12. This view, for which there is no historic foundation, is urged by those whose interest
it is to deny the possibility of a census during the reign of Herod.
13. That these were the sole grounds of resistance to the census, appears from Jos. Ant.
xviii. 1. 1, 6.
14. As unquestionably they did.
This accession of Herod, misnamed the Great, marked a period in Jewish history, which
closed with the war of despair against Rome and the flames of Jerusalem and the Temple.
It gave rise to the appearance of what Josephus, despite his misrepresentation of them,
rightly calls a fourth party - besides the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes - that of the
Nationalists.15 A deeper and more independent view of the history of the times would,
perhaps, lead us to regard the whole country as ranged either with or against that party.
As afterwards expressed in its purest and simplest form, their watchword was, negatively,
to call no human being their absolute lord;16 positively, that God alone was to lead as
absolute Lord.17 It was, in fact, a revival of the Maccabean movement, perhaps more fully
in its national than in its religious aspect, although the two could scarcely be separated in
Israel, and their motto almost reads like that which according to some, furnished the
letters whence the name Maccabee18 was composed: Mi Camoc hah Baelim Jehovah,
'Who like Thee among the gods, Jehovah?'19 It is characteristic of the times and religious
tendencies, that their followers were no more called, as before, Assideans or Chasidim ,
'the pious,' but Zealots (ζηλωται) or by the Hebrew equivalent Qannaim (Cananĉans,
not 'Canaanites,' as in A.V.) The real home of that party was not Judĉa nor Jerusalem,
but Galilee.
15. Ant. xviii. 1. 6.
16. Ant. xviii. 1. 6.
17. u.s. and Jew. War vii. 10. 1.
18. ψβκµ
19. Ex. xv. 11
Quite other, and indeed antagonistic, tendencies prevailed in the stronghold of the
Herodians, Sadducees, and Pharisees. Of the latter only a small portion had any real
sympathy with the national movement. Each party followed its o wn direction. The
Essenes, absorbed in theosophic speculations, not untinged with Eastern mysticism,
withdrew from all contact with the world, and practiced an ascetic life. With them,
whatever individuals may have felt, no such movement could have originated; nor yet
with the Herodians or Boethusians, who combined strictly Pharisaic views with Herodian
political partisanship; nor yet with the Sadducees; nor, finally, with what constituted the
great bulk of the Rabbinist party, the School of Hillel. But the brave, free Highlanders of
Galilee, and of the region across their glorious lake, seemed to have inherited the spirit of
Jephthah,20 and to have treasured as their ideal - alas! often wrongly apprehended - their
own Elijah, as, descending in wild, shaggy garb from the mountains of Gilead, he did
battle against all the might of Ahab and Jezebel. Their enthusiasm could not be kindled
by the logical subtleties of the Schools, but their hearts burned within them for their God,
their land, their people, their religion, and their freedom.
20. Judg. xi. 3-6.