in Herod's palace at Jerusalem, the four sons of Herod came forward in
defence of Jewish principles and he was ordered to remove them. In 35 he
dispersed a number of Samaritans, who had assembled near Mt Gerizim at
the bidding of an impostor, in order to see the temple vessels buried
there by Moses. Complaint was made to Vitellius, then legate of Syria,
and Pilate was sent to Rome to answer for his shedding of innocent
blood. At the passover of 36 Vitellius came to Jerusalem and pacified
the Jews by two concessions: he remitted the taxes on fruit sold in the
city, and he restored to their custody the high priest's vestments,
which Herod Archelaus and the Romans had kept in the tower Antonia. The
vestments had been stored there since the time of the first high priest
named Hyrcanus, and Herod had taken them over along with the tower,
thinking that his possession of them would deter the Jews from rebellion
against his rule. At the same time Vitellius vindicated the Roman
supremacy by degrading Caiaphas from the high-priesthood, and appointing
a son of Annas in his place. The motive for this change does not appear,
and we are equally ignorant of the cause which prompted his transference
of the priesthood from his nominee to another son of Annas in 37. But it
is quite clear that Vitellius was concerned to reconcile the Jews to the
authority of Rome. When he marched against Aretas, his army with their
standards did not enter Judaea at all; but he himself went up to
Jerusalem for the feast and, on receipt of the news that Tiberius was
dead, administered to the Jews the oath of allegiance to Caligula.
35. _Caligula and Agrippa I._--The accession of Caligula (A.D. 37-41)
was hailed by his subjects generally as the beginning of the Golden Age.
The Jews in particular had a friend at court. Agrippa, the grandson of
Herod the Great, was an avowed partisan of the new emperor and had paid
penalty for a premature avowal of his preference. But Caligula's favour,
though lavished upon Agrippa, was not available for pious Jews. His
foible was omnipotence, and he aped the gods of Greece in turn. In the
provinces and even in Italy his subjects were ready to acknowledge his
divinity--with the sole exception of the Jews. So we learn something of
the Palestinian Jews and more of the Jewish community in Alexandria. The
great world (as we know it) took small note of Judaism even when Jews
converted its women to their faith; but now the Jews as a nation refused
to bow before the present god of the civilized world. The new
Catholicism was promulgated by authority and accepted with deference.
Only the Jews protested: they had a notion of the deity which Caligula
at all events did not fulfil.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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