44 CHAPTER I PREPARATION FOR CHRISTIANITY IN THE HISTORY OF THE JEWISH AND HEATHEN WORLD. heathen writers of that age, and shows the absolute need ward organization of the Christian church. As the Greek of redemption. “The world,” says Seneca, in a famous church rose on the basis of the Grecian nationality, so passage, “is full of crimes and vices. More are committed the Latin church rose on that of ancient Rome, and rethan can be cured by force. There is an immense struggle produced in higher forms both its virtues and its defects. for iniquity. Crimes are no longer bidden, but open be- Roman Catholicism is pagan Rome baptized, a Christian fore the eyes. Innocence is not only rare, but nowhere.”82 reproduction of the universal empire seated of old in the Thus far the negative. On the other hand, the universal city of the seven hills. empire of Rome was a positive groundwork for the uni§ 13. Judaism and Heathenism in Contact. versal empire of the gospel. It served as a crucible, in The Roman empire, though directly establishing no which all contradictory and irreconcilable peculiarities more than an outward political union, still promoted inof the ancient nations and religions were dissolved into directly a mutual intellectual and moral approach of the the chaos of a new creation. The Roman legions razed hostile religious of the Jews and Gentiles, who were to be the partition-walls among the ancient nations, brought reconciled in one divine brotherhood by the supernatuthe extremes of the civilized world together in free inter- ral power of the cross of Christ. course, and united north and south and east and west in 1. The Jews, since the Babylonish captivity, had been the bonds of a common language and culture, of com- scattered over all the world. They were as ubiquitous in mon laws and customs. Thus they evidently, though un- the Roman empire in the first century as they are now consciously, opened the way for the rapid and general throughout, Christendom. According to Josephus and spread of that religion which unites all nations in one Strabo, there was no country where they did not make family of God by the spiritual bond of faith and love. up a part of the population.84 Among the witnesses of The idea of a common humanity, which underlies all the miracle of Pentecost were “Jews from every nation the distinctions of race, society and education, began to under heaven ... Parthians and Medes and Elamites, and dawn in the heathen mind, and found expression in the the dwellers of Mesopotamia, in Judaea and Cappadocia, famous line of Terentius, which was received with ap- in Pontus and Asia, in Phrygia and Pamphylia, in Egypt plause in the theatre: and the parts of Libya about Cyrene, and sojourners “Homo sum: humani nihil a me alienum puto.” from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and AraThis spirit of humanity breathes in Cicero and Virgil. bians.”87 In spite of the antipathy of the Gentiles, they Hence the veneration paid to the poet of the Aeneid by had, by talent and industry, risen to wealth, influence, the fathers and throughout the middle ages. Augustine and every privilege, and had built their synagogues in calls him the noblest of poets, and Dante, “the glory and all the commercial cities of the Roman empire. Pompey light of other poets,” and “his master,” who guided him brought a considerable number of Jewish captives from through the regions of hell and purgatory to the very Jerusalem to the capital (b.c. 63), and settled them on gates of Paradise. It was believed that in his fourth Ec- the right bank of the Tiber (Trastevere). By establishing logue he had prophesied the advent of Christ. This in- this community he furnished, without knowing it, the terpretation is erroneous; but “there is in Virgil,” says an chief material for the Roman church. Julius Caesar was accomplished scholar,83 “a vein of thought and sentiment the great protector of the Jews; and they showed their more devout, more humane, more akin to the Christian 84 Jos., Bell. Jud., VII. c. 3, § 3: “As the Jewish nation than is to be found in any other ancient poet, whether is widely dispersed over all the habitable earth,” etc. Antiqu., Greek or Roman. He was a spirit prepared and waiting, XIV. 7, 2: “Let no one wonder that there was so much wealth though he knew it not, for some better thing to be re- in our temple, since all the Jews throughout the habitable earth, and those that worship God, nay, even those of Asia vealed.” The civil laws and institutions, also, and the great and Europe, sent their contributions to it.” Then, quoting administrative wisdom of Rome did much for the out- from Strabo, he says: “These Jews are already gotten into all 82 De Ira, II. 8. 83 Principal Shairp, in an article on “Virgil as a Precursor of Christianity,” in the “Princeton Review” for Sept., 1879, pp. 403-420. Comp. the learned essay of Professor Piper, in Berlin, on “Virgil als Theologe und Prophet,” in his “Evang. Kalender” for 1862.
cities, and it is hard to, find a place in the habitable earth that has not admitted this tribe of men, and is not possessed by it; and it has come to pass that Egypt and Cyrene and a great number of other nations imitate their way of living, and maintain great bodies of these Jews in a peculiar manner, and grow up to greater prosperity with them, and make use also of the same laws with that nation.”
