The Story of Civilization: Volume III: Caesar and Christ

by Will Durant

  In his ninetieth year, when he had grown weak and reactionary, Akiba found himself, as in his youth, surrounded by revolution. In 115-16 the Jews of Cyrene, Egypt, Cyprus, and Mesopotamia rose once more against Rome; the massacre of gentiles by Jews, and of Jews by Gentiles, became the order of the day; 220,000 men, says Dio, were killed in Cyrene, 240,000 in Cyprus; the figures are incredible, but we know that Cyrene never recovered from the devastation, and that for centuries thereafter no Hebrew was allowed in Cyprus. The uprisings were suppressed, but the surviving Jews kept fiercely alive their hope of a Messiah who would rebuild the Temple and restore them in triumph to Jerusalem. Roman stupidity reanimated the revolt. In 130 Hadrian declared his intention to raise a shrine to Jupiter on the site of the Temple; in 131 he issued a decree forbidding circumcision and public instruction in the Jewish Law.67 Under the leadership of Simeon Bar Cocheba, who claimed to be the Messiah, the Jews made their last effort in antiquity to recover their homeland and their freedom (132). Akiba, who all his life had preached peace, gave his blessing to the revolution by accepting Bar Cocheba as the promised Redeemer. For three years the rebels fought valiantly against the legions; finally they were beaten by lack of food and supplies. The Romans destroyed 985 towns in Palestine, and slew 580,000 men; a still larger number, we are told, perished through starvation, disease, and fire; nearly all Judea was laid waste. Bar Cocheba himself fell in defending Bethar. So many Jews were sold as slaves that their price fell to that of a horse. Thousands hid in underground channels rather than be captured; surrounded by the Romans, they died one by one of hunger, while the living ate the bodies of the dead.68

  Resolved to destroy the recuperative virility of Judaism, Hadrian forbade not merely circumcision, but the observance of the Sabbath or any Jewish holyday, and the public performance of any Hebrew ritual.69 A new and heavier poll tax was placed upon all Jews. They were allowed in Jerusalem only on one fixed day each year, when they might come and weep before the ruins of their Temple. The pagan city of Aelia Capitolina rose on the site of Jerusalem, with shrines to Jupiter and Venus, and with palaestras, theaters, and baths. The Council at Jamnia was dissolved and outlawed; a minor and powerless Council was permitted at Lydda, but public instruction in the Law was prohibited on pain of death. Several rabbis were executed for disobeying this injunction. Akiba, now ninety-five, insisted on teaching his pupils; he was imprisoned for three years, but taught even in jail; he was tried and condemned, and died, we are told, with the basic tenet of Judaism on his lips: “Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one.”70

  Though Hadrian’s decrees were softened by Antoninus Pius, the Jews did not for centuries recover from the disaster of Bar Cocheba’s revolt. From this moment they entered their Middle Ages, abandoning all secular learning except medicine, renouncing every form of Hellenism, and taking comfort and unity only from their rabbis, their mystic poets, and their Law. No other people has ever known so long an exile, or so hard a fate. Shut out from their Holy City, the Jews were compelled to surrender it first to paganism, then to Christianity. Scattered into every province and beyond, condemned to poverty and humiliation, unbefriended even by philosophers and saints, they retired from public affairs into private study and worship, passionately preserving the words of their scholars, and preparing to write them down at last in the Talmuds of Babylonia and Palestine. Judaism hid in fear and obscurity while its offspring, Christianity, went out to conquer the world.

  * * *

  I The Talmud attributes to Hillel’s reply the additional words, “This is all the Law, the rest is commentary.”36

  II The word Messiah (Heb. mahsiah) occurs frequently in the Old Testament. The Jews who made the Septuagint (ca. 280 B.C.) translated it into the Greek Christos, the Anointed, he upon whom has been poured a chrism or holy oil.

  III Josephus rejoiced to learn that an ulcer had compelled Apion to be circumcized.64

  BOOK V

  THE YOUTH OF CHRISTIANITY

  4 B.C.-A.D. 325

  CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE

  All dates except the first are A.D.; and all dates before 150 are uncertain.

  B.C. 4:

  Birth of Christ

  A.D. 30:

  Crucifixion; conversion of Paul

  45-47:

  First mission of Paul

  50-53:

  Second mission of Paul

  51:

  Paul in Athens

  53-57:

  Third mission of Paul

  58-60:

  Paul imprisoned by Felix

  61-64:

  Paul imprisoned in Rome

  64:

  Neronic persecution; d. of Peter and Paul

  65:

  Linus, Bishop of Rome

  77:

  Cletus, Bishop of Rome

  60-100:

  The Four Gospels

  89:

  Clement I, Bishop of Rome

  90:

  The Johannine epistles

  98:

  Evaristus, Bishop of Rome

  106:

  Alexander I, Bishop of Rome

  116:

  Xystus I, Bishop of Rome

  126:

  Telesphorus, Bishop of Rome

  137:

  Hyginus, Bishop of Rome

  141:

  Pius I, Bishop of Rome

  150:

  Justin’s First Apology

  156:

  Anicetus, Bishop of Rome

  166:

  Martyrdom of Polycarp

  175:

  Eleutherius, Bishop of Rome

  177:

  Martyrdoms at Lyons

  178:

  Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons

  190:

  Victor I, Bishop of Rome

  193:

  Pertinax and Didius Julianus, emperors

  193-211:

  Septimius Severus, emperor

  194:

  Montanus; Clement or Alexandria

  200:

  Tertullian’s Liber Apologeticus

  202:

  Zephyrinus, Bishop of Rome

  203:

  Arch of Sept. Severus; Origen

  205-70:

  Plotinus

  211-17:

  Caracalla

  212:

  Caracalla extends citizenship

  215:

  Baths of Caracalla; Mani

  218:

  Callistus I, Bishop of Rome

  218-22:

  Elagabalus, emperor

  222:

  Urban I, Bishop of Rome

  222-35:

  Alexander Severus, emperor 228: Murder of Ulpian

  235-58:

  Maximinus, emperor

  236:

  Fabian, Bishop of Rome

  238-44:

  Gordianus I, II, III, emperors

  241-72:

  Shapur I, King of Persia

  244-49:

  Philip the Arab, emperor

  248:

  Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage; Origen’s Contra Celsum

  249-51:

  Decius, emperor; Diophantus, mathematician

  251:

  Cornelius, Bishop of Rome

  251-53:

  Gallus, emperor

  253-60:

  Valerianus, emperor

  253-68:

  Gallienus, emperor

  254:

  Marcomanni raid north Italy

  255:

  Shapur invades Syria

  257:

  Edict of Valerian against Christians

  259:

  Goths overrun Asia Minor

  260:

  First edict of toleration

  260-66:

  Odenathus at Palmyra

  266-73:

  Zenobia and Longinus at Palmyra

  268-70:

  Claudius II, emperor

  270-75:

  Aurelian, emperor

  271:

  Barbarians invade Italy

  275-76:
>
  Tacitus, emperor

  276-82:

  Probus, emperor

  282-83:

  Carus, Carinus, Numerianus, emperors

  284-305:

  Diocletian, emperor

  286-305:

  Maximianus co-Augustus

  292:

  Galerius and Constantius, Caesars

  295:

  Baths of Diocletian

  296:

  Marcellinus, Bishop of Rome

  301:

  Price Edict of Diocletian

  303-11:

  Diocletian persecution

  306:

  Constantine becomes a Caesar

  307:

  Maxentius and Maximian, Augusti; basilica of Maxentius

  307-09:

  Marcellus I, Bishop of Rome

  307-10:

  Lactantius’ Divinae lnstitutiones

  307-13:

  Constantine and Licinius, Augusti

  309-10:

  Eusebius, Bishop of Rome

  312:

  Battle of the Mulvian Bridge; Edict of Milan (?)

  313:

  Eusebius’ Church History

  313-23:

  Constantine and Licinius divide the Empire

  314:

  Council of Arles

  314-36:

  Sylvester I, Bishop of Rome

  315:

  Arch of Constantine

  323:

  Licinius defeated at Adrianople

  324-37:

  Constantine sole emperor

  325:

  Council of Nicaea

  326:

  Constantine kills son, nephew, and wife

  330:

  Constantinople made the capital

  337:

  Death of Constantine

  CHAPTER XXVI

  Jesus

  4 B.C..-A.D. 30

  I. THE SOURCES

  DID Christ exist? Is the life story of the founder of Christianity the product of human sorrow, imagination, and hope—a myth comparable to the legends of Krishna, Osiris, Attis, Adonis, Dionysus, and Mithras? Early in the eighteenth century the circle of Bolingbroke, shocking even Voltaire, privately discussed the possibility that Jesus had never lived. Volney propounded the same doubt in his Ruins of Empire in 1791. Napoleon, meeting the German scholar Wieland in 1808, asked him no petty question of politics or war, but did he believe in the historicity of Christ?1

  One of the most far-reaching activities of the modern mind has been the “Higher Criticism” of the Bible—the mounting attack upon its authenticity and veracity, countered by the heroic attempt to save the historical foundations of Christian faith; the results may in time prove as revolutionary as Christianity itself. The first engagement in this two-hundred-year war was fought in silence by Hermann Reimarus, professor of Oriental languages at Hamburg; on his death in 1768 he left, cautiously unpublished, a 1400-page manuscript on the life of Christ. Six years later Gotthold Lessing, over the protests of his friends, published portions of it as the Wolfenbüttel Fragments. Reimarus argued that Jesus can only be regarded and understood not as the founder of Christianity, but as the final and dominant figure in the mystical eschatology of the Jews—i.e., Christ thought not of establishing a new religion, but of preparing men for the imminent destruction of the world, and God’s Last Judgment of all souls. In 1796 Herder pointed out the apparently irreconcilable difference between the Christ of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and the Christ of the Gospel of St. John. In 1828 Heinrich Paulus, summarizing the life of Christ in 1192 pages, proposed a rationalistic interpretation of the miracles—i.e., accepted their occurrence but ascribed them to natural causes and powers. In an epoch-marking Life of Jesus (1835-36) David Strauss rejected this compromise; the supernatural elements in the Gospels, he thought, should be classed as myths, and the actual career of Christ must be reconstructed without using these elements in any form. Strauss’s massive volumes made Biblical criticism the storm center of German thought for a generation. In the same year Ferdinand Christian Baur attacked the Epistles of Paul, rejecting as unauthentic all but those to the Galatians, Corinthians, and Romans. In 1840 Bruno Bauer began a series of passionately controversial works aiming to show that Jesus was a myth, the personified form of a cult that evolved in the second century from a fusion of Jewish, Greek, and Roman theology. In 1863 Ernest Renan’s Life of Jesus, alarming millions with its rationalism and charming millions with its prose, gathered together the results of German criticism, and brought the problem of the Gospels before the entire educated world. The French school reached its climax at the end of the century in the Abbé Loisy, who subjected the New Testament to such rigorous textual analysis that the Catholic Church felt compelled to excommunicate him and other “Modernists.” Meanwhile the Dutch school of Pierson, Naber, and Matthas carried the movement to its farthest point by laboriously denying the historical reality of Jesus. In Germany Arthur Drews gave this negative conclusion its definitive exposition (1906); and in England W. B. Smith and J. M. Robertson argued to a like denial. The result of two centuries of discussion seemed to be the annihilation of Christ.

  What evidence is there for Christ’s existence? The earliest non-Christian reference occurs in Josephus’ Antiquities of the Jews (A.D. 93?):

  At that time lived Jesus, a holy man, if man he may be called, for he performed wonderful works, and taught men, and joyfully received the truth. And he was followed by many Jews and many Greeks. He was the Messiah.2

  There may be a genuine core in these strange lines; but the high praise given to Christ by a Jew uniformly anxious to please either the Romans or the Jews—both at that time in conflict with Christianity—renders the passage suspect, and Christian scholars reject it as almost certainly an interpolation.3 There are references to “Yeshu’a of Nazareth” in the Talmud, but they are too late in date to be certainly more than counterechoes of Christian thought.4 The oldest known mention of Christ in pagan literature is in a letter of the younger Pliny (ca. 110),5 asking the advice of Trajan on the treatment of Christians. Five years later Tacitus6 I described Nero’s persecution of the Chrestiani in Rome, and pictured them as already (A.D. 64) numbering adherents throughout the Empire; the paragraph is so Tacitean in style, force, and prejudice that of all Biblical critics only Drews questions its authenticity.7 Suetonius (ca. 125) mentions the same persecution,8 and reports Claudius’ banishment (ca. 52) of “Jews who, stirred up by Christ [impulsore Chresto], were causing public disturbances,”9 the passage accords well with the Acts of the Apostles, which mentions a decree of Claudius that “the Jews should leave Rome.”10 These references prove the existence of Christians rather than of Christ; but unless we assume the latter we are driven to the improbable hypothesis that Jesus was invented in one generation; moreover, we must suppose that the Christian community in Rome had been established some years before 52, to merit the attention of an imperial decree. About the middle of this first century a pagan named Thallus, in a fragment preserved by Julius Africanus,11 argued that the abnormal darkness alleged to have accompanied the death of Christ was a purely natural phenomenon and coincidence; the argument took the existence of Christ for granted. The denial of that existence seems never to have occurred even to the bitterest gentile or Jewish opponents of nascent Christianity.

  The Christian evidence for Christ begins with the letters ascribed to Saint Paul. Some of these are of uncertain authorship; several, antedating A.D. 64, are almost universally accounted as substantially genuine. No one has questioned the existence of Paul, or his repeated meetings with Peter, James, and John; and Paul enviously admits that these men had known Christ in the flesh.12 The accepted epistles frequently refer to the Last Supper 13 and the crucifixion.14

  Matters are not so simple as regards the Gospels. The four that have come down to us are survivors from a much larger number that once circulated among the Christians of the first two centuries. Our English term gospel (Old English godspel, good news) is a rendering of the
Greek euangelion, which is the opening word of Mark, and means “glad tidings”—that the Messiah had come, and the Kingdom of God was at hand. The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke are “synoptic”: their contents and episodes allow of being arranged in parallel columns and “viewed together.” They were written in the Greek koine of popular speech, and were no models of grammar or literary finish; nevertheless, the directness and force of their simple style, the vivid power of their analogies and scenes, the depth of their feeling, and the profound fascination of the story they tell give even the rude originals a unique charm, immensely enhanced for the English world by the highly inaccurate but lordly version made for King James.