Читать онлайн "Jews and Greeks in ancient Cyrene" - Эпплбаум Шимон - RuLit

The aim of the destruction of pagan cults and images does not constitute a problem if the general objects of the movement are considered. The Maccabees[1793] and the activists of 66-70[1794] behaved in much the same fashion. The educated pagan was doubtless equal to doubting whether his cult-images were more than symbols of the deities he worshipped, but the written testimony must be interpreted to mean that the simple Greek and Roman saw in the image the god himself. Plato writes:[1795] “We behold the laws of the gods clearly and honour them, setting up images and statues in their honour, and although they are not alive when we worship them, we consider them to be the living gods themselves, who extend to us abundant good will and grace on that account.” In case we should think that Plato’s words applied only to the 4th century B.C., but not to the 2nd century of the current era, we have the words of Plutarch, priest of Delphi (A.D. 120-146): “As philosophers claim, those who do not learn to understand names correctly misuse things also; like those Greeks who, not having studied, are in the habit of calling bronze objects, paintings and things of stone, not statues or offerings to the gods, but ‘gods’, and even dare to say that Lachares clothed Athena, and that Dionysius trimmed the golden curls of Apollo.”[1796]

Even after the middle of the 2nd century A.D., when the Jewish scholars had begun to take a more lenient view’ of statues, distinguishing between those used for idolatrous worship and those designed for mere ornament — since they no longer feared that Jews would be led astray by images — they nevertheless persisted in their austere attitude to all images of the emperors and all actions associated with their cult.[1797] But in the earlier 2nd century they had not yet reached leniency even in spheres outside the imperial cult, and, clearly, the revolutionary activists even less so. Even subsequently, we hear of R. Nahum ben Samai at the end of the 2nd century, who refused to look upon a coin because it bore the image of Caesar.[1798] The degree of courage and hostility vis-a-vis the alien power involved in the smashing of the idols is made clear by the testimony of John of Ephesus,[1799] who relates that as late as the year 572 the statues of Trajan were still standing in Persia, and the Persians feared to pass by them. But we should not think that iconoclastic actions were confined to the Jews. Occasionally imperial statues became the targets of other rebels in times of revolt. Thus we find at Bath in Britain an inscription of the 2nd or 3rd century, which reads: Locum religiosum per insolentiam dirutum virtuti et n(umini) Aug(usti) repurgatum reddidit C. Severius Emeritus centurio reg(ionarius).[1800] Plutarch too, after the extract already quoted, proceeds to refer to “the statue of Zeus Capitolinus which was burnt and destroyed in the civil war.”[1801] The Res gestae Divi Augusti tell us that M. Antony plundered numerous dedications, including statues, from the temples of Asia, although this desecration did not reach the point of destroying the images themselves.[1802]

The destruction of gentile settlements becomes increasingly clear as the excavation of the city of Cyrene progresses, and details amounting to a comprehensive picture of what occurred in the province have been assembled above. The work of destruction embraces most of the country, despite the defectiveness of our information on various settlements. The picture at Alexandria and Salamis is similar. It is hard not to see in this destruction, more especially in Cyrene and Cyprus, judging by the number of casualties which occurred there, the result of a premeditated plan, and the systematic character of the demolition at Cyrene (e.g. the felling of the internal columns of the Temple of Zeus and of the peristasis of the Temple of Apollo) does not dispel the impression. Both this writer and Professor Fuks[1803] have put forward a reason for this work of destruction: it was a corollary of the determination to abandon the lands of the Diaspora and to concentrate in Eretz Yisrael. But it was also directed against certain factors, and the question is, against which? — The Greeks, the Romans, or all idolators indiscriminately? Many scholars tend, relying on ancient sources, to see the Jewish effort as directed first and foremost against the Greeks.[1804] Their view finds support in the texts of Eusebius,[1805] Orosius,[1806] and Syncellus.[1807] There is no doubt, of course, that a great proportion of the victims of the events in Cyrenaica, Cyprus and Alexandria, were Greek-speakers, because they were the inhabitants of the urban centres where the revolt raged most violently. But the revolt blazed up also in the Egyptian countryside, and in two places at least we hear of collisions between the Egyptian villagers and the Jewish insurgents.[1808] In Alexandria the rising appears as a continuation of the constant clashes between Greeks and Jews which were a recurrent phenomenon during the ist century A.D., but this does not prove that only the Greeks were the objects of Jewish hostility. We do not hear, for instance, of the spread of the movement to Greek Asia Minor, where anti-Semitism had manifested itself in the early days of the Empire,[1809] and an anti-Jewish literature existed much like that in Egypt.[1810] In Babylonia, as emerges from the revolt of Seleucia against Trajan, Jews and Greeks shared a common front against Rome. We must therefore conclude that only in the Hellenic-Roman cities was the Jewish onslaught directed against the Greeks, as they were the majority, and because the Jewish urban communities were concentrated in the hellenized cities of the eastern Empire. But the leaders of the insurgents must have known perfectly well that they had no prospect of defeating the Greeks, or any other community, without colliding with the Roman power. The very scope of the rebellion shows that the movement made no distinction between Greek and Roman, hence its purpose was to destroy not only the pagan cults, but also the Roman government. It is hard to think, however, that the insurgents hoped to overthrow the entire Roman Empire at one blow; their immediate objective seems to have been Eretz Yisrael. This is the meaning of the Cyrenean Jewish advance upon Egypt, their struggle for the Delta junction at Memphis, Lukuas’ break-in to Eretz Yisrael, and Lulianus’ and Pappus’ organization of Jewish infiltration from Cyprus to Syria and Judaea. It may indeed be supposed, on the evidence of the Apocalyptic literature, that the ingathering of the exiles to Eretz Yisrael was regarded as a precondition of the messianic kingdom. This aim, inspired by expectation of the Messiah, is expressed in its clearest form in an Egyptian-Jewish source — in the writings of Philo Judaeus,[1811] who says: “And even if (the Jews) are slaves at the ends of the world under the enemies who have led them captive — at one signal and in one day all of them shall be freed, and their unanimous conversion to virtue will strike their masters with amazement... and when this unexpected liberation comes, they, who were originally scattered over Greece and the barbarian lands, over islands and continents, shall arise with one impulse, hastening from all quarters to the destination shown to them, with a divine insight beyond the power of human nature, invisible to others and visible only to them, as they pass from exile to their motherland... and as they go, the ruins shall become cities again and the ravaged land shall become fruitful.”