More particularly, in the New Testament', "the Jews are described as a most superstitious and bigoted people, attached to the Mosaic ritual and to the whimsical traditions of their elders, with a zeal and fanaticism approaching to madness. They are represented as a nation of hypocrites, assuming the most sanctimonious appearance before the world, at the corners of crowded streets uttering loud and fervent strains of rapturous devotion, merely to attract the eyes of a weak and credulous multitude, and to be noticed and venerated by them as mirrors of mortification and heavenly-mindedness; devoured with ostentation and spiritual pride; causing a trumpeter to walk before them in the streets, and make proclamation that such a rabbi was going to distribute his alms; publicly displaying all this showy parade of piety and charity, yet privately guilty of the most unfeeling cruelty and oppression; devouring widows' houses, stripping the helpless widow and friendless orphan of their property, and exposing them to all the rigours of hunger and nakedness; clamouring, The temple of the Lord! The temple of the Lord! making conscience of paying tithe of mint, anise, and cummin, to the support of its splendour and priesthood, but in practical life violating and trampling upon the first duties of morality, justice, fidelity, and mercy,-as being vulgar and heathenish attainments, and infinitely below the regard of exalted saints and spiritual perfectionists. Their great men were to an incredible degree depraved in their morals, many of them Sadducees in principle, and in practice the most profligate sensualists and debauchees: their atrocious and abandoned wickedness, as Josephus testifies, transcended all the enormities which the most corrupt age of the world had ever beheld; they compassed sea and land to make proselytes to Judaism from the Pagans, and, when they had gained these converts, soon rendered them, by their immoral lives and scandalous examples, more depraved and profligate than ever they were before their conversion. The Apostle tells them that by reason of their notorious vices their religion was become the object of calumny and satire among the heathen nations. The name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles through you! (Rom. ii. 24.) And in his Epistle to Titus, he informs us that the Jews in speculation, indeed, acknowledged a God, but in practice they were atheists; for in their lives they were abominably immoral and abandoned, and the contemptuous despisers of everything that was virtuous. They profess that they know God, but in works they deny him, being abominable and

Affairs of Christians before the time of Constantine the Great, vol. i. introd. chap. ii. Pritii Introductio ad Lectionem Novi Testamenti, c. 35. De summa Populi Judaici corruptione, tempore Christi, pp. 471-473.

For the following picture of the melancholy corruption of the Jewish church and people, the author is indebted to Dr. Harwood's Introduction to the New Testament. (vol. ii. pp. 58. 61.)

2

Josephus, Bell. Jud. lib. vii. p. 1314. Hudson. Again, says this historian, "They were universally corrupt, both publicly and privately. They vied which should surpass each other in impiety against God, and injustice towards men." Ibid.

3 The superstitious credulity of a Jew was proverbial among the heathens. Credat Judæus Apella. Horat. Epictetus mentions and exposes their greater attachment to their ceremonies than to the duties of morality. Dissertationes, lib. i. p. 115. edit. Upton. Sce also Josephus contra Apion. p. 480. Havercamp.

1

disobedient, and unto every good work reprobate. (Titus i. 16.) This testimony to the religious and moral character of the Jewish people, by Jesus Christ and his apostles, is amply corroborated by Josephus, who has given us a true estimate of their principles and manners, and is also confirmed by other contemporary historians. The circumstance of their nation having been favoured with an explicit revelation from the Deity, instead of enlarging their minds, miserably contracted and soured them with all the bitterness and leaven of theological odium. They regarded uncircumcised heathens with sovereign contempt, and believed them to be hated by God, merely because they were born aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and lived strangers to their covenant of promise. They would not eat with them (Acts xi. 3.), do the least friendly office for them, or maintain any social correspondence and mutual intercourse with them. The Apostle comprises their national character in a few words, and it is a just one: They were contrary to all men.33 (1 Thess. ii. 15.) The supercilious insolence with which the mean and selfish notion of their being the only favourites of heaven and enlightened by God inflated them as a people, and the haughty and scornful disdain in which they held the heathens, are in a very striking manner characterised in the following spirited address of St. Paul to them: -Behold! thou art called a Jew, and restest in the law, and makest thy boast of God: and knowest his will, and approvest the things that are more excellent, being instructed out of the law, and art confident that thou thyself art a guide of the blind, a light of them which are in darkness, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of babes, which hast the form of knowledge and of the truth in the law. (Rom. ii. 17-20.) This passage exhibits to us a faithful picture of the national character of this people, and shows us how much they valued themselves upon their wisdom and superior knowledge of religion, arrogating to themselves the character of lights and guides, and instructors of the whole world, and contemptuously regarding all the heathen as blind, as babes, and as fools.

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"I cannot forbear," says Josephus, “declaring my opinion, though the declaration fills me with great emotion and regret, that if the Romans had delayed to come against these wretches, the city would either have been ingulfed by an earthquake, overwhelmed by a deluge, or destroyed by fire from heaven, as Sodom was: for that generation was far more enormously wicked than those who suffered these calamities." Bell. Jud. lib. v. c. 13. p. 1256 "These things they suffered," says Origen, "as being the most abandoned of men. Origen contra Celsum, p. 62. Cantab. 1677.

2 The Jews are the only people who refuse all friendly intercourse with every other nation, and esteem all mankind as enemies." (Diod. Siculus, tom. ii. p. 524. edit. Wesseling, Amstel. 1746.) "Let him be to thee as an heathen man and a publican." (Matt. xviii. 17.) Of the extreme detestation and abhorrence which the Jews had for the Gentiles we have a very striking example in that speech which St. Paul addresses to them, telling them in the course of it, that God had commissioned him to go to the Gentiles. The moment he had pronounced the word, the whole assembly was in confusion, tore off their clothes, rent the air with their cries, threw clouds of dust into it, and were transported into the last excesses of rage and madness. "He said unto me, Depart, for I will send thee far hence unto the Gentiles. They gave him audience," says the sacred historian, "until this word, and then lifted up their voice and said, Away with such a fellow from the earth; for it is not fit that he should live." (Acts xxii. 21.)

This character of the Jewish nation is confirmed by Tacitus, and expressed almost in the very words of the Apostle, "Adversus omnes alios hostile odium." Tacit. Hist. lib. v. § 5. vol. iii. p. 261. edit. Bipont.

"Another ever memorable instance of the national pride and arrogance of this vain and ostentatious people is, that when our Lord was discoursing to them concerning their pretensions to moral liberty, and representing the ignoble and despicable bondage in which sin detains its votaries, they imagined this to be an indirect allusion to the present condition of their country: their pride was instantly in flames; and they had the effrontery and impudence openly to assert, that they had always been free, and were never in bondage to any man (John viii. 33.); though every child must know the history of their captivities, must know that Judæa was at that very time a conquered province, had been subdued by Pompey, and from that time had paid an annual tribute to Rome. Another characteristic which distinguishes and marks this people, was that kind of evidence which they expected in order to their reception of truth. Except they saw signs and wonders they would not believe! (John iv. 48.) If a doctrine proposed to their acceptance was not confirmed by some visible displays of preternatural power, some striking phenomena, the clear and indubitable evidences of an immediate divine interposition, they would reject it. In ancient times, for a series of many years, this people had been favoured with numerous signal manifestations from heaven: a cloud had conducted them by day, and a pillar of fire by night; their law was given them accompanied by a peculiar display of solemn pomp and magnificence; and the glory of God had repeatedly filled their temple. Habituated as their understandings had been, for many ages, to receive as truth only what should be attested and ratified by signs from heaven, and by some grand and striking phenomena in the sky, it was natural for them, long accustomed as they had been to this kind of evidence, to ask our Saviour to give them some sign from heaven (Matt. xvi. 1), to exhibit before them some amazing and stupendous prodigy in the air to convince them of the dignity and divinity of his character. The Jews, says St. Paul, require a sign (1 Cor. i. 22.); it was that species of evidence to which their nation had been accustomed. Thus we read that the Scribes and Pharisees came to John, desiring him that he would show them a sign from heaven. Again, we read that the Jews came and said to Jesus, What sign showest thou unto us, seeing that thou dost these things? Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up! (John ii. 18, 19.) What kind of signs these were which they expected, and what sort of preternatural prodigies they wanted him to display in order to authenticate his divine mission to them, appears from the following passages: They said, therefore, unto him, What sign showest thou then, that we may see and believe thee? What dost thou work? Our fathers did eat manna in the desert; as it is written, Ile gave them bread from heaven! (John vi. 30, 31.) This method, therefore, of espousing religious doctrines, only as they should be confirmed by some signal and indubitable interposition of the Deity, and their cherishing the vanity and presumption that heaven would lavish its miraculous signs whenever they called for them, constitute a striking and very distinguishing feature in the national character of this people."

So exceedingly great was the fecundity of the Jewish people, that multitudes of them had occasionally been constrained to emigrate from their native country: hence, at the time of our Saviour's birth, there was scarcely a province in the Roman empire in which they were not to be found, either serving in the army, engaged in the pursuits of commerce, or exercising some lucrative arts. They were maintained, in foreign countries, against injurious treatment and violence, by various special edicts of the emperors and magistrates in their favour1; though, from the peculiarities of their religion and manners, they were held in very general contempt, and were not unfrequently exposed to much vexation and annoyance, from the jealousy and indignation of an ignorant and superstitious populace. Many of them, in consequence of their long residence and intercourse with foreign nations, fell into the error of endeavouring to make their religion accommodate itself to the principles and institutions of some of the different systems of heathen discipline: but, on the other hand, it is clear that the Jews brought many of those among whom they resided to perceive the superiority of the Mosaic religion over the Gentile superstitions, and were highly instrumental in causing them to forsake the worship of a plurality of gods. Although the knowledge which the Gentiles thus acquired from the Jews respecting the only true God, the Creator and Governor of the universe, was, doubtless, both partial and limited, yet it inclined many of them the more readily to listen to the subsequent arguments and exhortations of the apostles of our Saviour, for the purpose of exploding the worship of false deities, and recalling men to the knowledge of true religion. All which, Mosheim observes, with equal truth and piety, appears to have been most singularly and wisely directed by the adorable hand of an interposing Providence: to the end that this people, who were the sole depository of the true religion and of the knowledge of the one supreme God, being spread abroad through the whole earth, might be every where, by their example, a reproach to superstition, contribute in some measure to check it, and thus prepare the way for that fuller display of divine truth which was to shine upon the world from the ministry and Gospel of the Son of God.2

In proof of this observation, Mosheim refers to Jacobi Gronovii Decreta Romana et Asiatica pro Judæis ad cultum divinum per Asia Minoris urbes securè obeundum. Ludg. Bat. 1712. 8vo. See also Dr. Lardner's Credibility, part i. book i. ch. 8. (Works, vol. i. pp. 164-201.), where numerous valuable testimonies are adduced.

2 Moshiem's Commentaries, vol. i. p. 106. Eccl. Hist. vol. p. 52. edit. 1806. Besides the authorities cited in the preceding chapter, the Jewish sects, &c. are largely discussed by Prideaux, Connection, book v. vol. ii. pp. 335–368. Relandi Antiq. Sacr. Hebræorum, pp. 276. et seq. Ikenius, Antiq. Hebr. pp. 33-42. Schachtii Dictata in Ikenium, pp. 241. et seq. Dr. Macknight's Harmony, vol. i. disc. 1. Lamy's Apparatus Biblicus, vol. i. pp. 225-243. Dr. Lardner's Credibility, part i. book i. ch. 4. Leusden's Philologus Hebræo-Mixtus, pp. 138-170. Buddei Hist. Philosophiæ Hebræorum, pp. 86. et seq.

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PART IV.

DOMESTIC ANTIQUITIES OF THE JEWS, AND OF OTHER NATIONS INCIDENTALLY MENTIONED IN THE SCRIPTURES.

CHAPTER I.

ON THE DWELLINGS OF THE JEWS.

I. As men, in the primitive condition of society, were unacquainted with the arts, they, of course, were not able to build themselves houses; they abode, therefore, necessarily under the shade of trees. It is probable that when mankind began to multiply on the earth, they dwelt in CAVES, many of which, in the Holy Land, are both capacious and dry, and still afford occasional shelter to the wandering shepherds and their flocks. Thus Lot and his daughters abode in a cave, after the destruction of Sodom. (Gen. xix. 30.) Numerous sepulchral caverns in the vicinity of Jerusalem are to this day occupied by living tenants.' Ancient historians contain many notices of troglodytes, or dwellers in caves, and modern travellers have met with them in Barbary and Egypt, as well as in various other parts of the East.3

The Horites, who dwelt on Mount Seir, the Zamzummim, and the Emims or Anakim, are supposed to have resided in caves.

II. In succeeding ages, they abode generally in TENTS, as the Arabs of the Desert do to this day. The invention of these is ascribed to Jabal the son of Lamech, who is therefore termed the father of such as dwell in tents. (Gen. iv. 20.) The patriarchs pitched their tents where they pleased, and it should seem under the shade of trees whenever this was practicable. Thus, Abraham's tent was pitched under a tree in the plains of Mamre (Gen. xviii. 4.), and Deborah the prophetess dwelt under a palm-tree between Ramah and Bethel, in Mount Ephraim. (Judg. iv. 5.) In the East, to this day, it is the custom in many places to plant about and among their

1 Mr. Addison, who visited Jerusalem in 1835, states that all the rocks around that city are excavated into caverns and chambers, forming one vast ancient cemetery; which, having long since been dispossessed of the bones of their former occupants, and left open and neglected, are now considered fit and comfortable habitations for the living, being tenanted by various poor families, who, having no other place of residence, remain among the graves, and lodge in the monuments. (Isa. lxv. 4.) Addison's Journey southward from Damascus, in the Metropolitan Magazine for 1839, vol. xxvi. pp. 5, 6. 2 Herodotus, lib. iii. c. 74. Diod. Sic. lib. iii. c. 31. Quintus Curtius, lib. v. c. 6. Josephus, Ant. Jud. lib. xv. c. 4. § 1.

The inhabitants of Anab, a town on the east of the all live in grottoes or caves excavated in the rock. Arab Tribes, p. 61.

river Jordan (lat. 32. long. 35. E), Buckingham's Travels among the