The Cradle of the Christ: A Study in Primitive ChristianityFrothingham, Octavius Brooks
Religion
The Cradle of the Christ: A Study in Primitive Christianity
Frothingham, Octavius Brooks
Christianity -- Controversial literature
Plutarch, who minutely describes the Mosaic system of laws. Satire
betrays fear as well as dislike. The great writer disdains to caricature
people who are inconspicuous. Juvenal was a great writer, and his
envenomed raillery against the Jews has become familiar by quotation. It
would seem, from his invectives, that Jewish ideas and practices had
crept into public approval, and were exerting an influence on the
education of Roman youth. He complains bitterly of parents who bring up
their children to think more of the laws of Moses than of the laws of
their country.--"Some there are, assigned by fortune to Sabbath fearing
fathers, who adore nothing but the clouds and the genius of the sky; who
see no distinction between the swine's flesh as food and the flesh of
man. Habitually despising the laws of Rome, they study, keep and revere
the code of Judæa, a tradition given by Moses in a dark volume. The
blame is with the father, with whom every seventh day is devoted to
idleness, and withdrawn from the uses of life." Juvenal lived in the
latter part of the first and the early part of the second century, about
a generation after the destruction of Jerusalem. Admitting the
genuineness of the passage, and the ground of the criticism, neither of
which is disputed, the influence of the Jews was by no means
contemptible.
[Footnote 2: Bellum Judaicum, VII. 17.]
Milman conjectures that while the number of Jews in Rome was much
increased, their respectability as well as their popularity were much
diminished by the immense influx of the most destitute as well as of the
most unruly of the race, who were swept into captivity by thousands
after the fall of Jerusalem. This may be true. There is reason to
believe that the importation of so great a number of strangers was
attended by poverty, distress, and squalor, horrible to think of. It
could not have been otherwise. That they should infest and infect whole
districts of the city; that they should pitch their vagabond tents on
vacant plots of ground, and should change fair districts, gardens and
groves into disreputable and foul precincts; that they should resort to
mean trades for support, peddling, trafficking in old clothes, rags,
matches, broken glass, or should sink into mendicancy, is simply in the
nature of things, But it is fair to suppose that the exiles from
Jerusalem would bring with them the memory of their sufferings during
the unexampled horrors of that tremendous war; would bring with them
also a fiercer sense of loyalty to the faith for which such agonies had
been borne, such sacrifices had been made. That they held their religion
dear, is certain. Their Sabbaths were observed, their laws revered,
their synagogues frequented, their peculiarities of race cherished and
perpetuated by tradition from father to son. There is reason to think
that they anticipated the Christians in their practice of burying their
dead in the catacombs, which bore a strong resemblance to the rocky
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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