x. 11. and end of 1 and xiii. c. 19. duced to three hundred; and yet even these, by the assistance of the Lord of Hosts, ut- From 1 Mace. terly subdued the vast army of the Midianites. Upon this presumption then, that Judas V. 1. 2 Mace. thought his army under the care and direction of the same Lord of Hosts, there was no Jos. lib. xii. discouragement in the desertion of his forces, nor any false reasoning in his speech: "If c. 14. to the our time be come, let us die manfully for our bretheen ;" which, in the present juncture 2 Macc. and of our affairs, is the best thing we can do: but, if it be not, God, we know, is able to of Jos. lib. give us victory, and to defend us. For how often have we experienced the effects of his Almighty Power? Is not conquest always in his hands? Or is there any difference, with regard to him, between a larger or a smaller number?" These seem to be the reasons that determined Judas in his choice of engaging the enemy, though superior in force and if these reasons are built upon right notions of God, and confirmed by a long experience of his goodness, they will certainly clear him from all imputation of rashness, or presumptuous tempting of God in this action: An action for which St Ambrose, in particular, has represented him as a perfect model of true heroism: for (a) "Habes hic," says he, "fortitudinem bellicam, in quâ non mediocris honesti et decori forma est, quod mortem servituti præferat, ac turpitudini." The message which Moses sent to the king of Edom, delivered in these words :--"Let us pass, I pray thee, through thy country. We will not pass through the fields, or through the vineyards, neither will we drink of the water of thy wells. We will go by the king's high-way; we will not turn to the right hand or the left, until we have passed thy borders: And Edom said unto him, Thou shalt not pass by me, lest I come out against thee with the sword." But hereupon a question has arisen, whether the Edomites might lawfully, and according to the rules of strict right, deny the Israelites a passage through their country. (b) Selden is of opinion, that princes have always a right to deny foreign troops a passage through their country, not only to preserve their territories from being invaded, and their subjects from being plundered, but to prevent their being corrupted likewise by the introduction of strange manners and customs into their kingdom. But (c) Grotius, on the other hand, asserts, that this refusal of the Edomites was an act contrary to the just rights of human society; that, after the promise which the Israelites had made, of marching through their country quietly and inoffensively, they might very justly have fallen upon the Edomites, had they not been restrained by a Divine prohibition; that, for this very cause, the Greeks thought proper to make war upon the kings of Mysia; and that the principal reason which the powers of Christendom gave for their carrying their arms against the Saracens, was, because they hindered their brethren going in pilgrimage to Jerusalem from passing through their country. However the sentiments of these two great men may be, it is certain that Gideon's severity against the inhabitants of Succoth, for denying his army some necessary refreshments, when they were pursuing the enemy, is justified upon the presumption, that such a refusal was a kind of rebellion against the state; that those who exposed their lives for the public safety, had a right to be maintained at the public expence; and that "no man might call any thing his own," when a demand of this nature came upon him. And if Gideon, (d) who was sent immediately by an angel to deliver his brethren, and in all his atchievements was supported by the Spirit of God, thought it no injustice to put the people of Succoth (e) to exquisite torture, for denying his army what they wanted; why might not Judas give the people of Ephron up to military execution, for being so cruel and inhuman as to deny him a passage through their city, when there was no possibility of taking his rout any other way? What the particular situation of this Ephron was we can no where learn; but the (a) Ambros. lib. i. Offic. c. 41. t. ii. et Mare Clausum, lib. i. c. J. (b) Mare Clausum, c. 20. (c) De Jure Belli et Pacis, lib. ii. &c. or 5247. or 164. A. M. 3841, author of the book of Maccabees seems to imply, that the country all about it was imAnt. Christ. passable, i. e. was very probably so full of water and morasses, that the (a) company 163, &c. which Judas had along with him must have been lost, had they been obliged to turn either to the right-hand or to the left. In their own defence therefore, they were necessitated to make their way through the town; and if, in the siege and saccage of it, great numbers of people were put to the sword, this was properly the effect of their own folly and obstinacy in refusing not so much to do a favour, as an act of common right, even when it was humbly requested by a general at the head of a victorious army. The strength of the behemoth (which by most interpreters is supposed to be the ele-. phant †) is thus expressed in the book of Job: (b) His bones are as strong pieces of brass, and his small bones like bars of iron;" and therefore it is no wonder that creatures of this prodigious strength (when the method of fighting was chiefly by force) should be made use of in all military expeditions. (c) Some of these creatures have been known to carry two canons fastened together by a cable rope, of three thousand pounds weight each, for five hundred paces together, with their teeth; and what reason have we to doubt but that they are able to carry a much greater weight upon their backs? The largest and strongest species of these animals is said to be bred in India, (for those that come out of Africa are not near so big) and therefore if we suppose that the elephants which Antiochus carried to the wars with him were of this Indian breed, (as (d) the circumstances of the whole story make it highly probable that they were) there cannot be so much difficulty as is imagined, in one of these creatures carrying upon its back two and thirty men light armed, (as archers are known to be) with towers, or other such vehicles as might be thought proper to give them an ascendant in the fight, and so secure them from the darts and other weapons of the enemy. For, upon supposition that each of those men, one with another, weighed an hundred and fifty pounds, the amount of the weight of thirty-two will be no more than four thousand eight hundred pounds; and yet it is a common thing to meet with elephants of a moderate size that will carry you five or six thousand pounds weight; so that, upon the lowest computation, we have full two thousand pounds weight allowed for the wooden machine, wherein the slingers and archers were seated and secured. The danger indeed of approaching this animal, with such a number of armed men upon its back, is very visible; but most of the Jewish doctors and fathers of the Christian church, look upon Eleazar's action in killing the royal elephant, (as he took it to be) though at the expence of his own life, as a singular instance of courage and magnanimity. Fool hardiness it would have been, had he been certainly persuaded that the creature would have fallen upon him so directly and so suddenly as he did; but why might he not rather think that it might possibly tumble down on one side, so as to miss him, or live for some moments after it had received the wound, so as to give him an opportunity to escape ? (e): The motives which the history assigns for his adventuring upon this exploit are not discommendable. The preservation of our laws, liberties, and religion, requires, upon a proper occasion, the hazarding our lives: Our reputation too is a natural good, which we are not only bound to preserve, but, by all lawful means, allowed to improve and increase; and therefore charity (f) will not suffer us (without very good reasons) to believe, that these motives, which themselves were laudable, lost all their merit, (a) 1 Maccab. v. 45, 46. [This seems to be a mistake. By most interpreters of the present age, the behemoth is supposed to be the hippopotamus or river-horse.] (c) Calmet's Commentary on 1 Maccab. vi. 37. (ƒ) Ibid. ver. 44. (d) Ibid. (b) i Maccab. xl. 18. (e) 1 Maccab. vi, 44. We From 1 Macc. v. 1. 2 Macc. x. 11. and c. 14. to the and were adulterated by any sinister ends that Eleazar might propose to himself. cannot, I say, without rashness, blame him, or deny him that justice which we owe to all actions that are apparently commendable, i. e. to believe them really good, so long Jos. lib. xii. as we have no proofs to the contrary: And as it is no uncommon thing in such heroic end of 1 and acts as these, to find persons (under the Jewish economy more especially) instigated by 2 Macc. and a Divine impulse, it will best become us to suspend our judgments concerning this ac- of Jos. lib. tion of Eleazar's until we can find arguments to prove that he had no motive extraordinary to attempt it *. But there is not the like reason, I think, to suspend our judgment concerning the action of Razis, which, upon due consideration, was no better than self-murder. (a) To consider it, indeed, according to the notion which some heathens had of courage and magnanimity, contempt of death, and love of liberty, it comes nearer to what they called true heroism, than all the great actions that history has recorded of the Greeks and Romans. Nay, the Jews themselves are willing to place this man in the number of their most illustrious martyrs, and from his example (as well as some others) pretend, that, upon certain occasions, self-murder is not only allowable, but highly commendable; never considering, (b) that in the sixth commandment, it is as much prohibited as the murder of any one else; and that, if I must not shed the blood of another man, for this very reason, because (c) he is made in the image of God, I must not shed the blood of myself, because I also am a man, and made in the image of God as well as he. (d) Razis indeed was sorely beset, and ready to have been taken by his enemies on every side; but then he should have surrendered himself to their treatment, and testified his magnanimity, not in butchering himself, but in manfully enduring whatever inflictions they laid upon him. Had the martyrs of old thought themselves at liberty to dispose of their own lives upon any emergent danger, or apprehension of suffering, we had read little of their being (e) " mocked, and scourged, and tormented," and less of their "being stoned and sawn asunder," but a great deal of their "stepping out of the world" (as some call it), when any difficulty or persecution came to press upon them. Upon the whole, therefore, we may conclude, that as this was not the practice of those worthies of old, (ƒ) who" obtained a good report by faith," it was not true courage, but the want of it, that put Razis upon committing this barbarous cruelty to himself; that it was pride, not patience (which is the proper virtue of a martyr), that made him fly to death, merely for refuge against those outrages which he had not strength of mind to withstand; and therefore St Austin's short reflection upon the whole is,—(g) "Factum narratum est non laudatum, et judicandum potius, quam imitandum." This reflection indeed will hold good in several other matters related in the history of the Maccabees, viz. that the author of it neither commends no discommends, but only relates them. Demetrius Soter, for instance, was the rightful heir to the crown of Syria, and Alexander Balas no more than a vile impostor; and yet Jonathan thought proper to adjoin himself to him, because (h) he remembered what a bitter enemy Demetrius had all along been to the Jewish interest; how oft he had sent his generals with positive orders to take his brother Judas dead or alive; and what ruin and oppres * [This is a feeble answer to a very foolish objection. Who ever thought of censuring Codrus king of Athens for devoting himself to death for his country; or Samson for pulling down the temple of Dagon on himself as well as his enemies: or indeed any great commander for exposing part of his army to inevitable destruction, for the safety of the remainder who could not otherwise have been saved? Eleazar knew by experience, that the armies of his enemies had uniformly gone into confusion and been casily routed on the fall of their leaders in battle; he had reason to xiii. c. 19. Ant. Chris. 163, &c. or 164. A. M. 3841, "sion his frequent invasions had brought upon the whole nation. And therefore no won&c. or 5247. der that we find him taking a contrary part to the man, whom he looked upon as an enemy to his country. Demetrius Nicanor, in like manner, was the true heir to the same crown, and Alexander Zabina no more than a broker's son of Alexandria; and yet we find John Hyrcanus entering into a league and alliance with the latter, because indeed Demetrius had behaved so ungratefully to the Jews, (who rescued him from the rebellion of his subjects) as to load them with heavy taxes, even though he had promised them an immunity from them to engage their assistance, The truth is, the kingdom of Syria was always in hostility with Judea. Its kings were tyrants, and great persecutors of the Jewish religion; and therefore what reason had any Jewish prince to trouble himself with the right of succession in an enemy's country? all that he seemed to be concerned in was, (a) to make what advantages he could of their divisions, and by adjoining himself to the party, from whence he might expect the best treatment and support, to secure and establish his own and his country's interest. It is a mistake however to think that Hyrcanus destroyed Samaria out of the hatred which the Jews bore to the sect of the Samaritans, because, upon examination, we shall find, that none of that sect did at that time live in that place. (b) The ancient Samaritans, who were of the sect that worshipped God on mount Gerizzim, had slain in a tumult, (as we related before) one Andromachus, a favourite of Alexander the Great, whom he had constituted governor of Syria; and in revenge for this base act Alexander had expelled them all from Samaria, and in their stead new-planted the city with a colony of Macedonians, Greeks, and Syrians mixed together, and they were the descendants of those who inhabited Samaria, when Hyrcanus made war against it; for the expelled Samaritans retired to Sechem, where they settled their abode, and made it the head seat of their sect ever since. In like manner, it is a mistake to think that, because Hyrcanus is said to have left the Pharisees and adjoined himself to the Sadducees, that therefore he espoused their doctrine against the resurrection and a future state. (c) On the contrary, it seems highly probable, that at this time the Sadducees had gone no farther in the doctrine of their sect than their rejecting all the unwritten traditions which the Pharisees held in so much veneration. Josephus mentions no other difference in his time between them; nor does he say, that Hyrcanus went over to the Sadducees in any other particular, than in the abolishing the traditional constitutions of the Pharisees; and therefore we can hardly think, that so good and righteous a man as he is represented to have been, would, upon any provocation whatever, have been induced to renounce the great and fundamental articles of his religion; but it can be no diminution to his character, we hope, that he made it his business to oppose those false interpretations of the law, which our blessed Saviour, in the course of his ministry, so severely condemned. (a) Prideaux's Connection, Anno 331. (c) Ibid. 108. [This is certainly a mistake. Long before the time of Josephus, the Sadducees denied not only the resurrection of the dead, but the existence of the separate soul after death, and indeed the existence of angels or any other created spirits.] DISSERTATION IV. OF THE ORIGINAL AND TENETS OF THE JEWISH SECTS. v. 1. 1 Macc. IT seems very probable indeed, that during the times of the prophets, who, by their From 1 Mace. commerce with God, were immediately instructed in his will, no disputes about matters x. 11. and of religion could possibly arise, because their authority was sufficient for the decision of Jos. lib. xii. every controversy; but that when this race of prophets disappeared, and their autho- end of 1 and rity ceased, men soon began to wrangle and dispute, and to form themselves into differ- 2 Macc. and ent sects and parties upon the first occasion that offered. After the return of the people from Babylon, Joshua the high priest, and Zerubbabel the governor, together with the chief elders their contemporaries, and others that afterwards succeeded them, collected together all the ancient and approved usages of the Jewish church which had been in practice before the captivity. These, and whatever else pretended to be of the like nature, Ezra brought under a review, and after due examination, having settled them by his approbation and authority, he thereby gave birth to what the Jews call their Oral Law. For (a) they pretend, that when God gave unto Moses the law on Mount Sinai, he gave him, at the same time, the interpretation of it, with a strict injunction to commit the former to writing, but to deliver the other down to posterity only by word of mouth; that, pursuant to this injunction, Moses wrote several copies of the law, which he left behind him among the several tribes, but in the interpretation of it, he took care more especially to instruct his successor Joshua ; that after his death, Joshua delivered this interpretation, or oral law, to the elders who succeeded him, and that they delivered it to the prophets, who transmitted it down to each other until it came to Jeremiah; that Jeremiah delivered it to Baruch; Baruch to Ezra; Ezra to the men of the great synagogue, until it came to Simon the Just; and that Simon delivered it to others, who handed it down, in a continued succession, until it came to Rabbah Judah Hakkadosh, who wrote it into the book which they call the Mishnah. But all this is a mere fiction, spun out of the fertile invention of the Talmudists; and the little truth that there seems to be in it is only this,-That after the death of Simon the Just there arose a sort of men (whom the Jews call the Tannaim or Mishnical doctors), that made it their business to study and descant upon these traditions, which had been received, and allowed by Ezra and the men of the great synagogue, to draw such consequences and inferences from them as they thought proper; to ingraft these into the body of the ancient traditions; and to expect from others that they should receive them as if they had been as authentic as the other. But this imposition was too gross and palpable not to be attended with remonstrances from several: So that, in a short time, the Jewish church came to be divided into two grand parties, viz. those who adhered to the written law only, among whom the Sadducees were the chief, and those who, over and above this, received the traditions and constitutions of the elders, among whom the Pharisees made the greatest figure. (b) The most ancient sect among the Jews was that of the Sadducees, which took its name from Sodock the founder of it. This Sodock (as the Talmudic story is) was the (a) Prideaux's Connection, Anno 446, (b) Ibid. Lamy and Beausobre's Introduction. c. 14. to the of Jos. lib. xiii. c. 19. |