Curiosities of Christian History Prior to the Reformation

by James Paterson

From the time Pompey (63 B.C.) captured Jerusalem and subjected the country to the Roman yoke, the Jews were always on the verge of insurrection. In 65 A.D., when Florus the Roman procurator robbed the sacred treasury, and brought on an insurrection, Bernice, the wife of Agrippa, rushed with bare feet through the streets to intercede with Florus; but it was in vain. In 69 A.D. Titus approached and besieged the city, starved out the inhabitants, and destroyed the Temple. Many Jewish captives were afterwards carried to Rome to swell the triumph of Titus, and were thrown to the wild beasts or forced to kill one another. The triumphal arch of Titus, erected soon after his death, remains to this day in Rome. From that date the Jews ceased to be a nation, and were dispersed over the world. There are no clear accounts of what became of the Apostles after the fall of Jerusalem. Some say that they arranged to go into different regions, as Scythia, Asia, Parthia, India. Those writers who profess to give later accounts of the Apostles flourished only in the third or fourth century.

DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM IN 70.

Not long before the outbreak of the Jewish War, seven years before the siege of Jerusalem, a man, by name Jesus, came to the city at the Feast of Tabernacles, and in a fit of abstraction cried continually, “Woe to the city! woe to the Temple!” He alarmed the authorities, who ordered him to be scourged as a madman; but he continued these exclamations, and during the siege he was last seen sitting on the wall, still repeating the same cries, till a missile put an end to him. The Jews rebelled against the Romans in 66. The Christians, remembering our Lord’s admonition (Matt. xxiv. 15), forsook the city, and fled beyond the Jordan. In April 70, when the city was filled with strangers, the siege began, and history records no other instance of such obstinate resistance, such desperate bravery and contempt of death. The Castle of Antonia was surprised and taken by night. The famine was so severe that many swallowed their jewels; a mother even roasted her own child. Titus wished to spare the Temple. But in a fresh assault a soldier, unbidden, hurled a firebrand through the golden door. When the flame arose the Jews raised a hideous yell. The Roman legions vied with each other in feeding the flames. It was burnt on August 10th, 70, the same day of the year on which the first Temple was, according to tradition, destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar. The sight was terrible. The mountain seemed enveloped in one sheet of flame; all was covered with corpses; over these heaps the soldiers pursued the fugitives. Josephus says the number of Jews slain was 1,100,000, and the number sold into slavery was 90,000. The Christian Church was by this event liberated from local influences, and took up an independent position in the world.

ANTIOCH THE FIRST GENTILE CHURCH.

The interest of Antioch consists in certain memorable events having occurred there in the first ages of Christianity. It was situated where the chain of the Lebanon, running north, and the chain of Taurus, running east, meet, and was partly on an island. It was here that the Christians, when dispersed from Jerusalem at the death of Stephen, preached the Gospel. Here was the first Gentile Church founded; here the disciples of Christ were first called Christians; here St. Paul first settled as a minister of the Church and started on his first mission; here St. Paul rebuked St. Peter for conduct into which he had been betrayed through the influence of emissaries from Jerusalem. Jews were from the first settled in Antioch in large numbers. The city was founded in 300 B.C., and became prosperous. The citizens were noted for scurrilous wit, and for the nicknames they gave, and perhaps the name of Christian had its origin in this disposition of theirs. The modern place known as Antioch is a small and insignificant town of 6,000 inhabitants, though the ancient city was supposed to have had a population of 200,000. An earthquake destroyed most of the city in 526, and again in 583. The Saracens captured it in 635; the Crusaders stormed it in 1089; and it fell under the Moslem rule in 1286, since which time it has dwindled into insignificance.

PALESTINE EXPLORATIONS.

In modern times the geography of Palestine was chiefly known through the works of Dr. Robinson, Burckhart, and Vande Velde; but in 1864 a society sprang up in England for the purpose of a more systematic exploration. Successive expeditions were sent there for that purpose. In 1868 the Moabite Stone was discovered by the Rev. F. Klein. It is a block of basalt about 3½ feet by 2 feet, and has on its face thirty-four lines of writing in the character known as Phœnician. If it had remained entire, there would have been no great difficulty in reading the inscription; but when the Arabs heard that the Europeans attached great value to its possession, they quarrelled about it and broke it up. About two-thirds of the fragments were afterwards collected and pieced together. And, fortunately, a “squeeze” of the whole had been taken before it was broken, and a translation has been arrived at. The restored monument was preserved in the Louvre at Paris, and a plaster cast is in the British Museum. The inscription is supposed to be a record by Media, King of Moab (nearly nine hundred years before Christ), of the victories and public works he had achieved. Besides the Moabite Stone, the explorers discovered numerous dolmens, being circular terraces 3 feet high, some of which were conjectured to be burial-places; also, dolmens being flat, table-like surfaces, probably used as altars by the Canaanite tribes.

THE COURSE OF THE JORDAN TO THE DEAD SEA.

Mr. Macgregor, of the Rob Roy canoe, traversed the upper part of the Jordan, and arrived at certain measurements, which have been corrected slightly by the Palestine Survey Commission. From the source to the Dead Sea it is 200 miles long. The source of the tributary of the Hasbany is 1,700 feet above the level of the sea. The Dead Sea is 1,292 feet below the level of the sea. The Lake of Tiberias is 682 feet below the level of the sea. The river at first runs 20 miles, then falls into the basin of Hooleh, 4 miles long; then runs 10 miles, and falls into the basin of Tiberias, or the Lake of Galilee, 12½ miles long and 8 miles wide; then runs 65 miles, and falls into the basin of the Dead Sea, 47 miles long and 10 miles wide. The Dead Sea is 1,278 feet deep at its greatest depth; the Sea of Galilee is 165 feet deep at the greatest; Hooleh about 15 feet deep. The Jordan ranks in size with the Dee of Aberdeenshire, but is rather less rapid. The Jordan has nearly the same rapidity as the Clyde and the Tweed. The Dead Sea, called in the Old Testament the Salt Sea, has no outlet to the south, but gets rid by evaporation from the surface of all the water poured into it. This is said to be the most remarkable depression of the kind on the face of the earth. There is no port, and there are no fish. The waters of lakes which have no outlet, such as the Caspian, the Sea of Aral, Lakes Balkash, Van, Uramiah, and the Dead Sea ultimately become more or less saline. The excessive saltness of the Dead Sea is represented as 24·57 lbs. of salt in 100 lbs. of water; while that of the Atlantic is only 6 lbs. of salt in the same quantity.

THE SEA OF GALILEE.