The Historians' History of the World 02 [Israel, India, Persia, Phoenicia, Minor Nations of Western Asia]

Their Messianic dreams haunted them more and more persistently. The land was full of visionaries, and they always found disciples. A prophet named Theudas induced more than four hundred persons to follow him into the wilderness by declaring that he would cause them to pass dry-shod over Jordan. Fadus, the procurator, despatched a body of horsemen, who slew him and dispersed his following. The author of the Acts, who placed the said Theudas before the time of Judas the Gaulonite, indicates the comparison generally made between the preaching of these two agitators and that of the Apostles. Roman governors and Jewish lovers of order saw no great difference between men inspired and robbers. Tiberius Alexander, a renegade Jew of Alexandria, who succeeded Fadus in the government of Judea, crucified two sons of Judas the Gaulonite, who were still upholding the sect of the Zealots. As for the populace, they were well disposed to all attempts, but among innovators they liked those who adopted violent measures better than those whose methods were peaceable; thus, as the Gospel relates, Barabbas was preferred to Jesus.

Samaria, like Jerusalem, had its prophets and its messiahs. In the days of Pontius Pilate there was one who gathered together a great multitude on Mount Gerizim, promising to show them the sacred vessels which had been buried there by Moses. Pilate punished these wretched people so severely that Vitellius, governor of Syria, compelled him to go to Rome, there to exculpate himself before Tiberius. In the reign of Claudius one Simon of Gittha taught in Samaria with great success a subtle form of theology borrowed from the Judæo-Egyptian schools of Alexandria, which subsequently reappears in the mythological doctrines of Christian Gnosticism. He assigned the principal rôle in it to himself, giving himself out to be an incarnation of the great power of God, though he acknowledged the divine mission of Jesus. He averred that in him, Simon, God had revealed himself to the Samaritans in the character of the Father, as he had revealed himself to the Jews in the crucifixion of the Son, and to the Gentiles by the gift of the Holy Ghost. The doctrine of the Trinity, perhaps borrowed from Egypt, has become a part of Christianity, but Simon appears to have given a place in it to the Feminine Principle, probably represented by the Holy Ghost, that name being feminine in Hebrew. Wherever he went he took with him a very beautiful woman, whom he had bought in the market at Tyre. Her name was Helen, and Simon, identifying her with Homer’s Helen, deduced from the name a mystical scheme of redemption for the Eternal Feminine. It was the time when Christianity was first preached, and the Apostles were credited with miraculous powers of healing by the laying on of hands. A prophet ought to work miracles, and Simon was accordingly anxious to purchase their methods, and proposed that they should work together. The invincible repugnance of the Jew for the Samaritan made them repel his advances with scorn. A legend grew up in the Christian church about the name of Simon, surnamed Magus, who became the type of all charlatans, and the name of simony has since been given to all traffic in holy things.

The reciprocal antipathy of Jews and Samaritans was a source of embarrassment to the Roman government. Some Galileans, on their way to Jerusalem for the feasts, passed through Samaria and quarrelled with the inhabitants. The men of Jerusalem, led by a robber chieftain, pillaged Samaria. Cumanus, the procurator, was called upon to intervene, and decided in favour of the Samaritans. The Jews accused him of taking bribes, and appealed first to the governor of Syria and then to the emperor. The young Agrippa, who stood high in the good graces of Claudius, contrived that the Jews should win their suit, and Cumanus was banished.

[52-62 A.D.]

From the government of this same Cumanus, Josephus dates the disorders which ended in the destruction of Jerusalem. He had, nevertheless, treated the religious scruples of the Jews with great consideration, going so far as to inflict capital punishment on a Roman soldier who had torn up a copy of the Pentateuch while engaged in suppressing a riot. The sway of Rome was not oppressive, and the government confined itself to protecting the public peace against adventurers who lived on plunder under the cloak of religion, and fanatics who endeavoured to stir up the people by promising to work miracles before them. One of these induced thirty thousand persons to follow him to the Mount of Olives, that thence they might see the walls of Jerusalem fall at his behest. Felix, the procurator, sent soldiers to disperse the multitudes, and the prophet took to flight. But it was always the same story. “Judea,” says Josephus, “was full of robbers and sorcerers who deceived the people, and not a day passed in which Felix did not punish some of one sort or the other. But the robbers continued to stir up the people to rebel against the Romans, giving over to fire and plunder the villages of those who refused to rejoin them.”