Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| The Last Siege of the Jews after Christ.
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Chapter
V.—The Last Siege of the Jews after
Christ.
1. After Nero had held the power thirteen years,622
| 622 Nero
was emperor from Oct. 16, 54, to June 9, 68 a.d. | and Galba and Otho had ruled a year and
six months,623
| 623 Eusebius figures are incorrect. He omits Vitellius entirely, while
he stretches Galba’s and Otho’s reigns to make them cover a
period of eighteen months, instead of nine (Galba reigned from June 9,
68, to Jan. 15, 69; and Otho from Jan. 15 to April 20, 69). The total
of the three reigns of Galba, Otho, and Vitellius was about eighteen
months. | Vespasian, who had become
distinguished in the campaigns against the Jews, was proclaimed
sovereign in Judea and received the title of Emperor from the armies
there.624
| 624 Vespasian was proclaimed emperor by the prefect of Egypt at
Alexandria, July 1, 69, while Vitellius was the acknowledged emperor in
Italy. His choice was immediately ratified by his army in Judea, and
then by all the legions in the East. Vitellius was conquered by
Vespasian’s generals, and slain in Italy, Dec. 20, 69, while
Vespasian himself went to Alexandria. The latter was immediately
recognized by the Senate, and reached Italy in the summer of 70.
Eusebius is thus approximately correct, though he is not exact as to
details. | Setting out immediately, therefore, for
Rome, he entrusted the conduct of the war against the Jews to his son
Titus.625
| 625 Titus
undertook the prosecution of the war against the Jews after his
father’s departure, and brought the siege of Jerusalem to an end,
Sept. 8, 70 a.d. |
2. For the Jews after the
ascension of our Saviour, in addition to their crime against him, had
been devising as many plots as they could against his apostles. First
Stephen was stoned to death by them,626
and after him
James, the son of Zebedee and the brother of John, was beheaded,627
and finally James, the first that had
obtained the episcopal seat in Jerusalem after the ascension of our
Saviour, died in the manner already described.628
| 628 See Bk. II. chap. 23. |
But the rest of the apostles, who had been incessantly plotted against
with a view to their destruction, and had been driven out of the land
of Judea, went unto all nations to preach the Gospel,629
relying upon the power of Christ, who had
said to them, “Go ye and make disciples of all the nations in my
name.”630
3. But the people of the church
in Jerusalem had been commanded by a revelation, vouchsafed to approved
men there before the war, to leave the city and to dwell in a certain
town of Perea called Pella.631
| 631 Pella was a town situated beyond the Jordan, in the north of
Perea, within the dominions of Herod Agrippa II. The surrounding
population was chiefly Gentile. See Pliny V. 18, and Josephus, B.
J. III. 3. 3, and I. 4. 8. Epiphanius (De pond. et mens. 15)
also records this flight of the Christians to Pella. | And when those
that believed in Christ had come thither from Jerusalem, then, as if
the royal city of the Jews and the whole land of Judea were entirely
destitute of holy men, the judgment of God at length overtook those who
had committed such outrages against Christ and his apostles, and
totally destroyed that generation of impious men.
4. But the number of calamities
which everywhere fell upon the nation at that time; the extreme
misfortunes to which the inhabitants of Judea were especially
subjected, the thousands of men, as well as women and children, that
perished by the sword, by famine, and by other forms of death
innumerable,—all these things, as well as the many great sieges
which were carried on against the cities of Judea, and the excessive.
sufferings endured by those that fled to Jerusalem itself, as to a city
of perfect safety, and finally the general course of the whole war, as
well as its particular occurrences in detail, and how at last the
abomination of desolation, proclaimed by the prophets,632
stood in the very temple of God, so
celebrated of old, the temple which was now awaiting its total and
final destruction by fire,—all these things any one that wishes
may find accurately described in the history written by Josephus.633
| 633 Josephus, B. J. Bks. V. and VI. |
5. But it is necessary to state
that this writer records that the multitude of those who were assembled
from all Judea at the time of the Passover, to the number of three
million souls,634
| 634 B. J.VI. 9, §§3 and 4.
Eusebius simply gives round numbers. Josephus in §3 puts the
number at 2,700,000, exclusive of the “unclean and the
strangers” who were not allowed to eat the Passover. In the same
work, Bk. II. chap. 14, §3, Josephus states that when Cestius
Gallus, governor of Syria, came to Jerusalem at the time of the
Passover in 65 a.d., no less than 3,000,000
persons came about him to enter complaint against the procurator
Florus. These numbers are grossly exaggerated. Tacitus estimates the
number in the city at the time of the siege as 600,000, but this, too,
is far above the truth. The writer of the article Jerusalem, in
Smith’s Bible Dict., estimates that the city can never
have had a population of more than 50,000 souls, and he concludes that
at the time of the siege there cannot have been more than 60,000 or
70,000 collected within the walls. This is probably too low an
estimate, but shows how far out of the way the figures of Josephus and
Tacitus must be. | were shut up in Jerusalem “as
in a prison,” to use his own words.
6. For it was right that in the
very days in which they had inflicted suffering upon the Saviour and
the Benefactor of all, the Christ of God, that in those days, shut up
“as in a prison,” they should meet with destruction at the
hands of divine justice.
7. But passing by the particular
calamities which they suffered from the attempts made upon them by the
sword and by other means, I think it necessary to relate only the
misfortunes which the famine caused, that those who read this work may have some
means of knowing that God was not long in executing vengeance upon them
for their wickedness against the Christ of God. E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
