RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Israel, History of
across the Jordan, and Masada, west of the Dead Sea. But from that time the Jews have had to live without country, sanctuary, and nationality.
C. von Oeelli.
II. Post-Biblical History. — 1. General Survey: With the fall of Jerusalem the Jewish nation lost the remains of its independence and all control over its external destiny, while it became dependent upon the peoples among whom it lived. It nevertheless had received such a development of spiritual, social, and religious life as had differentiated it from the other nations with which its lot was from that time cast and had made absorption into them an impossibility. Consequently the Jewish people has had for 1,900 years its own inner history, which has not been without influence upon the world at large. Externally and internally this history divides into three periods: (1) From the fall of Jerusalem to the Mohammedan conquest and the emergence of the Teutons; (2) to the French Revolution; (3) to the present. In the first of these periods the Jews built about themselves a spiritual wall within which they protected and developed their peculiar and individual bent. Abandoning all claims upon the outer world, they busied themselves with the production of the Talmud, the citadel of their spiritual life, the treasury of their thought, the basis of the physical and spiritual laws of their existence. When their individuality had thus been fixed in enduring form, they could without danger to their peculiar genius participate in the life of the nations of the world so far as this was permitted to them. In the second period this participation was very limited, confined chiefly to the exercise of the functions of commerce and of the privileges of middlemen between the Orient and Occident. They also exercised a decided influence upon culture and mediated between Greek learning and philosophy and the Arabic and between the Arabs and the West, and so contributed to learning of the scholastic type, producing a monistic type of thought best illustrated by Spinoza. With the French Revolution began the gradual emancipation of the Jews, in which they gained political equality with Christians, lost the quality of separativeness, acquired eminence in the world of wealth and of letters, but at the expense of that intensity of religious life which had distinguished them through the centuries. Against this there came late in the nineteenth century a reaction which took the form of Zionism (q.v.), one of the purposes of which is the unification of the nation through the erection of a Jewish state in Palestine. The present century finds among the Jews a social excitement and a spiritual ferment such as it has not known since the destruction of Jerusalem.
2. The Early Period: The Jewish war left Judea a waste and its Jewish inhabitants despoiled. Vespasian took the land as his personal domain, from which he bestowed es-
1. Conditions after
the War- ^ates uPon his friends ; he settled 800 Jabneh.' veterans in the neighborhood of Jerusalem, and compelled those Jews who wished to remain in the country to purchase their holdings from the conqueror. The Jews who had previously been domiciled in other lands became
the real strength of those nations. They were in greatest force in Egypt, especially in Alexandria; but they were scattered elsewhere from India westward, and no considerable city was without its Jewish community and its synagogue. In Rome there were at least 8,000 Jews with their own quarter of the city; Jewish merchants followed the legions, while the Herodian family had a recognized place at court, and Jews under the empire had special exemption and position. With the destruction of Jerusalem the Jews had lost their unifying center. But by his flight to the camp of the Romans and his prediction to Vespasian of elevation to the throne, Rabbi Johanan ben Zakkai (cf. JE, vii. 214 sqq.) had gained the emperor's favor and a promise to grant any request the rabbi might make. The latter asked permission to establish a school of Jewish law, and when this was given, settled at Jabneh or Jamnia, a little city near the coast south of Joppa. Under the care of the institution there erected came the settlement of many matters formerly in charge of the Sanhedrin, including the Jewish calendar. Hence arose the tradition that Rabbi Johanan transferred the Sanhedrin to Jabneh. While it had not been his purpose to create a new center of Judaism, the gathering of scholars there and the study of the law had this effect, and so made possible the continued survival of the Jewish spirit. Jews from abroad sent their sons for the study of the law, while the teachers gave their pronouncement upon matters of importance for all their coreligionists. Here was developed the tradition of the law, as divided into Halacha and Haggada (see Mideash), out of which came a definite and characteristic set of views which stamps the Jewish learning with what may be called a Talmudic type as opposed to the Biblical type of post-exilic and pre-Christian Judaism. This is the third stage in the development of the Jewish spirit, the first being what may be termed the pre-Biblical. In this stage the four generations to the close of the Mishna are known as Tanaim, the five to the close of the Talmud as Amoraim, both classes influential upon all succeeding Judaism, guarding as they did Judaic orthodoxy. Among the Tanaim two men were of eminent importance, Gamaliel the younger (cf. JE, v. 560 sqq.), and Akiba (q.v.). The first stood for the influence of Hillel's interpretation of the law, for the decision of legal matters by a majority of authorities, and for Jabneh as the continued center of official Judaism. Rabbi Akiba 's fame rests not merely upon his collection of the Halachoth, but upon his new method of using the literal and minute elements of Scripture as a basis of legal formulas. Under Gamaliel the estrangement between Jews and Christians became final and complete.
Judaism meanwhile gained ever a stronger influence, and proselytes of eminence in the heathen world adopted the Jewish religion. This aroused Domitian's distrust, and he had the Jewish law examined to discover whether it were a danger to the state. Under Trajan this distrust became greater because of the practical aid given by Jews to the Parthians, and victory over these was recognized, even in inscriptions on coins, as a new victory
2. The Last Insurrections.
Israel, History of