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W%*£ L 
 
 SECOND ADVENTTSM, 
 
 IN THE LIGHT OF 
 
 JEWISH HISTORY. 
 
 BY 
 
 REV. T. M. HOPKINS, A.M. 
 
 "Let him that readeth understand." — MARK xiiu 14. 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 JAMES R. BOYD, D.D 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 PUBLISHED FOR THE AUTH.OR'BY 
 
 DODD & MEAD. 
 1872. 
 
J>1tf? 
 
 
 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1872, by 
 
 T. M. HOPKINS, 
 In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 
 
 The Library 
 of Congress 
 
 WASHING*!' 
 
NOTE BY THE EDITOR. 
 
 The Author left, at the time of his decease, two 
 works in manuscript, on the much agitated subject 
 of Second Adventism, probably designing to pub- 
 lish the smaller first (which is a sort of synopsis of 
 the larger), as a means of determining whether it 
 would be expedient to follow it with the larger. 
 Both of these having been placed in the hands of 
 the Editor for examination and revision, it has 
 seemed best, on a careful comparison, to lay be- 
 fore the public the following treatise, composed 
 of the greater part of the larger work, and some 
 portions of the smaller that served to render the 
 former more complete. 
 
 The subject is one confessedly of peculiar diffi- 
 culty, upon which, therefore, a great diversity of 
 opinion still exists ; and if, as the author supposed, 
 he has constructed a line of argument that leads to 
 a sound and satisfactory result, the reader will be 
 
4 NOTE BY THE EDITOR. 
 
 amply compensated for the trouble of examination. 
 The Treatise certainly throws much light on many 
 portions of this important subject ; and it possesses 
 great value besides, on account of the large quota- 
 tions which it contains from a learned treatise of 
 F. Muenter, late Bishop of Copenhagen, on the 
 Jewish War under Trajan and Hadrian ; and also 
 from a valuable exegesis (which it quotes) of Matt, 
 xxiv. 29-31, by Prof. Edward Eobinson, D. D., to 
 which that historical tract gives strong support. 
 
 The argument which is drawn from the prophe- 
 cy of Daniel and from the Apocalypse, introduces 
 some points that will be read with interest, for 
 their novelty at least, if not for their plausibility 
 and accuracy as well. The interpretation given of 
 the Apocalypse differs widely from the common 
 one; but is not, for that reason, to be regarded as 
 unworthy of consideration, and perhaps also of 
 adoption. 
 
 On these several accounts, the Editor takes 
 great pleasure in commending the following work 
 to a candid perusal, on the part of all who desire 
 to know what the Scriptures really teach in re- 
 spect tO THE COMING OF THE LOED. 
 
 Geneva, K Y., 1872. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 -*~ 
 
 PAGl 
 
 Introductory 7 
 
 The Subject as announced by Jesus Christ. . . 10 
 
 PART I. 
 
 The First Catastrophe. — The Destruction of 
 
 Jerusalem by Titus 12 
 
 Literal Interpretation 17 
 
 Figurative Interpretation 20 
 
 The Time near at hand 22 
 
 The Day of the Lord.— The Coming of the Lord. 27 
 
6 CONTENTS. 
 
 PART II. 
 
 PA8B 
 
 The Second Catastrophe 41 
 
 Munter's History • . 48 
 
 Argument derived from the Jewish War under 
 
 Trajan and Hadrian 52 
 
 PART nx 
 
 Recapitulation 117 
 
 Exegesis op Matt. xxrv. 29-31 126 
 
 Exegesis op Matt. xxiy. and xxv 163 
 
 PART IV. 
 
 Recapitulation op the Argument 171 
 
 Argument from the Book op Daniel - 173 
 
 Argument prom the Apocalypse 185 
 
 Conclusion 194 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 Again the world is summoned to look for the 
 personal appearing of the Lord Jesus Christ. 
 Again the human family is assured that the day of 
 his advent is at hand; that not only the signs 
 and tokens of his appearance are numerous, but 
 that they are precisely those which Christ himself 
 designated as the infallible precursors of his speedy 
 appearing. The advocates of this position hold us 
 responsible not only for a belief in the cardinal 
 doctrines of the gospel, but also for a belief in the 
 personal appearing and reign of Christ upon the 
 earth, for a thousand years before the dawn of the 
 millennial glory. It is not enough that we watch 
 and wait and pray for the prevalence of his gospel 
 and his universal reign on the earth, but we are told 
 that we must believe in his personal presence and 
 reign as introductory to the Millennium. Assuran- 
 
8 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 ces are given us from the Old World and the New, 
 that the day is at hand when " the Son of Man shall 
 be seen coming in the clouds of heaven/ 5 with 
 great pomp and glory, as introductory to the king- 
 dom of heaven among men, and that he shall again 
 dwell with men, as in the days of Herod the King, 
 to instruct and train his people for the kingdom of 
 heaven, and to bring his enemies to condign pun- 
 ishment. 
 
 The following Treatise takes the ground that 
 the Second Advent or Coming of Christ is an 
 event which transpired over 1700 years ago. How 
 far the writer has succeeded in sustaining that 
 position the reader can judge when he has duly 
 considered the facts adduced in support of it. 
 
 There is a kind of faith which differs so slight- 
 ly from a blind credulity that it may properly be 
 called by the same name, though it cannot be at- 
 tacked successfully with the same weapons. It 
 recognizes no conflicting facts or principles; ac- 
 knowledges no argument which militates against 
 it, as worthy of notice, but steadfastly endeavors 
 to maintain its ground in defiance of all that has 
 been said, however successfully, for its overthrow. 
 Like the Jews who have so long been looking in 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 9 
 
 a wrong direction for the promised Messiah, the 
 men who are daily expecting the literally personal 
 coming of Christy are looking for an event which 
 beyond all reasonable occasion for doubt, as we in- 
 tend to show, has long since been numbered with 
 things of the past. 
 
THE SUBJECT AS ANNOUNCED BY 
 JESUS CHEIST. 
 
 We shall endeavor to prove that Jesus Christ, 
 in his instructions to his disciples concerning his 
 coming, clearly assured them of three distinct car 
 tastrqphes, two of which were to take place within 
 a few years after his crucifixion and death, the 
 other at the end of the world when he should per- 
 sonally appear and literally, to raise the dead and 
 judge the world. It w T ill be shown in respect to 
 the two former events, that they were to be pre- 
 ceded by many signs and wonders heralding their 
 approach ; but that the latter shall be announced 
 by " the Son of Man coming in his glory, and all 
 his holy angels with him ; that he shall sit upon 
 the throne of his glory, and that before him shall 
 be gathered all nations," etc. His personal pres- 
 ence is to be looked for in connection with this 
 last event, and with this alone. 
 
THE SUBJECT AS ANNOUNCED BY CHRIST. 11 
 
 That which we regard as the First Catastro- 
 phe — and we believe it is so regarded by all — is 
 the Destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, in the 
 year of our Lord 70, or about forty years after the 
 conversation held with his disciples respecting it 
 upon the Mount of Olives. The Second Catas- 
 trophe is that for which the advocates of a premil- 
 lennial and personal advent of Christ are now wait- 
 ing ; but which, as we are able to show, took place 
 about seventy years after the first, in the nearly 
 total destruction of the Jewish Nation, the wreck 
 of their civil and ecclesiastical polity, and the dis- 
 persion of the fragments of that unhappy people 
 among the nations of the earth. The Third Co- 
 tastrophe is the General Judgment at the end of 
 the world. 
 
PART I. 
 
 THE FIEST CATASTROPHE. 
 
 THE DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM BY TITUS. A. D. 70. 
 
 This was indisputably the subject of discourse 
 between the Lord Jesus Christ and his disciples on 
 the Mount of Olives. He had just taken his final 
 leave of the Temple and its Courts, and in quit- 
 ting them had given utterance to the memorable 
 prediction : " Yerily I say unto you, there shall 
 not be left one stone upon another that shall not 
 be thrown down,"— Matt. 24 : 2 ; Mark 13 : 2 ; 
 Luke 21 : 6. Seated with his disciples upon the 
 mountain side over against the Temple, where its 
 courts and its edifices, as well as the City itself, were 
 spread out before him, Peter, James, John and An- 
 drew proposed to him privately the following ques- 
 tions : " Tell us when shall these things be, and what 
 shall be the sign of thy coming and of the end of 
 
THE FIRST CATASTROPHE. 13 
 
 the world ? "—Matt. 24 : 3 ; Mark 13:4; Luke 21 : 
 7. It will be shown hereafter that the last ques- 
 tion related to the end of the age, or dispensation, 
 the word in the original being a\uvoq > and not koohov. 
 The disciples, in the questions proposed, un- 
 doubtedly referred to the things about which the 
 Saviour had just been speaking — the destruction 
 of the Temple, the coming of the Lord Jesus, and 
 the end of the age — not of the world (as in the 
 authorized version), for that had not been made the 
 subject of conversation. Not a word had been 
 said, as far as appears from the record, on the sub- 
 ject of his final coming. And as to the term 
 "world" (alovog), there cannot be a single argument 
 offered in support of the translation. New Testa- 
 ment usage is clearly against it. Gal. 1 : 4 — " This 
 present evil world" can mean only the men of 
 the present age ; in every-day language, the age. 
 n. Cor. 4 : 4 — " In whom the god of this world 
 hath blinded," etc. (i. e. as is evident, the god of 
 this age or generation.) But i. Cor. 10 : 11, would 
 seem to settle its meaning effectually. The Apostle 
 is speaking of examples under the O. T. dispensa- 
 tion which were left for our " admonition, on whom 
 the ends of the world are come," plainly the ends 
 
14 THE FIRST CATASTROPHE. 
 
 of the Jewish world, or Dispensation. He speaks 
 as though this were a familiar phrase. Why, then, 
 after the instructions which Christ had given con- 
 cerning his new Kingdom, his new Dispensation, 
 may we not reasonably suppose that the disciples 
 inquired of their Master concerning that dUn> which 
 was about to end ? Plainly this would be alto- 
 gether consonant with the drift of the preceding 
 questions. Besides, there is nothing in the pre- 
 ceding part of Matthew's Gospel which shows 
 that Christ had said any thing to his disciples which 
 could lead them to believe that the end of the 
 world, as we use this phrase, would come just be- 
 fore the commencement of his kingdom. He 
 taught them, indeed, that there would be at some 
 future time an end of the world, a general judg- 
 ment ; but it was evidently not his object to de- 
 clare the exact time of this event in any conver- 
 sation which he held with his disciples. His lan- 
 guage is — " When the Son of Man cometh," etc., 
 then he would proceed to do so and so. 
 
 A more important passage for determining the 
 exact meaning of this word (alow) is Matt. 13 : 39. 
 In the preceding verse the Saviour says — " The 
 field (of your labors) is the world" the Kocjiog. In 
 
THE FIRST CATASTROPHE. 15 
 
 the next verse he says, " the harvest is the end of 
 the world" (aloyvog), i. e. age y dispensation. If he 
 meant to convey the same meaning by each of 
 these words, why does he employ both ? Besides, 
 as if to fix the meaning of this latter term, he as- 
 sures his disciples that there were some standing 
 before him who should not taste of death till they 
 had seen the Son of Man coming in his Kingdom. 
 Now who can understand him as thereby affirm- 
 ing that some of those persons should remain on 
 the earth till the judgment ? Hence we infer that 
 the disciples mast have inquired concerning the 
 end of the age, or dispensation. In answer to 
 that question, it was true that there were some stand- 
 ing there who lived to see the end of that dispensa- 
 tion, but not the end of the world — the scene of 
 the Judgment. 
 
 It should also be understood that the meaning 
 given by our translators to aiw in the passage 
 under consideration, was derived from the Rabbins. 
 The Jewish Church was so sunk in superstition to- 
 wards the close of its existence and the beginning 
 of the gospel dispensation, as to regard Jerusalem, 
 heaven; and the land of Palestine, the world. 
 Outside of this territory there was nothing which 
 
16 THE FIKST CATASTROPHE. 
 
 the Jew regarded as worthy of his notice. This 
 sentiment or feeling crept into the minds of the 
 Apostles so far as to influence their modes of ex- 
 pression. Paul affirms that the Gospel had been 
 preached "in all the earth " (Rom. 10 : 18), when, 
 as is perfectly obvious, he meant only the tribes 
 of Israel. His object seems to be to show that 
 this event (the preaching of the gospel) which 
 the Saviour declared must take place before his 
 coming, had actually transpired. Christ had de- 
 clared that his Gospel must first be preached " in 
 all the world for a witness to all nations, and then 
 the end should come." Paul affirmed that that 
 had already been done. u Their words," meaning 
 the words of the first preachers of Christianity, 
 " went into all the earth, and unto the ends of the 
 world." Rom. 10: 18. 
 
 The word which our translators have here ren- 
 dered " world " is not aluv, but olKov/xhy, meaning the 
 habitable earth or world, especially Judea, or Pal- 
 estine ; precisely the same which Matthew repre- 
 sents our Saviour as using, when he declared that 
 the Gospel of his Kingdom must first be preached 
 in all the earth, and then the end should come. 
 Now it would seem to be quite clear that if Paul's 
 
THE LITERAL INTERPRETATION. 17 
 
 understanding of the words of Christ may be re- 
 lied on, " the end " to which Christ referred was 
 very near at the time the Apostle wrote ; and it 
 evidently was near, for the first catastrophe, the des- 
 truction of Jerusalem by Titus, was even at the 
 door. 
 
 In confirmation of the above interpretation, 
 refer to Luke 2:1. The decree that Caesar Augus- 
 tus sent forth was, that " all the world should be 
 taxed." Was Caesar Augustus ruler of the whole 
 world (as we understand the term), or does the 
 sacred writer mean only the land of Palestine ? or 
 perhaps of the Roman Empire ? The same writer 
 (4 : 5) uses the term evidently with reference to the 
 Eoman Empire. And what a relief to the plain 
 English reader, could he read, as he evidently 
 should — u Again the Devil taketh him up into an 
 exceeding high mountain, and showeth him all the 
 region round about," i. e. all the Roman Empire 
 that was included in Palestine, in a moment of 
 time. 
 
 THE MEANING OF THE EXPRESSION " THE COMING 
 OF THE SON OF MAN." 
 
 As used by our Lord, it seems to bear the same 
 import as the expression " the coming of the Lord" 
 
18 THE LITERAL INTERPRETATION. 
 
 in the O. T. scriptures. But the manner in which 
 it is used, both in the Old and in the New Testa- 
 ment, clearly shows that no one understood by it a 
 personal appearance of the Son of Man. It al- 
 ways seems to imply a series of events of a most 
 solemn and important character, and those which 
 should deeply affect the character and condition of 
 the Jewish nation, as well as of other nations 
 around. 
 
 Much has been said, by those who have writ- 
 ten on this subject, in favor of what they are 
 pleased to call a literal interpretation of the Scrip- 
 tures, in reference to the event now under consid- 
 eration. Hard language has been used with res- 
 pect to those who differ from them as to the prin- 
 ciple of interpretation, and a class of feelings ex- 
 cited that are any thing but friendly. But, cer- 
 tainly, no sane man will attempt to maintain the 
 literal accomplishment of many things which our 
 Saviour said would attend his coming. " The sun 
 shall be darkened and the moon turned to blood," 
 cannot be understood or explained literally. The 
 darkening of the sun thus explained would be 
 simply an eclipse, which is an event that takes 
 place very often, and causes, of course, no special 
 
THE LITERAL INTERPRETATION. 19 
 
 alarm or interest. The other expression, " the 
 turning of the moon into blood," must be under- 
 stood as referring only to its appearance ; but this 
 is true of that luminary so often that no one re- 
 gards it as any mark of fearful import, or one that 
 would indicate any extraordinary event as about 
 to take place. But " the stars falling from heaven " 
 is an expression that creates the greatest difficulty 
 to the Literalist. That the millions of stars, each 
 one being perhaps many times larger than this 
 earth, should fall upon this earth, yea, even upon 
 the land of Palestine, and find room to lie there, is 
 a declaration which every intelligent man will be 
 likely to inquire into before he will adopt a theory 
 involving such an absurdity. 
 
 " Yery true," replies the second adventist, " but 
 the orientals would mean by such a declaration 
 (' the stars,' etc.) only the falling of meteors, like 
 those of Nov., 1832." Our reply to such a sugges- 
 tion is, that the Bible says " stars," not meteors, nor 
 fire-balls, nor anything else, but literally stars, and 
 we are dealing with Literalists. If there is any 
 departure whatever from the most rigid literal 
 construction, it must inure to our side of the ar- 
 gument. 
 
20 THE FIGURATIVE INTERPRETATION. 
 
 It must consequently be admitted that all these 
 signs and wonders, as they were designed to fore- 
 token events on the earthy and not in heaven, are 
 simply declarations of troublous times at hand for 
 the nation about whom our Lord was speaking. 
 The obscuring of the sun, inasmuch as the Jewish 
 church was the light of the world, may mean the 
 fearful darkness which enshrouded that moral lu- 
 minary " before the coming of the great and ter- 
 rible day of the Lord." The " turning of the moon 
 into blood " may foreshadow the bloody wars in 
 which the civil power of the same nation was soon 
 to be involved. " Falling stars " would then be 
 emblematic of the sad and melancholy defection 
 of those who were men of commanding influence, 
 whether in church or state ; as " earthquakes" in 
 different places would bespeak terrible commotion 
 among the common people. 
 
 It serves to commend this view of the subject 
 not a little, that such a state of things actually oc- 
 curred, in every important particular, before the 
 destruction of Jerusalem, and also prior to the 
 Second Catastrophe, as will soon be shown. Jose- 
 phus, whose history was written among the smol- 
 dering ruins of that city, has exhausted the Greek 
 
21 
 
 language in describing the horrors of its siege and 
 capture. Other historians who have attempted to 
 describe that terrible event have seemed to re- 
 gard themselves as portraying evils which strictly 
 accord with the declarations of Jesus Christ him- 
 self when he describes the troubles that were to 
 come upon that nation as not having been equalled, 
 or at any rate not surpassed, in all the preceding ages 
 of the world, and never to be surpassed in the future. 
 The fact that the Lord Jesus Christ, in predict- 
 ing the evils which were coming upon the Jews, saw 
 fit to make use of language which had been employ- 
 ed by Isaiah and all the prophets ages before, has not 
 been noticed with sufficient particularity, we think, 
 by any who have written upon the subject. It 
 would seem to prove that the prophets referred to 
 the same events as our Lord, and that the latter 
 would thus remind the Jews that " they were the 
 Librarians," as was said by Dr. Chalmers — that 
 they had themselves kept the books which an- 
 nounced with sufficient plainness those terrible 
 evils which were now at the door. And as to a 
 literal fulfilment of any of those O. T. prophecies, 
 no one will claim it ; the most earnest Literalist 
 will not dare to maintain it. 
 
THE TIME NEAR AT HAND. 
 
 Every reader of the New Testament has felt 
 embarrassed in reading the repeated assurances that 
 " the day of the Lord is at hand." " Behold," says 
 Christ himself, " I come quickly ; " " The time is 
 short," etc. How often did he admonish his dis- 
 ciples to watch, lest they should be taken by sur- 
 prise. " What I say unto you, I say unto all, 
 watch? His advent was often compared by him- 
 self to the coming of a thief, solely on the ground 
 of its unexpectedness. Various representations, 
 all implying suddenness, abruptness, and the like, 
 were employed by the Saviour in reference to his 
 coming, all pointing to an event near at hand, and 
 " at the door." 
 
 The destruction of Jerusalem must have been 
 that event. No other can claim to have been in- 
 tended. That which we regard as his second com- 
 ing is somewhat further off (65 or 70 years), or 
 about A. D. 135. But the consideration of this, 
 and of the facts connected with it, will be attended 
 to in due time. The third and last coming is that 
 in which he will personally appear for the pur- 
 pose of raising the dead and of judging the world 
 
"the COMING OF CHRIST." 23 
 
 — an event which certainly has not yet taken place, 
 and, from all we can now see, is not likely very 
 soon to occur. 
 
 The gospel is first to be preached among all 
 nations ; the world to be evangelized ; a period of 
 many thousand years may intervene before the 
 " end of all things " shall take place. But of this, 
 more hereafter. 
 
 Bearing in mind then the constant endeavor of 
 our Lord to represent his coming as near at hand, 
 and the fact that the Apostles, when they speak of 
 that event, regard it in the same light, it is folly to 
 maintain that he and they spoke then of the Judg- 
 ment. Equally vain is it to apply the language to 
 any other event except that of the destruction of 
 Jerusalem by Titus, and of the final catastrophe of 
 the Jewish nation soon after. 
 
 It seems important here to glance at the pecu- 
 liar training and expectations of the Apostles. 
 They, in common with the rest of their country- 
 men, had long looked for the promised Messiah. 
 Their expectation was founded upon the prophe- 
 cies of the O. T. scriptures, where the coming of 
 the Messiah and his triumphant reign are foretold 
 in terms of great poetic fervor and sublimity. This 
 
24: THE TIME NEAR AT HAND. 
 
 reign is described as a golden age, when the true 
 religion, and with it the Jewish throne and theoc- 
 racy, should be re-established in more than pristine 
 splendor and purity, and where universal peace and 
 happiness should prevail. "All this," says Dr. 
 Edward Robinson, " was doubtless to be understood 
 in a spiritual sense. It was the Redeemer's spiri- 
 tual kingdom that was thus foreshadowed — that 
 mystery of God which had been kept hid from 
 ages, but was now to be revealed to the Saints of 
 the Most High." 
 
 The occasion of blindness to the Jewish peo- 
 ple seems to be somewhat akin to that which has 
 happened to the advocates of Second Adventism at 
 the present time. The Jews insisted upon a lit- 
 eral explanation of the prophecies respecting the 
 Messiah and his kingdom ; consequently they 
 looked only for a temporal Prince and Sovereign. 
 They expected a Messiah who should literally 
 " come in the clouds of heaven," and, as King of 
 the Jewish nation, should restore the ancient reign 
 and worship, reform the morals of the people, de- 
 liver them from the yoke of foreign dominion, and 
 exalt them to national preeminence, and at length 
 reign over all the earth in peace and glory. Their 
 
"the COMING OF CHRIST." 25 
 
 then present condition of humiliation and sorrow 
 was to cease, and to be succeeded by an eleva- 
 tion to power and glory which should never end. 
 The world, so to speak, was to be turned upside 
 down ; existing principalities and thrones were to be 
 cast to the ground. The coming of the promised 
 Messiah was to be the signal for those mightly rev- 
 olutions, the antecedent of the downfall of the 
 then present order of the world, and of the intro- 
 duction of a new state of things. 
 
 That even the Apostles were deeply imbued 
 with these sentiments in respect to a temporal 
 Prince and Saviour, at least so long as Jesus was 
 with them, and for a time after his resurrection, 
 is apparent from the sacred narrative. On this 
 subject, notwithstanding all the instructions of their 
 Lord, they were still groping in darkness. True, 
 they received Jesus with sincere faith as the prom- 
 ised Messiah ; but of the true character of himself 
 and his kingdom they had only imperfect concep- 
 tions. Not until after the institution of the Holy 
 Supper did he speak plainly to them of his ap- 
 proaching departure. Even then their dullness of 
 apprehension was so great that our Lord pro- 
 nounces them incapable of receiving the instruction 
 
26 ''THE COMING OF CHRIST." 
 
 which he desired to communicate. " I have many 
 things to say to yon, bnt ye cannot bear them now." 
 
 Such then being the low state of knowledge 
 and expectation in the minds of the Apostles at 
 the time of our Lord's death, it is easy to see that 
 the inquiry, made by them only a few days earlier, 
 must be judged of and interpreted in accordance 
 with such a state of mind and of feeling. They 
 had looked for a literal temporal exaltation of their 
 Master, and for a restitution of secular preemi- 
 nence and glory to the Jewish people. The intro- 
 duction of this new and coveted state of things 
 would constitute his " coming." But with this 
 they must now connect the overthrow of the Tem- 
 ple and of the City, as he had just predicted. 
 
 The questions which they proposed to the Sa- 
 viour, respecting his " coming " and " the end of 
 the world," must be interpreted in accordance 
 with their circumstances. They inquired about 
 his coming to bring to an end the then existing 
 state of things in the Jewish nation. The subject 
 of the Judgment does not seem to have been em- 
 braced in their minds, and consequently they 
 asked no question about it, and therefore, no an- 
 swer was required to be given to such question. 
 
"THE DAT OF THE LORD." 
 
 Old Testament usage is the basis of the ex- 
 pressions used by our Lord. The prophecy of 
 Isaiah contains many parent texts, some of which 
 may have been intended to apply to the very sub- 
 ject in hand. Chapters xiii. and xiv. confessedly 
 have reference to the invasion and destruction of 
 Babylon, and we are to remember that the writer 
 of the Apocalypse has expressly assured us that 
 that is the name of the city " where our Lord was 
 crucified, and which is called Babylon." 
 
 In describing " the Day of the Lord " (a phrase 
 which has been adopted by the writers of the New 
 Testament and always connected with the idea of 
 retribution, punishment and the like) the prophet 
 says : " Behold the Day of the Lord cometh, cruel 
 both with wrath and fierce anger, to lay the land 
 desolate, and he shall destroy the sinners thereof 
 out of it." Then follows the phraseology to which 
 we have referred : " For the stars of heaven and 
 the constellations thereof shall not give their light ; 
 the sun shall be darkened in his going forth, and 
 the moon shall not cause her light to shine, and I 
 will punish the world," etc.— 13 : 9-11. " Here," 
 
28 "THE DAT OF THE LORD." 
 
 remarks Prof. Stuart, " verse 10 contains the very 
 same imagery which is employed by the Saviour 
 himself as recorded by Matthew 24 : 29. At least 
 the fundamental idea is the same." 
 
 Again, in Isaiah 24 : 19-23, the desolation and 
 destruction of Jerusalem are predicted. Refer- 
 ence should be made, also, to the prophecy of Joel 
 2 : 30-31, where the scene before us is described 
 with remarkable particularity : " I will show won- 
 ders in the heavens, and in the earth, blood, fire, 
 and pillars of smoke. The sun shall be turned 
 into darkness and the moon into blood, before 
 the great and terrible day of the Lord come." 
 Peter, as is well known, quotes this passage, with 
 much that precedes it, as applying to events that 
 were about to take place in Palestine — the great 
 changes that were soon to follow. In other words, 
 we have in the verse quoted, a declaration of the 
 impending judgments of God against Jerusalem, 
 with imagery or costume emphatically similar to 
 that in Matt. 24. Again, in Joel, chap. 3, the 
 heaviest judgments are denounced against heathen 
 nations who, at some future day, should come up 
 against Jerusalem. Their punishment is described 
 as accompanied with the same wonderful phenom- 
 
" THE COMING OF CHRIST." 29 
 
 ena : " The sun and the moon shall be darkened, 
 and the stars shall withdraw their shining." 
 
 We come now to the inquiry (upon which some 
 remarks may be found on a previous page) as to 
 what is implied in " the coming of the Son of 
 Man." Matt. 24, verse 30, asserts that, after 
 certain events already specified by the Saviour as 
 harbingers of his coming, he himself should be 
 seen coming in the clouds of heaven," etc. This 
 expression is especially relied on by the Literalist 
 as altogether inapplicable to the destruction of Je- 
 rusalem. That Christ did not at the time of that 
 event appear " in propria persona " is admitted. 
 "Therefore," says the Literalist, "it is evident 
 enough that the Saviour did not intend it to apply 
 to any event but that of his final coming to judg- 
 ment." The soundness of this inference depends 
 entirely on the fact whether Christ meant to be 
 understood literally or figuratively. 
 
 The Bible elsewhere speaks in like manner, 
 without leaving us any room to suppose that the 
 coming in this manner was a literal, personal, or 
 visible one. When God intends to express his 
 purpose to execute certain plans in respect to men, 
 he speaks of coming down to earth to do it. When 
 
30 "the coming of the lord." 
 
 Babel was built, "the Lord came down to see the 
 city and the tower," — Gen. 11 : 5. Again, he said : 
 " Let us go down, and confound their language," 
 5: 7. See also Gen. 18:21 ;Exod. 3-8; 19: 18-20; 
 Numb. 12:5, for examples of the same phrase. 
 The prophet Isaiah, 64: 1, uses this expression, 
 " Oh that thou wouldst rend the heavens, that thou 
 wouldst co'me down, that the mountains might 
 flow down at thy presence" 
 
 But the apostle Paul declares God to be invis- 
 ible, (i. Tim. 1 : 17), and says of him (i. Tim. 6 : 
 16 " whom no man hath seen or can see" The 
 apostle John says : " No man hath seen God at 
 any time " (i. John 4 : 12-20). Of course all the 
 scripture passages which represent him as being 
 seen, or as having been seen, are not to be under- 
 stood literally. They must be explained as signi- 
 fying a manifestation of God, either by symbol, or 
 by his agency either in punishing his enemies, or in 
 protecting his people. But we are never to suppose 
 a personal and visible coming. He is always and 
 everywhere present, and cannot therefore come and 
 go, in a literal sense. Of course we are not at lib- 
 erty to give such passages a literal interpretation. 
 
 Enough has been said respecting Old Testament 
 
"the coming of the lord." 31 
 
 usage ; let us now come to the New. The only 
 question with which we are concerned is, whether 
 there be any other than a visible or a literal coming 
 of Christ spoken of in the N. T. If there be plain 
 and indubitable cases of such a nature (as we be- 
 lieve there are) then it does by no means become 
 a matter of necessity to allow that the coming of 
 Christ spoken of in Matt. 24 : 30 should be inter- 
 preted in its literal sense, and thus be referred to 
 the General Judgment. 
 
 Christ said to his disciples on one occasion : 
 " If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come 
 again and receive you to myself," — John 14 : 3. 
 Did he then come in proper person, visibly, when 
 each of his disciples died, and take them to him- 
 self? In verse 23 is a much stronger expression : 
 " If any man love me, he will keep my words, and 
 my Father will love him, and we will come to 
 him, and make our abode with him." "Was this 
 a literal, bodily coming? Turn also to Rev. 
 3 : 20 ; but especially to John 21 : 22-23—" If I 
 will that he tarry till I come," etc. "When was 
 that coming to be ? If it was at the General Judg- 
 ment then John was not to die at all, for the saints 
 then alive are not to die at all, but to be immedi- 
 
32 "the coming of the lokd." 
 
 ately caught up to meet the Lord in the air, doubt- 
 less after a proper and necessary metamorphosis. 
 This coming then, after which, and not before, 
 John was to die, must have been an event which 
 was to take place during that generation. And 
 what could that be but his coming to punish the 
 unbelieving and persecuting Jews. 
 
 The term " coming " is used in the N. T. with 
 direct reference to the coming of the Lord Jesus 
 Christ twenty-five times, in not one of which is there 
 the remotest reference to his coming in judgment at 
 the end of the world, i. e. the end of all things. 
 There can be no doubt that that term was used in 
 the sense of arraigning and punishing the wicked, 
 and thus it came very naturally to imply the de- 
 struction of the unbelieving Jews — the destruction 
 of Jerusalem and its temple by Titus. This was 
 his first visitation — the first catastrophe. But 
 does any man attempt to maintain that this " com- 
 ing" implied a personal appearing or advent of the 
 Son of Man ? Was Christ present in the year 70, 
 when Jerusalem and its temple were demolished, 
 or did the disciples understand him as coming in 
 any other sense than that of inflicting summary 
 punishment upon that guilty people ? 
 
''THE COMING OF THE LORD." 33 
 
 We will next refer the Literalist to Matt. 16 : 
 28 — " Verily I say unto you, there be some stand- 
 ing here who shall not taste of death till they see 
 the Son of Man coming in his kingdom." Mark, 
 in the parallel passage (9 : 1), says — " till they 
 see the kingdom of God come with power ; " Luke 
 (19 : 27)—" till they see the kingdom of God." The 
 coming of the Son of Man, therefore, as here taught, 
 is not a visible manifestation of him in any other 
 method than by the agency and efficacy of gospel 
 truth. It is the reign of Christ for which he 
 taught us to pray : " Thy kingdom come." No- 
 tice this, kind reader, we are taught to pray for the 
 coming of Christ's kingdom, not for his coming. 
 
 Further : At the close of the parable of the Ten 
 Virgins (Matt. 25 : 13), Christ says to his disciples: 
 " Watch, therefore, for ye know neither the day 
 nor the hour when the Son of Man comethP If 
 now this exhortation was addressed to the disciples 
 in the sense of a practical duty, and was uttered 
 for the reason assigned, namely, their ignorance 
 of the time of his coming, then it follows that the 
 event spoken of must be some other than his com- 
 ing in judgment. If not, Christ himself, as it would 
 seem, must have been mistaken, and was thus lead- 
 3 
 
34 
 
 inghis disciples into error. How could he exhort 
 them to live constantly on the watch, expecting 
 his coming, if that coming was not to arrive for 
 thousands of years after they were dead ? There is 
 no alternative. Either the Saviour himself was 
 mistaken, and so led his disciples into error, or the 
 coming in question was not the final one to judg- 
 ment. It must have been his coming to destroy 
 Jerusalem, and the Jewish commonwealth. 
 
 But we must look a little further, at Matt. 24 : 
 14, where it is said : " This gospel of the kingdom 
 must be preached in all the world for a witness to 
 all nations, and then shall the end come." But 
 the Apocalypse assures us that when the gospel 
 has been preached among all nations, a thousand 
 years are to follow before the end of the world. 
 This apparent discrepancy is removed by consid- 
 ering the true import of the word here translated 
 world, which is properly the land of Judea or Pal- 
 estine. The object of the Saviour seems to have 
 been to embrace all the known world which was 
 at that time occupied by the tribes of Israel. The 
 word oiKov[iLvr] is thus defined by Dr. Robinson, upon 
 the authority of the Apostle Paul, as we shall soon 
 see. The literal end of the world then, or of the 
 
THE COMING OF CHRIST. 35 
 
 earthy is not even alluded to here, for that is an 
 event that is to follow the diffusion of the gospel 
 through the tribes of Israel. And this took place 
 before the Jewish capital or commonwealth was 
 destroyed. Paul assures us (Rom. 10 : 18) that 
 the messengers of gospel truth had caused " their 
 sound to go forth into all the earth, and their words 
 unto the ends of the world." Here the Apostle uses 
 the aforesaid word olKov/ievr? in precisely the same 
 sense in which it is used in Matt. 24 : 14. Again, 
 he says of the gospel that it is come to the Colos- 
 sians, " and into all the world " — (1 : 5, 6). And 
 further, that it was "preached to every creature 
 under heaven" — (v. 23). Every difficulty here van- 
 ishes when we regard Paul as laboring to convince 
 the Colossians that " the end of all things was at 
 hand," because the gospel had been preached to all 
 the tribes of Israel, and this was an event which 
 was immediately to precede the end of the age, or 
 dispensation. 
 
 We know not how it is that men familiar with 
 the languages in which the Bible was originally 
 written, who seem to be honest in pursuit of truth, 
 can come to the conclusion that all the conversa- 
 tion between Christ and the disciples on the occa- 
 
36 WHAT COMING IS MEANT. 
 
 sion we are considering, referred either to a second 
 appearing, literal, visible, and personal, or to 
 his coming at the end of time to judge the world. 
 In every case, except that which is recorded in 
 Matt. 25 : 31-46 (where it is conceded by all that 
 his subject is the General Judgment) our Lord gives 
 instructions, announces events that shall take place 
 before his coming, which cannot be reconciled with 
 any such idea. The advocates of Second Adven- 
 tism believe that none of his instructions as to his. 
 coming refer to the destruction of Jerusalem, either 
 that which took place under Titus, or that which oc- 
 cured under Hadrian. They stoutly maintain that 
 all his teachings, on the occasion of which we are 
 speaking, related to the General Judgment, and that 
 every thing which he said is worthy of a higher 
 interpretation than the event of the destruction of 
 Jerusalem. 
 
 Let us look, however, at his directions to his 
 disciples, to ascertain whether we can find any thing 
 to guide us in this matter. Matt. 24 : 2 — " Yerily 
 I say unto you, there shall not be left here one 
 stone upon another, that shall not be thrown 
 down." Is there any thing in the scenes of the 
 judgment answering to this ? Again, Christ says : 
 
WHAT COMING IS MEANT. 37 
 
 " Take heed that no man deceive yon." Is there 
 a possibility of any man deceiving them " when 
 the Son of Man shall come in his glory, and all the 
 holy angels with him " ? He cautions them further, 
 that many would come in his name, saying " I am 
 Christ." Can this prediction have reference to the 
 judgment ? Will any but Christ claim to sit upon 
 the throne in that day ? Passing over the predic- 
 tions of wars, the rising of nation against nation, 
 famines, pestilences, and earthquakes, as the begin- 
 ings of sorrows, why should any man seek to kill 
 the disciples at this particular time, and why at this 
 important period should men betray and hate one 
 another? All are summoned to judgment. Why 
 seek to embarrass one another in any way, or for 
 any cause ? How are we to understand the predic- 
 tion : " Many false prophets shall arise ? " It would 
 seem rather unnatural that such characters should 
 be found in the morning of the judgment, but quite 
 likely to appear before the destruction of Jerusa- 
 lem. Again it was said : " He that shall endure 
 to the end, the same shall be saved." End of 
 what ? Of the judgment ? And who will not en- 
 dure unto that end ? 
 
 Our next inquiry concerns " the abomination of 
 
38 NOT FOR JUDGMENT. 
 
 desolation, standing in the holy place," or, more 
 correctly, the directions that follow it — " Then let 
 them that are in Judea flee to the mountains." 
 For what ? To escape the judgment ? And who 
 gave such instructions as these ? The Judge him- 
 self? Impossible ! And what shall become of the 
 rest of the earth's inhabitants ? The directions are 
 only to those occupying the land of Judea. We 
 admit the pertinence and the propriety of the in- 
 structions in verses 17 and 18, when men are called 
 to the judgment, but this admission does not re- 
 move the absurdity of the idea that the Judge 
 should represent himself as counselling men to flee 
 to the mountains to escape the judgment. But 
 verse 20 presents another difficulty upon this 
 theory. Christ, the Judge, instructs them to pray 
 that their " flight " from the judgment seat " be 
 not in the winter ! " 
 
 But the reader may be referred to the record 
 itself, without note or comment, from v. 20 to v. 28 
 inclusive, as containing a series of statements which 
 can never be reconciled with the idea that the 
 " coming " of which the Saviour speaks, v. 27, is to 
 be understood of the Judgment Day. He must 
 have a deeper insight into things than any intelli- 
 
NOT FOR JUDGMENT. 39 
 
 gent man has, or he will be able to see only the 
 announcement of Christ's coming to destroy Jeru- 
 salem. 
 
 Thus far then the case is clear. Several points 
 have been settled: 1. The discourse of our Lord 
 up to this point does not refer to the Day of Judg- 
 ment ; 2. The disciples had confined their inqui- 
 ries to Jerusalem, as to the period of its destruc- 
 tion and the signs which should indicate it ; 3. To 
 the " coming of the Son of Man" this last ex- 
 pression being understood by them all to imply 
 the punishment of the Jews and the end of the 
 Jewish dispensation. The part we have considered 
 terminates with 24 : 28, the invasion of Jerusa- 
 lem by the army with eagle ensigns ; the eagles 
 are gathered around the corse, but have not yet 
 devoured it. 
 
 Luke points to the time when they " shall see 
 Jerusalem compassed by armies, and then they 
 should know that the desolation thereof was nigh." 
 Then you will have your last opportunity to save 
 yourselves by flight : then will the eagles be gath- 
 ered together where the carcass is ; and " Jerusalem 
 shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the 
 times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.' 5 
 
40 NOT FOR JUDGMENT. 
 
 Here we suppose the Saviour's description of 
 the First Catastrophe terminates. The questions 
 put by the disciples which referred to the destruc- 
 tion of Jerusalem are here answered, so far as 
 they are answered at all. Events, as signs of that 
 destruction were at hand, and they were of a na- 
 ture that would require no expositor, and lead to 
 no mistake. 
 
 In close and direct connection with this repre- 
 sentation follows the passage in Matthew, which 
 we regard as the prophetic record of the Second 
 Catastrophe, or of Christ's Second Coming, and 
 which forms the second part of our subject. 
 
PART II. 
 
 THE SECOND CATASTROPHE. 
 
 We shall introduce this event by citing the rec- 
 ord given by Matthew only, agreeing in every es- 
 sential particular with the record as given by Mark 
 13 : 24-27, and Luke 21 : 24-28, Matt. 24 : 29-31. 
 " Immediately after the tribulation of those days 
 shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not 
 give her light ; and the stars shall fall from heaven, 
 and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken," etc. 
 The Saviour, while apparently pursuing the gen- 
 eral tenor of his discourse stops short, and by the 
 introduction of a few words intimates that the 
 theme upon which he had been dwelling was 
 ended, and that another was now commenced, and 
 yet an event so like to the former as scarcely to be 
 distinguishable from it, except in regard to its im- 
 portance. "Were it not for the words "immedi- 
 ately after" etc., the reader would feel compelled 
 
 
42 THE SECOND CATASTROPHE. 
 
 to regard the whole discourse as referring to but one 
 great event. All have felt, however, a serious diffi- 
 culty in the way of understanding it as referring to 
 one event. An appeal to the history of the Jews, so 
 far as that history was known, afforded no relief. 
 One catastrophe, and only one, is recorded by Jose- 
 phus, and that the destruction of Jerusalem under 
 Titus. He could not speak of anything later than 
 that, inasmuch as his death occurred near the close 
 of the scene. 
 
 In accordance with the above passage cited 
 from Matthew, the other Evangelists specify a num- 
 ber of events that were to transpire previous to the 
 catastrophe to which our Lord would now direct 
 the attention of his Disciples. The similitude of 
 the fig-tree is introduced to impress on their minds 
 the fact that it was near at hand, and the time is 
 made more definite by the declaration, " Verily I 
 say unto you, this generation shall not pass away 
 till all these things are fulfilled." 
 
 It will not be denied that the Saviour here re- 
 ferred to one of two or three events ; either to the 
 destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, or to his coming 
 to judge the w^orld, or to an event which was to 
 take place in the course of the time which at that 
 
THE SECOND CATASTROPHE. 43 
 
 period or age of the world was called a " genera- 
 tion." It has been already made abundantly 
 clear that the first of these events is not referred to 
 after v. 28. In respect to the hypothesis that our 
 Lord is speaking of his coming to judge the world, 
 we think the number is very small who will sub- 
 scribe to it, since it involves the chronological ab- 
 surdity that there were some standing there who 
 were to live till the judgment. There remains 
 then the hypothesis, which we advocate, that Christ 
 referred to another, a second catastrophe, a continu- 
 ance or consummation of the first, the destruction 
 of the Jewish state and nationality. There are 
 many, we are aware, who hold a very different view. 
 They believe in what is termed a second coming 
 of Christ — a personal advent and reign of the Mes- 
 siah on earth for the period of a thousand years 
 previous to the Millennium. 
 
 We admit that there is a similarity in the signs 
 and events that are described as antecedent to each 
 catastrophe, as we have designated them. So there 
 is a marked similarity in the two events — the de- 
 struction of Jerusalem by Titus, A. D. 70, and the 
 destruction of the same, together with that of the 
 Jewish state and nationality by Hadrian, A. D. 
 
44 THE SECOND CATASTROPHE. 
 
 135. And here lies the origin of that embarrass- 
 ment felt even by good men, concerning the com- 
 ing of Christ. They have confounded the two 
 events, or have made them one. But the principal 
 reason has been that the history of that nation, like 
 the nation itself, almost perished from the earth. 
 There was no Josephus to chronicle the second 
 event ; hence the knowledge of this has been not 
 only limited and incomplete, but it has been so 
 long kept back from the world, that the world re- 
 fuses to receive or credit it. 
 
 Those who confound the two events alluded to 
 have never been able to dispose in a satisfactory 
 manner of this announcement : " Immediately after 
 the events which I have related, ending, as this re- 
 lation does, in the total destruction of Jerusalem, 
 another series of similar or more formidable tokens 
 shall announce the same." They who have felt 
 this embarrassment most, have sought to escape 
 from it by supposing that the verses under consid- 
 eration referred to the coming of our Lord to judge 
 the world. But a more formidable difficulty is 
 found in the assurance that the catastrophe now 
 under consideration was to be heralded by events 
 that did not take place till after the destruction of 
 
THE SECOND CATASTROPHE. 45 
 
 Jerusalem. " The abomination of desolation," and 
 " the compassing of Jerusalem with armies," and 
 also " the treading down of the city by the Gen- 
 tiles," were to be subsequent to the destruction of 
 the Temple. Those who have endeavored to ex- 
 plain all by the hypothesis that Christ throughout 
 this conversation with his disciples intends to in- 
 dicate only his coming to judge the world, have 
 been most seriously troubled with the words under 
 consideration. And these difficulties are increas- 
 ing every year. Nearly 2,000 years have already 
 passed, and still the anticipated event is delayed ; 
 " the end is not yet." Time and again the period 
 has been fixed upon ; the year, the month, the day 
 even, when there should be an end of all earthly 
 things. The sun was to go down, never to rise ; 
 the moon to wax old, never to be renewed. The 
 humanly-appointed day arrives, but brings no ca- 
 tastrophe of the kind predicted. The world moves 
 on without appearing to know any thing about the 
 fearful predictions of men. 
 
 Universalism, on the other hand, had found an 
 anodyne for an uneasy conscience, in the theory 
 that all these predictions referred to the single 
 event of the destruction of Jerusalem. The gath- 
 
46 THE SECOND CATASTROPHE. 
 
 ering of all nations before Jesus Christ, as related 
 by Matt. 25 : 31, etc., the separation of the wicked 
 from the righteous, is the assembling of all the 
 tribes of Israel in Jerusalem, at the time of its de- 
 struction. The sending of the wicked into ever- 
 lasting punishment and the receiving of the right- 
 eous into life eternal, are events limited to the 
 present life ; and life eternal is just equivalent to 
 " threescore years and ten." 
 
 The great majority of those who have confi- 
 dence in the instructions of Christ still believe, how- 
 ever, that " he that shall come will come, and will 
 not tarry." But they look not for his personal 
 appearing until he shall come to raise the dead, and 
 judge the world. 
 
 The " logic of events," therefore, as well as 
 that of experience, aided by what we are compelled 
 to regard as a correct exegesis of the teachings 
 of Jesus, force upon us the conviction that a second 
 catastrophe, and that a most fearful one to the 
 Jews, was distinctly pointed out by the Saviour in 
 the words which we have placed at the head of 
 this division of our subject. "We are confident, 
 moreover, that it can be proved by the light of his- 
 tory, that the evils then foretold by our Lord came 
 
THE SECOND CATASTKOPHE. 47 
 
 upon the Jewish nation during their wars with 
 Hadrian, the Roman Emperor, between the year 
 130 and the year 140 of the Christian era ; and that 
 this desolating war was the Second Coming of 
 Christ — an event for which the Second Adventist 
 is now looking with anxious concern ! 
 
 The history of the scenes through which that 
 nation then passed has made the record of other 
 wars and of other calamities seem as idle tales. 
 Yet that history is confessedly of a meagre charac- 
 ter ; but meagre as it is, there is sufficient to show 
 that the declarations of Christ in respect to the evils 
 that were then coming upon the nation could only 
 be understood in the light of that terrible history. 
 This we know : that a nation, numbering some five 
 or six millions, in the course of twenty or thirty 
 years goes down almost to utter extinction, and its 
 sorry fragments are scattered over the civilized 
 world. During the last 1500 years historians have 
 searched for that people as for a paper that had been 
 dropped from the portfolio of Time ; yet that search 
 has for the most part been comparatively in vain. 
 They have seen where that nation went down. 
 The ruins of its cities and villages remain to 
 speak of their former grandeur and magnificence, 
 
48 mtjnter's history. 
 
 and point the inquiring traveller to portions of in- 
 spired prophecy which cannot be satisfactorily ex- 
 plained without a distinct recognition of this dread- 
 ful event. So near did the nation come to oblivion 
 that for the space of a hundred years or more the 
 world appeared to know nothing of the Jews or of 
 their chief city. History has rowed out upon the 
 ocean of the past, in search of something, some splint- 
 ered fragment, or bit of plank, to tell where and 
 how the ship of State went down ; but as yet has 
 found little. 
 
 To prepare the way for a final justification of 
 the exegesis we defend, there will now be produced 
 what of history we have been able to glean respect- 
 ing the Jews during the eventful period to which 
 reference has so often been made in this treatise. 
 The materials have been derived from the product 
 of the indefatigable labors of Bishop Miinter, of 
 Copenhagen, who has devoted half a century to 
 fishing up from the profound depths of the past 
 whatever could be found to throw light upon their 
 mysterious disappearance. The substance of his 
 discoveries we give to the reader, that he may be 
 able to explain the fact, that every man who for 
 the last 1700 years has believed and taught that 
 
munter's history 49 
 
 our Lord was to appear in person before he came 
 to judge the world, has lived to be convinced of his 
 mistake, and of the error of his theory. 
 
 It was the opinion of the late learned Dr. Ed- 
 ward Robinson (Professor of Biblical Literature 
 in the Union Theological Seminary, in New York 
 City,) that the treatise to which we have just re- 
 ferred, and the substance of which we are about 
 to introduce (from the Bibliotheca Sacra, 1843), 
 throws light upon a most difficult and important 
 subject — that of the Second Coming of Christ. He 
 speaks of this historical work of Miinter as " col- 
 lecting and embodying all the fragmentary notices 
 relating to a dark yet most interesting portion of 
 Jewish history — a portion, too, having a very impor- 
 tant bearing upon the right interpretation of those 
 instructions of our Lord Jesus Christ which are sup- 
 posed to refer solely to the Day of Judgment. 
 Had we the same minute and vivid picture," he con- 
 tinues, " of the extent and horrors of this tragedy 
 of the Jewish people which is presented to us by 
 Josephus in regard to the siege and downfall of the 
 Holy City by Titus, it may be doubted whether 
 the interest and historical importance of that final 
 overthrow would not be found to equal, or even 
 
50 munter's history. 
 
 surpass, that of the antecedent catastrophe." The 
 bearing of these events upon the prophetic declar- 
 ations to which we have just alluded, he has given 
 in another article, in the same volume of the Bib- 
 liotheca Sacra, in which he satisfactorily shows 
 that the passage of scripture more particularly 
 under consideration (Matt. 24 : 29-31), must have 
 referred to the Jewish state and nation in an event 
 which came near proving their utter extinction as 
 well as oblivion. This is our reason for citing it. 
 We bespeak for it a most careful perusal, not only 
 on the account just mentioned, but because we 
 regard it as a key to the right understanding of 
 several important passages of scripture — especially 
 in the prophecy of Daniel, and also of the Apoc- 
 alypse. This history was prepared but a few years 
 ago, and, for want of it, every commentator who 
 has attempted to explain those prophecies has 
 found himself involved in inextricable difficulties, 
 and has learned that he was attempting to explain 
 what he had not the means of understanding. 
 This production, from which we are about to 
 quote, settles forever the question of Christ's 
 Second Coming. No man can read it and be- 
 lieve it, without being convinced that it records 
 
munter's history. 51 
 
 the very calamities to which Christ referred, as 
 described in Matt. 24: 29-31, and in the corres- 
 ponding passages of the other Evangelists. 
 These points fteing settled, the advocate of a 
 premillennial and personal advent of Christ is 
 driven to the wall, and his theory with him. 
 There are not wanting, in our estimation, argu- 
 ments from the sacred record itself sufficient to 
 establish this position, if that record be rightly 
 construed; but if there are deficiencies, the his- 
 tory we are now to quote furnishes a satisfactory 
 supplement. 
 
THE JEWISH WAR 
 UNDER TRAJAN AND HADRIAN. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 The protracted and bloody war carried on by 
 the Jews and Romans under the Emperors Trajan 
 and Hadrian, is a subject which has not been suffi- 
 ciently known. Yet it is not only of great import- 
 ance to Jewish and the earliest ecclesiastical history, 
 but it will contribute to lower the opinion almost 
 universally entertained of the prosperity enjoyed by 
 the Roman Empire in the period extending from 
 Nerva to Commodus. A revolt repeatedly sup- 
 pressed and ever breaking out anew, in which prob- 
 ably the whole Jewish nation took part ; which con- 
 tinued either openly or secretly through a course 
 of more than twenty years ; in which several 
 blooming provinces were laid waste, and many hun- 
 dred thousands perished by the sword and other 
 disasters of war, while countless multitudes for- 
 feited their possessions and their freedom ; and 
 whose after-throes must have extended through the 
 
THE SECOND JEWISH WAR. 53 
 
 next following ages — such a revolt cannot be reck- 
 oned among the minor calamities of the Roman 
 Empire. Indeed the second Jewish war would 
 certainly not yield in historical interest to the first, 
 did we possess as full and correct an account of its 
 occurrences as Josephus has given us of the former. 
 We are able to determine or conjecture only 
 from scattered fragments its extent, duration, and 
 importance. 
 
 " To collect and to arrange these fragments," 
 says Dr. Miinter, " is the object I have proposed to 
 myself: a toilsome undertaking, truly, for all the 
 notices are so brief, so incoherent, and not unfre- 
 quently so contradictory, that one can often only 
 guess at the connection; and success, even here, often 
 depends upon the fact whether the writer who 
 treats of this subject has acquired a true historical 
 feeling ; although this again is liable to lead into 
 error. The most connected account is afforded in 
 Xiphilin's Extract from the sixty-eighth and sixty- 
 ninth books of Dion Cassius, and by Eusebius in 
 the 4th Book of his Ecclesiastical History. But 
 how brief is even this ! All else must be gleaned 
 from solitary intimations in other and meagre his- 
 torical productions of those times, the chronicles 
 
54 THE SECOND JEWISH WAR. 
 
 and the writings of the Fathers. Ancient coins 
 yield a few spoils ; of inscriptions we have only 
 a single one; and the notices scattered through 
 the Jewish writers — partly of a very modern date — 
 are of such a quality that at first one will be inclined 
 to pass them over altogether ; although one after- 
 wards may be induced to consult them, but with 
 great caution, and to make use of them where they 
 appear in a measure to supply chasms, and where 
 the mutual agreement of authorities speaks for the 
 truth of the substance of what they state." 
 
AEGUMENT DEEIVED 
 FEOM THE SECOND JEWISH WAE. 
 
 I. The Jewish War, under Vespasian, was 
 brought to a close by the taking of Jerusalem and 
 the destruction of the City and Temple. The sub- 
 jugated nation had now lost the central point of 
 their religion, and thus were long deprived of the 
 hope of seeing their old expectations of a Messianic 
 kingdom in the Holy City fulfilled. The dislike 
 and contempt entertained against them by the 
 Eomans had been greatly increased, and many 
 thousands of Israelites who had survived th& for- 
 tune of war were deprived of their liberty, placed 
 in the most wretched condition, and removed far 
 away from their native land. But this last misfor- 
 tune happened to those only who fell into the 
 power of their conquerors with arms in their hands, 
 for the- many Jewish colonies which had settled 
 before in the provinces of the Eoman Empire, and 
 which, at least apparently, had kept themselves 
 quiet during the war, were not involved in the 
 misfortunes of the Jews of Palestine, and retained 
 the undisturbed enjoyment of their rights and lib- 
 
56 ARGUMENT DERIVED 
 
 erties ; although it may readily be supposed that 
 the government watched them with greater strict- 
 ness, and no longer favored them in the same degree 
 as formerly. One burden only they were all obliged 
 to bear. The yearly tax of two drachmae, which 
 every Israelite over twenty years of age paid to the 
 Temple as long as it was standing in Jerusalem, 
 they were now compelled (if they wished to pre- 
 serve their religious freedom) to pay to the Temple 
 of Jupiter Capitolinus, a Roman Deity ; and to 
 what immense sums this tribute, although not very 
 oppressive on individuals, must have amounted, 
 may easily be imagined from the very remarkable 
 populousness of the Jews, who certainly amounted 
 to several millions. (Michaelis supposes there were 
 from five to six millions at that time.) 
 
 Every one that knows the character of the Jew- 
 ish people, their attachment to the religion of their 
 fathers, and their bitter hatred against Paganism, 
 can imagine with what feelings they paid this tax 
 (held hitherto so sacred) to an impure idol temple. 
 No wonder then, that whoever could, sought to es- 
 cape from it. Many a one may have even denied 
 being a Jew, in case he was able to obliterate the 
 corporeal marks of his religion by a means to which 
 
FROM THE SECOND JEWISH WAK. 57 
 
 Paul (i. Cor. 7: 18,) alludes, especially after the au- 
 thorities began to institute judicial investigations, 
 one of which Suetonius reports as an eye-witness. 
 The universal contempt entertained for this un- 
 happy people, together with the greediness of the 
 officials connected with the revenue, may have 
 given rise, under the tyrannical reign of Domitian, 
 to many oppressive acts, false accusations, and 
 harsh exactions of the tribute. And this moved 
 the noble Nerva to the edict which, if it did not 
 take off the tax, yet put an end to the misconduct 
 that had been practised in its collection, and was re- 
 garded as so benevolent that the Senate sought to 
 perpetuate the remembrance of it by a separate coin, 
 bearing the legend FISCI JUDAICI C ALUM- 
 MA SUBLATA. But that the government should 
 hold the Israelites remaining in Palestine under a 
 strict supervision, was very natural ; and it cannot 
 be made a matter of reproach to Domitian, that, on 
 receiving information of the survivors of the family 
 of David that were still living there, he had two 
 relatives of Jesus, grand-children of his brother 
 Jacob, brought to Rome. He convinced himself, 
 however, of their innocence, and let them return 
 to their homes in peace. 
 
58 ARGUMENT DERIVED 
 
 II. Still, all the hopes of the Israelites for better 
 times had not yet expired. They continued ever- 
 more to console themselves with the expectation of 
 the Messiah. Even supposing that Theudas left no 
 adherents behind him, there certainly remained 
 many of the party of Judas of Galilee, who, during 
 the siege of Jerusalem, had played so conspicuous, 
 and, for the people, so fatal, a part. And that even 
 the Alexandrine Jews still flattered themselves with 
 hopes for the future is probable from the drama of 
 the poet Ezekiel, entitled " The Departure out of 
 Egypt," of which no inconsiderable fragments are 
 found in Clemens of Alexandria, and in Eusebius, 
 and who, perhaps, lived towards the end of the first 
 century of the Christian era ; while the example of 
 that wondrous deliverance of the Jewish people 
 from Egyptian bondage was well calculated to nour- 
 ish and keep alive the expectation of a similar 
 release from the Roman sway. Perhaps, too, the 
 Apocryphal Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, 
 which appears to belong to the same period, had a 
 similar tendency. 
 
 But on the other hand, the courage of the un- 
 happy people was too much repressed by the 
 destruction of their capital for them to venture so 
 
FROM THE SECOND JEWISH WAR. 59 
 
 soon again on attempts for their liberation, the re- 
 sult of which could by no means be doubtful. On 
 the other hand, they were perhaps somewhat tran- 
 quillized by the moderation which Nerva exhib- 
 ited towards them, and by the mildness of the gov- 
 ernment of his successors. The fire, however, 
 continued to smolder beneath the ashes, and there 
 needed only some external stimulus to accelerate 
 the outbreak. Nerva, by his edict, had only sought 
 to alleviate the abuses that existed in the collection 
 of the tax to Jupiter Capitolinus. But wise and 
 philanthropic as Trajan was, and careful as he and 
 the Senate, after his example, were, in selecting 
 the governors of the provinces, it surpassed human 
 powers to hold in check all the subordinate func- 
 tionaries ; and many complaints never reached the 
 Emperor, who, involved in arduous wars, was forced 
 to be absent from Rome during a great part of his 
 reign. Add to this the constan tly increasing hatred 
 and scorn entertained by the Romans for the Jews, 
 and it will easily be comprehended how, by de- 
 grees, now that an age had already passed by since 
 the destruction of Jerusalem, a new insurrection 
 was prepared and ready to break out ; and that, 
 too, not at first in Palestine, where the people 
 
60 ARGUMENT DERIVED 
 
 dwelt in smaller numbers, and perhaps also under 
 heavier subjection, but in regions that had not suf- 
 fered by the war, and where the Jewish colonies 
 existed in wealth and comfort. And, although this 
 revolt showed itself only in single provinces, yet, 
 after weighing all the circumstances, it is more 
 than probable that a great, perhaps the greatest, 
 part of the nation had a share in it, and favored 
 and supported it, at least in secret. 
 
 III. Egypt and Cyrene were without doubt the 
 countries in which the Jews had spread themselves 
 the most. Every one knows how rich, how pow- 
 erful, and how highly favored by the government 
 that people were in Alexandria, from the time of 
 the first Ptolemies. Not less fortunate was their 
 condition in the province of Cyrenaica, so inti- 
 mately connected with Egypt. The first Ptolemy 
 had permitted them to settle there. The religious 
 persecutions of the Syrian king, Antiochus Epi- 
 phanes, had induced many to betake themselves to 
 this country, which was not subjected to his rule. 
 In every city of Cyrenaica dwelt Jews in the full 
 enjoyment of equal rights with the Greeks ; and 
 their prosperity is evinced not alone by their hav- 
 ing, together with the Alexandrians, a synagogue 
 
FROM THE SECOND JEWISH WAR. 61 
 
 in Jerusalem, but also from the circumstance re- 
 corded in the inscription of Berenice, that in this 
 city, as well as in Alexandria and other cities, and 
 hence most probably throughout Cyrenaica, they 
 were under their own magistrates. But here also 
 they had restless spirits among them. Shortly 
 after the destruction of Jerusalem, a weaver, one 
 Jonathan, had succeeded in misleading about 2,000 
 persons by promises of signs and wonders. It is 
 true that the wealthier and more respectable took 
 no part in this project, and even gave warning to 
 the Eoman governor, Catullus. The latter fell 
 upon their seducer, slaughtered many, and caused 
 3,000 more rich Jews to be put to death in Eygpt ; 
 after which he boasted of having obtained a victory 
 over the nation. But when he communicated the 
 matter to the Emperor, with many embellishments 
 to his own advantage, and thereupon made his ap- 
 pearance in Rome with the prisoners, among whom 
 Jonathan also was, Yespasian and Titus were in- 
 formed, doubtless by the historian Josephus, who 
 was under accusation in company with other 
 Eoman and Alexandrine Jews, of the true state of 
 the case. Jonathan paid the penalty of his crime 
 with his life. Catullus, on the contrary, escaped 
 
62 ARGUMENT DERIVED 
 
 the punishment he deserved, through the clem- 
 ency of the Emperor, but died shortly after. 
 
 IV. Since that time, so far as we know, all had 
 been quiet in the province of Oyrenaica, at least 
 in appearance, under Trajan's mild and at the 
 same time powerful and virtuous sway. The prov- 
 inces of the Roman Empire that lay at a distance 
 from the frontiers enjoyed an undisturbed repose ; 
 and it was not till he became involved in the ardu- 
 ous Parthian war that the Jews could venture to 
 take up arms. Their revolt, however, must have 
 been concerted and prepared long before ; otherwise 
 it could not have spread so far, and with so much 
 violence. 
 
 Did we still possess the Ecclesiastical History 
 of Aristo of Pella, which Eusebius made use of, or 
 the History of the Jewish War under Hadrian, by 
 the rhetorician Antonius Julianus, who in all prob- 
 ability was a contemporary, and of whom Minucius 
 Felix and Gellius make mention ; or were we bet- 
 ter acquainted with the contents of the Samaritan 
 Book of Joshua, so called, we should doubtless be 
 more particularly informed as to the circumstances. 
 As it is, we must content ourselves with what little 
 we obtain from Dion Cassius, Eusebius, and some 
 
FROM THE SECOND JEWISH WAR. 63 
 
 others, partly very corrupt sources ; and cannot even 
 adduce, with certainty, the immediate cause of the 
 insurrection in the province of Cyrenaica. Per- 
 haps, however, it was no other than the fact that 
 there were then but few troops in those regions, 
 inasmuch as Trajan had probably taken with him 
 all the forces that could be spared from the provin- 
 ces for the Parthian war. 
 
 It was in the year of Rome 868, A. D. 115, in 
 the 18th and 19th year of Trajan's reign, under the 
 Consuls, M. V. Messala and M. V. Pedo, when the 
 Emperor had in the spring attacked and completely 
 subdued Armenia, after expelling Parthamasiris, 
 the king set up by the Parthians, that the insur- 
 rection broke out in Cyrenaica. With incredible 
 quickness, says Orosius, the Jews at the same time 
 broke loose in different countries, as though they had 
 gone mad. The flame of war soon spread to 
 Egypt, and thus took a direction of the last impor- 
 tance to the Roman state. For Alexandria was 
 one of the principal granaries of Rome, which 
 for one-third of the year was furnished with the 
 necessary supply by the grain flotillas that regu- 
 larly sailed from that city. Consequently the Em- 
 perors had given their particular attention to Egypt, 
 
64: ARGUMENT DERIVED 
 
 and it had been a maxim ever since the time of 
 Augustus, to intrust the government of that coun- 
 try to none but a Roman knight, and to allow no 
 Senator or distinguished knight to make the jour- 
 ney thither without special permission. The cen- 
 tre of the revolt was Cyrenaica. Thence it* spread 
 over the inhabitants of the country, who were 
 slaughtered in droves. Dion Cassius, or rather his 
 epitomist Xiphilin, draws a frightful picture of 
 the barbarities committed by the Jews upon the 
 Greeks. They slew them, he says ; they stripped 
 off their skins, and then covered themselves with 
 them ; they sawed many of them in two, length- 
 wise; they devoured their flesh and wound the 
 entrails around their own bodies ; they cast them 
 to wild beasts ; they forced them to fight as gladi- 
 ators with one another ; and in such modes they 
 put 200,000 to death. 
 
 That the slaughter was immense can by no 
 means be doubted ; even E. David Ganz, of the 
 16th century, says in Zemach David, one of the 
 best Jewish authorities upon the history of this 
 war, that the Romans and Greeks slain in Africa 
 by the Jews were like the sand on the sea-shore, 
 that cannot be numbered. But the cannibal fury. 
 
FROM THE SECOND JEWISH WAR. 65 
 
 which the Jews are accused of, is altogether incred- 
 ible ; as they would thereby have rendered them- 
 selves in the highest degree " unclean." What we 
 are to assume as true, is this : that in a sudden and 
 widely-extended rising they destroyed many Ro- 
 mans and Greeks, and that in the amphitheatres 
 they threw many to wild beasts, or forced them to 
 fight with each other. Indeed, it is known that 
 they attended exhibitions of the kind ; and they 
 may have desired to repay the Romans, in this 
 manner, for the combats with wild beasts, and as 
 gladiators, in which the latter had employed the 
 Jewish captives after the taking of Jerusalem. The 
 sawing in pieces seems to have been a well-known 
 mode of execution among them. But can that, 
 which may have taken place in single instances, be 
 supposed to have occurred throughout a general 
 insurrection, in which men were slaughtered by 
 thousands ? At most, then, only some individuals 
 can have suffered such a death. How the rising 
 was suppressed, we know not. The quieting of 
 Cyrenaica was probably a consequence of the restor- 
 ation of tranquillity in Egypt ; but it required a 
 length of time, and cost rivers of blood, before this 
 
 end was obtained. 
 5 
 
66 ARGUMENT DERIVED 
 
 Egypt appears to have been stripped of troops, 
 which were probably needed by the Emperor for 
 the Parthian war ; for the revolt kept continually 
 spreading. Its leader is named Lucuas by Euse- 
 bius ; and by Dion Cassius, Andreas. Perhaps, 
 like many Jews of that period, he bore a double 
 name, one Jewish, the other Roman ; for Lucuas 
 appears to be a corruption of Lucius. The Jews 
 flocked to him on all sides, and greeted him as the 
 King of Israel. One nomos (district) after another 
 was laid waste, as far up as the Thebaid ; indeed 
 the Jewish bands appear to have pushed on beyond 
 the boundaries of the Roman Empire, even into 
 Ethiopia, and probably to the state of Meroe, where 
 many Jews resided. Even in Alexandria, where 
 the nation found itself in the most prosperous con- 
 dition, a revolt appears to have taken place, in 
 which great havoc was committed, although the 
 Jews can hardly have mastered that great and opu- 
 lent city, of which they possessed only a single quar- 
 ter. It was not till the following year, A. U. 0. 
 869, A. D. 116, that the troops were assembled ; 
 and then, apparently, they were not sufficiently nu- 
 merous, for they were driven back in the first bat- 
 tle. They retired, however, in good order to Alex- 
 
FKOM THE SECOND JEWISH WAR. 67 
 
 andria, which city they also defended, and where 
 they effected a dreadful slaughter among the Jews. 
 Rabbi David Ganz, in the Meor Enaim, gives, 
 according to the testimony of R. Asaria de Rossi (in 
 what age he lived is not accurately known), the num- 
 ber of the slain at 200,000. Lucuas and his com- 
 rades, however, seem to have given themselves no 
 further trouble about Alexandria, but to have di- 
 rected their efforts exclusively to the land of their 
 forefathers ; and if there be any truth in the tradi- 
 tion in Albulpharagius, that he led his hosts into 
 Palestine, the expedition must have taken place at 
 this time, and before the great general Marcius 
 Turbo could come to the assistance of the sorely- 
 afflicted province. This officer, who, little as we 
 know of him, was accounted one of the best of Tra- 
 jan's captains, was now despatched by the Emperor 
 against Lucuas with a body of infantry and cav- 
 alry, which, without doubt, was equipped in Syria 
 or Phenicia, and was destined to keep the sea open ; 
 for this was now of the last importance, as the re- 
 volt had also broken out in Cyprus, and everything 
 depended on preventing Rome from lacking a sup- 
 ply of corn. We are thus obliged to conclude that 
 the Jews also possessed ships ; which, as they were 
 
68 ARGUMENT DERIVED 
 
 then masters of Cyrenaica and Cyprus, is easily 
 explained. Turbo had at least two legions of reg- 
 ular troops, together with the auxiliaries belonging 
 to them, but was obliged to purchase the victory 
 dearly, for several bloody battles took place, in 
 which many thousand Egyptian and Cyrenian 
 Jews perished, and certainly many thousand Ro- 
 mans also. According to the Arabic text of Albul- 
 pharagius, Turbo sought out Lucuas in Palestine, 
 and there destroyed his army. He speaks of many 
 small skirmishes. This system of petty warfare was 
 quite suited to the locality of Palestine, as will also 
 be seen in the sequel of this history. The same Ara- 
 bic text states, moreover, that Lucuas was killed in 
 Palestine. 
 
 V. In Egypt, tranquillity seems now to have 
 been restored. The slaughter of the Jews, whether 
 in Palestine or in Egypt, itself terrified them all. 
 But was it the Jews alone, and not, perhaps, the 
 native Egyptians also, that rose against the Rom- 
 ans? That these latter were likewise turbulent, 
 and bore the Roman yoke with an ill-will, can 
 scarce be doubted. The insurrection of the Bu- 
 coli under Marcus Aurelius, furnishes a clear proof 
 of the fact. Were the dialogue of Philopatris 
 
FROM THE SECOND JEWISH WAR. 69 
 
 found in Lucian's writings genuine, the passage at 
 the close, where Egypt is spoken of as subdued, 
 might certainly be explained as referring to Tra- 
 jan's victory over the rebellious Jews and Egyp- 
 tians. But this production belongs, probably, to a 
 later Lucian, who lived in the time of the Emperor 
 Julian, as "Wieland has lately maintained from in- 
 ternal grounds. 
 
 But great and extensive as the insurrection of 
 Egypt may have been, still, Alexandria was not in 
 it. It is true that Alexandria, having been de- 
 stroyed by the Jews, was restored by the Emperor 
 Hadrian, in the first year of his reign. But, 
 although it may have suffered much in these dis- 
 turbances, and in those which, perhaps, broke out 
 there shortly after Trajan's death, destroyed it 
 certainly was not. 
 
 VI. While Egypt was now in a state of repose, 
 the insurrection raged in Cyprus. The number 
 of Jews in that island was very great. The trade 
 with Asia Minor, Syria and Egypt, had drawn 
 many thither, and their condition must have been 
 very prosperous. The leader of the revolt, of whom 
 we know nothing further, was named Artemion. 
 According to Dion Cassius, the Jews in Cyprus 
 
70 ARGUMENT DERIVED 
 
 put to death 240,000 persons. Eusebius states in 
 his Chronicon that they took Salamis, put the 
 Greeks to death and razed the city to the ground. 
 Jewish accounts also assert that they destroyed all 
 the Greeks in the island and in the neighboring 
 countries, and that Trajan was obliged to send 
 Hadrian, his sister's son, to Cyprus in order to 
 subdue them. All this is certainly exaggerated : 
 240,000 persons, together with 220,000 in Cyren- 
 aica, making all together more than half a million, 
 would not so easily, or rather without the most 
 strenuous resistance, allow themselves to be put to 
 death ; and so fruitful a country as Cyprus had at 
 that time certainly not less than a million of inhab- 
 itants, of which, however, the Jews could not by 
 far have constituted the largest part. Salamis, 
 also, remained thereafter, as it had been before, the 
 capital of Cyprus, and received in the time of 
 Constantine the name of Constantia. Its bishop, 
 Epiphanius, is also known to Church history. It was 
 at length destroyed by Saracens, under Heraclius. 
 It is therefore probable that Salamis was plun- 
 dered and set on fire by the Jews, an event 
 which later historiographers have turned into a 
 total destruction. The tumults in Cyprus were 
 
FROM THE SECOND JEWISH WAR. 71 
 
 soon suppressed, either by Turbo or by Lucius 
 Quietus. The Jews were completely exterminated, 
 or at least were driven out of the island ; for Dion 
 Cassius relates that none of this people could dwell 
 there, and that any who were driven on shore by 
 stress of weather were immediately put to death. 
 This also is not to be taken literally, and must at 
 any rate be understood only of the period immedi- 
 ately succeeding the revolt. 
 
 VII. The circumstances of the period, without 
 doubt, rendered the rising of the Jews in Mesopo- 
 tamia still more dangerous. They were very 
 wealthy and powerful in this province. Of the ten 
 tribes who had been carried away in former times 
 into the kingdom of Assyria, by far the greater part 
 remained behind, when Cyrus and his successors 
 gave the Jews permission to return to the land of 
 their forefathers. The cities on both banks of the 
 Euphrates in particular were filled with them. Ac- 
 cording to Philo, they were spread over Babylon 
 and other satrapies. They had their own Patriarch, 
 of the family of David, who was possessed of great 
 privileges under the Parthian government. They 
 came in multitudes to Jerusalem at the time of the 
 festivals ; and under Caligula, the prefect Petronius 
 
72 ARGUMENT DERIVED 
 
 was so struck with their numbers that he feared a 
 powerful aid might come from that quarter, were 
 the Jews to oppose by force of arms the Emperor's 
 decree to set up his image in the Temple ; and it 
 cannot be doubted that from the ruins of the Jew- 
 ish state not a few escaped to their co-religionists 
 in the Parthian dominions. 
 
 The hatred of the Jews against the Romans may 
 easily be conceived, and in each Parthian war they 
 no doubt devoted themselves with all their hearts 
 to their protectors, the Parthian Emperors, to whom 
 their assistance must have been exceedingly wel- 
 come. This, too, must have rendered a revolt in 
 the rear of their army so much the more hazardous 
 to the Romans. Trajan probably still remained 
 with a part of his legions in Armenia, whence, as 
 this country became tranquillized, he gradually 
 withdrew into Mesopotamia. Here, no doubt, it 
 was, in the regions which the Romans had not yet 
 been able to occupy, that the Jews broke out into 
 insurrection. The Emperor committed their sup- 
 pression or entire expulsion to Lucius Quietus, a 
 Mauritanian, who was considered one of his most 
 distinguished generals, who had done him signal 
 service in the Parthian war, and had taken Nisibis 
 
FROM THE SECOND JEWISH WAR. 73 
 
 and Edessa : a proof how important the Emperor 
 held the matter to be. Lucius subdued the Jews 
 with much bloodshed, but incontestable with great 
 loss on his own side also ; for the bravery which 
 the Jews were wont to exhibit, when combatting 
 for their freedom and religion, is well known. Tra- 
 jan was so well satisfied with the service done him, 
 that he conferred on Lucius the governorship of 
 Palestine — of course with the charge of preserving 
 tranquillity, and, provided there be anything in 
 the story of Lucuas' irruption, to put down him or 
 his still remaining adherents. And thus Lucius 
 appears to have restored order for a while. 
 
 VIII. With the disturbances in Mesopotamia 
 we are perhaps to connect the martyrdom of St. 
 Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, who, it seems, was 
 tried in this metropolis of Asia, and then sent to 
 Home to be executed. The story of his martyrdom 
 has often been called in question ; and especially by 
 Martini. But how can the credibility of the most 
 ancient church history be maintained if we attack 
 even those statements which are confirmed by the 
 most respectable testimonies ? Nevertheless, as the 
 precise period of his death is uncertain, we must as- 
 sume that Trajan sentenced him during his second 
 
74 ARGUMENT DERIVED 
 
 stay in Antioch, in the year 115 ; his first visit to 
 that city having been in A. D. 105. The Chris- 
 tians were not there so accurately distinguished 
 from the Jews, but that the Emperor, although he 
 might have attained more correct information and 
 better ideas respecting them from the trials held in 
 Bithynia by the younger Pliny a few years before, 
 was continually confounding them one with 
 another ; and this especially in the East, and in 
 provinces that were filled with Jews, where the 
 greater part of the Christians had previously pro- 
 fessed Judaism, or were of Jewish origin. If now 
 Trajan learned that Ignatius was one of the heads 
 of the Christians, he might easily regard him as a 
 party to the Jewish attacks on the Empire ; and 
 this it was — not the earthquake that had just de- 
 vastated Antioch, and from which it is said the 
 priests took occasion to accuse the Bishop — that 
 may have excited Trajan against the venerable old 
 man. Indeed, the whole trial as it stands (perhaps 
 not wholly authentic) in the Acta Martyrum, ex- 
 hibits an acrimony which in this noble and philan- 
 thropic prince is truly surprising, but which may 
 be accounted for by supposing that he confounded 
 the Syrian Christians with the Jews, or at least re- 
 
FROM THE SECOND JEWISH WAR. 75 
 
 garded them as belonging to the same party. That 
 Hadrian also, at a later period, was not able to dis- 
 tinguish between them with readiness, will be seen 
 in the sequel. If such be really the case, the reason 
 is evident why Trajan, after having passed sen- 
 tence of death on Ignatius, did not cause him to be 
 executed at Antioch, but sent him to Rome, there 
 to be torn in pieces by wild beasts as a rebel. That 
 is, it was an object with him to strike terror into 
 the great body of the Jews in the Roman Empire 
 by the cruel execution of one whom he regarded as 
 the chief of a party in the East, and thus deter them 
 from insurrections. All this, however, I offer as 
 nothing but a conjecture, which perhaps has more 
 plausibility than truth. 
 
 IX. Trajan died in the twentieth year of his 
 reign, A. D. 117. Hadrian succeeded him without 
 opposition, made peace with the Parthians, to whom 
 he restored the provinces conquered by Trajan on the 
 other side of the Euphrates, and hastened to Rome. 
 But as soon as he found himself firmly seated on 
 the throne, he commenced, apparently in the year 
 120, his celebrated tours through all the provinces 
 of the empire. It is true that of these journeys 
 historians have left us little on record, but there 
 
76 ARGUMENT DERIVED. 
 
 are so many monuments everywhere extant relating 
 to them, and they are testified to by so many in- 
 scriptions and coins, that they well deserve to be 
 accurately investigated in a separate Dissertation ; 
 which would doubtless furnish very interesting re- 
 sults. In the regions with which we are at pres- 
 ent concerned we first find him between the years 
 129 and 131. 
 
 Through all this period the Jews seemed to 
 have kept themselves tolerably quiet ; if we except 
 a brief revolt in Palestine, immediately after Tra- 
 jan's death, of which Spartian and Eusebius make 
 mention. The former speaks in general terms of 
 insurrectionary movements in this country, with 
 which, perhaps, the disturbances in Egypt, to which 
 he alludes, were connected. 
 
 Eusebius, however, records that Hadrian in his 
 first year subdued the Jews, who had for the third 
 time revolted against the Romans, perhaps in Alex- 
 andria. It was, therefore, probably a remnant of 
 the war against Trajan, which had been brought to 
 a close a short time before, and was now completely 
 extinguished. The breaking out of these disturb- 
 ances may have been connected with the disgrace 
 into which Lucius Quietus fell. For Hadrian, 
 
FROM THE SECOND JEWISH WAR. 77 
 
 whose adoption by Trajan was very equivocal, con- 
 ceived against this great general a suspicion of a 
 design upon the throne, in consequence of an im- 
 peachment by his praetorian prefect Tatian, where- 
 upon he deprived him of the command of Maure- 
 tanian troops, who were very much devoted to him, 
 as being their own countryman. This may have 
 given the Jews courage to make a new attempt, 
 which, however, can hardly have been of great im- 
 portance. Since that time all had been quiet in 
 Palestine likewise. Hadrian was there in the year 
 130, A. U. 0. 883 ; for we have coins of Gaza 
 commencing with a new era, that of his visit to 
 this city. To this period belong the Roman coins 
 that make mention of his journey to this country, 
 and of the benefits conferred on it. 
 
 In Egypt Hadrian seems now to have consid- 
 ered himself safe, as far as regards the Jews. He 
 noticed them, indeed, as he did everything else 
 that came in his way ; but it was with a rapid and 
 superficial glance. 
 
 X. It was very natural that Hadrian, during 
 the first years of his reign, while the Jews re- 
 mained tranquil, should often occupy himself with 
 them, and with pondering the means of securing 
 
78 ARGUMENT DERIVED. 
 
 the empire against their attempts for the future. 
 One of these means was perhaps that of dividing 
 the numerous population among the different prov- 
 inces. But it may well have been difficult to find 
 places for them. Asia, Greece, Italy, and Spain 
 hardly wished for any more of them than they had 
 already. The coast of Africa offered, perhaps, the 
 only tract of land whither he could have trans- 
 planted any more than a small number, and even 
 this may not have appeared to him advisable, 
 when he reflected on the revolt in Cyrenaica. 
 
 Another means Hadrian seems actually to have 
 tried, and this was, gradually to extirpate the Jews 
 as such by prohibiting circumcision, the character- 
 istic sign of their nationality, and to amalgamate 
 them with the other peoples of the empire. This 
 prohibition is mentioned in a few words by Spar- 
 tian as the cause of insurrection. He does not in- 
 deed fix the time ; but it seems evident from his 
 narration that the outbreak followed soon after. 
 
 XI. Another means contrived by Hadrian for 
 keeping the Jews in subjection, was the restoration 
 of Jerusalem. This city had always been consid- 
 ered one of the strongest fortified places ; and was 
 found to be so in the time of Titus. Surrounded 
 
FROM THE SECOND JEWISH WAR. 79 
 
 by mountains, itself built on a rocky promontory, 
 almost completely isolated, forming the hill called 
 Mount Zion, and that on which the lower city stood 
 — the reduction of Jerusalem, in the then state of 
 the art of besieging, was necessarily a very tedious 
 operation, and to be effected chiefly by famine ; so 
 that Hadrian, who in the journey from Syria to 
 Egypt was at least in its neighborhood, if he did 
 not visit the place itself, must have been perfectly 
 well convinced of the importance of this post. No 
 wonder, therefore, that he determined to fortify it 
 anew, and to send thither a colony, consisting in- 
 deed mostly of veterans, and sufficient for the de- 
 fence of the city. Dion Cassius cites this deter- 
 mination of the Emperor, and the carrying it into 
 execution, as a cause of the renewal of the insur- 
 rection. Eusebius states, on the contrary, that 
 Hadrian did not send the colony till after the Jews 
 were put down. It is not difficult to reconcile 
 both these apparently contradictory testimonies, as 
 Basnage has done already. The restoration of 
 Jerusalem was not the work of a few months ; but 
 the labor, when begun, was interrupted by the re- 
 volt ; and after this was suppressed, the labor was 
 continued and completed. 
 
80 ARGUMENT DERIVED. 
 
 But ere we proceed further, we must collect the 
 few notices that have been preserved respecting the 
 history of Jerusalem after the capture of the.city 
 by Titus. "Witsius and Deyling are our guides. 
 
 It is true that Titus, after the burning of the 
 Temple, which he would so willingly have spared, 
 destroyed the city. But we cannot conceive this 
 destruction to have been complete, although Jose- 
 phus speaks of it in that sense. The same histo- 
 rian, however, informs us that Titus left standing 
 the three large towns — Hippicus, Phasael, and 
 Mariamne — probably with the wall connecting 
 them, and the western wall as a shelter for the 
 cohorts whom he left in that neighborhood ; and 
 these must also have had dwellings for themselves, 
 their families, and their followers. It is very prob- 
 able, moreover, that Jews who had taken no part 
 in the war had permission from the author- 
 ities, either expressed or understood, to settle 
 among the ruins. A few survivors of the tribes of 
 Judah and Benjamin remained there immediately 
 after the destruction of the city ; but it is certainly 
 going too far, when Eusebius affirms that only half 
 the city was destroyed by Titus, for this is at vari- 
 ance with all history, and we can only assume with 
 
FROM THE SECOND JEWISH WAR. 81 
 
 the greatest probability, that Jerusalem under 
 Titus, Domitian, Nerva, and Trajan, was indeed no 
 longer a city, but that it still possessed inhabitants 
 beside the Roman garrison, and was much visited 
 by pious Jews who came to mourn over their city 
 and temple. Jerome also speaks of some remains 
 of the city and temple in the fifty years that elapsed 
 between its destruction by Titus and the war with 
 Hadrian. With this, too, agrees what we read in 
 ancient authors respecting the war with Hadrian 
 and the second capture of Jerusalem. Were Occo the 
 numismatist a trustworthy man, we might cite an 
 ancient coin pretended to have been struck under 
 Hadrian, and conclude therefrom that the name 
 Jerusalem still continued under Hadrian, before he 
 brought his colony thither, and that a temple of 
 Jupiter was built in the city. But the coin spoken 
 of has remained unknown to later numismatists ; 
 and it is not at all probable that such a one ever 
 existed. The garrison of Jerusalem in its former 
 condition, as they were neither a colony nor a 
 municipium, could not have struck any coins ; the 
 erecting, too, of a temple to Jupiter upon the ruins, 
 would certainly have been noticed by some Jewish 
 or Christian author. 
 6 
 
82 ARGUMENT DERIVED. 
 
 We confine ourselves, therefore, to the assump* 
 tion that Hadrian, before the breaking out again 
 of the war, had already begun to put his design of 
 rebuilding and fortifying Jerusalem into execution. 
 We remark only in addition, that he could do this 
 without offending against the principles of the 
 Roman-state religion ; since this only forbade the 
 rebuilding of a city once in ruins in case the plough 
 had passed over it, and the exauguration or exfoun- 
 dation had been thereby rendered complete. We 
 have no proof, however, that this ceremony did 
 take place, after the capture by Titus. Josephus 
 is entirely silent respecting it ; and Jerome only 
 relates, according to the Jewish traditions which 
 we also possess, that Titus Annius Rufus caused 
 the plough to be drawn over the site of the Tem- 
 ple. But that is said to have been done in Hadri- 
 an's time. And even this is very doubtful, since 
 we do not know that the Romans observed the 
 practice with regard to single buildings. There 
 was therefore nothing in the Emperor's way, in 
 case he wished to rebuild Jerusalem. Moreover 
 the Gracchi undertook to rebuild Carthage, which 
 had been desecrated and laid waste with such solem- 
 nities ; — although at a short distance from the old 
 
FROM THE SECOND JEWISH WAR. 83 
 
 city ; and from the ruins of Punic Carthage that 
 of the Romans sprang, the fourth capital of the 
 world. 
 
 XII. But the restoration of their metropolis in 
 the shape of a Pagan city was more than the Jews 
 could bear. It is possible that they had for sev- 
 eral years been silently preparing anew for the 
 project of freeing themselves from the Roman 
 dominion, and had long entered into secret com- 
 pacts with the people of other Oriental regions, to 
 whom the yoke of their masters was equally hate- 
 ful, perhaps even with Parthian satraps, or with 
 the great King himself. It is only the enduring 
 contempt of the Romans for the oppressed people 
 w T hich renders it conceivable that they entertained 
 no suspicions, and made no preparations, easily as 
 they might have done so, to frustrate the plans of 
 their enemies. They felt secure, probably because 
 they had disarmed the Jews after suppressing their 
 revolt. If Dion were to be believed, the latter 
 devised a curious expedient for relieving them- 
 selves from this dilemma. It is said that they, 
 meaning doubtless the numerous prisoners con- 
 demned by Trajan to the public works, were 
 ordered to forge weapons for the Roman troops, but 
 
84 ARGUMENT DERIVED. 
 
 that they intentionally made them bad, so that 
 when rejected as unfit for service they could keep 
 them themselves, and thus become possessed of a 
 large quantity of arms. But this statement carries 
 with it an aspect so fabulous, that it is inconceiva- 
 ble how Dion could have given it the least atten- 
 tion ; for how could Roman commanders, who nec- 
 essarily knew well enough the spirit that animated 
 the whole Jewish people, have suffered the work- 
 men, and they too prisoners, to retain possession of 
 arms, with which, bad as they might be, they could 
 have wrought much mischief? and how could the 
 superintendents of the manufacture have answered 
 for such a proceeding? After the arms and 
 accoutrements had repeatedly been found ser- 
 viceable, resort would certainly have been had to 
 compulsory measures, to force the workshops to 
 deliver better articles. The truth of the matter can 
 only be this, that the Jews found ways and means 
 of procuring and secreting arms, which with their 
 extensive trade, and that too with people not under 
 the Roman sway, could not have been very difficult 
 of accomplishment, especially if the whole nation 
 were of one accord. 
 
 They kept themselves quiet notwithstanding, as 
 
FROM THE SECOND JEWISH WAR. 85 
 
 long as the Emperor remained in the East. lie 
 had spent the year A. D. 130 in Egypt. The fol- 
 lowing year he had travelled to Syria, and thence 
 had proceeded to the western provinces ; to which 
 of them is not known. We first meet with him in 
 A. D. 135, in Athens. The rebellion, however, 
 broke out shortly after his departure from the East, 
 as soon as he was considered far enough off, in the 
 year of Rome 885, and 132 of the Christian era. 
 
 For the direction of a conspiracy so widely 
 spread, and so accurately organized, and at the 
 same time so profoundly secret, and so exceedingly 
 active, a leader was indispensably requisite. And 
 now it was that such a one made his appearance. 
 How long he may have been already busy in secret, 
 rests upon conjecture. The war, however, is so 
 remarkable, as to make it incumbent on us to col- 
 lect all the remaining accounts concerning him 
 which are at all worthy of credit. 
 
 BAR-COCHBA. 
 
 XIII. This leader of the Jews is known to us 
 by the name of Bar-cochba. He has remained 
 unknown to the Roman historians. But the Chris- 
 
86 ARGUMENT DERIVED. 
 
 tian authors, Eusebius, Jerome, and Orosius, make 
 mention of him ; and in the Jewish writers many- 
 scattered notices respecting him are preserved ; 
 which, however, are to be used with caution, as 
 they are partly at variance with history and chro- 
 nology, and in part are evidently fabulous. We 
 shall therefore pay attention only to those writers 
 from whom something may with probability be 
 obtained for the elucidation of history ; while of 
 the others we shall give here and there a few 
 specimens sufficient to show their inadmissibility. 
 Titus had already permitted the Jews, after the des- 
 struction of their capital, to transfer their great 
 Sanhedrim to Samaria. It was placed under the 
 patriarch who was head of the Academy at Tibe- 
 rias, and who, as well as the Babylonian patri- 
 arch, is said to have been of the tribe of Judah. 
 His power extended over religious matters, and 
 perhaps to deciding as arbitrator in civil disputes, 
 when these were brought before him. But he can 
 hardly have had the power of life and death, 
 although he may have occasionally arrogated it to 
 himself. He was always, notwithstanding the title 
 of " Prince," which he bore, subject to the Roman 
 authorities, and it will easily be perceived that this 
 
FROM THE SECOND JEWISH WAR. 87 
 
 could not have been otherwise. Still his preroga- 
 tives may have augmented by degrees, and may not 
 have been as great at first as they afterwards 
 became, when an important rank w T as likewise con- 
 ferred upon him in the Roman empire. This w T as 
 all done publicly. But the book " Zemach David " 
 represents the matter as if the Jews, soon after the 
 destruction of Jerusalem, and in spite of their vic- 
 tor, had made for themselves a sort of civil constitu- 
 tion. It assumes, that as early as under Domitian, 
 Bar-cochba commenced his reign, and also died 
 under him ; and that this Bar-cochba was succeeded 
 by his own son. The possibility of the thing, in 
 itself considered, cannot be denied, if w T e take into 
 account the spirit that animated the Jews ; and 
 with this might be connected the inquiries set on 
 foot by Domitian after the family of David. But 
 in case we could, with difficulty, make out the 
 twenty-one years which this statement attributes 
 to the dynasty of Bar-cochba, they would already 
 have elapsed at the commencement of Hadrian's 
 reign ; and this cannot by any means be recon- 
 ciled w r ith history. Accordingly we cannot place 
 the period at w T hich Bar-cochba appeared earlier 
 than toward the end of the reign of Trajan ; and 
 
88 ARGUMENT DERIVED. 
 
 will endeavor to make use of the account of his 
 dynasty in the course of this narrative. 
 
 The number of adherents that he found, and the 
 power that he exercised, render it very probable 
 that he elevated himself by degrees. As King of 
 Israel he had certainly nothing more to do than to 
 imitate Eunus, the prince of the Sicilian slaves, and 
 to spit fire out of his mouth from tow secretly 
 lighted, in order to obtain for himself the admira- 
 tion and reverence of the common people. . This 
 trick can only have prepared the way for him ; his 
 own talents must have helped him further on. He 
 showed off no miracles before the learned; this 
 he had no need to do ; for, animated by national 
 enthusiasm, they only sought a man who was able 
 to lead them against the Romans. 
 
 Who he was, and what was his origin, is 
 entirely unknown. If he gave himself out for the 
 Messiah, he must have traced his pedigree back to 
 David. But this is not fully proved. The name 
 Bar-cochba, Son of the Star, under which he is 
 known to history, was given him because either he 
 or his adherents maintained that through him was 
 fulfilled Balaam's prophecy (Numb. 24: 17) con- 
 cerning the star that should rise out of Jacob. It 
 
FROM THE SECOND JEWISH WAR. 89 
 
 was not until his death, and the depressed condition 
 of the Jews had proved how little he answered the 
 great expectations formed of him, that he was 
 called Bar-coziba, Son of a Lie. But whether he 
 was the same whom Dion Cassius calls Andreas^ 
 and Eusebius, Lucuas, as Samuel Petit and Rei- 
 marus conjecture, we must leave undecided. 
 
 These assume two Bar-cochbas, the first under 
 Trajan, the second under Hadrian: a hypothesis 
 that stands in connection with the Rabbinical story 
 of the dynasty of three successive princes. But if 
 the account in the Arabic text of Abulpharagius be 
 well founded, Lucuas had perished already in the 
 war with Martius Turbo. 
 
 The Rabbins also, who ascribe to him the devas- 
 tations in Cyrene, Egypt, and Cyprus, fix his epoch 
 under Trajan. This we must leave undetermined. 
 
 The Jews flocked to him in multitudes, and 
 anointed and crowned him King in the stronghold 
 Bether ; for that he had his seat in Jerusalem, is 
 not known to the Jewish writers. That he gave 
 himself out for the Messiah, is not completely 
 proved, as has been already remarked. There are 
 indeed stories to the effect that he could not sup- 
 port the proof to which he was put, as to whether 
 
90 ARGUMENT DERIVED. 
 
 he, as was required of the Messiah according to an 
 interpretation of the saying in Isaiah 11 : 3, could 
 distinguish the just from the unjust by the smell ; 
 and that Rabbi Akiba said of him, " This is the 
 King Messiah." Maimonides, however, calls him 
 merely the great King. Meanwhile whether he 
 gave himself out for the Messiah, or not, he was 
 regarded as such by the populace ; for the Messiah 
 alone could be their deliverer from the Roman 
 yoke. He, however, was not expected to come from 
 the nobility, but out of their own midst. Indeed 
 according to his contemporary Trypho, whose dia- 
 logue with Justin Martyr we still possess, the Mes- 
 siah was to be unknown when born, and should not 
 even know himself or possess any power, until Elias 
 should come to anoint him. But this Elias was 
 most probably found in the person of Rabbi Akiba, 
 although we do not know that it was he who 
 anointed him in Bether. 
 
 XIV. Akiba, who had not sprung from an Isra- 
 elitish stock, but had gone over to Judaism of his 
 own free choice, had become the most zealous and 
 learned of the Rabbins, and glowed with the same 
 hatred that fired all Israel against the Romans. He 
 deduced his pedigree from Sisera, the general of 
 
FROM THE SECOND JEWISH WAR. 91 
 
 the Tyrian king Jabin, whom Deborah slew ; but 
 his mother was a Jewess. His whole history is 
 mythic, and copied after that of Moses. Forty 
 years lie was an untaught shepherd ; he then sued 
 for the hand of his master's daughter, who, how- 
 ever, would marry none but a learned man. For 
 four and twenty, or (according to others) forty 
 years, he pursued his studies, and is said to have 
 travelled much. He then began to teach, and 
 served the people forty years long as superintendent 
 of the schools, first at Lydda and then at Samaria. 
 The number of his pupils was reckoned at 24,000. 
 What God did not intrust to Moses, he is said to 
 have revealed to him ; and hence he is regarded as 
 the teacher of the unwritten law. The Mishna 
 began with his collection ; and the book Jezirah, 
 attributed to Abraham, but which is now lost, was 
 one of the works in which he deposited his wis- 
 dom. No wonder, therefore, that they even sought 
 for him in the Old Testament. The words of 
 Moses, Ex. 4 : 13, " Lord, send whom thou wilt 
 send," were applied to him. The passage in Job 
 28 : 10, " His eye seeth every precious thing," was 
 understood of him ; and when at last he was exe- 
 cuted by the Romans, some even referred to his 
 
92 ARGUMENT DERIVED 
 
 death the celebrated passage in the 52nd and 53rd 
 chapters of Isaiah. He had seen the temple while 
 yet in its splendor, and was so much the more eager 
 for its restoration. The exalted dignity with which 
 he was invested as associate of the patriarch, must 
 have considerably augmented the great influence he 
 already possessed, and at the same time it furnishes 
 us with a plain indication that the patriarch in 
 Palestine, Gamaliel, and the entire Sanhedrim, had 
 an understanding with Bar-cochba; which also 
 appears evident from the Jewish traditions of Bar- 
 cochba' s transactions with the wise men. 
 
 Akiba not only declared Bar-cochba to be King 
 Messiah, with which the latter, even if he did not 
 give himself out as such, was very well pleased, 
 but he was also his most trusty counsellor, accom- 
 panying him every where, and on festival occasions 
 assumed the office of his armor-bearer, by carrying 
 before him his sword, the symbol of his dignity. 
 That the old man of nearly six-score years could 
 not have attended him in battle may easily be con- 
 jectured. 
 
 Bar-cochba seems also to have had a counsellor 
 and assistant in Rabbi Tarphon, the successor of 
 Akiba in the superintendence of the school at 
 
FROM THE SECOND JEWISH WAR. 93 
 
 Lydda. This name at least occurs in the history of 
 this prince. Several other celebrated Rabbins, who 
 took an active part in the war, and perished in it, 
 will be mentioned in the sequel. 
 
 XV. Bar-cochba had at first the most complete 
 success. In Palestine all the Jews united with him, 
 and probably also the Samaritans, who at least are 
 never mentioned as his enemies ; this army must 
 have been very considerable, although the state- 
 ments of the Rabbins, who give it at 200,000 men, 
 may be exaggerated ; and he pushed forward his 
 army beyond the borders of the country into Syria. 
 After the conquest of Jerusalem by Titus, many 
 Jews had fled to the Galilean cities, Sephoris and 
 Tiberias ; the descendants of these now fell upon 
 the Pagan and Christian inhabitants, and commit- 
 ted great slaughter among them. After the war 
 was concluded, and these cities once more set free, 
 they testified their gratitude to the Emperor in 
 a remarkable manner. The former took a new 
 name, Diocsesarea Adriana, and the latter erected 
 a temple which they called Adrianum. 
 
 Bar-cochba at first endeavored to draw the 
 Christians of Palestine over to his side. But una- 
 ble to prevail upon them to renounce their faith, 
 
94 ARGUMENT DERIVED 
 
 and to participate in the insurrection against the 
 Romans, whom he treated with great barbarity, he 
 speedily turned his rage against the Christians also 
 in the most dreadful manner ; as is testified by 
 Justin Martyr, Eusebius, and Orosius. 
 
 !No long time had elapsed, when he became mas- 
 ter of Jerusalem. It is true that all writers are 
 silent as to this circumstance ; but the many testi- 
 monies to its recapture under Hadrian, place beyond 
 all doubt the fact that the Jews had possession of 
 the Holy City. It was probably the colony sent 
 thither by the Roman Emperor that was driven 
 out. A few incidents have been preserved, which 
 appear to belong to this period. 
 
 The surrounding region was dreadfully deso- 
 lated. Wolves and hyenas made inroads on the city 
 itself. R. Akiba, therefore, according to the inter- 
 pretation given by Samuel Petit to a passage in 
 Aben Ezra, caused the celebration of the Passover 
 to be transferred from Mount Nisan to Mount Ijor. 
 This seems to have reference to the journeys usu- 
 ally undertaken at the time of the festival ; for it 
 is certain that every one might keep the feast of 
 Easter in his own house, even though there should 
 be no hindrance — such as continual rain-storms, 
 
FROM THE SECOND JEWISH WAR. 95 
 
 Swollen streams, roads and bridges destroyed, — to 
 render the journey to Jerusalem difficult. But fes- 
 tival-journeys presuppose that Jews were living in 
 Jerusalem, and that divine worship was at least in 
 some measure restored. Again, Dion relates that 
 about this time Solomon's sepulchre tumbled down 
 of itself — a prodigy that, considering the great 
 antiquity of David's family burying-place, was very 
 natural, but which he regarded as a bad omen. He 
 mentions, indeed, that this happened before the 
 breaking out of the war. But could the falling 
 down of the old royal tomb presage any disaster to 
 the Romans ? It is probable, therefore, that the 
 explanation did not occur till after the close of the 
 war, and that Dion erred with regard to the time, 
 and placed the event in a somewhat earlier period 
 than that in which it actually took place. The 
 Jews in Jerusalem might certainly, according to 
 their way of thinking, have had reason to be terri- 
 fied when they saw the tomb of David and Solo- 
 mon, whose kingdom they were then about to 
 restore, fall down without any visible cause. 
 
 XVI. To these proofs are to be added those 
 furnished by numismatists. We know from both 
 the Talmuds that coins were struck bv Bar-cochba. 
 
96 ARGUMENT DERIVED 
 
 That of Jerusalem says expressly, "Samaritan 
 money, as for instance that of Bar-coziba, does not 
 defile," and that of Babylon mentions the coins 
 themselves. Of these some have descended to our 
 times. These are, namely, four silver coins ; three 
 of which belong undeniably to the Emperor Trajan, 
 while the fourth is somewhat doubtful. On these 
 the Roman impress can still be partially discerned, 
 although they are stamped over again with a Samar- 
 itan inscription. It is known that such recoining 
 was practised in ancient as well as in modern times. 
 This restamping of money, however, points infalli- 
 bly to a war in which the Jews wished to have a 
 coinage of their own. The name " Simon," which 
 we find on two of them, is the name of the prince, 
 and who can this have been but Bar-cochba ? It is 
 true, we nowhere read that he was called Simon ; 
 but from this silence there is nothing to be inferred. 
 Upon the examination of various coins and 
 deductions from them by various writers, the fol- 
 lowing results are reached : — (1) That in the first 
 outbreak of the insurrection, before the new Jewish 
 government was organized, it was the practice 
 to recoin money of the Roman currency. How 
 long this may have lasted, cannot be determined. 
 
FROM THE SECOND JEWISH WAR. 97 
 
 (2) That Bar-cochba, however, as soon as he was 
 able, coined his own money. Th*e rich contributions 
 of the Jews, that flowed to him from all quarters 
 (for the Jews of Palestine were too poor to afford 
 him much aid in this respect), procured him the req- 
 uisite metal. This enabled him to strike coins of 
 many kinds. (3) That the mint was at first, in the 
 first two years, at Jerusalem, is at least very prob- 
 able from the inscriptions — " To the freedom of 
 Jerusalem," and "Jerusalem the holy," which 
 alternate with the legends — " To the freedom or 
 redemption of Zion," or "Israel." (4) That Bar- 
 cochba either was called Simon, or that he assumed 
 this name in memory of Simon Maccabeus, the 
 deliverer of the Israelites from Syrian bondage, in 
 token that he would deliver his people in like man- 
 ner from that of the Romans ; but that this name 
 fell into oblivion because the people preferred to 
 call him " the Son of the Star," which according to 
 the prophecy had risen over Israel, although they 
 afterward gave him the nickname of Bar-coziba. 
 
 It was probably one of his first concerns, when 
 he saw himself in possession of Jerusalem, to 
 restore the temple, of which at least the foundation 
 
 walls and subterranean vaults were still in exist- 
 1 
 
98 ARGUMENT DERIVED 
 
 ence ; in addition to which an immense mass of 
 building materials must have been found under the 
 ruins. This is so much the more certain since 
 Chrysostom, the Chronicon Alexandrinum, etc., give 
 accounts of it. Here, too, appears to belong a coin 
 on which is seen a portico with four pillars ; in the 
 middle hangs a lyre, a serpentine line runs beneath. 
 Who does not here call to mind the brook Kedron ? 
 On the other side stands a manna pot, and a leaf 
 or a small fruit : the inscription is, " Simeon, prince 
 of Jerusalem." The year, however, is wanting. 
 
 We may regard it then as fully proved that Bar- 
 cochba had possession of Jerusalem, although the 
 Jewish writers, the Samaritan Book of Joshua alone 
 excepted, are entirely silent on the subject, and 
 speak only of Bether. Was it perhaps too painful 
 to their feelings to speak of a third destruction of 
 their capital ? An occurrence so remarkable and 
 affecting them so nearly, they can certainly never 
 have forgotten. Or did they purposely exchange 
 the name Jerusalem for Bether ? But then it is 
 just as true that Bether likewise was captured. 
 
 How long Bar-cochba was master of Jerusalem, 
 cannot be determined. From the fact that the coins 
 of the two first years alone bear the inscriptions 
 
FROM THE SECOND JEWISH WAE. 99 
 
 above named, we can only draw the conjecture that 
 his possession of the city may have lasted no longer 
 than these first two years. It is true that the coins 
 of the third and fourth years also mention Zion and 
 Israel ; but then by Zion may be meant the nation 
 itself, which always, even after it had lost Jerusa- 
 lem, continued to hope for the recovery of its free- 
 dom. 
 
 XYII. At first, the Romans despised the insur- 
 rection. Tet they must soon have found that they 
 had to do not with single mobs, but with the entire 
 Jewish people. Not only was all Palestine in 
 motion, but the spirit of disturbance spread in every 
 direction where Jews were to be found in the 
 Roman Empire, and broke out in covert or open 
 attacks on the Romans, and the support that Bar- 
 cochba received, proves of itself how deeply the 
 nation was involved in his undertaking. Almost 
 the whole world, says Dion, was set in motion by 
 the revolt of the Jews. Lucius Quietus was at a 
 distance ; and as Hadrian supposed that all was in 
 perfect tranquillity, there were probably but few 
 cohorts in the country. The insurrection accord- 
 ingly proceeded so much the more quietly. The 
 governor of Palestine, T. Rufus, could effect noth- 
 
100 ARGUMENT DERIVED 
 
 ing. The Romans were everywhere exposed to 
 the attacks of the Jews ; who, while they avoided 
 coming to the decision of a battle, were exceedingly 
 formidable in slight skirmishes, and could easily 
 retire to the mountains. The revolt assumed a very 
 serious character. At length the eyes of Hadrian 
 were opened. He found that none of his generals 
 in the east were capable of managing the affair. 
 Fifty places fortified either previously or by them- 
 selves, and nine hundred and eighty-five open 
 towns and villages, were in the possession of the 
 Jews. They must therefore have spread themselves 
 far beyond the bounds of Palestine proper, into 
 Syria, and perhaps into Phenicia ; and must also 
 have obtained possession of the sea coast, which ren- 
 dered it much easier for them to procure supplies. 
 And now came the capture of Jerusalem, or of Elia, 
 if the revolted city was already so called. Hadrian 
 at length summoned from the extreme west the 
 governor of Britain, Julius Severus, the greatest 
 general of his time. Auxiliaries came from the 
 remotest regions. The struggle was protracted and 
 dangerous. As late as under Hadrian's grandsons, 
 Marcus Aurelius and Verus, Fronto speaks of it, 
 and places this struggle on a parallel with the Par- 
 
FROM THE SECOND JEWISH WAR. 101 
 
 thian and British wars. The Jews were very 
 numerous, and fought with the courage of despair. 
 Necessity developed talent. Perhaps, too, they 
 obtained leaders from the kingdom of Parthia. 
 Julius Severus attacked single bodies of troops, and 
 cut off their supplies, doubtless by taking possession 
 of the roads and passes ; for Palestine, thinly popu- 
 lated as it was, could by no means furnish support to 
 two hostile armies, and yet the Jews were able to 
 keep up the war for four years. Consequently in 
 order to carry it on so long, they must have been 
 able to obtain assistance and supplies by ways which 
 the Romans could not for a long time block up. 
 We are made acquainted in the history of the first 
 Jewish war with the glens and mountain caves that 
 rendered the subjugation of Palestine so difficult to 
 the Romans. These, and the subterranean passages 
 intersecting each other, which possessed many out- 
 lets, and obtained air as well as light through open- 
 ings from above, they now made use of, partly as 
 hiding-places from which they made attacks on the 
 Romans, and partly as strongholds to protect them- 
 selves ; and when it was necessary, they threw up 
 walls in addition for their better defence. Caves 
 and subterranean passages of this kind are still to 
 
102 ARGUMENT DERIVED 
 
 be seen in the desolated portions of Palestine ; and 
 the writers of travels speak of them with wonder. 
 
 XVIII. Two years appear to have been passed 
 by the Romans in clearing the region about Jeru- 
 salem before they could think of besieging the city. 
 Its capture, however, does not admit of a doubt, 
 though the Rabbins are silent in respect to it. So 
 was Josephus in respect to Christ. It is testified 
 by Appian and by many other authorities. The 
 age which was now passing, however, was one in 
 which so little that was done was made matter of 
 record, that they who were unfriendly to an event 
 thought it the most sure method of consigning to 
 oblivion whatever they wished to be unknown, to 
 neglect to record it. This view, of course, takes for 
 granted the spuriousness of that passage in Jose- 
 phus in which he is made to bear testimony to the 
 person and character of Christ. A far more popu- 
 lar method with the historians of that age, espe- 
 cially among the Jews, was to represent things as 
 they wished to have them, and in the most extrav- 
 agant manner possible — a practice from which the 
 historian just named cannot be regarded as free. 
 Jerusalem was therefore demolished ; and that the 
 Jews might know that they were never to rebuild 
 
FROM THE SECOND JEWISH WAR. 103 
 
 it, tlie plough-share was pushed over the founda- 
 tions of the Temple. 
 
 Of Bar-cochba's fate we have no positive knowl- 
 edge. One event only is recorded of him — that he 
 caused one Rabbi Tryphon to be put to death 
 because he counselled a surrender. This, however, 
 cannot be the Tryphon with whom Justin held his 
 well-known dialogue, for it is known that he sur- 
 vived the war, being mentioned in the dialogue 
 relating to the close of the war. Of the death of 
 the above-named E. Tryphon, nothing is related 
 by the Rabbins, though they often make mention 
 of him. 
 
 The Talmud assigns to the reign of Bar- 
 cochba the mysterious number so frequently met 
 with in the Scriptures — "three years and a half" 
 (of which we shall have occasion to speak hereafter). 
 Notwithstanding the mortification of the Jews, they 
 have made Hadrian to say, on receiving intelli- 
 gence of this man's death — " had this man not been 
 killed by his God, no one would have been able to 
 do him harm." 
 
 Jerusalem fell for the last time from the keep- 
 ing of the Jews A. D. 119, or forty -nine years after 
 its demolition by Titus Yespasian, and only eighty 
 
104: ARGUMENT DERIVED 
 
 years after the declaration of our Lord, recorded by 
 all the Evangelists — " Yerily I say unto you that 
 this generation shall not pass away till all these 
 things be fulfilled." Others have made the date of 
 its destruction twelve or fifteen years later, which 
 does not in any measure affect the meaning of our 
 Lord's declaration above, which seems to be only 
 another method of saying — " The man is born who 
 is to witness the final and complete overthrow of 
 the Jewish state and nation." 
 
 XIX. As we have seen, Jerusalem was now 
 taken ; but there was still a stronghold in the hands 
 of the Jews, into which a strong force must have 
 previously thrown themselves ; since we cannot 
 suppose that, on the surrender of Jerusalem, the 
 Roman army granted a free retreat thither to a 
 great body of fugitives. But, doubtless, all that 
 could would naturally make their way to the strong- 
 hold Bether. Such, according to Eusebius, was the 
 name of this fortress, situated near Jerusalem. Its 
 site is not fully determined, nor will it be, till, at 
 some future time a more exact investigation of its 
 ruins shall brino; it to lio;ht. We have no knowl- 
 edge of its location further than that which is given 
 us by the historian last named, who places it in the 
 
FROM THE SECOND JEWISH WAR. 105 
 
 vicinity of Jerusalem, and describes it as very- 
 strong. And it must have been of great extent, as 
 a great multitude of people found protection in it. 
 Probably also it was situated on a hill, as it held 
 out a long time against a siege. According to the 
 Rabbins, it was an immense city, having four or 
 five hundred synagogues, and other things equal. 
 This is probably an exaggeration. 
 
 At last the besieged were subdued by hunger 
 and thirst, as well as by the attacks of the Romans. 
 The city was captured with great bloodshed towards 
 the end of the 18th year of Hadrian's reign, in the 
 year of Rome 888, and of our Lord 135. Jewish 
 authors relate that the horses had to wade up to 
 their mouths in blood. Who does not recall the 
 terrible declaration in the Apocalypse — " blood up 
 to the horses' bridles " ? It is further stated by these 
 same authors that the blood of the men w-ho fell 
 rolled along in its current stones of four pounds 
 weight ; that the corpses of the slain did not 
 undergo putrefaction, and that Hadrian caused his 
 vineyard, which was 15 Roman miles square, to be 
 fenced in with them. 
 
 The terrible character of this war may be appre- 
 hended from the fact that 50 strongholds, and 985 
 
106 ARGUMENT DERIVED 
 
 towns and villages fell into the hands of the 
 Romans ; their inhabitants were either given to the 
 sword, or driven into slavery never to be redeemed. 
 This must have required a long interval. The clos- 
 ing scene of the war appears to have lasted three 
 and a half years. In this Jerome and the Tal- 
 mud coincide. 
 
 XX. It is a most singular fact, how T ever, that 
 neither in the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, 
 nor in this last and most fatal war of the Jews, was 
 there any slaughter of the Christians. All history is 
 positive on this point ; whether the writer knew 
 anything or not, of the assurances given by our 
 Lord that he would send forth his angels and they 
 would gather his elect from every quarter where 
 they could be found, if he noticed the Christians 
 that were found among the Jews (and there w T ere 
 undoubtedly thousands, as is intimated in the 
 Apocalypse, in the sealing of the 144 thousand) he 
 always distinctly notices their timely withdrawal 
 from the place of strife, and safe arrival in places 
 where the sword could not devour. 
 
 Perhaps it will not be entirely out of place here 
 to suggest that this was undoubtedly a specific and 
 special arrangement of God our Saviour, whereby 
 
FROM THE SECOND JEWISH WAR. 107 
 
 he signified to the world the scenes of his coming 
 at the last great day. Then, as at the period we 
 are contemplating, " he shall separate the righteous 
 from the wicked, as a shepherd divideth his sheep 
 from the goats ; and these, the goats (representing 
 the sinner), shall go away into everlasting punish- 
 ment, but the righteous into life eternal." 
 
 XXI. We return to our narrative. Many of 
 the Rabbins perished at the taking of Bether, some 
 for one cause, and some for another ; but the num- 
 ber of these, as of every class, was so great as to 
 defy specification. Of the Jews that perished in 
 those fearful battles, Dion Cassius says there were 
 580,000, while those who perished by hunger, 
 pestilence, and the miseries of war, could not be 
 calculated. Jewish accounts give the number 
 that Hadrian killed at four millions. In Alexandria 
 he is said to have destroyed twice as many as came 
 out of Egypt under Moses, viz., six millions. This 
 amount is evidently an exaggeration. But the 
 number of the Romans that suffered in this war 
 may easily have amounted to over two millions. 
 
 XXII. At length the Jews were reduced to 
 complete subjection. Palestine had also become a 
 desert. Prisoners were sold for slaves in countless 
 
108 ARGUMENT DERIVED 
 
 multitudes. The slave market at the Terebinth 
 tree (as Jerome says) near Hebron, where Abra- 
 ham had dwelt, was glutted, so that multitudes 
 were shipped to Egypt, of whom many perished 
 by the way, with hunger, fatigue or shipwreck, 
 while thousands were murdered by the heathen. 
 
 Thus was this unhappy people severely pun- 
 ished for their bold, renewed, but indiscreet attempt 
 to recover their freedom. No wonder that even 
 in the following centuries they continued to mourn 
 over the capture of Bether, as they had over 
 that of Jerusalem by Titus, and that in their la- 
 mentations Hadrian and Nebuchadnezzar are men- 
 tioned with equal abhorrence. Titus, on the con- 
 trary, was far from being detested by the Jews in 
 a like degree. Appian relates that the Emperor 
 Hadrian imposed on the Jews a poll tax which 
 must be distinguished from that to Jupiter Capi- 
 tolinus. But this may have served as a partial in- 
 demnification for the expenses of the war. 
 
 XXIII. It was now (A. D. 136) that Jerusa- 
 lem, no longer a Jewish but a Roman city, received 
 the new name of Colonia 2Elia Cajpitolina — JElia 
 after the first name of its founder iElius Hadrianus, 
 and Capitolina in honor of the god to whom it was 
 
FROM THE SECOND JEWISH WAR. 109 
 
 now dedicated, and whose temple was built on the 
 site where that of the Jews had formerly stood. 
 This was indeed u the abomination of desolation " 
 spoken of by Daniel, standing where it ought not. 
 Thus, too, a temple to Jupiter in the ancient Sichem 
 occupied the place of the Samaritan sanctuary on 
 Mount Gerizim, although perhaps at a somewhat 
 later period. Hadrian adorned his colony with 
 magnificent buildings, among the rest a theatre, 
 out of the ruins of the Temple and of other great 
 works. 
 
 XXIV. JElia Capitolina, however, did not at- 
 tain to the former Jerusalem. Mount Zion, which 
 now lay in ruins, and was used for gardens and till- 
 age, was not included within the walls. That the 
 city was enlarged on the west, and that Calvary 
 among other places was brought within its circuit, 
 is a fable of later date. Hadrian's iElia is the Jeru- 
 salem of the Crusaders and of the Turks ; and its 
 limits have been assigned by nature herself. The 
 name ^£lia was retained long after in the Christian 
 ages, together with the ancient one ; which last was 
 applied again to the city from Constantine's time 
 onwards, and gradually supplanted the other. 
 
 Over the gate that led to Bethlehem, Hadrian 
 
110 ARGUMENT DERIVED 
 
 caused a swine to be sculptured in relief on the wall ; 
 perhaps with the view of rendering the new city 
 still more odious to the Jews ; since their refrain- 
 ing from the flesh of that animal was a subject of 
 derision among the Romans. The swine, however, 
 belongs also to the signa militaria of the Roman 
 army, and was the fifth in rank, in honor of the sow 
 that JEneas found at the place where Lavinium 
 was to be built. We see it on one of Hadrian's 
 coins. 
 
 It was an object of importance with the Em- 
 peror to attract a large number of inhabitants to his 
 new city. Accordingly, he provided also for their 
 religious worship. That great honor was shown to 
 Jupiter Capitolinus, is a matter of course. He was 
 indeed regarded as the guardian deity of the city. 
 His temple, on the site where that of Solomon 
 formerly stood, is mentioned by Dion Cassius. 
 Jerome also speaks of a statue of Jupiter at the 
 place of the resurrection. But the sepulchre of 
 Christ must certainly have been destroyed in the 
 siege under Titus. Golgotha also, according to 
 Sozomon, was surrounded by the Pagans with a 
 wall, and filled up with stones, and on it placed a 
 temple of Yenus, whose image in marble is men- 
 
FROM THE SECOND JEWISH WAR. Ill 
 
 tioned by Jerome. This was probably an Astarte, 
 for the Phenicians ; and if there stood also in this 
 temple, as Paulinus of Nola reports, an image of 
 Jupiter, it was doubtless a Phenician Baal, who 
 indeed was not unfrequently adored as the solar 
 Deity in the same temple with the queen of heaven 
 (Astarte). A temple to Serapis seems to have been 
 erected by Hadrian for the Egyptians. But, except- 
 ing the adoration of Jupiter, the Phenician wor- 
 ship must have been the predominating one in the 
 city and in the country round about ; and hence it 
 was that the cave in Bethlehem, in which, accord- 
 ing to tradition, Christ was born, was dedicated to 
 Adonis ; yet Hadrian can hardly have conceived 
 the idea of a dying God, and have represented to 
 himself Adonis as a mystical being having any 
 reference to Christ. He was, moreover, no enemy 
 or persecutor of the Christians. Had he not pos- 
 sessed the conviction that the Jews and Christians 
 differed essentially from each other, he would have 
 prohibited the Christians as strictly as the Jews 
 from approaching Jerusalem. This, however, was 
 not done ; and he seems even to have observed with 
 satisfaction that the Nazarene community, who had 
 retired to Pella in the time of Yespasian, now 
 
112 ARGUMENT DERIVED 
 
 took up their abode in his new city, together with 
 the Romans and the Phenicians. 
 
 XXV. The rigorous treatment to which the 
 Jews were subjected by their Roman masters was 
 not a little embittered by the fact, that while they 
 themselves were excluded from the Jerusalem that 
 remained, the Christians, even those who had once 
 fled from it, were permitted to return and to dwell 
 in safety. Hadrian forbade them access to it under 
 pain of death. This is testified to by Justin Mar- 
 tyr, Aristo of Pella in Eusebius, Tertullian, Euse- 
 bius himself, and Jerome. The prohibition was 
 still in force in Tertullian's time, in the beginning 
 of the third century. Nay, the unhappy people 
 dared not even to venture into the neighborhood of 
 Jerusalem, not even to look upon and lament over 
 the ruins of their sanctuary from a distance. Guards, 
 too, were stationed to prevent their entering. Such 
 strong measures were of course intended to last only 
 for a while. But they were certainly renewed, and 
 perhaps increased in severity, as often as the Jews 
 gave new cause for suspicion, or raised new disturb- 
 ances. In the age of Constantine, however, the 
 Jews received permission to approach the city 
 within a certain distance, so that they could see it 
 
FROM THE SECOND JEWISH WAR. 113 
 
 from the surrounding mountains. But none ven- 
 tured to enter it, or take up his abode there. At 
 length they were allowed to come to Jerusalem 
 once a year, on the anniversary of the day when 
 Titus took the city, and to weep over the ruins of 
 the Temple. Men and women, often feeble and 
 aged persons, flocked there together in rent garments 
 of mourning, and were forced to purchase permis- 
 sion from the Roman guards to weep undisturbed. 
 At a later period, when the Jews were more equit- 
 ably treated, they obtained leave, either expressed 
 or understood, to reside in Jerusalem. Twice, how- 
 ever, they were driven forth by Constantine and by 
 Heraclius ; and it was not until under the domin- 
 ion of the Saracens, to whom the city was no less 
 holy, that its gates were again opened to the pos- 
 terity of its former inhabitants. 
 
 XX YI. But with the taking of Bether all dis- 
 turbances among the Jews do not yet appear to 
 have been suppressed. A few words of Capitolinus 
 allude to a new attempt in the first years of the 
 reign of Antoninus Pius. By means of his govern- 
 ors and lieutenants, says this biographer, he quelled 
 the rebellious Jews. He also states that disturb- 
 ances had broken out in several provinces ; for in* 
 1 
 
114 ARGUMENT DERIVED 
 
 stance also in Achaia and Egypt. At the solicitation 
 of the Jews, Antonine had softened the rigor of 
 Hadrian's laws, and permitted the circumcision of 
 their children ; but he forbade them to incorporate 
 strangers in this way among their own people. 
 Their Sanhedrim had been established anew, and 
 history names several of their patriarchs who lived 
 under Antonine and his successors. 
 
 Marcus Aurelius and Verus also at first gave 
 them proofs of favor, and according to Ulpian again 
 granted them access to posts of honor. But when 
 a new Parthian war broke out, the Jews living in 
 the East, and hence probably those in Mesopotamia 
 under Parthian rule, united themselves to the 
 hereditary enemies of the Roman Empire, and with 
 them became again subject to the hated yoke of 
 the Romans. The Emperor, on his journey through 
 Syria to Egypt, renewed Hadrian's laws against 
 them; though in the remote oriental provinces 
 they were never enforced. 
 
 In the early part of the reign of Severus 
 nothing was heard of them. They appear not to 
 have been involved in the war with Severus. 
 We have an account that Severus, in his journey 
 through Palestine, prohibited an accession to Juda- 
 
FROM THE SECOND JEWISH WAR. 115 
 
 ism under severe penalties. Consequently the 
 Jews must have gone on making proselytes, in 
 spite of all former laws. The same prohibition 
 w r as issued, by command of the Emperor, respecting 
 the Christians, and thus he gave rise to a persecu- 
 tion which was particularly vehement in Alexan- 
 dria and in Africa, and destroyed many martyrs, 
 among others, Leonidas, the father of Origen, and 
 somewhat later, Felicitas and Perpetua. In the 
 sequel Severus became again more favorable to the 
 Jews. Their money opened his heart to them; 
 but at the same time he did not spare their purses, 
 and they were obliged afterwards, as before, to pay 
 the taxes imposed on them. They were, however, 
 regarded as Roman citizens, were capable of hold- 
 ing office, and of being employed in public busi- 
 ness ; and possessed even the right of declining 
 such offices as were attended with too great ex- 
 pense, e. g. municipal magistracies. They conse- 
 quently felt deep gratitude to the Emperor ; and 
 applied to him, as they had previously done to 
 Marcus Aurelius, the words of Scripture : " now 
 when they fall, they shall be holpen with a little 
 help." 
 
116 ARGUMENT DERIVED 
 
 PART III. 
 
 Here then we have a history, fragmentary we 
 admit, which throws a world of light on an ut- 
 terly dark and hitherto inexplicable period in the 
 existence of the Jews. At their disappearance 
 from the theatre of the world, their numbers, as we 
 have seen, were sufficient to enable them to rank 
 high among the nations of the earth. Their power 
 as a warlike people was not to be despised; their 
 knowledge in arts and science was fully equal to 
 their standing in other respects ; and the influence 
 of their religion was felt wherever they were known. 
 
 It is scarcely to be supposed, therefore, that 
 such a nation should make its exit from the world 
 without leaving some memorial of its greatness, 
 which neither time nor accident could erase. The 
 wonder is that there should be so little left of 
 them as there evidently is, or as we have found. 
 But we are to remember that the world was leag- 
 ued against them. Men, that differed on every 
 
FROM THE SECOND JEWISH WA.R. 117 
 
 other subject, agreed in this, their hatred of the 
 Jews. In fact that feeling has not yet faded from 
 the world. 
 
 Let us now refer to the latter part of the his- 
 tory which has been quoted — to the reign of Ha- 
 drian — the man ordained of God to lay the heav- 
 iest stripes upon God's unbelieving and wicked 
 people. "With a view to secure the favor of the 
 nation, and make them satisfied with their condi- 
 tion, he rebuilds the temple which had been again 
 demolished, but does not restore the worship which 
 the Jews had been accustomed to witness there. 
 He proposes to rebuild the whole city, but it must 
 be a Pagan city, and its temple must have nothing 
 of Christ in it, or any thing else which would 
 serve to revive in the mind of the worshipper the 
 memory of those days when the true God was 
 worshipped there. 
 
 He begins by disarming the whole people. 
 They cannot of course misunderstand that, and ac- 
 cordingly arrange their affairs to meet the gather- 
 ing storm. Those employed by the Emperor to 
 fabricate weapons of war, which, as they well knew, 
 were to be employed against themselves, wrought 
 in every way to deceive, and to make their masters 
 
118 ARGUMENT DERIVED 
 
 believe they were honest and upright in their inten- 
 tions, while they were taking the most direct meas- 
 ures to provide for their own safety and defence. 
 
 The Jews, as a nation, though scattered over 
 almost the known world, are now ready for a gen- 
 eral revolt. It is to be the last act in the national 
 drama. "The abomination that maketh desolate 
 had long since been set up," i. e. " standing in the 
 holy place " ; " men's hearts began to fail them for 
 fear, and for looking at the evils which were gath- 
 ering over the pathway of the nation" once so 
 highly favored of Heaven. 
 
 The Jews lack only a leader — a man to head 
 the lost cause. Such a one is soon found in the 
 person of Bar-cochba — " the Son of a Star" He 
 thus designates himself in order to satisfy the Jews 
 that he is "the star" which Balaam saw in the 
 dim distant future, " which was to arise in Jacob," 
 and utterly overwhelm the tents of his enemies. 
 Bar-cochba succeeded in inspiring the Jews with 
 unlimited confidence in him as the Heaven-ap- 
 pointed leader and Saviour of his people : a confi- 
 dence, however, which was destined to be cruelly 
 betrayed. Those "wars and rumors of wars" 
 which were foretold by the Saviour, and which 
 
FROM THE SECOND JEWISH WAR. 119 
 
 were to be regarded as indisputable tokens of the 
 final catastrophe, began to rage in all the regions 
 to which the Jews had fled. Desolation every 
 where appears ; earth itself rocks with the moun- 
 tainous evils that are falling upon that generation. 
 Stars fall from heaven ; i. e. the lesser lights in 
 the church are seen departing from it, and leaving 
 it a prey to its enemies. This revolt is so far 
 .successful that the Jews recover possession of Je- 
 rusalem, and at once proceed to re-establish their 
 religion and their laws. The insurrection has so 
 far spread, and so thoroughly has it penetrated 
 the vast multitudes of the Jews, that they have 
 recovered fifty strongholds, and regained possession 
 of 989 villages and open towns. Bar-cochba is 
 every where victorious ; it would almost seem 
 that he was clothed with power from heaven ; but 
 the end draweth nigh. Hadrian, learning of the 
 revolt, and of the slaughter made by the Jews, 
 has sent for his victorious general Severus, who 
 was at that time employed with the Picts and 
 Scots, who flies with the velocity of an arrow to his 
 master at Rome, there to receive command from 
 him to repair at once to Palestine and put down 
 the rebellion, cost what it may, whether of treasure 
 
120 ARGUMENT DERIVED 
 
 or of blood. " Let him that readeth understand." 
 Here is undoubtedly " the he-goat " mentioned in 
 Daniel 8:5, " who was seen coming from the 
 west, on the face of the whole earth, and touched 
 not the ground." This simply denotes the celerity 
 with which he came. He smites the ram (Bar- 
 cochba), " casting him down to the ground, stamp- 
 ing him with the dust, so that none could deliver 
 the ram out of his hands." Here is the prophetic, 
 account, undoubtedly, of the battle of " Gog and 
 Magog" (Rev 20 : 8), which lasted " three years 
 and a half," — "forty and two months," — ending 
 in the almost utter annihilation of the Jews, and 
 fully that of the leader of the insurrection. 
 
 " Bether," as it is called in every place where 
 it is recorded, is the last place where the Jews 
 made a stand. This is undoubtedly the place 
 which is called Armageddon (Rev. 16 : 16), prop- 
 erly " Hor-mageddon," or " the mount of slaugh- 
 ter." It is written as in the first spelling by the 
 Apocalyptist, so that no one but a Jew could un- 
 derstand what place was referred to. Bether is 
 unquestionably the place, or city, to which the 
 Jews fled in such numbers as to render it utterly 
 impossible for them to sustain life but a few days 
 
FROM THE SECOND JEWISH WAR. 121 
 
 at most. They fell an easy prey to Roman rapac- 
 ity, and the all-devouring sword. Dion Cassius 
 affirms that nearly 600,000 Jews perished here, 
 while Jewish historians place the number much 
 higher. Probably not less than four millions of 
 those unhappy people perished during the strug- 
 gle which is said to have lasted " forty and two 
 months," or " three years and a half." 
 
 Thus virtually perished the Jewish common- 
 wealth ; nothing remained but lacerated fragments, 
 which were scattered over the face of the earth, 
 never to be gathered again till the final coming of 
 Christ, which is to take place when he is to come 
 again to raise the dead and judge the world. 
 
 Order reigns in Palestine, but it is the order 
 of desolation ; the land enjoys her sabbaths, but 
 they are the sabbaths that follow in the train of 
 annihilating warfare. Jerusalem is rebuilt by her 
 conquerors, but it is the Jerusalem of the bloody 
 Saracen and Turk, — with a swine sculptured over 
 the gate of Bethlehem, as a memorial of that 
 hatred which the unhappy descendants of Abraham 
 had incurred, and which is destined to remain till 
 they shall acknowledge Him who "bore their 
 griefs and carried their sorrows." Hadrian's vie- 
 
122 ARGUMENT DERIVED 
 
 • torious general can now return to Rome, and re- 
 port to his master that he will have no further 
 trouble with the Jews. The city for which they 
 had fought had perished; its very name was 
 almost forgotten. 
 
 "We have occupied too much time, perhaps, in 
 recapitulating the incidents of that history which 
 we have quoted, but its startling events are of such 
 importance to the right understanding of the word 
 of God, and to the work we have undertaken, as 
 to require no apology ; for it is not to be denied 
 that the world for at least fifteen centuries felt the 
 need of this light. It is, moreover, not to be cred- 
 ited, that the Lord Jesus Christ, having taken 
 such care to inform his disciples of the destruction 
 of Jerusalem by Titus, would subsequently say 
 nothing of another destruction so soon to follow, 
 which, in respect to its consequences, should as 
 far transcend that, as the destruction of the nation 
 transcends that of its chief city. 
 
 But Second Adventism involves this incredible 
 position. It supposes that our Lord, in his conver- 
 sation with the disciples on the Mount of Olives, 
 spoke of one and the same event after Matt. 26 : 28, 
 as before* In the next verse he says : " Immedi- 
 
FROM THE SECOND JEWISH WAR. 123 
 
 ately after the tribulation of those days." What 
 days ? Why those of course to which he had just 
 been directing their attention — days in which their 
 venerated temple should be destroyed. " Imme- 
 diately after these the sun shall be darkened, and 
 the moon shall not give her light ; the stars shall 
 fall from heaven, and the powers of the heaven 
 shall be shaken." 
 
 Let it not be overlooked that the above pas- 
 sage is a quotation from the prophecy of Isaiah 
 (13 : 10) — a quotation made by our Lord Jesus 
 Christ himself. We think it will not be contended 
 by any man, nor even thought, that He whose 
 spirit inspired the Scriptures, did not know how to 
 apply them, or to what even they referred. Here 
 is the prophet Isaiah, under the guidance of the 
 Spirit of inspiration describing "the day of the 
 Lord." He says it shall be preceded by the dark- 
 ened sun, and obscured moon, falling stars, etc., 
 and Christ appears to explain that prophecy. He 
 informs the disciples, and through them the world 
 itself, that those events shall " immediately "follov) 
 those to which he had just referred ; to wit, the 
 destruction of the temple. Now, what disposal can 
 be made of the terms we have been considering, 
 
124 ARGUMENT DERIVED 
 
 if Christ, in what follows, spoke only of one event 
 — the destruction of the temple of Jerusalem by 
 Titus ? 
 
 Dr. Robinson felt this difficulty for years. He 
 sees no consistency whatever in the supposition we 
 have been opposing. Nor would he adopt the 
 exegesis of De Wette and of other Universalists, 
 viz., that what follows v. 29 refers to the day of 
 judgment, and that, by the day of judgment, 
 simply and only the destruction of Jerusalem was 
 meant. He felt that it was worse than absurd to 
 adopt a theory which would make the Judge him- 
 self guilty of counselling men, even his own elect, 
 as to how they might shun the judgment. " Two 
 shall be in the field ; the one shall be taken, and 
 the other left." He felt, as every intelligent man 
 feels, that loth will go to the judgment, if one 
 does. 
 
 Professor Stuart felt the same difficulty. 
 Thousands have felt it. Dr Robinson informs us 
 how and where he himself obtained light. It was 
 in the history we have just quoted, — furnishing 
 a rational and consistent account of the manner in 
 which the nation of the Jews made their exit from 
 among the nations of the earth, and leaving the 
 
FROM THE SECOND JEWISH WAR. 125 
 
 subject of Christ's coming to judge the world free 
 from those difficulties which have been felt in all 
 ages of the church ; also harmonizing the statements 
 of the Evangelists w T ith the almost universally ac- 
 cepted doctrine, that the next personal coming of 
 Christ would be to raise the dead and judge the 
 world. It is not strange, therefore, that Dr. Rob- 
 inson embraced this view, and with great diligence 
 labored to set forth the theory which it sustains 
 as alone satisfactory. And the writer of this vol- 
 ume, without a single misgiving, adopts the same. 
 He has no manner of doubt that the Lord Jesus, 
 after answering the inquiries of the disciples, so far 
 as it was proper for him to do, in respect to the 
 first catastrophe, moves directly forward to make 
 known another, and a more formidable event, 
 which was to be announced by certain signs " im- 
 mediately after the tribulations of those days," to 
 which he at first referred ; and that he fixed with 
 sufficient distinctness the time beyond which his 
 enemies, the unbelieving Jews, need not dream of 
 deliverance. 
 
 The Bible argument is, of course, our great 
 reliance. Accordingly I propose to close the argu- 
 ment in this part of the discussion, by introduc- 
 
126 EXEGESIS or matt. 24: 29-31. 
 
 ing the testimony of the Bible, as it is given us 
 by the Evangelists themselves. And here I take 
 the liberty of presenting this scriptural argument 
 in the words of that close thinker and logical rea- 
 soner, Dr Edward Robinson, to whom I have so 
 often alluded. They are to be found in the Bib- 
 liotheca Sacra for 1843, a work of which he was 
 at that time the able editor. 
 
 THE COMING OF CHRIST. 
 
 AS ANNOUNCED IN MATT. 24: 29-31. 
 
 Our Lord had taken his final leave of the tem- 
 ple and its courts ; and in departing had uttered 
 over it the dread prediction, soon to be so fear- 
 fully accomplished : " Yerily, I say unto you, 
 there shall not be left here one stone upon another, 
 that shall not be thrown down." Retiring with 
 his disciples to the Mount of Olives, he seated him- 
 self upon the heights over against the temple, 
 where its courts and edifices, as well as the whole 
 city, were spread out as on a map before him. 
 Here, four of the disciples propose to him privately 
 the following inquiry (according to Matt. 24 : 3) : 
 " Tell us when shall these things be ? and what 
 
EXEGESIS OF MATT. 24 S 29-31. 127 
 
 the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the 
 world ? " According to Mark 13 : 4 — " Tell us 
 when shall these things be? and what the sign 
 when all these things shall be fulfilled ? " Ac- 
 cording to Luke 21 : 7 — " Master, but when shall 
 these things be, and what the sign when these 
 things shall come to pass ? " 
 
 As the manner in which this inquiry is to be 
 understood has some bearing upon the main ques- 
 tion before us, a few words may here be necessary, 
 in order to set the matter in a proper light. The 
 point to be considered is : To what events was the 
 inquiry of the disciples directed ? 
 
 Had we only the accounts of Mark and Luke, no 
 difficulty whatever could here arise. They both 
 refer simply and solely to these things : that is, the 
 things first spoken by our Lord in respect to the 
 temple — his emphatic annunciation of its total de- 
 struction. Why ask, " When shall these things be, 
 and what the sign when all these things shall be 
 fulfilled, or come to pass ? " This inquiry, then, 
 taken by itself, cannot possibly be referred to any 
 thing but the destruction of the temple : an idea 
 which would naturally connect itself in the minds 
 of the disciples, as it was afterwards connected in 
 
128 EXEGESIS OF MATT. 24 I 29-32. 
 
 fact, with the siege and overthrow of the Holy 
 City. 
 
 But Matthew relates the question in a different 
 form : " When shall these things be, and of the 
 end of the world ? " Here these things in the first 
 clause are necessarily the same things as before in 
 Mark and Luke, and can refer only to the destruc- 
 tion of the temple and city. But the coming of 
 our Lord and " the end of the world," in the last 
 clause — do these have respect to the same events ? 
 or are they to be regarded as an additional inquiry, 
 referring to that awful day, when the Lord will 
 come to final judgment, and "the earth and the 
 works that are therein shall be burned up % " In 
 other words, did the " coming " of our Lord here 
 have respect, in the minds of the inquiring disci- 
 ples, to the destruction of the temple and Jerusa- 
 lem, or to the judgment of the last great day ? 
 
 Perhaps a correct answer to this question would 
 be, that the disciples, in their own minds, referred 
 distinctly to neither of these events. They obvi- 
 ously had not, at the time, any definite and distinct 
 notions of that terrible overthrow and subversion 
 of the Jewish people which was so soon to take 
 place. They were also equally ignorant in respect 
 
EXEGESIS OF MATT. 24 : 29-31. 129 
 
 to the awful events which are to be the accom- 
 paniments of the day of judgment and the end 
 of the world. We cannot suppose nor admit that 
 the inquiry, as Matthew puts it, suggested to their 
 minds the same ideas, nor events of the same char- 
 acter, as the same language, taken by itself, would 
 now suggest to us under the full light of a com- 
 pleted revelation. The Holy Spirit had not yet been 
 given, and even our Lord's most favored disciples 
 still groped in comparative darkness. A glance at 
 their training and peculiar expectations may per- 
 haps enable us to perceive, with some degree of 
 distinctness, what they did intend to express by 
 the terms of their inquiry. 
 
 The expectation of a Messiah to come, which 
 had long been cherished by the Jewish people, had 
 its foundation in the prophecies of the Old Testa- 
 ment ; where the coming of the Messiah, his tri- 
 umphs and his reign, are foretold in the language 
 of poetic fervor and sublimity ; especially in the 
 writings of Isaiah and Daniel. His reign is there 
 figuratively described as a golden age, when the 
 true religion, and with it the Jewish throne and 
 theocracy, should be re-established in more than 
 their pristine splendor and purity, and universal 
 8 
 
130 EXEGESIS OF MATT. 24 I 29-31. 
 
 peace and happiness should consequently prevail. 
 All this was doubtless to be understood in a spirit- 
 ual sense. It was the Redeemer's spiritual king- 
 dom that was thus foreshadowed, — that " mystery " 
 of God which had been kept " hid from ages," but 
 was now to be revealed to the saints. And so in- 
 deed the devout Jews of our Saviour's time, such 
 as Zacharias, Simeon, Anna, Joseph, appear to have 
 received it. But the Jewish people at large gave 
 to these prophecies a temporal meaning. They ex- 
 pected a Messiah who should come in the clouds of 
 heaven ; and, as king of the Jewish nation, should 
 restore the ancient religion and worship, reform the 
 corrupt morals of the people, make expiation for 
 their sins, deliver them from the yoke of foreign 
 dominion, exalt them to a preeminence over all 
 other nations, and at length reign over the whole 
 earth in peace and glory. A main idea in this 
 mode of representation, was " the restitution of all 
 things" to the Hebrew nation, and their exaltation 
 to privileges and a rank above the nations of the 
 earth. Their then present condition of humiliation 
 and sorrow was to cease, and to be succeeded by a 
 state of power and glory which should never end. 
 The world (so to speak) was to be turned upside 
 
EXEGESIS OF MATT. 24 : 29-31. 131 
 
 down ; principalities and thrones were to be cast to 
 the ground, and those who dwelt on dung-hills were 
 to be exalted. The coming of the expected Mes- 
 siah in solemn pomp and glory was to be the 
 signal for these revolutions, — the downfall of the 
 present order of things, and the introduction of the 
 new. The world, as it then was, and now is, was 
 to come to an end ; and then all things would be- 
 come new. 
 
 That even our Lord's twelve apostles were 
 deeply imbued with these views and expectations 
 of a temporal Prince and Saviour, as long as Jesus 
 lived, and for a time even after his resurrection, — 
 until, indeed, the giving of the Holy Ghost on the 
 day of Pentecost, — is apparent from every part of 
 the sacred narrative. They were still groping in 
 ignorance and darkness ; they received Jesus with 
 sincere faith as the promised Messiah ; but as to 
 the true character of himself and of his kingdom 
 they had but imperfect conceptions. Their Master 
 often had occasion to rebuke them for their i( little 
 faith ; " he unfolded to them only gradually the 
 deeper mysteries pertaining to his Gospel ; and it 
 was only on the very last evening of his intercourse 
 with them, and after the institution of the Holy 
 
132 EXEGESIS OF MATT. 24:1 29-31. 
 
 Supper, that he spoke openly to them of his depart- 
 ure (John, 14 : 16). Even then they were dull 
 of apprehension ; so that our Lord declares them 
 still incapable of receiving the instruction which he 
 would gladly communicate : " I have yet many 
 things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them 
 now." No wonder, then, that they looked upon 
 him as one who was about to become a glorious 
 Prince, and reign over the whole earth. In the 
 spirit of this temporal and national expectation, 
 the two disciples, on their way to Emmaus, de- 
 clared : " We trusted that it had been he which 
 should have redeemed Israel ; " and in the same 
 spirit, after his resurrection, the disciples, when 
 they had come together, " asked of him, saying, 
 Lord, wilt thou at this time restore again the king- 
 dom to Israel ? " 
 
 Such then being the state of knowledge and of 
 expectation in the minds of the disciples at the time 
 of our Lord's passion, it is easy to see that the 
 above inquiry, made by them only a few days ear- 
 lier, must be judged of and interpreted in accord- 
 ance with this state of mind and feeling. They 
 awaited a temporal exaltation of their Lord and 
 Master, and a restitution of preeminency and 
 
EXEGESIS OF MATT. 24 I 29-31. 133 
 
 glory to the Jewish people ; the introduction of 
 this new state would be his "coming," and with 
 this they now connected the overthrow of the tem- 
 ple and city, which he had just predicted. His 
 " coming " and the " end of the world," were there- 
 fore in their minds to be coeval and identical with 
 "the end" of the then present state of humiliation 
 and depression, and with the commencement of the 
 new and glorious era of the Messiah's temporal 
 reign. 
 
 The question, therefore, as reported by Mat- 
 thew, although it affords us a deeper insight into 
 the views and feelings of the disciples than as 
 given by Mark and Luke, yet does not differ in its 
 general import from the specifications of the two 
 latter Evangelists. 
 
 Does our Lord answer the inquiry of his disci- 
 ples ? Not directly. He first warns them of many 
 deceivers who shall arise. He speaks of famine, 
 pestilence, and earthquakes, as about to occur ; 
 which seem here, as elsewhere, to be emblems of 
 great civil commotions. He warns his followers 
 that they will be exposed to danger, and persecu- 
 tions on every side ; from which, if they endure 
 them with the patience of faith and hope, they shall 
 
134 EXEGESIS OF MATT. 24 I 29-31. 
 
 be delivered. The particular time when these dan- 
 gers shall break forth upon them will be when 
 they "shall see the abomination of desolation, 
 spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the 
 holy place." Instead of this expression, and ex- 
 planatory of it, Luke points to the time when they 
 " shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies." 
 Then they may know " that the desolation thereof 
 is nigh." Then will be the time for every one to 
 save himself by flight ; — then will the eagles be 
 gathered together over the carcass ; " and Jerusa- 
 lem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until 
 the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled." 
 
 In close and direct connection with this repre- 
 sentation, follows, in Matthew, the passage now 
 more immediately to be considered. Here let the 
 reader turn to Matt. 24 : 29-31, and also to the par- 
 allel verses of Mark and Luke (Mark 13 : 24-27, 
 and Luke 21 : 24-28), in which the connection 
 is equally close and direct ; and which have an 
 important bearing upon the right interpretation of 
 the language of Matthew. 
 
 After these passages, our Lord goes on, as re- 
 ported by all three of the Evangelists, to introduce 
 the similitude of the fig-tree putting forth its buds 
 
EXEGESIS OF MATT. 24 : 29-31. 135 
 
 and leaves as the harbinger of summer. In like 
 manner the disciples, when they shall see all 
 these things taking place, may "know that it 
 (the coming ?) is near, even at the door ; " or, as 
 Luke more definitely expresses it, they may " know 
 that the kingdom of God is nigh at hand." Then 
 follows immediately a most important designation 
 of time, in which the three Evangelists accord ver- 
 batim in the original : " Verily I say unto you, 
 
 THIS GENERATION SHALL NOT PASS AWAY, TILL ALL 
 THESE THINGS BE FULFILLED." (Matt. 24 : 32-34 ; 
 Mark 13 : 28-30 ; Luke 21 : 29-32.) 
 
 The subject is now before the reader, and the 
 question to be considered is — whether the language 
 of Matthew in the passage above quoted is to be 
 referred to the judgment of the last great day, or 
 rather to the then impending destruction of Jeru- 
 salem and the Jewish nation ? It is a question on 
 which good men have ever differed ; and on which, 
 perhaps, entire unity of opinion is not to be ex- 
 pected, until the night of darkness and ignorance in 
 which we are here enveloped shall be chased away 
 by the morn of pure light and perfect knowledge. 
 
 It is conceded by all, I believe, that the repre- 
 sentation, as far as to the end of the 28th verse of 
 
136 EXEGESIS OF MATT. 24 I 29-31. 
 
 Matthew, and in the parallel verses of the other 
 Evangelists, applies solely to the overthrow of Jeru- 
 salem. Or, if there be still those who would refer 
 any portion of these preceding verses to the judg- 
 ment day, it seems to me that they must first show 
 that " the abomination of desolation," spoken of by 
 Matthew and Luke, has nothing to do with the 
 " compassing of Jerusalem with armies, 53 mentioned 
 in the same connection by Luke ; and then, further, 
 that all these things could have no connection with 
 the " treading down " of Jerusalem by the Gen- 
 tiles, which Luke goes on to speak of as the result 
 of these antecedent circumstances. This, however, 
 cannot well be shown without disregarding every 
 rule of interpretation, and without violating the 
 very first principles of language. 
 
 But with the 29th verse a new specification of 
 time is introduced. " Immediately after the afflic- 
 tion of those days " shall appear the harbingers of 
 our Lord's coming ; and these are depicted in lan- 
 guage which elsewhere, it is said, is employed only 
 to describe his coming to the final judgment. (See 
 Matt. 25 : 3-19, also Matt. 13 : 40-41). The " com- 
 ing " here meant, is then to be subsequent to the 
 downfall of Jerusalem, and can therefore only mean 
 
EXEGESIS OF MATT. 24 : 29-31. 137 
 
 the coming of the Messiah in his kingdom at the 
 judgment day. This opinion is, perhaps, at the 
 present time the most prevalent one among com- 
 mentators, and even with those whose views in 
 other respects have little in common, — as in the 
 cases of Olshausen and De Wette. 
 
 But on the other hand, it is replied that the 
 phrase, " immediately after" indicates a very close 
 connection of this " coming "of our Lord with the 
 preceding events; and the Saviour himself goes 
 on to declare, that " this generation shall not pass 
 away, till all these -things be fulfilled." We must 
 then assume, it is said, that the prediction had its 
 fulfilment within a period not long subsequent to 
 our Lord's ministry ; or, if it is to be referred to 
 the day of judgment, then we must admit that 
 our Lord was in error, inasmuch as he here fore- 
 told that it would take place " immediately after " 
 — the downfall of Jerusalem. For these reasons 
 many commentators have understood the language 
 as applicable only to the destruction of the Holy 
 City ; forgetting, apparently, that the very expres- 
 sion which they urge against a remote future appli- 
 cation, is equally stringent against an exclusive 
 reference to the latter catastrophe. 
 
138 EXEGESIS OF MATT. 24 ! 29-31. 
 
 It is very obvious that both of these different 
 opinions cannot be true, while it is also very pos- 
 sible that both of them may be more or less wrong. 
 Before proceeding to develop the manner in which 
 the subject has presented itself to my own mind, 
 it will be necessary to examine the language of the 
 prediction and the attendant circumstances, and to 
 bring into view some other preliminary considera- 
 tions. All this may be best done under a number 
 of heads, as follows : 
 
 I. The destruction of Jerusalem was the topic 
 of our Lord's discourse with his disciples, and the 
 subject of his predictions at the temple and on the 
 Mount of Olives, as related by Matthew 24 : 1-28 
 inclusive ; and also by Mark and Luke in the par- 
 allel verses. This point has been already suffi- 
 ciently considered, and requires here no further 
 elucidation. 
 
 II. The "coming" foretold in verse 29-31 of 
 Matthew, was to be subsequent to the time of the 
 " abomination " of desolation and the compassing of 
 Jerusalem by armies, and also to the " treading 
 down " of the city by the Gentiles. By this latter 
 phrase is usually and rightly understood the capture 
 and destruction of the city by Tiius, as related by 
 
EXEGESIS OF matt. 24: 29-31. 139 
 
 Josephus. This same event is doubtless shadowed 
 forth in the lan^uao;e of Matthew — "For whereso- 
 ever the carcass is, there will the eagles be gathered 
 together;" not indeed through any verbal allusion 
 to the Roman eagles, as some assume, but in the 
 general application of a proverbial expression, viz., 
 that where the guilty are, there punishment shall 
 find them ; or, in other words, the guilty are sure to 
 be overtaken by the Divine punishment. (Com- 
 pare Luke 17 : 37. Neander.) When this catastro- 
 phe shall have taken place, then, immediately after 
 (evdeoc fierd) this affliction, there shall be distress and 
 anxiety, and the shaking of the powers of heaven, 
 all which are to accompany and introduce our Lord's 
 coming. The word evdiug means literally straight- 
 way, and implies a succession more or less direct 
 and immediate; so that there can be no doubt, 
 as De Wette justly remarks, that the coming of 
 the Messiah, as here described by Matthew, was 
 straightway to follow the destruction of Jerusa- 
 lem. Indeed no meaning can possibly be assigned 
 to svdiuc which will admit of any great delay; 
 much less of an interval so enormous as that be- 
 tween the destruction of the Holy City and the 
 end of the world, as understood by us. From 
 
140 exegesis of matt. 24: 29-31. 
 
 this it is manifest that the " coming " of Christ 
 here spoken of, as occurring after the downfall of 
 Jerusalem, could not be meant to refer solely to 
 that event. 
 
 III. Our Lord himself limits the interval within 
 which Jerusalem shall be destroyed and his " com- 
 ing " take place, to that same generation : " Verily r , 
 verily, I say unto you, This generation shall not 
 pass, till all these things he fulfilled" The lan- 
 guage is here plain, definite, and express ; it cannot 
 be misunderstood, nor perverted. It follows, in all 
 the Evangelists, the annunciation of our Lord's 
 " coming," and applies to it in them all, just as 
 much as it applies to the antecedent declarations 
 respecting Jerusalem ; and more directly, indeed, 
 inasmuch as it stands here in a closer connection. 
 
 But what is the meaning of the phrase, " this 
 generation " ? and what the interval of time thus 
 designated ? The specification is, and must be, at 
 any rate, indefinite ; for the tide of human life flows 
 on in an unbroken stream, and no man can mark or 
 tell the point where one generation ends and 
 another begins. Yet modern chronology, with 
 some degree of definiteness, reckons three genera- 
 tions in a century ; and thus allows to each an in- 
 
EXEGESIS OF MATT. 24: : 29-31. 141 
 
 terval of thirty-three and a third years ; or, more 
 loosely, from thirty to forty years. The ancient 
 Hebrews, on the other hand, appear to have counted 
 a hundred years to each generation. God said to 
 Abraham, that his seed should be afflicted in Egypt 
 four hundred years ; but that in the fourth genera- 
 tion they should return to the Promised Land. 
 (Gen. 15 : 13-15 ; comp. Exod. 12.) 
 
 In which of these senses is the above expression 
 of our Lord to be understood ? If in the former, 
 then certainly the destruction of Jerusalem, which 
 is usually held to have occurred in A. D. 70, took 
 place within the time thus generally specified ; that 
 is, within an interval of less than forty years after 
 our Lord's passion. But of the events which were 
 to follow that catastrophe, we know of none that 
 can be referred to the same interval. The destruc- 
 tion of the city itself occurred at the very last 
 point of time that can be reckoned to that genera- 
 tion thus understood ; and no events of importance 
 in Jewish history took place for quite a number of 
 years afterwards. 
 
 But our Lord was speaking in a popular man- 
 ner, and would naturally employ expressions in 
 their most popular sense. He did not mean to 
 
142 EXEGESIS OF matt. 24: 29-31. 
 
 point out definitely the exact time when this or 
 that event was to take place. He says himself 
 immediately afterwards : " Of that day and hour 
 knoweth no one, no, not the angels of heaven, but 
 iny Father only." It seems necessary, therefore, to 
 understand the word "generation," as thus used 
 by our Lord, in its largest sense, and in accordance 
 with popular Hebrew usage, as implying a hundred 
 years. But this again must not be construed too 
 definitely : it is rather a general expression, desig- 
 nating time by a reference to the duration of human 
 life ; and is apparently neither more nor less than 
 equivalent to our mode of expression, when we say : 
 " There are those now born, who will live to see 
 all these things fulfilled ! " Our Lord himself, in 
 another passage, relating to the same subject, pre- 
 sents the same idea in this very form : " Yerily I 
 say unto you, there be some standing here, which 
 shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of 
 Man coming in his kingdom." 
 
 IY. The question now arises whether, under 
 these limitations of time, a reference of our Lord's 
 language to the day of judgment and the end of the 
 world, in our sense of these terms, is possible ? 
 Those who maintain this view attempt to dispose 
 
EXEGESIS OF MATT. 24 : 29-31. 143 
 
 of the difficulties arising from these limitations in 
 different ways. Some assign to evdeug the mean- 
 ing suddenly, as it is employed by the Seventy in 
 Job 5 : 3. But even in this passage the purpose 
 of the writer is simply to mark an immediate 
 sequence, to intimate that another and a consequent 
 event happened forthwith. Nor would any thing 
 be gained, even could the word evdiug be thus dis- 
 posed of, so long as the subsequent limitation to 
 " this generation," remained. And in this, again, 
 others have tried to refer yevea to the race of the 
 Jews / or, to the disciples of Christ, not only with- 
 out the slightest ground, but contrary to all usage 
 and all analogy. All these attempts to apply force 
 to the meaning of the language are in vain, and 
 are now abandoned by most commentators of note. 
 Two or three general views, however, are cur- 
 rent on the subject, which demand some further 
 remark. 
 
 One is that of De Wette and others, who do 
 not hesitate to regard our Lord as here announcing 
 that the coming of the Messiah to the judgment 
 of the last day would take place immediately after 
 the fall of Jerusalem. This idea, according to De 
 Wette, is clearly expressed by our Lord, both here 
 
144 EXEGESIS OF matt. 24: 29-31. 
 
 and elsewhere ; and was likewise held by Paul. 
 (See Matt. 16 : 28 ; also i. Cor. 15 : 51-9 ; i. Thess. 
 4 : 15-39). But as the day of judgment has not yet 
 come, it follows, either that our Lord, if correctly 
 reported, was himself mistaken, and spoke here of 
 things which he knew not ; or else that the sacred 
 writers have not truly related his discourse. The 
 latter horn of this dilemma is preferred by De 
 Wette. According to him the disciples entertained 
 the idea of their Lord's return with such vividness 
 of faith and hope, that they overlooked the rela- 
 tions of time, which Jesus himself had left indefi- 
 nite ; and they thus connected his final coming 
 immediately with his coming to destroy Jerusalem. 
 They give here, therefore, their own conception of 
 our Lord's language, rather than the language itself 
 as it fell from his lips. They mistook his meaning ; 
 they acted upon this mistake in their own belief 
 and preaching ; and in their writings have perpet- 
 uated it throughout all time. 
 
 This view is of course incompatible with any 
 and every idea of inspiration on the part of the 
 sacred writers ; the very essence of which is, that 
 they were commissioned and aided by the Spirit 
 to impart truth to the world, and not error. To a 
 
EXEGESIS OF matt. 24: 29-31. 145 
 
 believer in this fundamental doctrine no argument 
 can here be necessary, nor in place, to counteract 
 the view above presented. To state it in its naked 
 contrast with the divine authority of God's word, 
 is enough. 
 
 But there may well be a further inquiry here 
 raised, viz., whether there was in fact, in the minds 
 of Paul and other apostles and early Christians, so 
 strong an expectation of the speedy coming of 
 Christ to judgment as is thus assumed ? The main 
 passage on which this assumption is made to rest 
 is the very one now under consideration ; which in 
 this way is first employed to demonstrate the exist- 
 ence of such an expectation ; and then that expec- 
 tation is assumed to sustain this interpretation of 
 the passage. In respect to Paul, reference is made 
 to his language in i. Cor. 15 : 51, et seq., and i. 
 Thess. 4 : 15 ; where, in speaking of our Lord's final 
 coming, he uses the first person of the plural : " we 
 shall not all sleep ; " " we who are alive," etc. 
 The inference drawn by some is, that Paul expected 
 the coming of the judgment day in his own life- 
 time, so that he himself would be one of those w T ho 
 would then be alive and would be changed without 
 seeing death. But nothing is more evident than 
 10 
 
146 EXEGESIS OF matt. 24: 29-31. 
 
 that the language of Paul here, as often elsewhere, 
 may be understood merely as including himself 
 and those to whom he was writing, as a portion of 
 the great body of Christians of the church univer- 
 sal in all ages, the dead as well as those living at 
 our Lord's coming. So Chrysostom and others, 
 and even De Wette, regard it as certain that the 
 phrase, "we shall all be changed," referred both to 
 the dead and the living. And further, it would 
 seem that Paul's language addressed to the Thessa- 
 lonians had, in fact, been so understood by some as 
 to imply the near approach of the judgment day ; 
 and therefore the apostle, in his second Epistle, 
 takes occasion expressly to warn them against any 
 such misapprehension of his words: "Now we 
 beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together — with 
 him, that ye be not soon shaken in mind, or be 
 troubled, neither by Spirit, nor by word, nor by 
 letter as from us, as that the day of Christ is at 
 hand." The very application of his language now 
 (as then) made, the apostle here protests against. 
 In the face of this protest, I do not see how we can 
 well affirm that Paul regarded the final coming 
 of our Lord as an event which was speedily to take 
 
EXEGESIS OF MATT. 24 \ 29-31. 147 
 
 place. That it was already so regarded by some, 
 is evident from the apostle's teaching to the con- 
 trary ; and that the idea continued in the Church, 
 and was occasionally current in the early centur- 
 ies, is matter of history. Yet for this, not the 
 teachings of our Lord and his apostles, but the 
 suggestions of human fancy, are responsible. 
 
 Another form of the same general view is that 
 presented by Olshausen. He too refers the verses 
 of Matthew under consideration directly to the final 
 coming of Christ, but seeks to avoid the difficulty 
 above stated by an explanation derived from the 
 alleged nature of prophecy. He adopts the theory 
 broached by Hengstenberg, that inasmuch as the 
 vision of future things was presented solely to the 
 mental or spiritual eye of the prophet, he thus saw 
 them all at one glance as present realities, with 
 equal vividness and without any distinction of order 
 or time, — like the figures of a great painting with- 
 out perspective or other marks of distance or rela- 
 tive position. "The facts and realities are dis- 
 tinctly perceived ; but not their distance from the 
 period, nor the intervals by which they are sepa- 
 rated from each other." Hence our Lord, in sub- 
 mitting himself to the laws of prophetic vision, was 
 
148 EXEGESIS OF MATT. 24 I 29-31. 
 
 led to speak of his last coming in immediate con- 
 nection with his coming for the destruction of Jeru- 
 salem ; because in vision the two were presented 
 together to his spiritual eye, without note of any 
 interval of time. Not to dwell here upon the fact, 
 that this whole theory of prophecy is fanciful 
 hypothesis, and appears to have been since aban- 
 doned by its author ; it is enough to remark that 
 this explanation admits, after all, the same funda- 
 mental error, viz., that our Lord did mistakenly 
 announce his final coming as immediately to follow 
 the overthrow of the Holy City. Indeed, the dif- 
 ficulty is even greater here, if possible, than before ; 
 because, according to the former view, the error 
 may be charged upon the report of the Evangelists, 
 while here it can only be referred to our Lord him- 
 self. 
 
 It may, indeed, be further asked, whether the 
 limitation to "this generation" in v. 34, may not 
 be referred solely to the prediction of the destruc- 
 tion of Jerusalem, ending with v. 28 ; and then 
 verses 29-31 be understood of the general judgment 
 without being affected by this limitation ? The 
 reply to this question has already been 'given under 
 our third head above. The limitation has a clear 
 
EXEGESIS OF MATT. 24 I 29-31. 149 
 
 and distinct reference to all the events foretold in 
 the previous discourse ; and therefore, as Lightfoot 
 says, " it is hence evident enough, that the preced- 
 ing verses are not to be understood of the last judg- 
 ment, but of the destruction of Jerusalem." 
 
 Y. We come now to our last preliminary in- 
 quiry, viz. — Whether the language of Matthew in 
 vs. 29-31 is in fact applicable to merely civil and 
 political commotions and revolutions ? and whether 
 the solemnity and strength of the language, and 
 the grandeur and pomp of the mode of representa- 
 tion, do not necessarily imply a catastrophe more 
 general and more awful than the fall of a single 
 city, or the subversion of a feeble people ? Can it 
 be, then, that the language of these verses should 
 refer merely to the destruction of Jerusalem or of 
 the Jewish nation ? 
 
 Not to dwell here upon the well-known facts, 
 that the language of the Orient, and especially of 
 the Hebrew prophets, is full of the boldest meta- 
 phors and the sublimest imagery, applied to events 
 and things which the manner of the Occident 
 would describe without figure and in far simpler 
 terms, it will be sufficient to show that similar lan- 
 guage is employed both in the Old and New Testa- 
 
150 EXEGESIS OF matt. 24: 29-31. 
 
 ments on various occasions arising out of changes 
 and revolutions in the course of human events ; and 
 especially in respect to the judgments of God upon 
 nations. We will take the verses in their order. 
 
 Verse 29. Here it is said, that after the preced- 
 ing tribulation, the darkness of the sun and moon, 
 the falling of the stars, and the shaking of the pow- 
 ers of heaven, are to be the harbingers of the Lord's 
 coming. " The powers of heaven " are the sun, 
 moon and stars, " the host of heaven " of the Old 
 Testament. Now that the very same language, 
 and the same natural phenomena are employed in 
 other places to mark events in human affairs and to 
 announce God's judgments, is apparent from the 
 following passages. 
 
 In Isaiah, chap. 13, woes and judgments are 
 denounced against Babylon. In v. 9 it is said " the 
 day of the Lord cometh to lay the land des- 
 olate ; " and in v. 10 the following signs and accom- 
 paniments are pointed out : " For the stars of 
 heaven and the constellations thereof shall not 
 give their light ; the sun shall be darkened in his 
 going forth, and the moon shall not cause her light 
 to shine." 
 
 In Isaiah, chap. 34, similar woes and judg- 
 
EXEGESIS OF MATT. 24 : 29-31. 151 
 
 ments are proclaimed against Idumea, — see vs. 
 5, 6. The prophet in v. 2 describes " the indigna- 
 tion of the Lord upon all nations . . . .he hath 
 utterly destroyed them ; " and in v. 4 he continues : 
 " And all the host of heaven ( Sept. Swdfietg rtiv 
 ovpavtiv ) shall be dissolved ; and the heavens shall 
 be rolled together as a scroll; and all their host 
 shall fall down, as the leaf falleth oft' from the vine, 
 and as the withered leaf from the fig-tree." 
 
 In Ez. 32 the prophet takes up a lamentation 
 for Pharaoh, v. 2 ; in the succeeding verses his de- 
 struction is foretold ; and then the prophet proceeds 
 in v. 7 as follows : " And when I shall put thee 
 out, I will cover the heaven, and make the stars 
 thereof dark ; I will cover the sun with a cloud, 
 and the moon shall not give her light. All the 
 bright lights of heaven will I make dark over thee, 
 and set darkness upon thy land, saith the Lord 
 God." 
 
 In Joel. 2 : 30, 31 [3, 3. 4, Heb.] the very same 
 phenomena are described as appearing "before the 
 great and terrible day of the Lord come." In Acts, 
 2 : 19, 20, this passage is quoted by the Apostle 
 Peter, and applied directly to the great events 
 which were to accompany the introduction of the 
 
152 EXEGESIS OF matt. 24: 29-31. 
 
 new dispensation, — including obviously the signs 
 and wonders attendant upon the death and resur- 
 rection of our Lord ; the outpouring of the Spirit 
 on the day of Pentecost and upon the churches af- 
 terwards ; the spread and establishment of Chris- 
 tianity ; and the final termination of the Mosaic 
 dispensation in the subversion of the temple- 
 worship, and the irretrievable ruin of the Jewish 
 nation. 
 
 These examples are enough to show that the 
 language of the verse under consideration may well 
 be in like manner understood as symbolic of the 
 commotions and revolutions of states and kingdoms. 
 In respect to the other two Evangelists, the words 
 of Mark are entirely parallel to those of Matthew ; 
 while Luke interweaves a further allusion to ter- 
 restrial phenomena, and to the distress and faint- 
 ness of heart among men " for fears and for look- 
 ing after those things which are coming on the 
 earth." 
 
 Verse 30. After the phenomena described in 
 the preceding verse, is to appear " the sign of the 
 Son of Man in heaven." This of course is not the 
 Messiah himself, as some assume ; but it would 
 seem to be something immediately connected with 
 
EXEGESIS OF MATT. 24 : 29-31. 153 
 
 his personal appearance, — perhaps the dark clouds 
 and tempest, the thunders and lightnings, which 
 are ascribed as the usual accompaniment of a The- 
 ophania, and in which the Redeemer is at first 
 shrouded— (see Ps. 18 : 11-14.) Then the Son of 
 Man himself is seen " coming in the clouds of 
 heaven with power and great glory." Can this 
 magnificent and awful representation have refer- 
 ence merely to events in the world's past history ? 
 
 Let this question also be answered by an ap- 
 peal to the Old Testament. There Jehovah is rep- 
 resented as appearing in a similar manner, both 
 for the judgment of the wicked and the protec- 
 tion of the righteous. 
 
 Thus in Ps. 97 : 2, seq : " Clouds and darkness 
 are round about him, — a fire goeth before him, 
 and burnetii up his enemies round about," etc. 
 
 So, too, in respect to particular nations. In 
 Isaiah 19 : 1, it is said : " Behold the Lord rideth 
 upon a swift cloud, and shall come into Egypt ; 
 and the idols of Egypt shall be moved at his pres- 
 ence," etc. 
 
 In like manner, Ps. 68 is the description of a 
 continued Theophania, in behalf of the people of 
 Israel : see vs. 1, 2 ; 7, 8 ; 17, 18 ; 33, 35. 
 
154: EXEGESIS OF MATT. 24 I 29-31. 
 
 The same sublime imagery is likewise employed 
 in Ps. 18 (see also n. Sam. chap. 22) in describing 
 God's appearance for the deliverance of an individ- 
 ual — his chosen servant David. A passage more 
 full of poetic sublimity and overpowering grand- 
 eur can hardly be found in the sacred writings 
 than is contained in vs. 7-15 of that Psalm. The 
 application of it to David follows immediately in 
 v. 16 : " He sent from above, he took me, he drew 
 me out of many waters," etc. 
 
 If then language of this kind relating to Jeho- 
 vah is employed in the Old Testament, with refer- 
 ence both to nations and to individuals, we surely 
 are authorized to apply the like representation of 
 the New Testament to an event so important in the 
 Divine economy as the overthrow of God's own pe- 
 culiar people, and the chosen seat of their national 
 worship. 
 
 The source of the particular form of representa- 
 tion in v. 30 is doubtless the seventh chapter of 
 Daniel. There in vs. 13, 14, the prophet says : 
 " I saw in the night visions, and behold, one like 
 the Son of Man came with the clouds of heaven. 
 And there was given him dominion, and glory, 
 and a kingdom, that all people, nations and Ian- 
 
EXEGESIS OF MATT. 24 : 29-31. 155 
 
 guages should serve him ; his dominion is an ever- 
 lasting dominion, which shall not pass away ; and 
 his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed." 
 Here then is the Messiah, coming not for the day 
 of judgment, but to introduce his spiritual kingdom 
 upon earth. Analogically, therefore, the like lan- 
 guage of our Lord in the verse before us must be 
 understood in the same way, and not made to re- 
 fer to the day of judgment. 
 
 Verse 31. Hosts of angels and the sound of 
 the trumpet belong to the Christophania here and 
 elsewhere, as also to the Theophania. Here, too, 
 it is said : " He shall send his angels (v. 31), and 
 they shall gather together his elect from the four 
 winds ; " the same is affirmed in the corresponding 
 verse of Mark. This " gathering," it has been 
 thought, can refer only to the assembling of all na- 
 tions for the final judgment, as more fully depicted 
 in Matt. 25 : 31, et seq., and also as implied in the 
 explanation of the parable of the tares in Matt. 
 13 : 40, seq. But on comparing the modes of ex- 
 pression in the two cases, they do not appear to be 
 parallel. Here the angels simply " gather together 
 the elect ; " there (in 25 : 32) " all nations " are 
 gathered before him, — elect and n<m-elect, and the 
 
156 EXEGESIS OF matt. 24: 29-31. 
 
 wicked are then separated from the righteous (see 
 also Matt. 13 : 41, 43). The idea of such a separation 
 before the judgment seat is indeed essentially con- 
 nected with every representation of the day of judg- 
 ment, and cannot be separated from it. Why then 
 are only the elect here said (in v. 31) to be gath- 
 ered together ? Nothing of the kind is expressed 
 or implied in the passage itself; nor is it elsewhere 
 ever said of the elect, that they alone will be " gath- 
 ered together," to the judgment of the great day. 
 But the idea of " gathering together" those 
 widely dispersed, sometimes includes also the ac- 
 cessory notion of deliverance and protection, as the 
 end and purpose of the act. Thus it is said of Je- 
 hovah that "he gathereth together the outcasts of 
 Israel" (Ps. 147: 2; Deut. 30: 3); he will gather 
 them out of all lands whither they are scattered, 
 will deliver them from all dangers, and secure to 
 them his protection. So too our Lord, in his touch- 
 ing lament over Jerusalem, exclaims ; "How often 
 would I have gathered thy children together, even 
 as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, 
 and ye would not." Here the idea of deliverance 
 and protection is strongly prominent. Now this 
 idea we may apply in the verse under consideration, 
 
EXEGESIS OF ma/it. 24: 29-31. 157 
 
 In the commotions and distress antecedent to our 
 Lord's coming for the destruction of the Jewish 
 state he will send his angels " to gather together 
 his elect," so that they may be delivered and pro- 
 tected from the dangers which threaten them. In- 
 deed, precisely this idea is strongly expressed by 
 Luke in the parallel verse: "And when these 
 things begin to come to pass, then look up, and 
 lift up your heads ; for your redemption draw- 
 eth nigh" 
 
 We come then to the general result, that the 
 language of the three verses under consideration 
 does not necessarily apply to the general judgment ; 
 while the nature of the context shows that such an 
 application is wholly inadmissible. On the other 
 hand, there is nothing in the language itself to 
 hinder our referring it to the downfall of Judaism 
 and the Jewish people ; but rather both the con- 
 text and the attendant circumstances require it to 
 be understood of these events. 
 
 In further illustrating the language of our 
 Lord as thus applied, I would remark, that " his 
 coming," as he foretold, includes as its object not 
 only the overthrow of the Jewish nation, but also 
 the establishment and spread of his own spiritual 
 
158 EXEGESIS OF MATT. 24 : 29-31. 
 
 kingdom upon earth. This is clearly indicated in 
 the words of Daniel, as above cited ; and also in 
 those of Joel, as cited and applied by the apostle 
 Peter (Dan. 7 : 13-4 ; Acts 2 : 16, seq). The latter 
 prophecy began to have its fulfilment in the signs 
 and wonders attendant upon our Lord's death and 
 resurrection, and in the outpouring of the Spirit on 
 the day of Pentecost ; but it was fully accomplished 
 only in the later catastrophe of Jerusalem and Ju- 
 daism. The tenacity with which that people clave 
 to the outward rites and ceremonies of the Mosaic 
 dispensation, to the worship of the temple, and to 
 their hopes of restoration and exaltation under a 
 temporal Messiah, as also their fierce and unre- 
 lenting opposition to the claims of the lowly Jesus, 
 — all this was the first great and prominent obsta- 
 cle to the introduction and prevalence of his spirit- 
 ual reign. This was at that moment the great ene- 
 my to be vanquished ; and the downfall of this 
 opposing power was to be the triumph and the 
 establishment of the Messiah's kingdom. Both 
 these great results, therefore, were to be accom- 
 plished by this his coming (see also Matt. 16 : 27). 
 The destruction of Jerusalem and of the tem- 
 ple, although standing out as a prominent catastro- 
 
EXEGESIS OF MATT. 24 I 29-31. 159 
 
 plie in this great series of events, was yet not the 
 only one, and perhaps not the most important. 
 Through the minute and vivid description of Jose- 
 phus, who was himself an actor and an eye-witness 
 in all those scenes of blood and desolation, the fall 
 of the Holy City has been brought out before the 
 world for all time with a distinctness and promi- 
 nence, greater, perhaps, than any other like event 
 of ancient history. Hence it has become the great 
 central point in the later history of the Jews ; and 
 thus has overshadowed and shut out from view the 
 slighter notices of other events, — in themselves per- 
 haps not of less moment, but which have not been 
 recorded by the graphic pen of a native historian. 
 In this way the overthrow of the Jewish capital 
 and temple has come to be regarded as the final 
 catastrophe of the nation ; after which their exist- 
 ence and name, as a nation, were utterly blotted 
 out. Hence the frequent application of our Lord's 
 prediction to this event alone. 
 
 But such was not, in fact, the case. The de- 
 struction of Jerusalem by Titus, although terrible, 
 was nevertheless not total. The city slowly revived. 
 The Jews in Palestine, though reduced completely 
 to the condition of a Roman province, were not 
 
160 EXEGESIS OF MATT. 24 I 29-31. 
 
 driven otit from their own land. The chief men, 
 indeed, were allured to Rome; or they found 
 employment elsewhere ; but the merchant in his 
 shop, and the husbandman at his plough, were not 
 interrupted in their labors. Yet we cannot sup- 
 pose that the national hatred towards the Roman 
 yoke was laid aside. Under the reign of Trajan, 
 insurrections broke out among the Jews of Cyrena- 
 ica and Egypt, which were soon quelled. Fifty 
 years after the ruin of Jerusalem, Adrian began to 
 rebuild the city, in order to convert it into a hea- 
 then capital ; and probably also with a view to ren- 
 der it a stronghold for keeping in check the national 
 spirit of the Jewish people. This new attempt 
 served as a spark to kindle the long smothered 
 embers of hatred and discontent ; and caused them 
 to burst forth into a flame, which overran and con- 
 sumed both the land and the people with terrible 
 desolation. The leader was the celebrated Bar- 
 cochba, " Son of a Star." His success at first was 
 great ; he soon obtained possession of Jerusalem, 
 and of no less than fifty fortified places, and one 
 hundred and eighty-five important villages. Adrian 
 at length awoke from his lethargy, and troops 
 poured in upon Judea from the remotest quarters 
 
EXEGESIS OF MATT. 21 1 29-31. 161 
 
 of the empire. The Jews were harassed and worn 
 out by degrees ; and the bloody tragedy was at 
 length brought to a close at the unknown city of 
 Bether, in the eighteenth year of Adrian, A. D. 
 135. Thousands and thousands of the captives 
 were sold as slaves at the Terebinth near Hebron, 
 at Gaza, and in Egypt. By a decree of Adrian the 
 Jews were forbidden thenceforth even to approach 
 the Holy City ; and guards were stationed to pre- 
 vent them from making the attempt. This severe 
 decree probably included, or at least effected, the 
 removal of the Jewish inhabitants from Judea. 
 Two centuries later, we find Tertullian speaking of 
 them as still deprived even of a stranger's right to 
 set foot upon their paternal soil. It was not until 
 the days of Constantine, in the fourth century, that 
 they were first allowed again to approach the Holy 
 City, and at length to enter it once a year, and buy 
 the privilege of wailing over the ruins of their for- 
 mer sanctuary. 
 
 Such is an outline of the great final catastrophe 
 of the Jewish people, as it can be collected from the 
 few scattered notices found in ancient foreign wri- 
 ters. These few fragments have been collected 
 
 and arranged by Miinter (already quoted largely in 
 11 
 
162 EXEGESIS OF MATT. 24 I 29-31. 
 
 previous pages of this volume). Had there been a 
 Josephus to give us a history of this war with equal 
 completeness and graphic power, — who can say that 
 the catastrophe, in its magnitude and its horrors, 
 would seem to us in any degree to come short of 
 that of Jerusalem ? 
 
 After these illustrations I may sum up here in 
 a few words the views suggested to my own mind 
 in respect to the discourse of our Lord under con- 
 sideration. In reply to the question of the four 
 disciples — " When shall these things be ? " Jesus 
 first points out what was to happen after his 
 departure, — the trials and dangers to which his 
 followers would be exposed. Then comes "the 
 abomination of desolation ; " Jerusalem is " com- 
 passed by armies," and is " trodden down by the 
 Gentiles ; " all this referring to its desolation by 
 Titus in A. D. 70. Immediately afterwards the 
 Lord would come and establish more fully his spir- 
 itual kingdom, by crushing in terrible destruction 
 the last remnants of the power and name of Ju- 
 daism ; and this within the general limit of a gen- 
 eration of a hundred years from the time when he 
 was speaking. There might therefore, literally, 
 have been some then " standing there, who did not 
 
EXEGESIS OF MATT. XXIV. AKD XXV. 163 
 
 taste of death till they saw the Son of Man (thus) 
 coming in his Kingdom.' 5 Then it was when this 
 first great foe of the Gospel dispensation was to be 
 thus trampled down, that Christians were to look 
 up. " Then look up, and lift up your heads ; for 
 your redemption draweth nigh." The chains of 
 religious despotism, and the terrors of Jewish per- 
 secution, would then be at an end for ever ; and 
 the disciples of Christ, thus far disenthralled and 
 triumphant, might rejoice in the prevalence of the 
 Gospel of peace and love, — which was the coming 
 of Christ's spiritual kingdom upon the earth. 
 
 I will here add a few remarks upon the remain- 
 ing part of our Lord's discourse in the 24th and 
 25th chapters of Matthew. It is well known that 
 commentators differ in respect to what portions of 
 this discourse are to be referred to the destruction 
 of Jerusalem, and what to the judgment-day ; and 
 also as to where the one topic ends and the other 
 begins. Thus Doddridge finds the transition from 
 the former to the latter event in Matt. 24 : 36 ; 
 Flatt and Kuinoel place it at v. 43 ; Eichhorn, 
 in chap 25 : 14 ; and others, as Wetstein, not until 
 chap. 25 : 31. 
 
 All interpreters, of any name, I believe, are 
 
 
164 EXEGESIS OF MATT. 25. 
 
 agreed that the vivid representation in Matt. 25 : 
 31-46, has reference only to the day of final judg- 
 ment. Perhaps an exception may be found among 
 some in this country, who deny the doctrine of fu- 
 ture punishment. But it cannot well be otherwise 
 than evident to every candid mind that if the doc- 
 trine of a future judgment day be found at all in 
 the N. T. it is prominently and expressly asserted 
 in this passage, — a day when all flesh shall rise 
 from the dead and be gathered before the omnis- 
 cient Judge ; when the righteous shall be separated 
 from the wicked ; and every one be rewarded, or 
 punished, according as his works shall be. The 
 same general view is taught also by our Lord in 
 his exposition of the parable of the tares, and in 
 his teaching as recorded by John (Matt. 13 : 40- 
 43 ; John 5 : 28, 29). It is found also in Daniel 
 (12 : 2), and is more fully developed in the writings 
 of Paul and in the Apocalypse. Paul often dwells 
 upon the mighty theme : " For we must all ap- 
 pear before the judgment seat of Christ," etc. 
 (n. Cor. 5 : 10.) In the sublime visions of the Apoc- 
 alypse, the writer " saw the dead, small and great, 
 
 stand before God ; and the books were opened 
 
 and the dead were judged," etc. (Rev. 20: 12 
 seq., 22, 12, etc.) 
 
EXEGESIS OF MATT. 25. 165 
 
 "With all these representations the language be- 
 fore us, in chap. 25 : 31-46, is perfectly accordant ; 
 nor is there any thing either in the circumstances 
 or in the context, to lead us on any philological or 
 historical grounds to a different interpretation of 
 the passage. The 46th verse of itself decides this 
 point: "And these [the wicked] shall go away 
 into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into 
 life eternal." There is no possible way of evading 
 the force of this antithetic declaration, which on 
 the face of it relates to the eternal destiny of 
 mortals as fixed by the judgment day, except by 
 denying the idea of endless duration ascibed t) 
 the word aluvtog; in respect both to future punish- 
 ment and to future life. This is said to be done 
 by some, who denying the doctrine of a state of retri- 
 bution in another world, refer this whole passage to 
 the destruction of Jerusalem ; and are thus ready 
 to barter away the hope of a future life of glory, 
 in order to get rid of the terrors of a future state 
 of punishment. According to them, in this verse, 
 both the condemnation and the promise h re- 
 spect only to this life ; and then it follows, that the 
 life of man, or threescore years and ten, is life 
 eternal. I am unable to see why this is not in 
 
166 • EXEGESIS OF MATT. 25. 
 
 the strictest sense of the term, both philologically 
 and theologically, a reductio ad absurdum. 
 
 This whole passage, then, I hold without doubt 
 to refer to the general judgment. 
 
 Let us now go back to the preceding parable, 
 that of the talents, in Matt. 25 : 14-30. Here the 
 awful scenes of the dread tribunal are not indeed 
 depicted ; yet the subject is the same as before, the 
 great doctrine of final retribution. Here it is the 
 Master who returns after a long absence ; calls his 
 servants to an account; invites those whom he 
 finds worthy to the splendid banquet of rejoicing 
 prepared to celebrate his return ; while he casts out 
 the unfaithful servant into outer darkness and woe. 
 The whole description is entirely consonant to that 
 of the judgment day which follows ; and is not 
 analogous to any representation of the N. T. hav- 
 ing reference merely to matters of this life. 
 
 If we go back now still further to the parable 
 of the Ten Virgins (Matt. 25 : 1-13), we shall find, 
 I think, that it is the great object of the parable to 
 inculcate the same important truth, the acceptance 
 or non-acceptance of those professing to be the fol- 
 lowers of Christ, according to their several charac- 
 ters and deserts, — their admission or non-admission 
 
EXEGESIS OF MATT. 24 AND 25. 167 
 
 to the state of future bliss in the kingdom of God, 
 here depicted under the imagery of a marriage-fes- 
 tival. The same idea of future bliss to the right- 
 eous is expressed by the same imagery in the Apoc- 
 alypse : " Blessed are they which are called unto 
 the marriage-supper of the Lamb " (Rev. 19 : 7-9). 
 Along with this great idea there is also strongly 
 inculcated in this parable the necessity of a constant 
 preparation, with reference to the future judgment 
 and its dread account ; since no man knoweth 
 when the Lord will call him to enter upon this 
 state of retribution. 
 
 Thus far, then, there seems to be no reason why 
 the three different representations contained in 
 chap. 25 should be separated, or not all referred 
 alike to the transactions of the last great day. 
 
 If now we look at the latter portions of the pre- 
 ceding chap. 24:43-51, we find it intimately con- 
 nected with the parable of the Ten Virgins ; so 
 closely, indeed, that the idea of separating the two 
 has apparently never occurred to any interpreter. 
 We have here the same great lesson inculcated, — 
 the necessity of continual watchfulness in the per- 
 formance of duty, under the imagery of servants 
 waiting for their master's return ; who then will 
 
168 EXEGESIS OF matt. 24: 36-42. 
 
 reward the faithful, and punish the slothful and 
 wicked. The punishment, it may here be noted, is 
 expressed in terms similar to these employed in 
 respect to him who hid his lord's talent, in chap. 
 25 : 30. All this seems to furnish a sufficient 
 ground, why we should regard this passage also as 
 having been spoken with reference to the future 
 judgment. 
 
 There now remains to be considered only the 
 passage in Matt. 24 : 36-42. Our Lord, after 
 declaring that his coming to destroy the Jewish 
 nation would take place before that generation 
 should pass away, goes on here to say that " of 
 that day and hour knoweth no one, no, not the 
 angels of heaven, but my Father only." This he 
 illustrates by the example of the deluge ; which, 
 although long predicted by Noah, yet came sud- 
 denly and unexpectedly upon the men of that gen- 
 eration. Hence he urges upon his disciples the 
 necessity of constant watchfulness, in order that, as 
 Luke expresses it, "ye may be accounted worthy to 
 escape all those things that shall come to pass, and 
 to stand (i. e. be approved, not destroyed) before 
 the Son of Man." 
 
 On this passage two remarks present them- 
 
EXEGESIS OF MATT. 24 : 36-42. 169 
 
 selves, which go to show that it is to be connected 
 with what precedes, rather than with what follows ; 
 and is therefore to be taken as referring to the over- 
 throw of Jerusalem and the Jews. 
 
 First, both the grammatical and logical connec- 
 tion of the language itself require it to be so 
 referred. The very expresssion "that (Ukv?/) day 
 and hour" can mean nothing but the day and 
 hour of which our Lord had been speaking, viz., 
 that " coming " of his which should take place before 
 that generation should pass away. It is that com- 
 ing which would be so sudden; for as yet he had 
 here described no other, and therefore his words 
 could apply to no other. 
 
 Secondly, it is somewhat remarkable, that 
 throughout this whole discourse of our Lord thus 
 far (to v. 42), from his departure out of the temple, 
 and through his whole prediction relative to his 
 then immediate coming, the Evangelists Mark and 
 Luke both give parallel reports, serving alike to 
 confirm and to illustrate the language of Matthew ; 
 while at this very point (v. 42) their reports cease. 
 All that follows in this and the next chapter is here 
 given by Matthew alone. Mark no where has any 
 thing corresponding. Luke indeed gives the sub- 
 
170 EXEGESIS OF matt. 24: 36-42. 
 
 sequent charge to watch (ts. 43-51) in a different 
 place and connection ; and also elsewhere the par- 
 able of the talents (Luke 12 : 39, seq. The par- 
 able of the talents is found in Luke 19 : 12, seq.). 
 But the parable of the Ten Virgins and the descrip- 
 tion of the last day, are found only in Matthew. 
 All this goes to show that Mark and Luke intended 
 to report the language now under consideration as 
 connected with what precedes ; inasmuch as they 
 give nothing further. It goes also to show that 
 they regarded the discourse of our Lord, up to this 
 point, as a whole, having reference to his coming 
 for the overthrow of Judaism ; and also that the 
 subject, which thus far was one, was here com- 
 pleted. 
 
 It follows, then, that our Lord, as further 
 reported by Matthew, here takes up (with v. 43) a 
 new topic ; which thus apparently begins, as it evi- 
 dently ends, with the enforcement of the duty of 
 watchfulness upon all, in reference to the terms of 
 their acceptance with God, and of their admission 
 to the Messiah's kingdom, when he shall come to 
 judge the world, and reign in bliss and glory. 
 
BECAPITULATION OF THE AKGUMENT. 171 
 
 PAKT IV. 
 
 Let us sum up the considerations, then, that 
 go to prove the " Second Catastrophe " in as few 
 words as possible. The disappearance of the Jew- 
 ish nation, at the time and in the manner already 
 described, cannot be reasonably questioned. They 
 were in being at the time Jerusalem was destroyed 
 by Titus, in ri'umber about six millions. That 
 number was not greatly diminished in that war. 
 With about that number it commenced the stormy 
 and disastrous period of sixty-five years which im- 
 mediately followed, at the end of which not one 
 million of souls can be found. This state of things 
 must have been as distinctly seen, and as fully 
 known by the Saviour when on the Mount of 
 Olives, conversing with his disciples, as was the 
 first catastrophe — the destruction of the city and 
 temple by Titus. Would it not be, therefore, a 
 most injurious and unjust reflection upon our Sa- 
 viour's character to suppose that he would inform 
 
172 RECAPITULATION OF THE ARGUMENT. 
 
 the disciples of the first series, and not of the last, 
 of these calamities, especially since the last series 
 was incomparably the more disastrous ? 
 
 Again, no reasonable construction can be put 
 upon Matt. 24 : 29-46, but that which involves 
 just this result. The event to which we referred 
 was to take place within one hundred years of the 
 time when he was speaking (A. D. 33), and that 
 nation fought its last battle A. D. 135. The Lord 
 Jesus Christ, in adopting the imagery which we 
 find him using in Matt. 24 : 29-31, evidently in- 
 timates that the ancient prophets for nearly a 
 thousand years pointed to this natidhal catastrophe. 
 And, finally, such a catastrophe was in harmony 
 with the decisions of divine wisdom and justice. 
 That nation, more honored than any other, in that 
 it had given birth to the Messiah, had committed 
 the greatest sin that any nation could be guilty of 
 in " crucifying the Lord of life and glory." The 
 wisdom and the justice of God are therefore con- 
 spicuous in the terrible punishments to which, as 
 we have seen, that guilty nation was, as a nation, 
 subjected in the first and the second century. 
 
 Our last argument in favor of the interpretation 
 we have maintained, is derived from the prophetic 
 
ARGUMENT FROM THE BOOK OF DANIEL. 173 
 
 portions of the Book of Daniel, and from the 
 Apocalypse. 
 
 It is an important fact that no two commenta- 
 tors, with whom we are acquainted, have ever 
 agreed in the interpretation of the prophetic parts 
 of these two Books. This want of agreement may 
 be referred in the main to two causes. The first we 
 believe to be a want of attention to the fact that 
 the authors of those books wrote under extreme 
 restraint. Both were in exile and in bondage. It 
 was known to both as an absolute certainty, that 
 if what they wrote were to be understood as ap- 
 plicable, either directly or indirectly, to the times in 
 which they lived, or to the powers which held them 
 in bondage, their lives, however important to their 
 country and to Christianity, would certainly be for- 
 feited. Hence they adopted the method of writing 
 in cipher : that is, they employed arbitrary, and in 
 general unknown, terms, in the communication of 
 their thoughts. What they designed to communi- 
 cate to their own nation and to their own times 
 would be readily understood by the people for whom 
 they wrote, while to their deadly enemies, in whose 
 power they were, the language would be obscure, 
 if not unintelligible, though it referred most directly 
 
174 ARGUMENT FROM THE BOOK OF DANIEL. 
 
 to themselves. In confirmation of this, the reader 
 is referred to Dan. 12 : 10 — " None of the wicked 
 shall understand, but the wise shall understand ; " 
 the term wise being used by the prophet to desig- 
 nate those who are truly the people of God (v. 3). 
 Nor is there any thing wrong in this manner of 
 writing, if we look at the circumstances in which 
 those men were placed. They both knew with ab- 
 solute certainty that if they came out and distinctly 
 announced the names and characters to whom they 
 referred, it would unquestionably cost them their 
 lives. This is especially true of the writer of the 
 Apocalypse. Daniel has expressly affirmed that 
 he " heard but he understood not " (v. 8), so impor- 
 tant was it that his message to the people of God 
 should be faithfully delivered, yet couched in lan- 
 guage which their enemies could not decipher, 
 that it is delivered even to Daniel in that charac- 
 ter. He could not tell what was the import of 
 those singular designations of time, such as are re- 
 corded in ch. 12 : 11-12 — " And from the time that 
 the daily sacrifice shall be taken away, and the 
 abomination that maketh desolate set up, there shall 
 be a thousand two hundred and ninety days " — 
 three years and a half, or very nearly. " Blessed 
 
ARGUMENT FROM THE BOOK OF DANIEL. 175 
 
 is he that waiteth and cometh to the thousand three 
 hundred and five and thirty days," — three years 
 and two-thirds or more. 
 
 These designations of time are found to refer 
 most accurately to that fearful war which put an 
 end to the Jewish nation. "The daily sacrifice" 
 would of course cease, as soon as the period had 
 arrived for the nation to die ; and " the abomina- 
 tion that maketh desolate " would be the divine 
 announcement that that period had arrived. 
 
 The different visions granted to this prophet, 
 as any one may see, are not recorded, in the book 
 before us, in the order in w T hich they obviously oc- 
 curred. Those which announced the destruction 
 of the Chaldean capital and the Chaldean nation 
 were the first which he saw. From these the tran- 
 sition to the future condition of his own nation and 
 people, inasmuch as there were many points that 
 were strikingly analogous, became very natural 
 and easy ; so much so that Jerusalem itself came to 
 be spoken of under the name of Babylon, especially 
 in the Apocalypse. 
 
 But here I must request the reader to notice 
 particularly the manner in which the prophet be- 
 fore us unquestionably refers to the coming of Christ, 
 
176 AKGUMENT FROM THE BOOK OF DANIEL. 
 
 and to the signs and wonders which announced his 
 advent (chap. 7 : 13) — " I saw in the night visions, 
 and, behold, one like to the Son of Man came with 
 the clouds of heaven." Then, mark the manner 
 in which Christ himself refers to this declaration, 
 Matt. 24 : 29, 30 — " Immediately after the tribula- 
 tion of those days, the sun shall be darkened, and 
 the moon shall not give her light : and they shall 
 see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven 
 with power and great glory." Can there be any 
 doubt that both these passages refer to one and the 
 same event. The Lord Jesus Christ must be re- 
 garded as a correct expounder of Scripture. If so, 
 the vision which Daniel had, and which is recorded 
 in the 7th chap, of Daniel, most clearly referred to 
 the calamities which were coming upon the nation 
 of the Jews, and which Christ declares should come 
 "immediately after" the first catastrophe — the 
 destruction of the city and temple by Titus. I feel 
 compelled to regard this entire vision as having ref- 
 erence to those scenes and events which were to 
 follow " immediately '' upon the occurrence of this 
 first visitation of the Son of Man — events which 
 we have every where regarded as forming the 
 second coming of Christ. 
 
ARGUMENT FROM THE BOOK OF DANIEL. 177 
 
 The effort of this prophet to conceal his full 
 meaning from those enemies of God by which he 
 was surrounded, while at the same time " the wise 
 should understand," is not indeed as obvious as it 
 is in the Apocalypse, where the writer regards him- 
 self as living on the very eve of those calamitous 
 times. His complaints, that he cannot understand 
 what he is obliged to utter, are very frequent, and, 
 we may add, very sore. Not so with him who is 
 an exile in the isle of Patmos ; he thoroughly un- 
 derstands the vision. " Behold I come quickly " 
 is at once apprehended, and he exclaims with rap- 
 ture, " Even so come, Lord Jesus." 
 
 But Daniel must use the imagery which he has 
 adopted throughout, in order that he may be per- 
 mitted to say what he has seen in vision ; and what 
 he distinctly perceives has a direct reference, pri- 
 marily, to the nation to which he and many of his 
 people are in bondage. There is such a marked 
 resemblance between Babylon on the eve of destruc- 
 tion, and Jerusalem when John wrote, that the rec- 
 ords of the one may almost be taken for the other. 
 But both are written under marked restraints. 
 Despotism, enthroned in Chaldea, held the sword 
 
 pointed at the heart of Daniel ; and a bloody and 
 12 
 
178 ARGUMENT FROM THE BOOK OF DANIEL. 
 
 relentless tyrant stood ready to demand the execu- 
 tion of John, upon the utterance of the first sen- 
 tence which could be fairly construed against the 
 Roman power. 
 
 So distinct and evident is this feature in the 
 7th chapter especially, that infidelity has affirmed 
 " it is in fact no prophecy, but history." Events 
 that are here foretold so obviously accord with 
 those which actually took place, that obstinate 
 unbelief could find no other explanation than to 
 say " the book is no prophecy, but a history ; a rec- 
 ord of events that had already taken place." 
 
 Let us look then a little more particularly at 
 this 7th chapter of Daniel. The first six chapters 
 are historical ; easily understood, of course ; while 
 the other six are as evidently prophetic^ and in their 
 interpretation attended with great difficulty. 
 
 In following out the method which the prophet 
 had adopted, he says, he " saw in a vision by night 
 the four winds of heaven striving upon the great 
 sea." The import of which seems to be that he 
 saw all the then known world in strife for the mas- 
 tery ; the result of which was the appearance of 
 " four great beasts that came up out of the sea." 
 These are afterwards explained to be " four kings 
 
ARGUMENT FROM THE BOOK OF DANIEL. 179 
 
 which were to arise out of the earth." The first 
 beast was "like a lion;" this was the Chaldean 
 monarchy. The second was "like a bear;" this 
 was the Persian. The third " like a leopard ; " this 
 was the Grecian. The fourth beast was like none 
 he had even seen or heard of; it was one "therefore 
 to which he could give no name. There can be no 
 doubt that here was the representation of the 
 Roman empire. 
 
 The prophet says he was employed in observing 
 these beasts " till the thrones were overturned and 
 the Ancient of days did sit;" i. e. he was em- 
 ployed in contemplating this vision in reference to 
 the beasts, till he saw " the king of kings and Lord 
 of lords " ascend his throne, and proceed to gather 
 around him the heavenly hosts, with a view to pun- 
 ish his enemies and protect his friends. The judg- 
 ment here spoken of was evidently not the general 
 judgment, as it is called — that which is gathered at 
 the last day, but it is the period when, as he says 
 in v. 13, he " saw in the night- visions one like unto 
 the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven," 
 to destroy the Jewish nation. Here notice that the 
 same imagery is employed as that which our Sav- 
 iour used in pointing out the " end of the age," or 
 the second coming of the Son of Man. 
 
180 ARGUMENT FROM THE BOOK OF DANIEL. 
 
 When, in the explanation given by the angel 
 (chap. 8 : 15-27) the " two horns upon the ram " 
 are said to be " the kings of Media and Persia," we 
 are to understand that these are taken as represen- 
 tations of that power which was to overthrow the 
 nation of the Jews. The fearful catastrophe which 
 awaited that unhappy people is still kept before 
 them. Not one of the prophets that follow can 
 close his mission without referring to a certain 
 unknown period in the dark future, sometimes 
 called "the day of the Lord/' and sometimes, as in 
 the passage before us, "the time of the end." 
 Every one who was commissioned to "loose the 
 seals of God's decrees, and gaze on things un- 
 known" to common men, must speak of an 
 approaching "end" as an event in which that 
 nation, if not the world, was most deeply inter- 
 ested. 
 
 Nor have we a single vision in which, in some 
 form or other, that power which was to overthrow 
 the Jewish nation and bring them to that fearful 
 end which awaited them is not mentioned. In fact 
 " the burden of the word of the Lord " from this 
 time forth, as it had been in the days of Isaiah, Eze- 
 kiel, and Jeremiah, was the demolition of that 
 
ARGUMENT FROM THE BOOK OF DANIEL. 181 
 
 stately structure which God had reared at such vast 
 expense, and the establishment of a kingdom which 
 should not be overthrown. But the chief instru- 
 ment in the hands of God for the accomplishment 
 of such a purpose, is every where referred to in 
 terms that should have made the Jewish ear tingle. 
 In the vision we have just considered (Dan. 7) this 
 monster was so formidable that Inspiration itself 
 durst not venture a description ; and in this which 
 we are now considering he makes his appearance 
 again, as one whose mission it was to " stand up " 
 " when the transgressors are come to the full," i. e. 
 " when the cup of their iniquity is filled," " a king 
 of a fierce countenance," and one "that understood 
 dark sentences;" whose mission would end in 
 " destruction of the holy people." His last and 
 most heinous act would be, that he would " stand 
 up against the Prince of princes." 
 
 Now it may be confidently affirmed that no 
 one ignorant of the portion of Jewish history 
 given in preceding pages, can decide correctly as 
 to the person here referred to. He may determine 
 upon Antiochus Epiphanes, or Alexander, or any 
 other one, but he will find that there are statements 
 made concerning him which can not be reconciled 
 
182 ARGUMENT FROM THE BOOK OF DANIEL. 
 
 with any of these conclusions. On the contrary, 
 when he opens the history we have quoted, and 
 reads of Bar-cochba, "the Son of a Star," as he 
 vainly called himself, he perceives at once that he 
 has found the right man. The boundless wicked- 
 ness of his whole life, the unutterable blasphemies 
 which he sanctioned, and the gross deceptions which 
 he practised upon the Jews, led them at length to 
 change his name to Bar-coziba, "the Son of a Lie." 
 He made his appearance among them at a time 
 when they greatly needed an earthly leader, and 
 he gained their confidence to an unlimited extent. 
 But he betrayed that confidence. He led them 
 into inextricable difficulties, and to the very verge 
 of extermination. 
 
 Through all the visions that follow, even to 
 the end of the prophecy, you may trace the history 
 of that awful period which to the Jews was now 
 approaching; a day drawing nigh, when, in the 
 language of Christ, those were to be regarded as 
 peculiarly blessed who should leave behind them 
 no posterity. Select any one of these visions, and 
 observe the imagery employed by the sacred writer 
 — his metaphors, similes or illustrations, and you 
 will find in the history we have given the per- 
 
ARGUMENT FEOM THE BOOK OF DANIEL. 183 
 
 sonage or the event brought before you in the 
 prophecy. The four beasts that emerged from the 
 great sea, brought into confusion and st>rife, are at 
 first said to be kings ; but they represent four ot 
 the chief persecutors or oppressors of the people 
 of God which were to arise from that " great sea " 
 of strife. 
 
 So strong is the current of divine influence 
 which pressed upon the mind of Daniel, that, as he 
 assures us, he sinks fainting and sick, and is unable 
 to pursue his business for many days ; for he was 
 astonished at the vision, " but none understood it." 
 Beginning with the prophet Isaiah, God had sought 
 by every practicable method to turn the eye of his 
 people to their approaching end; and, not until 
 He had made his appearance for whom all things 
 were created, did the Jews seem capable of un- 
 derstanding those events which plainly heralded 
 their doom. 
 
 As we read the N. T. we are often astonished 
 at the sluggishness of intellect or of heart which 
 characterized the disciples, when listening to the 
 instructions of the Saviour, concerning either his 
 death, or the end of the age. But after his resur- 
 rection their faith and intelligence improved. 
 
184 ARGUMENT FROM THE BOOK OF DANIEL. 
 
 Then we find them believing that " the day of the 
 Lord is at hand." Throughout the Epistles and 
 ;he Apocalypse there is increasing evidence that 
 they regard " the coming of the Lord Jesus " as at 
 the door. And they seem as anxious to persuade 
 the world that the day of the Lord draweth nigh ? 
 as the Saviour himself was to convince them of 
 this truth they had been ready to believe him, if 
 he would permit them to understand by the " day 
 of the Lord," a day when " he would restore the 
 kingdom to Israel ; " but when he meant by his 
 " coming " a day of judicial visitation — a day in 
 which he should crush his enemies, whether Jew 
 or Gentile, they could not understand him. 
 
 That sluggishness of heart which we complain 
 of in the original disciples, has travelled down from 
 that period to our own of the present day. Men 
 seem as unwilling now to understand by his " com- 
 ing" a visitation of wrath, as then. They have 
 forgotten that " the day of the Lord " may not be 
 desirable, especially to his enemies. While all the 
 prophets adopt substantially similar imagery when 
 speaking of the coming of Christ — imagery that 
 implies a fearful catastrophe — the disciples of " Sec- 
 ond Adventism " understand him as engaging to 
 
ARGUMENT FROM THE APOCALYPSE. 185 
 
 spend a literal thousand years on the earth, per- 
 sonally going about and instructing his people, 
 healing all diseases, removing all maladies, and thus 
 preparing the way for the days of millennial glory. 
 
 The writer of the Apocalypse, when he ven- 
 tures to name or designate the monster of whom 
 he had been speaking, and on whom he had be- 
 stowed the title of "beast," he gives us the arith- 
 metical number to which the letters composing 
 his name will amount (666), and bids the reader 
 find oat by his learning who is meant. Had he 
 affirmed in so many words that he meant Nero, or 
 had he spoken of him in a way which could have 
 been easily seen and understood as applicable to 
 that monster, he would have written little after- 
 wards. His life, so important to the people of 
 God and to the age in w r hich he lived, would not 
 have been safe. He must w r rite, therefore, as 
 Daniel did, so that " the wise " alone (meaning 
 his own people) can understand. 
 
 Another consideration, setting forth the diffi- 
 culty attending a literal understanding of the word, 
 is seen in what the author of the Apocalypse has 
 left on record in respect to the New Jerusalem. 
 The ancient city of that honorable name was fast 
 
186 ARGUMENT FROM THE APOCALYPSE. 
 
 passing away, and he is permitted to see the New 
 Jerusalem " coming down from God, adorned as a 
 bride for her husband." He describes this city — 
 its foundations, its gates, each a separate part ; its 
 streets, pure gold, transparent as glass ; its length, 
 12,000 furlongs (1,500 miles); its breadth, the 
 same ; and its height, the same. It is, therefore, 
 a perfect cube, 1,500 miles on every side ! This 
 city is seen descending out of heaven, settling down 
 upon the land of Palestine — a land, w^hich in its 
 greatest breadth measures but little over one hun- 
 dred miles ; yet this great city, understood liter- 
 ally, 1,500 miles on every side, in length, breadth 
 and height, is seen coming down upon the land of 
 Palestine. 
 
 We waste our time, however, in any attempt to 
 refute a literal interpretation. The fact is plainly 
 this : the advocates of this theory invariably adopt 
 that principle only so far as it seems to suit their 
 case, but when it begins to bear upon them unfavor- 
 ably they are quite ready to abandon it and to 
 adopt some other. 
 
 In the further discussion of this subject, we 
 notice one feature, which, as it pervades the whole 
 book, must be regarded as a very important one, 
 
ARGUMENT FROM THE APOCALYPSE. 187 
 
 especially since Christ dwelt so much upon it. I 
 refer to the declaration that the time for thefulfiU 
 merit of the prediction was near at hand. In vari- 
 ous forms the announcement is made that the evils 
 predicted would soon be experienced. Even our 
 Lord brings forward this assurance so frequently 
 that we come to regard him as speaking of the 
 brevity of human life, when he is obviously refer- 
 ring to a very different subject. The " coming of 
 the Son of Man," how often does Christ compare it 
 to the coming of a thief, i. e., unexpectedly, 
 unlooked for, at a time of supposed security ? 
 
 The appeal is now made to the reader to decide 
 whether it is consistent with facts to admit that the 
 events for which Christ and his apostles exhorted 
 the men of their generation to look, and watch, and 
 wait, as being near at hand, have not yet taken 
 place. If the Second Adventist — the believer in a 
 personal, actual coming of Christ, to reign with his 
 people a thousand years before the Millennium — will 
 here inform us of the view which he takes of this 
 subject, we may be relieved. If he shall say that 
 the prediction relates to the day of judgment — that 
 day for which all days were made — we have a right 
 to ask him to account for the declarations of Christ 
 
188 ARGUMENT FROM THE APOCALYPSE. 
 
 that the generation then on earth should not pass 
 away till all he had predicted should be fulfilled. 
 Eighteen centuries have passed since those fearful 
 words were uttered, and the judgment " is not yet." 
 More than fifty generations — understood as we now 
 use that term — have passed away, and the event 
 which he assured us was at the door, has not yet 
 made its appearance. Evidently he did not refer 
 to the judgment. 
 
 On the other hand, the Second Adventist will 
 not say that Christ has actually come, and person- 
 ally been on the earth a thousand years, reigning 
 with the saints. That catastrophe which was to be 
 heralded by the " coming of the Son of Man in the 
 clouds of heaven," has certainly not taken place, 
 unless it occurred before the generation then on 
 earth (calling a generation a hundred years) had 
 passed away. 
 
 In perfect harmony with this is every allusion 
 to that event, whatever it may be, both in the 
 instructions of Christ arud in the various Epis- 
 tles. Not once do they refer to it without employ- 
 ing expressive terms to signify its near approach, 
 and the importance of being prepared for it. The 
 same course is pursued by the author of the Apoc- 
 
ARGUMENT FROM THE APOCALYPSE. 189 
 
 alypse. If possible he is more explicit. His eye 
 is ever turned on the future, as if he saw at no great 
 distance an event which, in importance, should 
 never be surpassed in the history of that nation 
 and of the world. His last words are expressive of 
 what he had sought to impress on the mind of the 
 reader from the first ; and these are spoken as com- 
 ing from the Lord Jesus himself : " Behold I come 
 quickly ; blessed is he that keepeth the sayings of 
 the prophecy ot this book. And he saith unto me, 
 Seal not the sayings of the prophecy of this book, 
 for the time is at hand. And behold I come 
 quickly, and my reward is with me, to give every 
 man according as his work shall be. He who tes- 
 tifieth these things, saith, Surely I come quickly : 
 amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus." 
 
 Now is it credible that such language as this 
 should be employed in reference to an event which, 
 for a certainty, we know must have been at least 
 1,800 years distant, if that event was what the Sec- 
 ond Adventist makes it — a personal coming of 
 Christ ? And, besides, what is the fitness of such 
 solemn warnings to be ready for the coming of the 
 Son of Man, if that is to be a most merciful visita- 
 tion, viz., to dwell with his people here on earth a 
 
190 ARGUMENT FROM THE APOCALYPSE. 
 
 thousand years, thus personally introducing the 
 Millennium — an event greatly to be desired — not 
 dreaded ? The inference is unavoidable. Our Sav- 
 iour referred to a very different event — one of 
 frightful import to the Jewish nation and to the 
 world, and which has been brought to view in the 
 history already quoted. The demise of the Jewish 
 nation, the coming of Christ to punish that nation 
 capitally^ is beyond all question the theme which 
 is begun and pursued throughout the Apocalypse. 
 The Jewish nation, in rejecting Christ, had filled 
 up the measure of its iniquity. There was nothing 
 wanting to complete its ruin when it cast its vote 
 for Barabbas instead of Christ. The only service it 
 could subsequently yield to the world, must be fur- 
 nished in the death-throes of its approaching end. 
 Hence the labors of the prophets, from Isaiah down, 
 to prepare them for the day of the Lord ; hence the 
 repeated and solemn warnings of Christ to watch, 
 and pray, and wait, with loins girt, and lamps 
 trimmed, in hourly expectation of his speedy com- 
 ing. Hence the labors of the writer of the Apoca- 
 lypse, almost the first sentence of which is an assur- 
 ance that the things which had been given to Jesus 
 Christ to show unto his servants "must shortly 
 
AKGUMENT FROM THE APOCALYPSE. 191 
 
 come to pass." And hence, we may add, whatever 
 his theme in any part of his testimony, he fails not 
 to warn that nation that the end draweth nigh. 
 
 What was that end ? Was it the triumph of 
 Christianity — the full and complete emancipation 
 of the servants of God from the bondage of sin 
 and from the oppressions of their bitter enemies ? 
 These events were indeed to take place, but they 
 were not the main things in view. The advent of 
 Him who is again announced as He " that cometh 
 with clouds" was for a more terrible purpose than 
 to remove from the power of the unbelieving Jew 
 the victims of his relentless persecution. Hence 
 he is summoned to anticipate such an event : "and 
 every eye shall see Him, and they who pierced 
 Him," and " all kindreds of the earth (tt?s y^, the 
 land) shall wail because of Him " — all the inhabi- 
 tants of the land of Palestine. The whole book is 
 to be regarded as a prophetic announcement of the 
 end of the Jewish nation and polity — an end which 
 was reached in the slaughter of five or six millions 
 of that unhappy people in the course of a single 
 century, and was indicated in the prophetic warn- 
 ings of our Saviour which are recorded in the twen- 
 ty-fourth chapter of Matthew, already considered. 
 
192 ARGUMENT FROM THE APOCALYPSE. 
 
 " The loosing of Satan for a little season " refers to 
 the last and most fearful rebellion of the Jews; 
 and his going out to deceive the nations in the four 
 quarters of the earth, to gather them together for 
 battle, has been illustrated in the foregoing history 
 of the Jews in the second century, as that bloody 
 struggle which lasted three years and a half. 
 
 The nationality of the Jews being then com- 
 pletely destroyed, John next beholds the dead, 
 small and great, before God ; the books are opened ; 
 and all are judged ; the sea gives up the dead which 
 were in it ; death and hell, the same ; and every 
 man is judged according to his works. All that 
 were held in bondage of death and hell were cast 
 into the lake of fire, and whosoever was not found 
 written in the book of life. 
 
 Thus a vision which embraced the Jews and 
 their enemies for a little season, ends with the de- 
 struction of all who are the enemies of God, the 
 rescue and safety of his people (the followers of 
 Christ), and the end of all things here below. Like 
 many a vision which was imparted to the prophets 
 of the Old Testament, it begins with scenes which 
 are intended to represent (or symbolize) those 
 of the general judgment, ending with that fearful 
 
ARGUMENT FROM THE APOCALYPSE. 193 
 
 day itself, in all its solemn and momentous conse- 
 quences. 
 
 ~No subject was ever more mysterious than 
 that which was presented to the mind of John. 
 The nation which God had selected from the na- 
 tions of the earth as the recipients of most distin- 
 guished favors, — from whence sprang the prophets 
 and the Messiah himself, — that this nation should be 
 subjugated by Pagans, be made " hewers of wood 
 and drawers of water " to a nation of God's ene- 
 mies ; that their city should be demolished, their 
 temple desecrated and destroyed, and finally the 
 nation itself blotted out of existence, was so con- 
 trary to the expectations of the Jews, — so wide 
 from the career which the descendant of Abraham 
 had marked out for himself and his people, — that 
 he could not believe it. Other nations might be 
 trodden down and destroyed, but surely God would 
 not suffer His elect to be thus treated. 
 
 Nothing could be more probable therefore than 
 a revelation, on the part of Heaven, of this great 
 mystery. Hence the whole plan and development 
 of the Apocalypse. John must write, as we have 
 said, "in cipher." The persecuting, relentless 
 power, then grinding the nation to dust, must not 
 13 
 
194 CONCLUSION. 
 
 be named Roman, but under the figure of "the 
 beast/' The reckless impostor who was to lead 
 the Jews in their last rebellion, and to their final 
 ruin, must not be known in the record by his 
 proper name, " Bar-cochba," as it was, but by that 
 of " the false prophet." " The lake that burned 
 with fire and brimstone " was simply the unutter- 
 able destruction into which the enemies of God 
 and the persecutors of Christians were soon to be 
 hurled, and was only emblematic of that future and 
 eternal destruction that awaited the enemies of 
 Christ. 
 
 The Second Adventist, therefore, who is look- 
 ing for the literal and personal appearing of the 
 Lord from heaven, is very much like the Jew wait- 
 ing for the promised Messiah. He should be look- 
 ing backwards, not forwards. Things that are 
 past can be seen only by looking in that direction. 
 The future promises the universal triumph of the 
 Gospel — the spiritual reign of Christ, when " the 
 knowledge of the Lord shall cover the earth as the 
 waters do the seas." The Gospel has not yet 
 proved a failure. The world is much better and 
 much wiser than it was a century ago. All the 
 great changes that have taken place in science, 
 
CONCLUSION. 195 
 
 literature, and art, are favorable to the progress of 
 Christianity. We have shown that Christ, by his 
 " coming," meant, in the first instance, his visita- 
 tion for the destruction of Jerusalem and its tem- 
 ple; that in the second instance, "immediately 
 after the tribulations" occasioned by this event, 
 he designated the destruction of the Jewish na- 
 tion ; and in the third instance, " when he should 
 come in the glory of the Father, with all the holy 
 angels," it should be to judge the world. These 
 are the three catastrophes to which he directed the 
 attention of his disciples on the Mount of Olives. 
 As two are past, one only remains — that of the 
 Final Judgment. The writer and the reader will 
 be there. Both shall then know that in respect 
 to "the times and seasons" of which we have 
 written, two of them have long since passed ; while 
 as to the third, or last, " the end is not yet." 
 
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