כל הנביאים כולן לא נתנבאו אלא לימות המשיח All the prophets prophesied not but of the days of the Messiah.’ – Sanh. 99a לא אברי עלמא אלא למשיח ‘The world was not created but only for the Messiah.’ – Sanh. 98b Chapter I. The Jewish World in the Days of Christ – The Jewish Dispersion [...]
When we turn from the Jewish ‘dispersion’ in the East to that in the West, we seem to breathe quite a different atmosphere. Despite their intense nationalism, all unconsciously to themselves, their mental characteristics and tendencies were in the opposite direction from those of their brethren. With those of the East rested the future of [...]
The translation of the Old Testament into Greek may be regarded as the starting-point of Hellenism. It rendered possible the hope that what in its original form had been confined to the few, might become accessible to the world at large. But much yet remained to be done. If the religion of the Old Testament [...]
It is strange how little we know of the personal history of the greatest of uninspired Jewish writers of old, though he occupied so prominent a position in his time. Philo was born in Alexandria, about the year 20 before Christ. He was a descendant of Aaron, and belonged to one of the wealthiest and [...]
We have spoken of Alexandria as the capital of the Jewish world in the West. Antioch was, indeed, nearer to Palestine, and its Jewish population – including the floating part of it – as numerous as that of Alexandria. But the wealth, the thought, and the influence of Western Judaism centred in the modern capital [...]
It was not only in the capital of the Empire that the Jews enjoyed the rights of Roman citizenship. Many in Asia Minor could boast of the same privileged. The Seleucidic rulers of Syria had previously bestowed kindred privileges on the Jews in many places. Thus, they possessed in some cities twofold rights: the status [...]
The pilgrim who, leaving other countries, entered Palestine, must have felt as if he had crossed the threshold of another world. Manners, customs, institutions, law, life, nay, the very intercourse between man and man, were quite different. All was dominated by the one all-absorbing idea of religion. It penetrated every relation of life. Moreover, it [...]
Chapter VIII: In trying to picture to ourselves New Testament scenes, the figure most prominent, next to those of the chief actors, is that of the Scribe (סופר, γραμματεύς, literatus). He seems ubiquitous; we meet him in Jerusalem, in Judaea, and even in Galilee. Indeed, he is indispensable, not only in Babylon, which may have [...]
‘Fortitudo infirmatur, Parva fit immensitas; Liberator alligatur, Nascitur aeternitas. O quam mira perpetrasti Jesu propter hominem! Tam ardenter quem amasti Paradiso exulem.’ – Ancient Latin Hymn. Chapter I. In Jerusalem When Herod Reigned. If the dust of ten centuries could have been wiped from the eyelids of those sleepers, and one of them who thronged [...]
It is an intensely painful history, in the course of which Herod made his way to the throne. We look back nearly two and a half centuries to where, with the empire of Alexander, Palestine fell to his successors. For nearly a century and a half it continued the battle-field of the Egyptian and Syrian [...]
