R. Eleazar, son of Chananyah the High-Priest, a very wealthy man, whose father and brother belonged to the opposite or peace party. It was on the proposal of this strict Shammaite that the offering for the Emperor was intermitted (Jos. Jew. War ii. 17. 2, 3). Indeed, it is impossible to over-estimate the influence of these Shammaite decrees on the great war with Rome. Eleazar, though opposed to the extreme party, one of whose chiefs he took and killed, was one of the leaders of the national party in the war (War ii. 17. 9, 10). There is, however, some confusion about various persons who bore the same name. It is impossible in this place to mention the various Shammaites who took part in the last Jewish war. Suffice it to indicate the tendency of that School.] and it furnished leaders or supporters of the national movement.
We have marked the rise of the Nationalist party in Galilee at the time of Herod's first appearance on the scene, and learned how mercilessly he tried to suppress it: first, by the execution of Ezekias and his adherents, and afterwards, when he became King of Judaea, by the slaughter of the Sanhedrists. The consequence of this unsparing severity was to give Rabbinism a different direction. The School of Hillel which henceforth commanded the majority, were men of no political colour, theological theorists, self-seeking Jurists, vain rather than ambitious. The minority, represented by the School of Shammai, were Nationalists. Defective and even false as both tendencies were, there was certainly more hope, as regarded the Kingdom of God, of the Nationalists than of the Sophists and Jurists. It was, of course, the policy of Herod to suppress all national aspirations. No one understood the meaning of Jewish Nationalism so well as he; no one ever opposed it so sytematically. There was internal fitness, so to speak, in his attempt to kill the King of the Jews among the infants of Bethlehem. The murder of the Sanhedrists, with the consequent new anti-Messianic tendency of Rabbinism, was one measure in that direction; the various appointments which Herod made to the High-Priesthood another. And yet it was not easy, even in those times, to deprive the Pontificate of its power and influence. The High-Priest was still the representative of the religious life of the people, and he acted on all occasions, when the question under discussion was not one exclusively of subtle canon-law, as the President of the Sanhedrin, in which, indeed, the members of his family had evidently seat and vote, [a Acts iv. 6] The four families [1 See the list of High-Priests in Appendix VI] from which, with few exceptions, the High-Priest, however often changed, were chosen, absorbed the wealth, and commanded the influence, of a state-endowed establishment, in its worst times. It was, therefore, of the utmost importance to make wise choice of the High-Priest. With the exception of the brief tenure by Aristobulus, the last of the Maccabees, whose appointment, too soon followed by his murder, was at the time a necessity, all the Herodian High-Priests were non-Palestinians. A keener blow than this could not have been dealt at Nationalism.
The same contempt for the High-Priesthood characterised the brief reign of Archelaus. On his death-bed, Herod had appointed to the Pontificate Joazar, a son of Boethos, the wealthy Alexandrian priest, whose daughter, Mariamme II, he had married. The Boethusian family, allied to Herod, formed a party, the Herodians, who combined strict Pharisaic views with devotion to the reigning family. [2 The Boethusians furnished no fewer than four High- Priest during the period between the reign of Herod and that of Agrippa I. (41 A. D.).] Joazar took the popular part against Archelaus, on his accession. For this he was deprived of his dignity in favour of another son of Boethos, Eleazar by name. But the mood of Archelaus was fickle , perhaps he was distrustful of the family of Boethos. At any rate, Eleazar had to give place to Jesus, the son of Sie, an otherwise
unknown individual. At the time of the taxing of Quirinius we find Joazar again in office, [a Ant. xviii. 1.1] apparently restored to it by the multitude, which, having taken matters into its own hands at the change of government, recalled one who had formerly favoured national aspirations, [b Ant. xviii. 2. 1] It is thus that we explain his influence with the people, in persuading them to submit to the Roman taxation.
But if Joazar had succeeded with the unthinking populace, he failed to conciliate the more advanced of his own party, and, as the event proved, the Roman authorities also, whose favour he had hoped to gain. It will be remembered, that the Nationalist party , or 'Zealots,' as they were afterwards called, first appeared in those guerilla-bands which traversed Galilee under the leadership of Ezekias, whom Herod executed. But the National party was not destroyed, only held in check, during his iron reign. It was once more the family of Ezekias that headed the movement. During the civil war which followed the accession of Archelaus, or rather was carried on while he was pleading his cause in Rome, the standard of the Nationalists was again raised in Galilee. Judas, the son of Ezekias, took possession of the city of Sepphoris, and armed his followers from the royal arsenal there. At that time, as we know, the High-Priest Joazar sympathised, at least indirectly, with the Nationalists. The rising, which indeed was general throughout Palestine, was suppressed by fire and sword, and the sons of Herod were enabled to enter on their possessions. But when, after the deposition of Archelaus, Joazar persuaded the people to submit to the taxing of Quirinius, Judas was not disposed to follow what he regarded as the treacherous lead of the Pontiff. In conjunction with a Shammaite Rabbi, Sadduk, he raised again the standard of revolt, although once more unsuccessfully, [c Ant. xviii i. 1] How the Hillelites looked upon this movement, we gather even from the slighting allusion of Gamaliel, [d Acts v. 37] The family of Ezekias furnished other martyrs to the National cause. The two sons of Judas died for it on the cross in 46 A. D. [e Ant. xx. 5. 2] Yet a third son, Manahem, who, from the commencement of the war against Rome, was one of the leaders of the most fanatical Nationalists, the Sicarii, the Jacobins of the party, as they have been aptly designated, died under unspeakable sufferings, [f Jewish War ii. 17 8 and 9] while a fourth member of the family, Eleazar, was the leader of Israel's forlorn hope, and nobly died at Masada, in the closing drama of the Jewish war of independence, [a Jewish War, vii. 7-9] Of such stuff were the Galilean Zealots made. But we have to take this intense Nationalist tendency also into account in the history of Jesus, the more so that at least one of His disciples, and he a member of His family, had at one time belonged to the party. Only the Kingdom of which Jesus was the King was, as He Himself said, not of this world, and of far different conception from that for which the Nationalists longed.
At the time when Jesus went up to the feast, Quirinius was, as already stated, Governor of Syria. The taxing and the rising of Judas were alike past; and the Roman Governor, dissatisfied with the trimming of Joazar, and distrustful of him, had appointed in his stead Ananos, the son of Seth, the Annas of infamous memory in the New Testament. With brief interruption, he or his son held the Pontifical office till, under the Procuratorship of Pilate, Caiaphas, the son-in-law of Annas, succeeded to that dignity. It has already been stated that, subject to the Roman Governors of Syria, the rule of Palestine devolved on Procurators, of whom Coponius was the first. Of him and his immediate successors, Marcus Ambivius, [b 9-12 A.D.] Annius Rufus, [c 12-15 A.D.] and Valerius Gratus, [d 15-26 A.D.] we know little. They were, indeed, guilty of the most grievous fiscal oppressions, but they seem to have respected, so far as was in them, the religious feelings of the Jews. We know, that they even removed the image of the Emperor from the standards of the
Roman soldiers before marching them into Jerusalem, so as to avoid the appearance of a cultus of the Caesars. It was reserved for Pontius Pilate to force this hated emblem on the Jews, and otherwise to set their most sacred feelings at defiance. But we may notice, even at this stage, with what critical periods in Jewish history the public appearance of Christ synchronised. His first visit to the Temple followed upon the Roman possession of Judaea, the taxing, and the national rising, as also the institution of Annas to the High-Priesthood. And the commencement of His public Ministry was contemporaneous with the accession of Pilate, and the institution of Caiaphas. Whether viewed subjectively or objectively, these things also have a deep bearing upon the history of the Christ.
It was, as we reckon it, in spring A. D. 9, that Jesus for the first time went up to the Paschal Feast in Jerusalem. Coponius would be there as the Procurator; and Annas ruled in the Temple as High-Priest, when He appeared among its doctors. But far other than political thoughts must have occupied the mind of Christ. Indeed, for a time a brief calm had fallen upon the land. There was nothing to provoke active resistance, and the party of the Zealots, although existing, and striking deeper root in the hearts of the people, was, for the time, rather what Josephus called it, 'the philosphical party', their minds busy with an ideal, which their hands were not yet preparing to make a reality. And so, when, according to ancient wont, [a Ps. xlii. Is. xxx. 29.] the festive company from Nazareth, soon swelled by other festive bands, went up to Jerusalem, chanting by the way those 'Psalms of Ascent' [b A.V. 'Degrees'; Ps. cxx.-cxxxiv.] to the accompaniment of the flute, they might implicitly yeild themselves to the spiritual thoughts kindled by such words.
When the pilgrims' feet stood within the gates of Jerusalem, there could have been no difficulty in finding hospitality, however crowded the City may have been on such occasions [1 It seems, however, that the Feast ofPentecost would see even more pilgrims at least from a distance, in Jerusalem, than that of the Passover (comp. Acts ii. 9-11).] the more so when we remember the extreme simplicity of Eastern manners and wants, and the abundance of provisions which the many sacrifices of the season would supply. But on this subject, also, the Evangelic narrative keeps silence. Glorious as a view of Jerusalem must have seemed to a child coming to it for the
