The attitude of enthroned Christianity was at once inimical to the parent Faith. At first sight it would seem that it might be more kindly disposed to a religion to which it owed so much and to which it was so closely related. Alas to confess it—for such is human nature—the very closeness of the relationship was the cause of its enmity. It regarded the very persistence of Judaism as a denial of its theories and as a challenge to its claims. Christianity declared the law abrogated; Judaism called it religion's keystone. Christianity declared that the Messiah had come; Judaism maintained he had not. Christians called Jesus a divinity—Son of God; the Jews spurned this as blasphemy. The Church taught a Trinity; the Synagogue made the indivisible Unity of God its cardinal principle. Spiritual monotheism became for the Jew a passion.
The first act by which Christianity exercised its new power was to prohibit Jews from making converts to Judaism and to reward those who deserted it. Thus it conspired for the gradual elimination of the Jewish Faith.
As its ranks rapidly swelled, Christianity continued to make consciously and unconsciously more and more concessions to the heathen beliefs and customs that were deeply rooted in the hearts of people, who accepted the new creed more or less superficially. The original Essene ideas from which it had sprung were completely lost to view. Taking the imperial government as its model, the Church reproduced Roman administration in its systematic organization, even to its despotic demand of sole sway. It enforced a rigid uniformity of doctrine; it organized a hierarchy of patriarchs and bishops whose power was enforced by the State and whose provinces corresponded with the administrative divisions of the Empire, the emperor being head of the Church. In the year 325 a Council was called at Nicæa (Asia Minor) to draw up the official creed of Christianity. For it laid great stress on belief. This marked another distinction from Judaism, which, so far, had formulated no creed and had no particular theory of salvation. The Nicæan Council condemned the doctrines of the followers of Arius, a Christian whose idea of God was closer to Judaism, and declared the equal eternity and divinity of the three persons of the Trinity, with more decided emphasis. So the Arians were henceforth regarded as heretics. It further decided, that the Festival of Easter (which was the Jewish Passover readapted to commemorate the resurrection of Jesus) should now be arranged independently of the Jewish calendar.
The policy of suppression directed against Judaism commenced by Constantine was continued with greater ardor by his son, Constantius. He forbade intermarriage and imposed the penalty of death on Jews who made proselytes of Christian slaves. He even prohibited their converting heathen slaves. Further prohibitive acts followed. This hostile attitude was continued for centuries.
Thus the Jews in the Roman Empire were transferred from a heathen to a Christian regime. Quietly they continued on the even tenor of their way and prayed with greater fervency for the restoration of their ancestral home and for the speedy coming of the Messiah; it meant for them the coming of light and liberty.
The Calendar.
It became necessary for Hillel II., Palestinian Patriarch, in 359, to establish a fixed calendar based on that of Samuel of Babylon, (p. 234) to guide the people as to the time of celebrating New Moon and Festivals, as in these troublous times they could not always transmit the news obtained by observing the heavens. But the "second" day of the Festivals, for lands outside of Palestine, now no longer needed, was maintained as a matter of sentiment and is maintained still in conservative Judaism.
This planning of a Jewish calendar by which the Festivals were computed perpetually and yet kept in their natural seasons, was a wonderful piece of astronomical and arithmetical ingenuity. For a lunar year of twelve months is shorter than a solar year of three-hundred and sixty-five and a quarter days. To average the difference and thus prevent, for example, Passover eventually occurring in Autumn and Tabernacles in Spring, an additional month (second Adar) was added seven times in every nineteen years. Further, the calendar had to be so devised that certain Festivals should not fall on undesirable days—for example to prevent the Day of Atonement falling on Friday or Sunday. This ancient calendar is still our guide for the Jewish year.