“The Jewish king himself was intolerant and he forced many heathen cities to embrace Judaism; those who refused were destroyed. Simon ben Shetach, president of the Synhedrion, _condemned 80 women to be crucified for witchcraft_. The son of Simon ben Shetach was accused by his enemies of some breach of a religious precept and although the father himself knew him to be innocent, he nevertheless sentenced him to death and allowed him to be executed. “Between the school of Hillel and Shammai there was constantly bloodshed. The trial and execution of Jesus were the natural outcome of religious intolerance. The greatest service to God a Jew thought possible was to persecute the Christians. Rabbi Tarphon said that the Gilion, that is, the Gospels and all the writings of the Minim, that is, the Apostolic Epistles, should be burned even with the holy name of God in them. He maintained that Christianity was more dangerous than paganism and he would rather fly to a heathen Temple than to a meeting house of the Minim. A curse against the Minim was inserted into the Jewish daily prayers at that time, which is still used by the congregations. Bar-Kosibah, the false Messiah, persecuted the Christians without mercy. Even in the time of Justinian, in the sixth century, the Jews massacred Christians in Caesarea and destroyed their churches. When Stephanus, the governor, attempted to defend the Christians, the Jews fell on him and slew him. In 608, the Jews of Antioch fell upon their Christian neighbors and killed them with fire and sword. The Patriarch Anastasius, surnamed the Sinaite, was disgracefully illtreated by them and his body dragged through the streets, before he was finally put to death. About 614, the Persians advanced upon Palestine and the Jews, after joining their standard, massacred the Christians and destroyed their churches. Ninety thousand Christians perished in Jerusalem alone. The Jews expected fair play from the Persians as a reward, but were treated worse by them than by the Christians. In 628, the Emperor Heraclius had retaken Palestine from the Persians and when marching through Tiberius, he was entertained by a wealthy Jew named Benjamin, the same man who invited the Jews to join the Persians against the Byzantines; the emperor asked him what had induced him to betray so great an animosity against the Christians, to which he replied that they were the enemies of his religion. _Yet they claim the prophecy of Isaiah in the fifty-third chapter, to have been fulfilled in them. ‘He was oppressed, and he was afflicted yet he opened not his mouth.’_ They even persecuted Mohammed in the incipient stages of his career. They prejudiced the chief Arabs against him, helped his enemies to discredit him and endeavored to alienate his followers.”