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SECTION VIII.

JERUSALEM.

HISTORY, STATISTICS, ETC.

I. HISTORICAL NOTICES.

It is not my purpose here to enter into any critical discussion; but merely to bring together a few historical notices of the Holy City, which may aid in throwing light upon some of the preceding details. They relate chiefly to the early centuries after the Christian era.

The picture which Josephus has given us of the siege and overthrow of Jerusalem by Titus, is drawn in gloomy colours; and presents a fearful succession of disease, famine, suffering, and slaughter. The Romans had besieged the city at a time when multitudes of the Jews were collected in it to celebrate the Passover. First came pestilence, and then famine and the sword; so that, according to the same historian, there perished during the siege not less than eleven hundred thousand persons; while ninety-seven thousand more were made captives.' The devastation of the temple and the city was terrific; and in a sense

1) Joseph. B. J. VI. 9. 3. This is doubtless a greatly exaggerated

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estimate; though the destruction of life was at any rate immense.

complete. The former was burned with fire; and the walls of both, with the exceptions hereafter to be mentioned, were levelled with the ground; so that a passer-by would not have supposed that the place had ever been inhabited.1

Yet amid all this destruction and the insatiable fury of the Roman soldiers, there is no evidence that it was the intent of Titus to lay a ban upon the city, and devote it to perpetual desolation. This indeed was sometimes done by the Romans in respect to conquered cities; the plough was made to pass over their ruins, as a symbol of exauguration; and they might then never be again built up.2 But Jerusalem was not thus made a doomed site; no plough was passed over its ruins, as has sometimes been reported; and no superstitious curse rested upon its future renovation. Josephus, the eyewitness and participator in all those scenes, who describes in minute detail the events and consequences of the siege, is wholly silent as to any such desecration. The report in question has no doubt arisen in modern times, from confounding a notice relating to the time of Adrian with the events which occurred under Titus.3

Jerusalem, however terrible,

The destruction of was nevertheless not total. 1) Joseph. B. J. VII. 1. 1.

2) Servius ad Virg. Æn. lib. V. vs. 755, "Nam ideo ad diruendas, vel exaugurandas urbes aratrum adhibitum, ut eodem ritu, quo conditae, subvertantur." So Horat. Carm. I. Od. 16:

"et altis urbibus ultimae
Stetere causae cur perirent
Funditus, imprimeretque muris
Hostile aratrum exercitus insolens.
See also Seneca de Clementia I. c.
26. Deyling de Eliae Capitol.
Origine et Hist. § 6, in Deyling's
Observat. Sacr. P. V. p. 448.

3) The assertion in question seems first to have been made by

Josephus expressly re

Joseph Scaliger in a hap-hazard manner in his Animadv. ad Eusebii Chron. p. 211. It is repeated by Valesius in his notes on Eusebii Hist. Ecc. lib. IV. c. 6. p. 61; by Witsius, Miscell. Sacr. II. Exerc. XII. 8; and by several other writers. Scaliger evidently confounded the later alleged passing of the plough over the site of the temple by Titus Annius Rufus, with the desecration of Jerusalem itself; and has even changed the name of the person to Musonius Tyrrhenus. See a full exposure of the error in Deyling 1. c. p. 450,

seq.

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