Section 7. The Fiery Eruption on Julian's attempt to rebuild the Jewish Temple{334} 195. BISHOP WARBURTON, as is well known, has written in defence of the miraculous character of the earthquake and fiery eruption which defeated the attempt of the Emperor Julian to rebuild the Jewish Temple. Though in many most important respects he shows his dissent from the view of the Ecclesiastical Miracles taken in these pages, yet the propositions which he lays down in the commencement of his work are precisely those which it has been here attempted to maintain; first, "that not all the miracles recorded in Church history are forgeries or delusions;" next, "that their evidence doth not stand on the same foot of credit with the miracles recorded in Gospel history." In drawing out the facts and the evidence of the miracle in question, I shall avail myself of the work of this learned and able writer, with which I agree in the main, though of course there is room for difference of opinion, both as regards the details of the one and the other, and as regards the view to be taken of them. {335} 196. In the year 363, Julian, in the course of his systematic hostilities against Christianity, determined to rebuild the Temple at Jerusalem. The undertaking was conducted on a magnificent scale, large sums being assigned out of the public revenue for its execution. Alypius, an intimate friend of Julian, was set over the work; the Jews aided him with a vast collection of materials and of workmen. Both sexes, all ranks, took part in the labour, entering upon the ruins, clearing away the rubbish, and laying bare the foundations [Note 1]. What followed is attested by a number of authorities, who agree with each other in all substantial respects, though, as was to be expected, no single writer relates every one of the particulars. First, we have the contemporary testimony of the Pagan historian Ammianus Marcellinus, and we may add of Julian himself; then of St. Gregory Nazianzen [Note 2], St. Ambrose, and St. Chrysostom, who were more or less contemporaries; and of Rufinus, Socrates, Sozomen, and Theodoret, of the century following. They declare as follows. The work was interrupted by a violent whirlwind, says Theodoret, which scattered about vast quantities of lime, sand, and other loose materials collected for the building. A storm of thunder and {336} lightning followed; fire fell, says Socrates; and the workmen's tools, the spades, the axes, and the saws, were melted down. Then came an earthquake, which threw up the stones of the old foundations of the Temple, says Socrates; filled up the excavation, says Theodoret, which had been made for the new foundations; and, as Rufinus adds, threw down the buildings in the neighbourhood, and especially the public porticoes, in which were numbers of the Jews who had been aiding the undertaking, and who were buried in the ruins. The workmen returned to their work; but from the recesses laid open by the earthquake, balls of fire burst out, says Ammianus; and that again and again, so often as they renewed the attempt. The fiery mass, says Rufinus, ranged up and down the street for hours; and St. Gregory, that when some fled to a neighbouring Church for safety, the fire met them at the door, and forced them back with the loss either of life or of their extremities. At length the commotion ceased; a calm succeeded; and, as St. Gregory adds, in the sky appeared a luminous Cross surrounded by a circle. Nay, upon the garments and upon the bodies of the persons present Crosses were impressed, says St. Gregory; which were luminous by night, says Rufinus; and at other times of a dark colour, says Theodoret; and would not wash out, adds Socrates. In consequence, the attempt was abandoned. {337} 197. There is no reason for doubting any part of this narrative; however, enough will remain if we accept only the account given us by Ammianus, who, to use the words of Warburton, was "a contemporary writer, of noble extraction, a friend and admirer of Julian, and his companion in arms, a man of affairs, learned, candid, and impartial, a lover of truth, and the best historian of his times," and "a Pagan professed and declared." "Though Julian," says this writer, "with anxious anticipation of contingencies of every kind, was keenly engaged in the prosecution of the numberless arrangements incident to his [Persian] expedition, yet that no place might be without its share in his energy, and that the memory of his reign might continue in the greatness of his works, he thought of rebuilding at an extravagant expense the proud Temple once at Jerusalem, which after many conflicts and much bloodshed, in the siege under Vespasian first, and then Titus, was with difficulty taken; and he committed the accomplishment of this task to Alypius of Antioch, who had before that been Lieutenant of Britain. Alypius therefore set himself vigorously to the work, and was seconded by the governor of the province; when fearful balls of fire, breaking out near the foundations, continued their attacks, till the workmen, after repeated scorchings, could approach no more; and thus, the fierce element obstinately repelling them, he gave over his attempt." {338} 198. Julian, too, seems awkwardly to allude to it in a fragment of a letter or oration, which Warburton has pointed out, and which is so curious an evidence of his defeat and its extraordinary circumstances that it may be fitly introduced in this place. He is encouraging the zeal of the Pagans for the honour of their divinities, and he says: "Let no one disbelieve the gods, from seeing and hearing that their statues and their temples have been insulted in some quarters. Let no one beguile us by his speeches, or unsettle us on the score of providence; for those who reproach us on this head, I mean the Prophets of the Jews, what will they say about their own Temple, which has been thrice overthrown, and is not even now rising [Note 3]? This I have said with no wish to reproach them, inasmuch {339} as I myself, at so late a day, had in purpose to rebuild it for the honour of Him who was worshipped there. Here I have alluded to it, with the purpose of shewing that of human things nothing is imperishable, and that the Prophets who wrote as I have mentioned, raved, and were but the gossips of canting old women. Nothing, indeed, contradicts the notion of that God being great, but He is unfortunate in His Prophets and interpreters; I say that they did not take care to purify their souls by a course of education, nor to open their fast-closed eyes, nor to dissipate the darkness which lay on them. And, like men who see a great light through a mist, not clearly nor distinctly, and take it not for pure light, but for fire, and are blind to all things around about it, they cry out loudly, 'Shudder and fear; fire, flame, death, sword, lance,' expressing by many words that one destructive property of fire." [Note 4] When it is considered that Julian was, as it were, defeated by the prophets of that very people he was aiding; that he desired to rebuild the Jewish Temple, and the Christians declared that he could not, for the Jewish Prophets themselves had made it impossible; we surely may believe, that {340} in the foregoing passage this was the thought which was passing in his mind, while the prophetic emblem of fire haunted him, which had been so recently exhibited in the catastrophe by which he had been baffled. 199. The fact then cannot be doubted [Note 5]; it may be asked, however, whether the perpetual ruin of the Temple was actually predicted in the Prophets; and if not, what was the drift of this miracle, and how it was connected with the Church. It is connected with the Church and the Prophets by one circumstance, if by no other, and that a remarkable one; that before the actual attempt to rebuild, a Bishop of the Church had denounced it, prophesied its failure, and that {341} from the light thrown upon the subject by the Prophets of the Old Testament. "Cyril, Bishop of Jerusalem," says Socrates, "bearing in mind the words of the Prophet Daniel, which Christ had confirmed in the Holy Gospels, declared to many beforehand, that now the time was come, when stone should not remain upon stone for that Temple, but the Saviour's prophecy should be fulfilled." [Note 6] St. Cyril seems to have argued that since our Lord prophesied the utter destruction of the Temple, and since that destruction was not yet fully accomplished, but only in course of accomplishment, for the old foundations at that time still remained, therefore Julian was reversing the Divine order of things, and building up when God was engaged in casting down, and in consequence was sure to fail. And as Julian probably understood Daniel's and our Lord's words in the same way, and did set himself deliberately and professedly to contravene them, viewed as fulfilled in the fortunes {342} of the Temple, he was evidently placing himself in open hostility to Christ and His Prophet, and challenging Him to the encounter. No circumstances then could be more fitting for the interposition of a miracle in frustration of his undertaking. 200. The same conclusion may be argued from our Lord's words to the Samaritan woman. He does not indeed mention the Temple by name, but he must be considered to allude to it, when He says that men should not "worship at Jerusalem." They were indeed to worship there, as everywhere, but to worship without the Temple; and that because they were to worship "in spirit and in truth." A spiritual worship was incompatible with the Judaic services; so that when Christianity appeared the Temple was destroyed. Julian then, in building again the Temple, was doing what he could to falsify Christianity. 201. But, again, the Jewish Temple was confessedly the centre of the Jewish worship and polity; to rebuild the Temple, then, was to establish the Jews, as Jews, in their own land, an event which, if prophecy is sure, never is to be. "The building of [the Temple]," says Mr. Davison, "was directed for this reason, that God had given 'rest to His people,' and henceforth would not suffer them to wander or be disturbed; so long as they enjoyed the privilege of being His people at all. 'Moreover, I will appoint a place for my people Israel, and will plant them, that they may dwell in a place {343} of their own, and move no more.' This promise of rest was connected with the Temple, for it was spoken when God confirmed and commanded the design of building it." He continues presently, "Their national estate was henceforth attached to this Temple. It fell with them; when they returned and became a people again, it rose also ... Excepting around this Temple, they have never been able to settle themselves, as a people, nor find a public home for their nation or their religion ... So that the long desolation of their Temple, and their lasting removal from the seat of it, are no inconsiderable proofs that their polity and peculiar law are come to an end in the purposes of Providence, and according to the intention of the Temple-appointment, as well as in the fact." [Note 7] Julian then, in proposing to rebuild the Jewish Temple, aimed at the re-establishment of Judaism,—of that ceremonial religion which in its day indeed had been the instrument of Divine Providence towards higher blessings in store, and those for all men, but which, when those blessings were come, forthwith was disannulled in the Divine counsels "for the weakness and unprofitableness thereof." 202. And next the question may be asked whether there was after all any miracle in the case, as in the instance of most of the other extraordinary occurrences which have passed under review. The luminous {344}Crosses upon the garments and bodies of the persons present were apparently of a phosphoric nature; the Cross in the air resembled meteoric phenomena; the earthquake and balls of fire had a volcanic origin; and other marvellous circumstances are referable to electricity. This all may be very true, and yet it may be true also that the immediate cause, which set all these various agents in motion, and combined them for one work, was supernatural; just as the agency of mind on matter, in speaking, walking, writing, eating, and the like, is not subject to physical laws, though manifesting itself through them [Note 8]. Again, even supposing that these phenomena were not in themselves miraculous, yet surely their concurrence with the {345} moral system of things, their happening at that time and place and in that subserviency to the declamations of ancient prophecy, is in itself of the nature of a miracle. It is observable too, that though the Cross in the air be attributable to meteoric causes, yet such an occurrence is after all very unusual; now we read of three such occurrences in the course of the fifty years between Constantine's accession to power and Julian, during which period Christianity was effecting its visible triumph and establishment in the world;—viz., the Cross at the conversion of Constantine, that which hung over Jerusalem in the reign of Constantius, and the Cross which forms part of the awful events now in question; and while any accumulation of extraordinary phenomena creates a difficulty in finding a cause in nature adequate to their production, the recurrence of the same phenomena argues design, or the interference of agency beyond nature. It must be added, too, that the occurrence of a whirlwind, an earthquake, and a fire, especially reminds us of Elijah's vision in Horeb, and again of the manifestation of the Divine Presence in the first and fourth of the Acts, yet it does not appear as if the writers to whom we have referred had these events in their mind; rather it is only by the union of their separate testimonies, each incomplete in itself, that the parallel is formed [Note 9]. {346} 203. Moreover the events in question did the work of a miracle; they defeated powerful enemies, who would not have been unwilling to detect imposture, and who would not have been deterred from their purpose by interruptions which are extraordinary only in a relation. If the purpose of the Scripture miracles be to enforce on the minds of men an impression of the present agency and of the will of God, His approval of one man or doctrine, and His disapproval of another, not even the clearest of those recorded in the Gospel could have secured this object more effectually than did the wonderful occurrence in question. And did we see at this day a great attempt made to reinstate the Jews as Jews in their own land, to build their Temple, and to recommence their sacrifices, did the enemies of the Catholic Church forward it, did heretical bodies and their officials on the spot take part in it, and did some catastrophe, as sudden and unexpected as the fiery eruption, befall the attempt, I conceive, whatever became of abstract definitions, we should feel it to be a Divine interference, bringing with it its own evidence, and needing no interpretation. It must be recollected, too, that certain of the miracles of Scripture, such as the destruction of Sodom, may be plausibly attributed to physical causes, yet without disparagement of their {347} Divine character. And lastly, as to the extravagance of some writers who have considered the miracle an artifice of the Christian body, the same scepticism which has wantonly ascribed it to combustibles of the nature of gunpowder, has at other times suggested a like explanation of the thunders and lightnings when the Law was given, and of the deaths of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram. Notes1. It was quite an enthusiastic movement. We are
told that the spades and pickaxes were of silver, and the rubbish was
removed in mantles of silk and purple. Vid. Gibbon, Ch. xxiii. 2.
Orat. v. 4-7. The Oration was composed the very year of the miracle. [Vid.
Fabric. Salutaris Lux. p. 124, Gothofr. in Philostorg. p. 296.] 3.
Fabricius and De la Bleterie consider the "three times" to include
Julian's own attempt to rebuild; yet it is harsh, as Warburton
observes, to call a hindrance in rebuilding an actual destruction of
the building, though the hindrance was a destruction as far as it
went. But Lardner and Warburton seem to mistake when they argue
against Fabricius that [egeiromenou de oude nun] means "not raised
again to this day," whereas it must rather be construed "not rising"
or "in course of building." Warburton reckons the alterations
and additions under Herod as by implication a destruction of the
second Temple; and as another hypothesis he suggests the profanation
under Antiochus. Lardner thinks Julian spoke vaguely or rhetorically,
or that he referred to the calamities which came upon Jerusalem in the
time of Adrian. "Julien loin de conclure de ce qui étoit arrivé à
Jerusalem la vérité de la religion Chrétienne, en inferoit que la
revelation judaïque étoit fausse." De la Bleterie. Julian, v.
p. 399. 4.
Page 295. Ed. Spanh. Lardner contends that this letter from its tone
must have been written before any attempt to rebuild the
Temple; which indeed he considers Julian never to have put into
execution. This is a paradox more in the style of Warburton, whom he
is opposing, than of so sensible and sober a writer. 5.
It is objected by Lardner that St. Jerome, Prudentius, and Orosius are
silent about the miracle. Others have alleged the silence of St. Cyril
of Jerusalem. But if, as a matter of course, good testimony is to be
overborne because other good testimony is wanting, there will be few
facts of history certain. Why should Ammianus be untrue because Jerome
is silent? Sometimes the notoriety of a fact leads to its being passed
over. Moyle is "unwilling to reject all [miracles since the days of
the Apostles] without reserve, for the sake of a very remarkable one
which happened at the rebuilding of the Temple," etc. Posth. Works,
Vol. i. p. 101. He professes to be influenced by the testimony and the
antecedent probability. Douglas speaks of Warburton's defence of it as
"a work written with a solidity of argument which might always have
been expected from the author, and with a spirit of candour which his
enemies thought him incapable of." These admissions are very strong,
considering the authors. Mosheim takes the same side. J. Basnage,
Lardner, Hey, etc., take the contrary. 6.
Hist. iii. 20. Lardner (Testimonies, Ch. 46. 3) says, that "it is very
absurd for any Christians to talk in this manner. Christ's words had
been fulfilled almost 300 years before;" and refers to Rufinus as
giving the true account of St. Cyril's words, viz., that "it could not
be that the Jews should be able to lay them stone upon stone;"
but St. Cyril himself expressly says what Socrates reports of him,
Catech. xv. 15: "Antichrist shall come at a time when there
shall not be left one stone upon another in the Temple." This was
written before Julian's attempt; and St. Chrysostom, after it,
pronounces the prophecy of "not one stone upon another" not fulfilled
even then. Hom. 75. in Matth. 7.
Discourses on Prophecy, v. 2. § 2. 8.
"The mineral and metallic substances which, by their accidental
fermentation, are wont to take fire and burst out in flame, were the
native contents of the place from which they issued; but in all
likelihood they would have there slept, and still continued in
the quiet innoxious state in which they had so long remained, had
not the breath of the Lord awoke and kindled them.
But when the Divine Power had thus miraculously interposed to stir
up the rage of these fiery elements, and yet to restrain their
fury to the objects of His vengeance, He then again suffered them to
do their ordinary office; because nature, thus directed, would,
by the exertion of its own laws, answer all the ends of the moral
designation." Warburt. Julian. p. 246. Again, "We see why fire
was the scourge employed; as we may be sure water would have
been, were the region of Judea naturally subject to inundations. For
miracles, not being an ostentatious, but a necessary instrument of God's
moral government, we cannot conceive it probable that He would create
the elements for this purpose, but use those which already lay
stored up against the day of visitation." Ibid. p. 250. 9.
It should be observed that the order in which the miraculous
phenomena have been arranged above is not found in the original
authorities; Warburton has been followed except in one instance. Newman Reader — Works of John Henry Newman |