The Crown and the Cross: The Life of Christ by Frank G. Slaughter Read Free Book Online Page A

had reigned longer in Israel as king under Rome than had any other for a long while. One reason for his fear was the fact that he was not even a Jew by heritage or a member of any royal house in Israel or Syria.
    Oppressed by both Herod, an alien king, and Augustus, an alien emperor, the Jews looked back longingly over almost exactly a thousand years to the glorious days of David and Solomon. David, the shepherd boy who became king, had united the loose confederation of families and tribes, descendants of those who had come storming across the Jordan behind Joshua to unlock the rich treasure chests of Canaan when God had sent the walls of fortress Jericho tumbling to the plain. For a brief period Israel had known a golden age, but the division of the kingdom following Solomon’s death had made the nation the victim of a series of conquerors.
    Israel as a nation and Judaism as a religion might actually have been destroyed during these trying years but for the Persian insult in deporting a large portion of the Jewish people to Babylon. There in servitude, as during the stay in Egypt a thousand years before, their unity of spirit and purpose through worship of the single God who had selected them as his own, was crystallized into the driving force that was to animate the Jews ever after, no matter how far they might be scattered abroad.
    The prophet Ezekiel had fanned the flame in Babylon. When the Jews had finally been allowed to return to the homeland through the generosity of Cyrus of Persia, their poverty in numbers had been more than compensated for by their fervor of spirit and their confidence that God would once again raise up His kingdom for them with a glory exceeding even that of the days of David and Solomon. Peopled by only a few thousand of the fiercely devout who had returned from captivity in Babylon and governed by a high priest and a gerousia , or senate, Judea was at first only a city-state under the domination of nearby Syria.
    The conquering tide of Alexander the Great had swirled about the walls of Jerusalem when he laid siege to Tyre on the seacoast to the north, but he had graciously spared the city, even, it was said, making a sacrifice in the temple. Greek tolerance proved in many ways a greater enemy of Judaism than Alexander’s armies, however, for it introduced the pagan philosophy of life called Hellenism. Greek cities sprang up all over the neighboring area, Greek influences penetrated Jerusalem and soon infiltrated into the very worship of the temple. Nor did Alexander’s untimely death change this situation, for the rulers who succeeded him were Greek as well.
    Hellenistic influences, and the inevitable reaction against them by the inspired core of Judaism in Jerusalem, soon altered the character of the worship in the temple. Opposed to this change, a group of pious men known as the Sopherim sought to keep intact the inheritance of Judaism from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Organized as the Great Synagogue, they concentrated on the Torah, a history of God’s dealings with His own people, and the Law handed down from Moses. From them came the most influential and most determinedly religious group in all of Israel, the Pharisees.
    For a brief period under Syrian rule, however, Hellenism triumphed in Israel, and the high priest became hardly more than a Greek puppet, even participating in the worship of Greek gods. Antiochus IV entered the city and desecrated the temple in a vain attempt to destroy Judaism’s remaining opposition to the Greek philosophies. The result was a period of national scourging for Israel from which a hard core of resistance emerged, strengthened in its determination to lead the people back to the old faith. Calling themselves the Chassidim, these “pious ones” chose death rather than allow the few copies of the Torah they possessed to be destroyed.
    In the midst of this period of national chastening, a new hope arose, manifested in a mixture of poetry, song, and prophecy