Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| Many of the Jews in Crete embrace the Christian Faith.
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Chapter XXXVIII.—Many
of the Jews in Crete embrace the Christian Faith.
About this period a great
number of Jews who dwelt in Crete were convened to Christianity,
through the following disastrous circumstance. A certain Jewish
impostor pretended that he was Moses, and had been1024
| 1024Nothing further is heard of this strange affair.
|
sent from heaven to lead out the Jews inhabiting that island, and
conduct them through the sea: for he said that he was the same person
who formerly preserved the Israelites by leading them through the Red
Sea. During a whole year therefore he perambulated the several cities
of the island, and persuaded the Jews to believe such assurances. He
moreover bid them renounce their money and other property, pledging
himself to guide them through a dry sea into the land of promise.
Deluded by such expectations, they neglected business of every kind,
despising what they possessed, and permitting any one who chose to take
it. When the day appointed by this deceiver for their departure had
arrived, he himself took the lead, and all followed with their wives
and children. He led them therefore until they reached a promontory
that overhung the sea, from which he ordered them to fling themselves
headlong into it. Those who came
first to the precipice did so, and were immediately destroyed, some of
them being dashed in pieces against the rocks, and some drowned in the
waters: and more would have perished, had not the Providence of God led
some fishermen and merchants who were Christians to be present. These
persons drew out and saved some that were almost drowned, who then in
their perilous situation became sensible of the madness of their
conduct. The rest they hindered from casting themselves down, by
telling them of the destruction of those who had taken the first leap.
When at length the Jews perceived how fearfully they had been duped,
they blamed first of all their own indiscreet credulity, and then
sought to lay hold of the pseudo-Moses in order to put him to death.
But they were unable to seize him, for he suddenly disappeared which
induced a general belief that it was some malignant fiend,1025
| 1025ἀλάστωρ. Æschylus and
Sophocles apply this word to the Furies.
|
who had assumed a human form for the destruction of their nation in
that place. In consequence of this experience many of the Jews in Crete
at that time abandoning Judaism attached themselves to the Christian
faith.
E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
