the awful wreck, and a group of devoted Jews gathered them together, and with them at once proceeded to train up a new and a yet greater and more influential people than had ever before worshipped the Eternal of Hosts, even in the golden days of their mighty kings David and Solomon; but the foundation stories of the grandeur of the new Israel were not to be built with human materials. No army, no strong fortress, no stately city, not even a visible temple made with hands after the fashion of the glorious lost House of God, were for the future to rank among the proud and cherished possessions of the Jew. Only the Divine Law given him direct from God the One Supreme, the Everlasting, for the future was to represent to the Jew home and hearth, family and nation, City and Temple.

If the Jews—the scattered harassed remnant who survived the bloody Roman war of Titus—would with heart and soul keep the precepts of the Divine Law, what mattered insult and cruelty, human scorn and malice, suffering and misery for a little season; for eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, the beatitude which awaited the Jew who loved the Torah. This was the teaching of that group of fervid and devoted men who, so to speak, arose out of the ashes of the ruins of Jerusalem and the Temple. And the sad remnant of the people hearkened to this teaching, and with heart and soul revered the Law, the Torah of their God.

All this is no mere rhetoric, strange though it reads: it is plain unvarnished history.

Undismayed by the crushing ruin of A.D. 70, the chief Rabbinic leaders, when Jerusalem was destroyed, re-established their schools at Jamnia (Jabne), a town close to the sea, south of Joppa. They had little sympathy with the extreme party of Nationalists, the Zealots; for they saw that any serious conflict with Rome was utterly hopeless, so they diverted the thoughts and aspirations of the survivors of the great revolt into other channels. The cult of the Law henceforward must be the work of Israel. They were wonderfully successful, and soon infused into the heart of the Chosen People something of their burning zeal; for what they taught, they maintained, were the very words and commands of the Eternal of Hosts.

A great master, Jochanan ben Zacchai, soon made the new school of Jamnia a notable centre of the new work. We use the term “new”; for although Rabbinism and the scientific study of the Law had existed long before the events of A.D. 70, it received a fresh and striking impulse when the Temple and City existed no longer.

Round the chair of Jochanan gathered quickly a band of faithful disciples who shared in the quiet enthusiasm of the great master, and in the last twenty-five or thirty years of the fatal century which had witnessed the terrible victory of Titus, the real foundations of the Talmud, which united and bound together the Chosen People for centuries, which preserved them from disintegration and welded them once more into one great race, were laid.

Rome allowed this new spirit to grow up among the remnant of the people she had crushed, and made no effort to interfere with the Jamnia Rabbinic school. The statesmen of the Empire were quite content that the restless people, so long a danger to the State, should turn its attention to other matters unconnected with aspirations after independence. It was no doubt with some contempt that they witnessed the growth of the new spirit among the turbulent nation. It was nothing to Rome—this singular devotion to an old Law and a traditional revelation which the Jew considered divine. They little thought that the Jew and his ancient Law would outlive the mighty Empire of which they were so proud, and that the despised and crushed race and its cherished belief would influence in a marvellous way the civilized world for hundreds of years after Rome had become the mere shadow of a name.

The great Jewish revolt of A.D. 117 had little influence upon the fortunes and wonderful growth of the Rabbinic schools, the chief seat of which was in Palestine. The scenes of that rebellion and its ghastly punishment were far removed from Palestine, and what happened in Cyrene, Egypt, and Cyprus only slightly affected the dwellers in the old Land of Promise.

But the next revolt—the rebellion we have termed the third great Jewish war—had a different scene. Once more Palestine witnessed a dangerous and bloody war, when Bar-cochab, a mistaken enthusiast and patriot, raised again the standard of rebellion against Rome, and, asserting that he was the long-looked-for Messiah, gave this last formidable Jewish rising the character of a religious war.

As a rule the great masters of the new Rabbinic schools were out of sympathy with the Zealots who had risen against Rome in this last disastrous revolt; but one of their number, the famous Rabbi Akiba, curiously enough, had espoused their cause, and certain others of the more eminent Rabbinic teachers, no doubt owing to his influence, had rallied to the cause of Bar-cochab in the desperate and hopeless struggle.