But the saints of God did not die in vain; their victories over pain and death fired the hearts that had grown so cold, and awakened the careless into active life. Those who had forsaken the religion of their fathers returned by hundreds to God, confessing their sins, and pleading for pardon.
So the very fierceness of the trial proved a blessing, and the days of torture were followed by a revival of faith in God, and devotion to His service.
Now there was an old priest named Mattathias who, with his four sons, had never listened to the cunning temptations of the heathen Greeks. All his life he had served God with his whole heart, and had brought up his sons to follow in his steps. When Mattathias and his sons heard what was being done at Jerusalem, they clothed themselves in sackcloth and wept, praying, and fasting continually, beseeching God to forgive His people, and to put away their sins.
In a little while the king's officers came to the heathen altar at Modin, the town where the old priest lived.
'Sacrifice to Jupiter, our master's god!' they said. 'Sacrifice, as all Jews shall be forced to do, or die!'
But the old man looked the Greek straight in the face. 'Though all the nations in the world obey the king, yet will I and my sons walk in the covenant of our fathers. God forbid that we should forsake His Law.'
As he spoke a backsliding Jew stepped up to the altar to sacrifice. The old priest's eyes flashed fire, and in an instant he had struck him down, and the Greek officer with him.
Quivering with indignation Mattathias then turned to the startled people: 'Whosoever loves God, let him follow me!'
And he turned and fled swiftly through the streets of the city.
Many followed him at once. Others joined him later in the strong camp he formed in the mountains, until at last he was at the head of an army.
Wonderful it is to read how, little by little, this army of God's people drove the heathen from the cities of Judah; how they overturned the heathen altars, and cast down the images of the false gods; and how, at last, they came to Jerusalem, cleansed the Temple, and purified the golden altar from the stains of heathen sacrifices.
Then, tenderly and reverently, they gathered together all that was left of the copies of their Scriptures, weeping as they saw the poor fragments, blackened with fire, stained with blood, and scrawled all over with the horrible figures of heathen gods.
As to-day we read in the clean white pages of our Bible, let us remember this scene and of the time when those torn and blood-stained fragments were all that remained to the world.
But, thank God, when all the pieces had been collected together, there was plenty of material from which to make fresh copies; and no sooner had peace been restored to the city than the scribes set to work, with eager, loving care.
The Book had become doubly precious now! Its written words were indeed sacred, for the blood of martyrs had fallen upon them, and men and women, and little children, too, had chosen to die by hundreds rather than to deny them.
[1] With all his cleverness, Alexander, while still quite young, drank himself to death.
[2] In the days of Joshua, who bought the office of High Priest under the reign of Antiochus, so many priests took part in the games that the regularity of the Temple services suffered.
[3] From 'Maccabees,' an old Jewish history, which is sometimes bound up with our Bible.
[4] This is taken from 'Maccabees.'
y the blue waters of the Mediterranean Sea, on the coast of Egypt, lies Alexandria, a busy and prosperous city of to-day.
You remember the great conqueror, Alexander, and how nation after nation had been forced to submit to him, until all the then-known world owned him for its emperor? He built this city, and called it after his own name.
About a hundred years before the days of Antiochus (of whom we read in our last chapter) a company of Jews were living in Alexandria, then a rich and beautiful city, with its stately palaces and temples of white marble, its beautiful gardens, and groves of graceful palm-trees.
After the death of Alexander, the Greek kings of Egypt delighted to live in the new city, and in the old Greek books we can yet read of the splendid processions and festivals held in its streets year by year.
At this time Alexandria drew all the merchants of the world to her markets; and her harbour was constantly filled with ships laden with silver, amber, and copper; while caravans were arriving daily, bringing jewels and rich silks from China, India, and the cities of the far East.
The Jews of Alexandria were not treated as foreigners, but as good subjects and citizens, by the Greek rulers of Egypt, and therefore as the years passed they grew rich and honoured in their beautiful home. Their children, however, seldom if ever heard Hebrew spoken; for all the Jews of Alexandria, for convenience' sake, spoke Greek like their neighbours.
But, although these Jews lived in a heathen city where they read nothing but Greek books, and heard Greek spoken all day long, they did not forget their God. They longed as earnestly as ever to hear about Him, and to read in His Book; but what was to be done? Only a few of the elder Jews could read Hebrew, and their children could not understand one word of the language. Must the little ones, therefore, grow up in ignorance of the Word of God?
This was impossible. Here in the heathen city of Alexandria the Scriptures would be the only safeguard of Jewish boys and girls. 'If the language of our children is Greek, then the Bible must be translated into Greek, so that they all can understand it.' So said these Jewish parents.
This was a wonderful proof of the Bible's living power. The Jews had changed their language and their country. Thousands of the cleverest books ever written were within their reach—for Alexandria had at this time the largest library in the world—yet all this made no difference; without the written Word of God, they could not exist.
Some writers say that Ptolemy Philadelphus, the king of Egypt of that time, having heard the Jews speak of their Book, and wishing to have a copy of it to place in his great library, sent all the way to Jerusalem for seventy learned scribes who should translate the Book into Greek.
Now, however, it is believed that the Jews of Alexandria did the work entirely themselves, although their Greek Bible is still called the 'Septuagint'—that is, 'The Scriptures of the Seventy'—in memory of the old tradition.
Gradually, as the years passed, the Greek language spread to other nations, until at last it became, as we have seen, the leading language of the world. Even to-day, as you know, this old Greek tongue is taught in many of our schools and colleges, and those who can read it tell us that there is no language so beautiful; none with words so sweet to the ear, nor in which such deep thoughts can be expressed.
Thus we see how God used the learning of the heathen Greeks to make His Book known to the world!
For hundreds of years the Bible had been a Book for the people of Israel alone; but now, as the time drew near when the Son of God Himself should come to the world—that the world by Him might be saved—the Scriptures, which had since the days of Moses spoken of His coming, were sent out to the nations by God Himself in order to prepare the way.
The Jews of old divided all dwellers on the earth into two classes: the Jews—that is, themselves; the Gentiles—that is, all the other nations.
But now the wall of separation was to be broken down, and the words of the Prophet Isaiah were to be fulfilled, 'The Gentiles shall come to Thy light.' (Isaiah Ix. 3.)
Now that God's Holy Word had been translated into Greek, the one language which every man of those days wished to learn, the message could ring through all the Gentile cities: 'A King, a Saviour, is coming; be ready to meet Him!'
So the Scriptures went forth, north, south, east, and west, and we think they reached to that far eastern city in which those three wise men lived who afterwards travelled to Bethlehem, seeking the Messiah, and saying, 'Where is He that is born King of the Jews?' (Matthew ii. 2.)
The Bible had indeed taken a strong leap forward now!
For long centuries it had been like a tiny stream flowing through a dry land, and reaching only a few people. Now it had become as a river of truth, ever growing deeper and wider, guided by God in all its wanderings across the earth.
The Bible was now no longer locked up in a language which was already half-forgotten. With this Greek translation its world-wide work had begun!
But while the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures was becoming an open door through which the people of many lands could draw nearer to God, a second witness to the truth of God's Book was hidden away in Samaria.
For the Samaritans had their own copies of the Books of the Law, and kept them closely shut up among their own people for hundreds of years.
It is impossible now to give the actual date when the Samaritans began to use a different copy of the Scriptures from the Jews. The Israelitish city of Samaria was captured by Sargon, king of Assyria, in 722 B.C.; but although he carried away the most important inhabitants captive, a great number of the poorer people remained on the land, and when Sargon filled the country with new and heathen settlers, so many marriages took place between the two races that the Children of Israel lost their old name and were known to the Jews of Judah as 'Samaritans.'
Yet the Samaritans still clung to the Jews' religion, and the separation did not probably become complete until Nehemiah expelled all those Jews from Jerusalem who had married heathen wives. (Nehemiah xiii. 23-30.)
Now Josephus, the Jewish historian, tells us that among these exiles was a man named Manasseh, a grandson of the high priest, and that, indignant at being cast out, he fled to Samaria. Here he determined to set up a separate worship of Jehovah, and, having obtained permission from the king of Persia to erect a Temple, he built a Holy Place on Mount Gerizim, which became the centre of a new form of religion.
It is thought that Manasseh had carried away a copy of the Books of the Law from Jerusalem, and by means of certain alterations in the words he made it appear that God had chosen Mount Gerizim in Samaria for the site of His House, instead of Mount Moriah in Jerusalem.
Now at this time all the Jews still wrote in the ancient style, forming their letters as we see them on the Moabite Stone; but not long afterwards they adopted the square letters of Hebrew writing such as are still in use to-day.
The Samaritans, however, in their hatred of everything Jewish, refused to follow their example. The Jews had cut them off, and they would take nothing from the Jews; they would keep to the old style of letters; they would not allow a single word of the Books of the Prophets or the Psalms or History Books to have a place among their sacred writings. The Jews accepted these Books as inspired; therefore the Samaritans rejected them.
Thus Jewish pride and Samaritan littleness raised a terrible barrier between the two nations, which grew more hopeless every year.
Yet these hidden Samaritan documents, falsified as they had been, have had a work to do for God's Word within comparatively recent times.
For in the year 1616 A.D., just as some people were beginning to attack the Bible, and to declare that they could find no evidence that the Old Testament was so ancient after all, the world was suddenly startled to hear of a great discovery—an ancient copy of the Law had been found in Syria.
Other copies soon afterwards came to light: the world had rediscovered the Samaritan Bible!
At Nablous, in Samaria, known in Old Testament times as Shechem, a traveller was allowed to look at the oldest Samaritan copy of the altered books of the Law. Its queer letter signs are traced on parchment rolls, which are said to have been formed from the skins of rams offered in sacrifice. They are kept in a silver cylinder, covered with crimson satin, heavily embroidered with gold.
But out of this discovery a new difficulty arose. Some of the critics decided that this was the original copy written by Moses, and therefore more correct than the Jewish Scriptures. They would have done better to wait, and to have trusted the Bible a little more.
True, the discovery was of great importance, for these documents proved beyond all doubt that the Book of the Law dated back to a time when the ancient form of letters were still in use, and so they bore a strong witness to the great age of the first five Books of our Bible.
But learned scholars were soon able to prove that the oldest Samaritan copy was probably not older than the tenth or eleventh century of our era, and that the form of the letters was so ancient merely because the Samaritans refused to imitate the improved Jewish writing. A hundred years ago, for instance, books with long 's's' were printed in England; but the old form of letter was tiresome to read, and is now entirely out of date.
Now the Samaritans had not only refused to accept the new and improved form of letters—they had rejected as well all the fresh light and inspiration which God was continually giving to His people through the Holy prophets. According to the Samaritans, Moses was the only true prophet. Thus they cut themselves adrift from further light, and little by little the nations had dwindled away.
Yet because so many of the Samaritans in the time of Christ were faithful to the measure of light they had, and kept alive in their hearts the hope of a coming Messiah, God made for them a wonderful way of escape.
Every Bible reader knows and loves that beautiful scene by the well of Sychar, in Samaria, where the Saviour began by asking a woman for water to drink, and ended by explaining to her some of the deepest truths of God's Kingdom.
We understand now why the woman was so surprised that a Jew should condescend to speak to her, and why the Jews would have 'no dealings with the Samaritans.' As we have seen, a great barrier divided her from all ordinary Jewish teachers—she had been taught to believe in an altered Bible.
Not merely a different translation, remember, for the Bible should be the same in every language, but a Book of the Law in which some of the words had been changed and the original meaning destroyed.
So the woman said to our Lord, 'Our fathers worshipped in this mountain; and ye say, that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.' (John iv. 20.)
The Saviour had not said so, but she felt sure that He, as a Jew, would certainly contradict the old traditions of his countrymen.
But the Lord Jesus Christ had come to show the world that it was no longer a question of this mountain or that. Such matters had been but a shadow of the good things to come. 'God is a Spirit: and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.' (John iv. 24.)
With these words Jesus, the Messiah, for whom both Jews and Samaritans were waiting, threw down the barrier of ages, and united the two nations in a spiritual worship.
lowly but surely, as time went on, God was adding to His Book, until about four hundred years before the birth of Jesus Christ the Old Testament Scriptures, in their present shape, were completed.
Many questions have been asked as to how the canon of the Old Testament was formed—that is, how and when did the Jews first begin to understand that the Books of the Old Testament were inspired by God.
About the first five Books—the Books of the Law—there had never been any question. From the very earliest times those Books, so wonderfully given to the people, had been the strength and stay of the Children of Israel.
But many books had been written in the days of the old Jewish kings, and also after the return of the people from Babylon: some of these were very beautiful and helpful. How were the sacred Scriptures first divided from the other Jewish writings?
We do not know. Some have thought that Ezra the scribe, with the assistance of a council of elders, fixed the canon of Hebrew Scripture; others have supposed Nehemiah to have undertaken the work; but most likely it was a gradual process, directed by God Himself, who inspired His servants to carry out His will.
The Christian Bible is composed of two parts, the Old and the New Testament; but the Jews divided their Scriptures—our Old Testament—into three parts, and they certainly looked upon some books as far more sacred than others. The 'Torah'—that is, the Law—included, as we have seen, the first five books of the Bible. From the very earliest days the Torah was reverenced as containing the commandments and promises of God.
The second division consisted of the 'Prophets,' these being subdivided into the 'Former Prophets' (four volumes)—Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings—and the 'Latter Prophets' (three volumes)—Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel—and the Twelve Minor Prophets (which were included in one book).
Next in order of sanctity came the third division, the 'Writings,' and these again were subdivided into three groups: the poetical Books of the Psalms, Proverbs, and Job; the 'Rolls' or 'Readings' (seven volumes)—Solomon's Song, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Daniel, and one volume containing Ezra and Nehemiah; and, lastly, in a separate book, Chronicles. Thus the whole Scriptures were contained in twenty-four books.
Indeed, not until the Greek translation was made were the books grouped in the order in which we have them now, and at the same time their number was increased to thirty-nine by taking the writings of each of the prophets separately, and treating Ezra and Nehemiah as different books.
And now God, who has spoken in times past by many different ways and voices, spoke at last to the nations by His Son, 'by whom also He made the worlds.' (Hebrews i. 2.)
Let us think for a little while of what was being done with the Scriptures in the days when the Lord Jesus learnt to read their words at His mother's knee; words which from first to last told of Himself.
We have seen that no people could possibly honour the actual letters of the Scripture more highly than did the Jews. The care they took to keep the words exactly as they had been handed down to them was infinite; and God, who knows all things, knew that a time would come when the pure Hebrew words of the old Bible would be eagerly sought for, and treasured by all who truly honour His Book.
Therefore, although the eyes of the learned Jewish scribes were so blinded, that they did not recognize their King and Saviour when He came, yet God blessed all that was true in their work, and it is from the Hebrew copies which they made of the Books of the Old Testament, and not from the 'Septuagint,' or Greek translation, that the Old Testament of our Bible has come to us to-day.
Yet, sad to say, while so careful to preserve the words of the Scriptures, the Scribes and Pharisees forgot its spirit, the very purpose for which the Bible had been given them.
A man might know by memory every letter of the Bible, but unless the Spirit of God were in his heart, helping him to act out in his life the words he repeats with his lips, all his knowledge of the Bible would only lie as a dead-weight upon his soul. 'The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.' (2 Corinthians iii. 6.) So wrote the Apostle Paul, who had, as we know, been educated by the Scribes and Pharisees, and when he wrote those words he was recalling his own experience.
Thus, as year by year the learned Jews thought more of the letters of their Bible, they saw less of its spirit; worse still, they began to add to the teaching of the Books of the Law.
Not that they ventured to put other words between those of the Bible, or to alter it as the Samaritans had done; but they invented long explanations of almost every verse, and declared that these explanations must be followed as absolutely as the words of the Bible itself.
For instance, a learned Jewish teacher wrote an explanation of Moses' command about obeying the Levites. (Deuteronomy xvii. 11.) Moses had said that the people were to do what the Levites told them respecting the Law of God, neither turning 'to the right hand, nor to the left.' The Jewish teachers declared what Moses really meant was that if a teacher of the Law told you that your left hand was your right you must believe him!
In this way, while professing to explain God's Word, the scribes and teachers were confusing the simple people who wanted to obey this Holy Law.
The Saviour saw this, and He fearlessly rebuked the teachers of the Law, grieved beyond words that those to whom God had entrusted His Book should make 'the Word of God of none effect through your tradition.' (Mark vii. 13.)
His own way of using the Scriptures was very different. From His mother He had first learned to repeat texts from the Old Testament, and with her He had gone to the Synagogue, Sabbath by Sabbath, to hear the Books of the Law and the Prophets read.
As He grew older He would have been sent to school and taught to read and recite the Scriptures, and long before He began Himself to teach the people He had so absorbed the spirit of the Old Testament that His very thoughts seem to have been given in Scripture words.
Perhaps you have wondered why the names of some of the prophets and heroes of the Old Testament are spelt so differently when mentioned in the New—'Elias' instead of 'Elijah,' 'Noe' instead of 'Noah,' and so on. This is because the writers of the New Testament quoted from the Greek translation of the Bible instead of from the Hebrew. Names change a little, you know, when translated into other languages. For instance, our name of Mary becomes 'Marie' in French, and 'Maria' in Italian, and yet it is all the while the same name.
Some people think that this, the Septuagint, or first Greek translation, was the special translation of the Bible which the Saviour used. Many of the quotations which He gave from the Old Testament appear to have been from this translation, although some seem taken directly from the Hebrew, and others again from an Aramaic version which has disappeared.
Christ Himself no doubt taught the people in the Aramaic tongue, which was a mixed language, and came into use after the Jews' return from Babylon. Aramaic is called 'Chaldee' in the Book of Daniel.
But while our Saviour constantly quoted from the Old Testament, He never used its words without definite purpose. The Sword of the Spirit in His hands was either turned against the Evil One, or brought directly to bear with overwhelming force on some mistaken teaching which had blinded the people to the true meaning of the Word of God.
The direct and yet simple way in which He reached the point, and once and for all swept away the difficulty, amazed and confounded the learned Jews.
An instance of this is found in His wonderful answer to the Sadducees, who disbelieved in the Resurrection. 'As touching the Resurrection of the dead,' He said, 'have ye not read that which was spoken unto you by God, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob?' (Matthew xxii. 31, 32.) His hearers, of course, had heard these words quoted from childhood, but not till the Saviour explained their full significance—'God is not the God of the dead, but of the living'—did they realize that in the first recorded words spoken by God to Moses lay a proof of the Resurrection and of life after death.
Let us take a look at the first time in which Christ publicly read and explained the Scriptures. It is the Sabbath, and the synagogue of Nazareth is full of people, serious and attentive, for they have met together to hear the Word of God.
Now One stands up to read. The sacred Roll is in His hand; the Roll of the Book of the prophet Isaiah. Listen:—
'The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He hath anointed Me to preach the Gospel to the poor; He hath sent Me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised,
'To preach the acceptable year of the Lord.' (Luke iv. 18, 19.)
He closes the Book and sits down.
From the dim ages of the past those words had been read; in the long, long ages to come they will yet be read, until the World shall cease to exist, and time itself be known no more.
But never before and never again could there be so heart-searching or sacred a reading as this, when the Son of God read from His Father's Book in the simple village meeting in Galilee.
And yet His listeners did not understand the reading. Even after His explanation of the words they fell upon deaf ears and raised only anger and surprise. It was then that the first attempt was made to destroy Him. (Verse 29.)
To His own Apostles, enlightened as they were, the message of the Old Testament was sealed until after the Saviour's Resurrection, when He 'opened their understanding, that they might understand the Scriptures.' (Luke xxiv. 45.) Then only did the wonderful truth dawn upon them that in coming to earth, in suffering, rising from the dead, and ascending to Heaven, their Master had not destroyed the Scriptures, but had fulfilled them. (Matthew v. 17.)
od had given to His people a Book foretelling the coming of the Christ—or Messiah, as the word is written in Hebrew—so that they might be prepared and ready for His appearance. Yet when He came they did not receive Him. They were looking for an earthly king, and the beautiful words spoken by the ancient prophets had no meaning to them.
When Jesus Christ was born in Bethlehem, the Jews were under the iron rule of the Roman Empire, of which they formed a part, for although the Jewish family of the Herods reigned over Judea, they only held their throne under the Roman Emperor. This the Jews could not endure. They longed to be a free and independent nation once again.
'When our Messiah comes He will be a great warrior,' they said. 'He will utterly destroy all our enemies. He will make Jerusalem the greatest and richest city in the whole earth; all other nations will bow down before us, acknowledging that the Jews alone are the chosen people of God.'
Thus they were expecting a Messiah who would begin his work by killing all the Roman soldiers in Palestine.
Had Jesus of Nazareth been willing to become their earthly king and to lead the nation against the Romans, the Jews would probably have followed Him to a man. (John vi. 15.) But He saw that, even from a human standpoint, the nation could not be helped in this way, and that the Jews would only rebel against the Romans to their destruction.
Instead of widening the breach between them and their conquerors, the Saviour sought to heal it. He called out the faith and gratitude of the Roman centurion, and His answer to the Jewish leaders, 'Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's (Mark xii. 17) showed them the right attitude in which to regard the Roman rule.
When, therefore, He was brought at last before Pilate, the Roman Government had no quarrel with Him. 'Thine own nation ... hath delivered Thee unto me,' said Pilate who would have released his prisoner, had not the Jews prevented it.
'If thou let this Man go, thou art not Caesar's friend,' they cried, thus compelling Pilate, at the risk of being reported as a traitor to his Emperor, to crucify Jesus of Nazareth, and to free Barabbas.
But in choosing the rebel, Barabbas (Mark xv. 7) as their hero, the nation started on their downward road, as the story of the forty years which followed the Saviour's crucifixion clearly shows.
For the Jews were determined at all costs to throw off the Roman yoke, and the history of those years is one long list of terrible risings and massacres, while cities were ruined, villages wrapped in flames, and men, women and children perished with hunger.
Yet the keener the suffering, the more desperate the Jews became. Their whole souls were possessed with a wild and mad passion for revenge.
The Saviour had warned His hearers most earnestly against following false Christs. 'Then if any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or there; believe it not.' (Matthew xxiv. 23.)
Yet no sooner did a daring rebel or murderer gather a band of robbers around him, and begin to kill and plunder, than multitudes of Jews cried, 'The Christ, or Messiah has come; now we shall have vengeance on our enemies!'
They were fighting against God now, and against the Book which He had given them. All peace-loving people who could possibly do so left the country.
At last, in 66 A.D., all the Jews in Jerusalem rose in a body against their Roman governors. They surrounded the great tower of Antonia where the Roman soldiers were quartered, and cried out to the garrison within that their lives should be spared if they would lay down their weapons. The Roman soldiers hesitated, but the Jews promised most faithfully to keep their word.
The Romans believed them, and opened their gates; but no sooner were they in the power of the Jewish mob than they were fallen upon and murdered to the last man!
As they died the Roman soldiers, whom not even death could terrify, lifted up their hands to Heaven, as though calling upon God to witness that the Jews had broken their solemn oath.
The Roman Emperor could not overlook such rebellion and treachery, and he sent a great army against Jerusalem. The Jews shut the gates of their city, and so began the awful siege of Jerusalem.
'And when ye shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies, then know that the desolation thereof is nigh.' (Luke xxi. 20.)
Forty years before, Jesus Christ Himself had spoken these words, and now there began for Jerusalem days filled with horror and woe, 'such as was not from the beginning of the creation which God created unto this time.' (Mark xiii. 19.)
The story of these days has been written for us by a wise Jew named Josephus. He was a prisoner in the Roman camp during the siege of Jerusalem, and he watched with dismay the great battering-rams and war engines crashing through the walls of the Holy City. His ears rang with the cries of rage and despair which broke from the Jews within, as one by one their defences fell, and the end drew near!
Then food failed in the city; men fought like demons in the streets for a tiny loaf of barley-bread; so frantic were the people with hunger that mothers even snatched the bread from their own children's mouths!
'Look over the walls, O people of Jerusalem; the Roman soldiers are crucifying all the prisoners they have taken, and the line of crosses is as long as our city is wide!'
Hard, merciless as was the Roman general, even he grew sick with horror at last, and he sent his Jewish prisoner, Josephus, to the Jews, promising them their lives if they would give up the city. But a furious madness had possessed the people, and they refused to yield.
Josephus pleaded in vain. He was not a Christian, but he could see plainly enough that God was no longer with His people.
'Ah, my countrymen,' he cried, 'we did nothing without God in the past, but now you are fighting against Him. Had God judged you worthy of freedom, He would have punished the Romans as He did the Assyrians long ago. God is fled out of your holy place, and stands on the side of those against whom you fight!'[1]
It is strange and wonderful to read these words in the old history. Even a Jew who had no faith in Jesus Christ could see plainly that the ancient power and glory of his nation had gone.
At last the end came. The first wall fell, then the second and the third, until the Roman soldiers, now as mad as the Jews themselves, burst into the Holy City, hewing down the defenceless people at every step.
And so they came to the Temple—that beautiful Temple of white marble and gold, which still glittered like a hill of snow in the morning sunshine, or sparkled as though wrapped in flame when the sunbeams struck full on its golden roof.
Then redder flames than ever the sunshine made leapt above the golden roof; pillars fell, beams crumbled to ashes, while round the altar of sacrifice the people of Jerusalem lay heaped together, slain in such numbers in the Holy Place that their blood flowed down the broad marble steps in a heavy crimson stream.
And the golden candlestick and the Book of the Law were carried away in triumph into heathen Rome.
Alas for the Holy City, over which the Saviour of the world had stood and wept forty years before, knowing the suffering that lay before her!
'These Jews are dangerous. We must not allow them to rebuild their city, or to become a separate people again. As a nation they must cease to exist.'
So the Roman conquerors of Jerusalem agreed; and from that day onward the Jewish people have had no country of their own. They have, indeed, been 'led away captive into all nations' (Luke xxi. 24) exactly as the Lord foretold.
There is scarcely a country in the world where Jews may not be found, but Jerusalem lies still in the hands of strangers, and is the property of the Turkish nation.
The Jews were now no longer a nation. They had become merely a body of people led by their Rabbis, or teachers of the Law; but they were still 'the people of the Book,' for even after frequent rebellions had so angered the Romans that they passed a law forbidding a Jew to enter the partially re-built city of Jerusalem under pain of death, they allowed the Jewish teachers to continue the synagogue services in other parts of Palestine, and to teach in their colleges.
The most famous Jewish college of these days was at Tiberius, on the shores of the 'Sea of Galilee,' over whose clear depths the Lord Jesus Christ had sailed so often, and beside whose shores He had done so many wonderful deeds of love and mercy.
A great and beautiful college it was, with broad terraced gardens, where the students paced to and fro, their whole hearts and souls absorbed in their work. The Temple copy of the Book of the Law was now in the palace of the heathen Emperor in Rome, but many less precious copies were left to them. So all day long they studied and copied the old Hebrew Bible.
As we have seen, the Jewish scribes had not been content with taking the Word of God just as it stood; they had begun, even in our Lord's day, to invent explanations of many parts of the old Books which quite altered their true meaning.
After the fall of Jerusalem the learned Jews, shut away in their colleges and striving to forget their sorrows, began to write down the Scripture explanations, and to add to them so greatly that it became more difficult to recall the comments on the Bible than it was to remember the Bible itself.
These explanations, all collected together, are called 'The Talmud.' Now the learned Jews grew so fond of their Talmud, that they declared a man to be a blockhead if he knew only the Scriptures and not the Talmud explanation.
'The law of Moses is like salt, but the Talmud is balmy spice,' they would say.
Yet although they heeded so little the true meaning of God's Book, they guarded its words more and more carefully; and the rules for copying any portion of the holy Books were strict indeed.
'My son,' an old teacher would say to his pupil, 'before you copy a single word you must wash your body all over, and clothe yourself in full Jewish dress, preparing your mind with solemn thoughts. The parchment you write upon must be made from the skins of "clean" animals only—that is clean according to the Law of Moses.
'The ink you write with must be of a pure black, made only from a mixture of soot, charcoal, and honey. Though you know the whole Book of the Law by heart, you must not write a single word from memory, but raise your eyes to your copy, and pronounce the word aloud before trusting it to your pen. Before writing any of the names of God you must wash your pen: before writing His most sacred Name you must wash your whole body. If, after your copy has itself been examined, three corrections have to be made, that copy must be destroyed.'
Not satisfied with all these directions, the master taught his scholar to count the letters of every Book.
One of the letters in Leviticus xi. is the middle letter of all the five Books of Moses, a word in chapter x. is the middle of all the words, and a verse in chapter viii. is the very centre of all the verses. The letter 'A'—that is the Hebrew letter which stands for 'A'—occurs 42,377 times; the letter 'B' 35,218, and so on.
Not only this, but every scribe was required to know from memory exactly how many letters of each kind there should be in his sheet before he began to write. Every sheet of parchment must contain an equal number of lines, and the breadth of each column had to be thirty letters wide.
There are eleven verses in the Book of the Law beginning and ending with 'N,' there are forty verses in which 'Lo' is read three times—and so on, and so on.
How tedious and meaningless such information appears! Of what value were all these details?
To spend all his days in learning such things as these could have no influence on a man's character, nor make him a power for good in the world. Not for this purpose had God revealed His will to man.
Some years ago in the coffin of an Egyptian mummy, a little jar of wheat was found. For thousands of years it had lain there, shut up in the dark, while out in the fields the corn which had been sown had grown up and been reaped every year, and men and women had been fed. But this jar of corn was useless, because it had been prevented from doing the work in the world for which it was created.
Just so was it with the Hebrew copies of God's Word. Locked up in a dead language, kept close, away from the world, they were like the jar of wheat which could not grow.
But meanwhile God's Book was growing in the wide fields beyond. While the Jews were keeping safe the letters of the Old Testament, the New Testament was beginning to do its mighty work in the great heathen cities of the world.