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 A History
of Christendom
Vol. I

Warren H. Carroll
Copyright© 1985 by Christendom Press.
All rights reserved.
Manufactured in the United States of America.

All inquiries should be addressed to:

Christendom Press, Front Royal, VA 22630.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical
means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in
writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a
review.

Fourth printing, 1993.

L.C. Classification Number: D20.C27
The Founding
of Christendom

Warren H. Carroll

Christendom Press
Front Royal, VA 22630
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This first volume of my history of Christendom was written and published

at Christendom College and owes much to the vibrant Catholic community
established there. I am particularly indebted to Jeffrey Mirus, Director of
Christendom Publications, for his critical reading of the manuscript and for mak­
ing all the arrangements for its publication; to William Marshner, Chairman
of the Theology Department at Christendom College, for his assistance with
questions of the interpretation of Latin and Hebrew passages; and to Robert
Hickson, Chairman of the English and Literature Department at Christendom
College, for his critical reading of the manuscript. I would also like to express
my particular appreciation for diligent assistance in the final preparation of this
book for publication to Walter Janaro, Assistant Director of Christendom Publica­
tions; Mrs. Irene Furtado, who produced the type-set copy; Mrs. Kathleen Sat­
terwhite, who did the layout; and to Katherine O'Brien, Darlene Summers, and
Diana Weyrich who helped proofread it.

WARREN H. CARROLL
 DEDICATED
to my beloved wife ,
ANNE
whose bright example and unceasing prayer
brought to me the grace of faith
and membership in the Church of Christ
 Contents

Introduction 9

Prologue 14

1. A Darkling Plain 21

2. Father in Faith 38

3. Fire on S inai 59

4. The Promised Land 81

5 . The Divided Kingdom 101

6. The Holy C ity 118

7. The Quest and the Chosen 148

8. Two Hopes 175

9. The March Across the World 192

10. The Fortitude of Rome 211

II. Rome Ascendant, the Temple Regained 229

12. Rome and Caesar 249

13. The W inning of the Roman Peace 270

14. The Incarnation of the Lord 287

1 5 . God in Galilee 315

16. "I A m the Resurrection and the Life " 351

17. He C hose Twelve-and Pau l 394

18. The Seed in the Earth 447

19. Blood of the M a rtyrs 490

20. Triumph of the C ross 524

B ibliography 550

Index 575
INTRODUCTION

W hat is Christendom? W hat kind of history can be written of it?

Christendom is the reign of Christ-that is to say , for the Christian, the reign
of God recognized by men . M uch of that reign is invisible, since His kingdom
is not of this world . Much of it is personal , since the primary concern of this
divine Person is with us as human and eternal persons . But some
of it is public and historical . Where men of courage and missionary spirit
recognize Christ as their Lord and proclaim Him, Christendom appears as a
social , cultural and political presence in the world . It grows with that courage
and profession , and above all by the silent impetus of prayer and example . It
fades with timidity , indifference , apostasy , and lack of holiness .
Christendom has faded today , to the edge of invisibility . Here in the United
States , when we founded a college to bear its name , we soon learned that most
people could no longer define , or even pronounce it.
For fifteen centuries Christendom shaped the development of Western
civilization . But it was not always so. In the spring days and nights of the year
30 A . D . in Jerusalem, between the feasts of Passover and Pentecost, all of
Christendom met in one upper room of a nondescript house in an out-of-the­
way street: a small group of men headed by a fisherman, and a few women
from Galilee . Out of that one room streamed a historical force greater than any
other ever known; no more than God H imself is it dead today . These years of
Christendom' s apparent eclipse are perhaps the best time to attempt the telling
of its full h istorical story , from preparation through birth and growth, climax ,
division, and retreat-so as to be more ready for its coming resurrection . The
six volumes proj ected for this history will cover each of those phases in the
history of Christendom : founding (this volume , to 324 A . D . ) ; building
(324-1100); glory (1100-1517); cleaving (1517-1774); revolution against

9
10 A HISTORY OF CHRI STENDOM

( 1 774- 1 9 1 4 ) ; martyrdom (the twentieth century since 1 9 1 4 ) .

The history of Christendom differs from conventional histories of Chris­
tianity in that the latter concentrate very largely, i f not almost exclusively on
the institutional church or churches, and on clergy men . But clerics are far from
I
being the only Christians; and the church is not, or at least need not be, the
only Christian institution, though it will always be , the most important, and uni­
que . The history of Christendom includes as a major element the lay or tem­
poral order insofar as it is penetrated and influenced by Christianity . The greater
the degree of this penetration or influence, the more signficant is the temporal
history so affected, for the h istorian of Christendom . He will therefore blend
eccles iastical and political history .
One of the greatest tragedies in the history of Christendom has been its divi­
sion into competing churche s . One of the relatively few immediately hopefu l
signs for the orthodox Christian in today ' s secularized world is the decline, at
long last, of the internal bitterness and dissension among believing Christians
as they discover the magnitude of their common ground and common interest
in the face of an apostate civilization . True ecumenism does not mean the aban­
donment of conviction and truth for the sake of a superfic ial, meaningless agree­
ment. It means building solidly on real convictions and truths which are found
to be shared . Full reunion is still far away . But hostility and contention are
recedi� g .
This h istory is written b y a Catholic, from the Catholic perspective, w ith
the conviction that Jesus Christ founded a church and that the visible church
He founded is the Roman Catholic Church which, through its succession of Popes
in particular, has remained, is, and always will be His Church, and through
which He acts in particular ways not available to members of most of the
separated churches, notably in the Holy Eucharist by which He becomes really
present on the altar at Mass, and reserved in the tabernacle. But He has other
sheep who are not of the visible Catholic fold, members of H i s
church through baptism b y water or b y desire . Many non-Catholic Christians
have served Christ well- indeed, better than a great many Catholics have serv­
ed Him . Their services are included in this h istory . Christendom-the idea and
reality of a Christian public order-has been, historically, much more a Catholic
than a Protestant concept and undertaking, but has echoes and reflections among
many of the separated brethren (most notably in the Eastern Orthodox churches) .
No h istory of Christendom as here defined has been published in English
in the twentieth centu ry . Of histories of Christianity and of the Cathol ic Church
there have, of course, been many . Probably the best is that of Henri Daniel­
Rops, translated from the French and published i n many volumes (by Dutton
and, in paperback, by Doubleday I mage Books) i n the U nited S tates from 1 946
to 1 966 . But even Daniel-Rops ' great and firmly orthodox work is not a history
of Christendom, of the Christian public order and of devout Christian laymen
 INTRODUCTION 11

working i n and building that order, nearly s o much a s i t i s a history o f the Church
per se. It is marred by an anti-Hispanic bias which undervalues and m isconceives
the heritage of the more than half of the Catholic Church that speaks S panish
or Portuguese . Despite the profound and encyclopedic knowledge of the author,
it is not properly speaking a work of scholarship, since it neither addresses
scholarly controversies involved in the history recounted , nor cites sources .
The attempt is made in this history to combine vivid narrative in the text
with thorough scholarship in the extensive notes at the end of each chapter. The
maj ority of the c itations in these notes refer to secondary sources-that is, to
the work of modern historians on which the author has drawn . Primary sources­
docum ents contemporary w ith the period under review-are used from time to
time, particularly where there is a strongly controverted point, but comprise
only a m inority of the citations . This is simply because of the scope of this work,
which renders it impossible for any one man in a reasonable period of time to
master all or most of the applicable primary sources adequately ; even if this
were possible, it would not be a reasonable expenditure of time and effort, since
so many painstaking and conscientious scholars have already investigated the
primary sources w ith the utmost care and reported thoroughly on them . The
overriding need is not for more monographs on original sources , but for syn­
thesis from the Christian point of view , in a time when this kind of h istory has
v i rtually ceased being written.
However, great care has been taken to cite every source used , even for
statements which m ight reasonably be deemed "common knowledge, " because
of the passions and prej udices which have so often touched the tell ing of the
history covered in these volumes, causing many to doubt or question even well­
established facts. Each source c ited is fully identified when it first appears in
the notes to a particular chapter, and thereafter by the author' s last name and
an abbreviated version of the title (op. cit. is used only within a single note) .
The bibliography at the end of each volum e will serve as a guide to works of
h istory pertaining to Christendom, many of which have been almost complete­
ly forgotten , or never were adequately known.
Two points of possible obj ection call for further comment here: ( 1 ) the issue
of historical obj ectivity ; (2) the slight use made of social , economic, intellec­
tual , and institutional (except ecclesiastical) history .
Regarding obj ectivity , every professional h istorian knows that the most dif­
ficult single task in h istorical research is pruning down and weeding out the
original indigestible mass of raw material i nto the basis for a coherent presenta­
tion of the subj ect being researched and written about . Every historian must
use principles of selection of what material is important and relevant to his general
and particular task . Every historian (though not all are fully aware of this) has
a world-view which has much to do w ith his choice of what is significant and
relevant. For the historian to suppress evidence bearing directly on his own sub-
12 A HISTORY O F CHRI STENDOM

j ect and conclusions is a grave derel iction ; but for hi m to screen out irrelevant
information is a duty , an essential part of his craft. In all honesty , every historian
owes to his reader an identification and a statement of his own world-view .
Above all it is necessary to see the fundamental error in the widely held
idea that the history of religion is " objective" when written by those who do
not believe in the rel igion they are writing about (or, often , in any religion) ,
but biased when written by a religious man . The rejection of some or all religious
truth is every bit as much an intellectual position as is the acceptance of rel igious
truth . Both the bel iever and the non-bel iever have a point of v iew . Both are
equally tempted to bias ; either may be objective by overcoming that tempta­
tion . Obj ectivity does not derive from having no point of view . History cannot
be w ritten without one. Objectivity does require honesty and respect for truth
alway s .
This writer's own beliefs w i l l b e made very clear throughout these volumes .
Facts and positions contrary to the conclusions stated herein will be noted to
the ful lest extent that a reasonable utilization of space permits . Again , due to
the scope of the work and of the historical controversies concerning its subject
matter, nothing l ike a definitive presentation of the contrary views can be
attempted-after all , the primary purpose of these volumes is to present a Chris­
tian view , not today ' s much more common non-Christian view , of five thou­
sand years of history . But the contrary arguments and especially the awkward
facts, not appearing to fit the conclusions h ere st ated , deserve to be, and wil l
b e , presented and dealt w ith explicitly .
Regarding social , pol itical , and non-ecclesiastical institutional h istory , the
writer would emphasize that as a C hristian his interest is in persons. Persons
in their earthly l ives are indubitably very much affected by social and institu­
tional structures and by economic conditions . But the person is ultimately ,
metaphysically independent o f them. H e is not their creature, but God' s creature .
It is surely no mere coincidence that the decline in political and ecclesiastical
history and good biography in sc holarly h istorical writing and the rise of social,
economic, and temporal institutional history has paralleled so closely in time
the erosion of Christianity in our civil ization . Christians do not see men as
primarily shaped or dominated by extrinsic and nameless forces, structures , and
trends . They see the drama of human life as primarily composed of personal
thought and action, above all by the working of the will. This is highl ighted
in political history but plays l ittle part in social , economic , and institutional
history .
Regarding intellectual history , the achievements of the mind are clearly a
product of free will and therefore relevant to the concerns of this h istory , and
where possible they will be introduced in these volumes . However, since the
primary emphasis is on Christendom as a manifestation of the Faith in the public
order, the more subtle and long-lasting effects of great intellectual achievements
 I NTRODUCTION /3

are difficult to fit into the organizational structure of this history , wh ich co ve rs
relatively short chronological periods in sequence, and therefore only a ve ry
lim ited coverage of intellectual history is attempted . An intellectual h istory of
Christendom , conceived on a different plan from these volumes , would be a
mo st worthy and needed task for a properly equ ipped scholar to undertake .
The writer firmly holds the perhaps unfashionable bel ief that any good history
s hould be a good story. Man ' s past is ful l of events more dramatic than any
ever put on stage . The most dramatic of these events pertain directly to the
supreme drama which is the action of C h rist in the world, in preparing for His
coming, in com ing , and in living in His Churc h . There is no law of nature or
of scholarship which says that a scholarly and rel iable history must be dull , and
no reason at all why it should be .
Since Christians today have almost ceased to write their own history as Chris­
tians , there is an im mense void in historical scholars hip. These volumes offer
a synthes is of all history from the Christian viewpoint, · a nd should often sug­
gest promis ing avenues for further research and writing from that viewpoint .
There is a crying need for ris ing young historical scholars pos sess ing the gift
of faith in Christ to answer the call for the reconstruction of Christian
historiography . There are a hundred lifetimes' work to do . God willing, that
work shall soon begin, and these volumes play some part in launching it.
Warren H. Carroll , Ph . D .
Christendom Col lege
F ront Royal . V i rginia
United States of America
PROLOGUE
''IN THE BEGINNING''

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth . The
earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon
the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over
the face of the waters . And God said , " Let there be l ight " ;
and there was light. -Genesis I: 1 -41

God is; and God is love . 2 Only God , of all beings , must necessarily be.
It is only God Wh ose Name can be, and must be , I AM.3
Because God is, He can c reate-give being to matter and energy in all their
configurations throughout the length and breadth and height and depth and past
and present and future of the Cosmos , to the last galaxy , and above all to the
souls of men . Because God is love, He did create the material universe and
its spiritual inhabitants . None of the tangible obj ects in the u niverse and none
of its spiritual inhabitants necessarily i s . None can explain or permanently
preserve their being by their own efforts . All are contingent. The hardest moun­
tain, the brightest star, the best man or woman unaided by Divinity must in­
evitably lose being in the visible universe as it moves down the corridors of time .
Time began w ith creation; h istory , in its broadest sense, began with man ' s
appearance in the universe God had c reated . F o r the Christian, history has a
center-point, a focus of ineffable radiance which alone gives it meaning , direc­
tion , and pu rpose. That focus is the person of One who was w ith God , is God ,
has acted in the universe and most especially in our world from the beginning ,
will act until the end , and will bring that end when He comes to j udge the world .

14
 PROLOGU E 15

In the beginning was the Word , and the Word was with God , and the
Word was God . He was in the beginning with God ; all things were made
through him, and without him was not anything made that was made . In
him was life , and the life was the l ight of men . The light shines in the
darkness, and the darkness has not overcome i t. 4

That was He Who one day was to be born a human babe in Bethlehem-He
Who lit the spark of all the galaxies , Who shot tim e ' s arrow upon its course,
the master of all the l ight-years who was nailed to a cross in Jerusalem , at the
Place of the Skull .
This happened upon the earth ; and therefore in the order of ultimates , the
·
order of Heaven , it makes our earth the center of the universe .
The earth came out of the starry heavens, and out of the earth came man .
On both points the Book of Genesis and today ' s scientific theories agree . On
the time span and the mechanism involved they seem to disagree , though they
may be harmonized much m ore than is generally believed . But in the last analysis,
.

questions of geologic time and organic evolution , though fascinating , are not
of p rimary importance to the Christia n . He needs to keep in mind that debate
on these questions should not be foreclosed on either side, that it is poss ible
for an orthodox Christian to accept the theory of m an ' s bodily evolution-as
a theory-so long as he unwaveringly affirm s the direct creation of man ' s im ­
mortal sou l by God and the descent of all men from an original pair whose sin
of pride and disobed ience , and its consequences, has indelibly stained the whole
h i story of the human race . These two de fide doctrines no science can disprove .
No fossil or rock stratum can ever tel l us that the Garden of Eden and its in­
habitants did not exist. Since all men are members of the same biological species
which interbreeds w ith no other species , 5 no scientist can ever p rove that we
did not all descend from an original p a i r .
O n t h e vexed question of the evolution o f life a n d o f man, the sure gu ide
for the Roman Catholic must be the only m agister ial p ronouncement ever made
on the subj ect, the encycl ical Humnni Generis by Pope Pius XII in 1 950, which
states:

The teaching authority of the Church does not forbid that , in conformi­
ty with the present state of human sciences and sacred theology , research
and discussions on the part of men experienced in both fields take place
with regard to the doctrine of evolution insofar as it inquires into the origin
of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter- for
Catholic faith obl iges us to hold that souls are immed iately created by God .
. . . Some , however, highly transgress this liberty of d iscussion when they
act as if the origin of the hu man body from pre-ex isting and living matter
were already completely certain and proved by facts which have been
discovered up to now, and by reasoning on those facts , and as if there were
noth ing in the sources of D ivine revelation which demands the greatest
moderation and caution in this question. When , however, there is a ques-
]6 A HISTORY OF CHRISTENDOM

tion of another conjectural opinion , namely polygenism, children of the

Church by no means enjoy such l iberty . For the faithful cannot embrace
that opinion which maintains either that after Adam there existed on this
earth true men who did not take their origin through natural generation from
him as the fi rst parent of all, or that Adam represents a certa in number
of fi rst parents . 6

On the other side of the evolution debate , no C h ristian can doubt that God
had the power to create all men new , both body and sou l , regardless of what
had gone before; and once again, no scientist can disprove that or prove the
contrary . There is considerable evidence of creatures living on earth from several
hundred thousand to several million years ago whose bodies were intermed iate
in form between ape and man ; but none of their remains show clear ind ications
of spi ritual awareness or imagination, the sure signs of humanity . They did not
bury their dead; no religious objects or art have been found associated with them.
A creature may be bodily intermediate between animal and man, but he cannot
be spi ritually intermediate . You either are a spiritual being or you are not. 7
Thomas Aquinas teaches that body and soul cannot be permanently sundered
or conceived as essentially separate , whatever the nature of the miracle involv­
ed in the soul ' s preservation du ring the period between bodily death and the
resurrection of the body ; 8 consequently , the idea of the soul of a man inserted
into the body of an animal is a philosophical monstrosity . The being man was
a whole new creation , whatever might have been his physical resemblances and
antecedents in the preced ing animal world-a new creation with a mind able
to comprehend the Cosmos and to worship and glory i n his Maker, as at the
dawn of time " when all the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of
God shouted for j oy . ' '9
These unique gifts we sti ll possess, though we may not apprec iate or use
them ; but the first man and the first woman had more . Their bodies were glorified
by their uncorrupted sou l s . Souls are immortal by nature . Since soul and body
were joined , their bodies would naturally have taken on the immortality of their
souls, and in the beginning they did so. Any other condition would have been
a contradiction , a clashing discord in the symphony of the Cosmo s .
Y e t that contradiction , that disharmony is the reality w i t h which w e l ive-a
real ity whose stark horror has been dulled by familiarity and made bearable
by countless habitual evasions: the horror of an immortal soul bound in a mor­
tal and corruptible body . The first tangible proof of the existence of true man
on earth is to be found in the fact that the earliest true men buried their dead .
To all animals death is a part of nature- sometimes to be mourned, as a mother
beast will mourn her dead young , but never frightening or uncanny , because
for an animal death is the end . But to all men-except those of our modern age
most insulated from real ity by sophisticated rationalizations-death is a ghastly
mystery , a sign of fear. A nd so prehistoric man tied up his dead with thongs
 PROLOG U E 17

so that they could not walk about to haunt him, and surrounded them with goat
horns to keep them in thei r graves by magic , yet left food to nourish and pro­
pitiate them in case neither bonds nor spell s should work . 1 0 We think it natural
that most men, especially primitive men , should be afraid of ghosts . But what
in the world is natural about it? Nothing could be more helpless and harmless
than a dead man , as any animal could tell us if it could think or speak ; but it
would be unl ikely to convince u s .
W e fear the dead because in t h e depths of o u r being we feel that they ought
not to be dead and might not stay dead ; because they rem ind us of what we
would much rather forget: That some day we will be as they ; and because we
cannot understand why this should be , and how it will be . Yet strange and ugly
as it is, death no less than l i fe is of the essence of humanity as we have known
humanity . Death wars with the l i fe in our bodies , and in time death always con­
quers . The victory of our " last enemy " is assured . No merely humanistic and
materialistic philosophy can truly come to grips w ith the fact of death , because
that fact makes dust and ashes out of the heart of their value systems, as it will
make dust and ashes out of the body of every humanist and every material ist .
Modern agnostic existential ists have at least faced the fact of death , but find
in it only a blank wall of negation; the best they can tel l us is to march into
obl iv ion with courage. But what good is courage to a corpse?
There is just one adequate explanation in all the history of human thought
for the terrify ing and unnatural presence of inev itable death and bodily dissolu­
tion in human l i fe . Materialism ignores the problem ; agnostic existentialism is
defeated by it; the doctrine of reincarnation merely multipl ies it. Only one real
answer has ever been given, in only one place : 1 1 in the third chapter of the Book
of Genesis, which tells us that the first man and the first woman w ished to sam­
ple the knowledge of evil, 12 believing th is would make them like God , and that
they did sample it in v iolation of God ' s express commandment and in disregard
of His explicit warning that death would result from its violation . 1 3
I n that act and i n that moment they lost their innocence and frustrated the
purpose for which they had been given being : to know , to love , and to serve
God . For nothing evil may behold Him W ho is all good in H i s full glory , nor
can one stained by sin worship Him with a pure heart. So the first man and
the first woman learned when God moved through the Garden on that most terri­
ble afternoon in the h istory of the world, and they tried to hide themselves from
Him in their shame, only to find that there is no place to hide from God . He
called them forth , l istened to thei r sordid attempts to shift and evade personal
responsibility for what they had done, 1 4 and passed the sentence which j u stice
demands even from the A uthor of Justice: 1 5

Cu rsed i s th e ground because of you;

in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your l ife ;
thorns and thistles it shall bring forth to you ;
18 A HISTORY O F C HRISTENDOM

and you shall eat of the plants of the field .

In the sweat of your face
you shall eat bread
till you return to the ground,
for out of it you were taken ;
you are dust,
and to dust you shall return .'6

F rom that day man was an exile upon the face of the earth ; but in time ,
while still an exile, he was to become a pilgrim.

NOTES

1 All quotations from .the Old Testament are taken from the Revised Standard Version
of the B ible ( 1 952), as printed , with the additional books in the Catholic and Eastern
Orthodox B ibles, in 1he New Oxford Annotated Bible , 2d ed . (New York, 1 977) .
2 John 4 : 1 6 .
3 Exodus 3 : 1 4 . See Chapter Three, below , for fu rther discussion o f the background
and significance of God ' s self-revelation to Moses reported in thi s passage.
4 John I: 1 -5 . All quotations from the New Testament are .t aken from the second ed i­
tion of the Revised Standard Version of the B ible, New Testament translation ( 1 97 1 ) ,
as printed i n 1h e New Oxford Annotated Bible . (There i s not yet a second edition of
the Old Testa ment translation in the Revi sed Standard Version . ) There is no difference
between the Protestant and Catholic canons of the New Testament.
s Everett C. Olson , 1he Evolution of Life ( New York , 1 965) , pp. 83-84 . The distinc­
tion between our own species, Homo sapiens, and the species regarded by evolutionists
as our immediate predecessor, Homo erectus, is clearly marked-especially in the shape
of the head and the size of the brain-and there is no evidence of any interbreeding .
On th is point see W . E . Le Gros C lark , 1he Fossil Evidence for Human Evolution , 3 rd
ed. (Chicago , 1 97 8 ) , pp . 83-89 , 1 1 8- 1 23 ; M arcellin Boule and Henri Vallois, Fossil
Men , rev . ed .l36- 1 38 , 146; and William Howells, Mankind in the Making , 2nd ed. (New
York , 1 967) , pp. 209-2 1 1 , 2 1 5 .
6 Pope Pius XII, Humani Generis ( 1 950) . Philip G . Fothergill, Evolution and Chris­
tians ( London , 1 96 1 ) , investigates the biological evidence and presents the case for evolu­
tion as a Cathol ic, strictly and expl icitly under the gu idance of the passages in Humani
Generis perta ining to this question , indicating how closely the Genesis account and the
scientific ev idence in favor of evolution can be harmonized . For a vigorous and intelligent
presentation of the opposing, anti-evolutionary v iewpoint from an equally orthodox Chris­
tian, not a Cathol ic , see Duane T. Gish , Evolution-the Fossils Say No! (San D iego ,
CA. , 1 973 ) . Those i nterested in pursuing the intricacies of this debate would do well
to compa re Fothergill and Gish point by point . The numerous standard scientific works
on orga n ic evolution are of limited value to the Christian concerned about this issue because
a l most a l l of them either ignore or ridicule the kind of questions which orthodox Chris­
tians natura l ly a nd necessa rily ask about the theory of evolution.
7 Most a nthropolog ists define ma n a s a tool-using a ni ma l . The crass ma teria l ism of
th is definition bears witness to an enormous phi losoph ica l poverty ; nor does it even fit
the ev idence of the fossils a ny longer, since there is now good rea son to bel ieve that
the primitiveAustralopithecus , with a bra i n ha rdly la rger tha n a gorilla ' s , used chipped
 PROLOG U E 19

stone tools ( P . V . T obias, 0/duvai GOrge 1951-1961, ed . L . S . B . Leakey , Volume I I

[Cambridge, England , 1 967] , p p . 86-87 ; W . E . Le Gros C lark, Man-Apes o r Ape-Men?,
2d ed . [New York, 1 967] , pp. 1 1 1 - 1 20) . Man is more than an animal in any case; cer­
tainly he is more than a tool-using animal. The practice of chipping hard stones so as
to use them in cutting up game to eat, and in striking down prey and enemies, grew
naturally out of animal habits , for a number of animals will use stones to get at food
such as shellfish, and chimpanz ees will use them to drive off an attacker (Clark , ibid. ;
Adolph H . Schultz , " Some Factors Influencing the Social Life of Primates in General
and of Early Man in Particular," in Social Life of Early Man , ed . Sherwood L. Washburn
[ New York, 1 96 1 ] , pp. 1 88- 1 90) . T he deliberate shaping of stone tools was new, but
hardly a unique adaptation in a world where creatures as diverse as ants, birds, and beavers
use natural materials to build elaborate dwellings and other structures . T he true mental
distinction between man and animal was most pithily stated by G. K. C hesterton : " It
is the simple truth that man does differ from the brutes in kind and not in degree; and
the proof of it is here : that it sounds like a truism to say that the most primitive man
drew a picture of a monkey and that it sounds l ike a joke to say that the most intell igent
monkey drew a picture of a man" ( The Everlasting Man [New York , 1 955] , p. 34) .
An excellent, philosophically sound modern investigation of the question of the essen­
tial mental difference between man and animal is Mortimer J. Adler, The Difference
of Man and the Difference It Makes (Cleveland , 1 968) .
8 T homas Aquinas , Summa Theologica , I , Q 75 , a. 4 ; Q 76, a. I.
9 Job 3 8 : 7 .
10 Grahame Clark and Stuart Piggott, Prehistoric Societies ( New York, 1 965) , pp .

6 1 -63 ; Henri Breuil and Raymond Lantier, The Men of the Old Stone Age (New York,
1 965 ) , pp . 236-237 .
1 1 Giuseppe Ricciotti , History of Israel (Milwaukee, 1 95 5 ) , I, 1 55- 1 56, and B ruce
Vawter, A Path Through Genesis ( New York, 1 956) , p. 53 , discuss the uniqueness of
the account of the fal l of man in the Book of Genesis . Vawter' s more recent work has
been increasingly marked by Modernism, but A Path Through Genesis is essentially sound
and orthodox .
1 2 Vawter, A Path Through Genesis, p. 5 8 , points out several essential truths that many
casual readers of the Genesis account of the fal l of man miss: that the " knowledge"
of evil spoken of is experiential knowledge, not mere intellectual knowledge, as in the
familiar Hebrew idiom to " know" one ' s wife , so that to know evil in this sense is also
to do it; and that the reference to knowledge of good as well as of evi l does not mean
" good or evil , but good-and-evil as a single unity ," in keeping with the Hebrew language
usage whereby binding-and-loosing meant j udicial sentences, and going-and-coming meant
walking about. T he context establishes whether good or evil , binding or loosing, going
or coming is meant . In the case of the Genesis account of the fal l of man, it is ev ident
that evil alone was meant.
1 3 Genesis 2 : 1 7 . Vawter, Path Through Genesis, pp. 65-66 , points out that we have
no way of knowing exactly what the sin of Adam and Eve was , since the eating of the
fruit described in Genesis is almost cer tainly a symbolic rather than a literal description
of what happened , but that we can be sure that " their sin was certainly at bottom one
of pride ."
1 4 Genesis 3 : 8- 1 3 . See the excellent summary in Vawter, Path Through Genesis , pp .
66-67.
•s We have g rown so accustomed-having enj oyed , until recently , a culture primarily
influenced by Christianity-to awareness of God ' s mercy that all too many have come
to think they have a right to that merc y . No one has a right to mercy ; if he did, it would
not be mercy but j ustice. God is first of all just, and cannot violate the principles of
20 A HISTORY OF CHRISTENDOM

justice any more than He can fail to be good , or make both s ides of a contradiction tru e .
16 Genes is 3 : 1 7- 1 9 .
1.
A DARKLING PLAIN

I saw a dream this night .

The heavens [ roared] , the earth resounded .
. . . He transformed me ,
M ine arms [were covered with feathers] l ike a bird .
He looks a t m e , leads m e t o the house of darkness,
to the dwell i ng of I rkalla;
To the house from which he who enters never goes forth ;
O n the road whose path does not lead back;
To the house whose occupants are bereft of light;
Where dust is their food and clay their sustenance ;
They are clad l ike b irds , w ith garments of wings;
They see no l ight and dwell in darkness.
In the h [ouse of dus] t , which I entered .
I loo[ ked at the kings] , and (behold ! )
the crowns had been deposited .
-Epic of Gilgamesh , Tablet VII'

The supernatural g i fts were gone , the Garden vanished, and the first men
on their own in a world full of enemies and haunted by death. C lothed in animal
skins , taking up the c rude stone tools by which alone they could now live, kill­
ing and being killed even by thei r own kind , they moved out upon the earth . 2
The body which had been the receptacle for man ' s God-given soul was no
longer fit to receive the graces which had come to man in his original
innocence-graces not only of immortality , but of perfect harmony within his
composite nature, and of effortless dominion over earthly creation. Without those
graces, man ' s now corruptible body and fal len soul were inevitably at war with

21
22 A HISTORY OF CHRISTENDOM

er even as they were estranged from God. That was the condition resulting from
original sin. Man could neither merit salvation from God nor attai n it on his
own . The wonder is that such an offense against God and H i s creation was per­
mitted to live at all; but God Who had made man and loved him would not destroy
him.
To any human mind the problem posed by this situation was insoluble . God ' s
solution finally came i n a form that n o man using only natural reason could
ever have foreseen; and that solution had to wait until man, by halting efforts
through many dark millennia, had at last reached the point where the solution
could be understood and remembered and the news of it and the truth about
it spread across the world despite all the evil which man carried w ith him
wherever he went. That required writing , and civilization , and the beginnings
of a discipl ined rationality , all far beyond the ken of The Stone Age .
So man roamed the earth with shadowed spirit , dreaming strange dreams
of magic and totem, of rituals that would command the invisible world3 and
bring back in some form what had come naturally to his ancestors, in the Garden.
But behind and above the magic and the totems , the frenzies and the idols, all
the perversions of worship i nto which sinful and desperate men prompted by
the dark angels can fall, there remained an awareness and an acknowledgment­
however faint and far-of the Divine King. In v irtually every primitive mythology
He is represented as the sky-god . Insofar as it can be disentangled from the
later and usually degraded accretions of myth and rite, the concept of the sky­
god originally included His creation of the world , H i s universal dominion and
His absolute purity . 4 But the sky-god dwelt only in the sky ; He did not come
down to earth . Earth was where the dark gods and the wild gods roamed , the
personifications of nature and of the passions of men . F rom the true God ' s
Heaven there was n o bridge t o earth . Eden had been that bridge , and Eden was
forever lost .
Yet still God called man to worship H im, because for this all men are made .
The scattered voiceless remains which are all we have or can ever have from
Stone Age men cannot tell us how God dealt w ith them or reached them. Was
there a continuous or nearly continuous revelation-lost and renewed again and
again -from the beginning , to those who were to be His C hosen People? The
Book of Genesis indicates that it was so. Our modern archeological and an­
thropological studies cannot disprove it, and seem increasingly to support that
thesi s where its possibility is not ruled out a priori by anti-religious bias . 5
M an increased and multiplied, and from his point of origin spread h imself­
though still very thinly-over almost the whole of the habitable earth . 6 But no
new Eden lay at the end of any of the long , long trails of the Stone Age hunter.
Everywhere his condition and way of life was fundamentally the same. It has
been preserved i nto modern times by the Australian aborigines and the Bushmen
of South Africa. 7
 A DARKLING PLAIN 23

Then came the F lood . However it may be explained by C hristian or non­

Christian scholars , the report of an immense deluge is much too widespread
and deeply imbedded in the traditions of ancient and primitive peoples to be
rationally attributed to mere cultu ral borrowing or diffusion , or to deny that
it reflects the memory of an event that really happened. The great Oriental scholar
and archeologist William F. Albright offers the following explanation :

I see no reason any longer for refusing to connect the traditions of the Great
Flood in most regions of Eurasia and America, including particularly
Mesopotamia and Israel, with the tremendous floods accompany ing and
following the c ritical melting of the glaciers about 9000 B . C . It may not
be accidental that there are no clear traditions of the Deluge in ancient Egypt,
which must have escaped the worst of these floods. 8

The low-lying plain of M esopotamia could well have been completely inun­
dated for a relatively brief period of time by a combination of heavy rains and
rising seas . The Book of Genesis tells us that the distant ancestors of Abraham
dwel ling there were saved from the Deluge by God ' s special warning to Noah ,
with instructions to build the ark . For Noah and his family the Mesopotamian
plain was the world , all of it they had ever known; from the ark upon that waste
of waters , with no land in sight for tens or even hundreds of miles- for the
Mesopotamian plain, flat as a board , extends for such distances -the Deluge
could hardly seem other than world-wide. That catastrophic geological changes,
suffic ient to produce a world-wide inundation , took place at this time is not in­
conceivable and is suggested by some bits of otherwise unexplained evidence ;
real scientists are never quite so sure about such matters as their popularizers .
But the weight of present evidence seems to tell against the explanation of the
Deluge involving massive planetary catastrophe , 9 while pointing to heavy rain­
fall and rising seas at the end of the Ice Age as the more l ikely explanation ,
though for a more limited inundation . Neither alternative can be ruled out. Just
as God could have made man l iterally and physically from the dust of the earth ,
so He could have covered all the surface of the earth with waters and soon after­
ward removed them together with most traces of their presence, and restored
the earth ' s inhabitants .
The M iddle East seems to have become increasingly arid after the Flood .
Great deserts appeared in Egypt and Arabia; along their edges the forests shrank
and the big game migrated away . Searching for new sources of food , men began
to gather the wild grain which grew in the hill country and to domesticate the
sheep and the goats they found there , in addition to the dogs which their hun­
ting ancestors had tamed . The transition from hunt ing and food-gathering to
farming and stock- raising occu rred in the M iddle East long before it happened
anywhere else in the world. The earl iest ev idence for it comes from a valley
24 A HISTORY OF CHRISTENDOM

in the Zagros Mountains separating northern M esopotamia from Persia, and

from several sites in Palestine, most recently dated to the ninth millennium
(9000-8000 ) before Christ . 1 0
This was the Neolithic or agricultural revolution . 11 It and the I ndustrial
Revolution have been the only really fundamental economic changes in all
history . Each made possible a great increase in population. The Neolithic Revolu­
tion also laid the foundation for civilization, which is distinguished from bar­
barism by two elements above all: the presence of c ities and the use of writing .
The ancient c ity , seed of civilization , was three things: a shrine, a market ,
and a wal l . It began with barbarian wande;ers who settled upon the land and
cultivated it. The shrine drew them together and made them more conscious
of their community . Trade sprang up, as will always happen when men gather
together with a reasonable degree of peace, and this was the market . Then the
wall was built to protect the shrine and the market from those who would despoil
them .
So it was that about 8000 B . C . a group of men gathered by a wondrous ,
ever-flowing spring near a river which ran through a deep straight valley , and
built there a walled city which, so far as we now know , was the very first in
all the world . 1 2 The river would one day be call ed Jordan , the city Jericho; and
the l and between the Jordan and the sea would be the substance of a promise
and the seal of a covenant .
Take a map or a globe of the world and suppose yourself confronted with
this problem: An event must occur, and truths must be taught, of supreme im­
portance to every human being upon earth . That event and those truths must
be made known to as many men as possible, as rapidly as possible, and as soon
as possible in man ' s history , while technology is still primitive . For it is of the
fundamental nature of this event that it can happen only at one time and in one
place . The establ ished cultu re of a civil ized society is necessary to preserve the
knowledge of it undistorted, and to provide a basis for the beginning of its world­
wide propagation; but any delay not absolutely necessary is not to be considered .
Thus it cannot wait until the progress of science has annihilated distance.
Where would you choose to have it happen?
Rarely are the reasons for a Divine dec ision so clear, in a material sense ,
to our finite minds . Studying map or globe with these criteria in mind , we can
see at once why God chose Palestine for H i s Incarnation . For Palestine is " the
center of the earth . " 13
It is not , of cou rse , the center of the physical or geological world, which
is a mass of nickel-iron four thousand miles beneath our feet . But it is the center
of the human world , the point nearest to all the great concentrations of popula­
tion before the European colonization of the Americas centuries after the Incar­
natio n . Palestine stands near the j u nction of the three great continents of the
Old World . Africa and Asia meet on its southwestern frontier. Europe is just
 A DARK LING PLA I N 25

a few days' sail away across the Mediterranean Sea to Crete . A circle drawn
with Jerusalem at its center and a radius of three thousand miles includes modern
cities as far apart geographically and culturally as Lisbon, London , Leningrad ,
Delhi, Kashgar in the Chinese province of S inkiang , and Kinshasa on the Con­
go . Such a circle touches all the great races and civilized cultures of man , save
only the strange civilizations developed in the Americas before Columbus . From
this focal point, this cockpit of geography and history , the Word could most
easily and quickly reach all the ends of the earth .
So Palestine was chosen as the place where mankind would be redeemed
from the consequences of the Fall. But the very characteristics of Palestine which
made it so eminently logical a choice for the site of the Incarnation also made
it, from a temporal and human standpoint, a most unsuitable place for the long
period of preparation which was the necessary prelude to the Incarnation. w ithout
which its true significance could never be understood or appreciated . For the
necessary preparation required a long continuity in culture; and as every historian
knows, that is precisely what is not normally found in the world's crossroads,
where outside influences from all sides tend to produce rapid , kaleidoscopic
change . Continuity in culture is naturally characteristic only of geographically
isolated areas like the Nile valley of Egypt, surrounded by desert except for
one short sea frontier to the north , or l ike China guarded by the immense moun­
tains and deserts of Central Asia .
In fact, throughout recorded history Palestine has been repeatedly fought
over, changing hands again and again, shifting from the Eastern to the Western
cultural orbit and back again, ever the victim of force and violence . From the
time four thousand years ago when " Amraphel king of Shinar, Arioch king
of Ellasar, Chedorlaomer king of Elam, and Tidal king of Goiim . . . made
war w ith Bera king of Sodom , Birsha king of Gomorrah " 1 4 and their allies,
to the latest outbreaks of war between A rab and Israeli reported in yesterday's
newspaper, this has been Palestine's fate . Yet through those same fou r thou­
sand years something has been in that small land which not all the pomp and
power and ferocity of men could expel , which has lasted through every storm ,
marking it out so unmistakably from all the rest of the world that even the
unbeliever admits the uniqueness of its story .
For this was the Promised Land .
Jericho began w ith a shrine. Upon bedrock, at the very bottom of the huge
mound built up by the accumul ation of debris over thousands of years , the Ke­
nyon expedition found its remains, a rectangular wall of stones with wooden
posts set among them . Holes were bored through two of the stones apparently
in order to hold totem poles or flagpoles . 15 It is believed that this structure marked
a " place of pilgrimage, probably a sanctuary , visited by M esolithic huntsmen
who, like their quarry , came to the spring " 1 6-the great life-giving spring of
Jericho which made its site unique in the hot dry valley of the Jordan .
26 A HISTORY O F CHRISTENDOM

Here, ten thousand years ago, grew up a city of more than two thousand
inhabitants . Its people, though still so primitive that they did not even know
how to make pottery , to say nothing of writing , obtained valuable trade goods
from distant places-obsidian from Anatolia (modern Turkey) , turquoise from
Sina i , cowrie shells from the M editerranean shore. It has been suggested that
they traded salt and tar from the Dead Sea for these valuables, as well as the
food which they must have produced in quantity with irrigation from the great
spring , under the unfailing sun . 1 7
Having established a flourishing market, the people o f Jericho soon learned
their need of a wal l . Built of immense stones some of which weigh several tons ,
standing more than twenty feet h igh and six feet wide, with thirty-foot wat­
chtowers overlooking a moat 27 feet wide and nine feet deep, their wall was
an amazing achievement, coming as it did five thousand years before the
pyramids of Egypt. 1 8 The fact that it had to be built on such a scale, requiring
an enormous effort at the very dawn of man's settled existence, tells us as clearly
as any written record of the terrible new consequences of the rapacity of fallen
man which the wealth created by the Neolithic revolution had unleashed .
By 6000 B . C . an even larger city had arisen in the north , on the A natolian
plateau , and there is reason to believe that men i nfluenced by its culture spread
south from the Taurus Mountains through Mesopotamia, Syria and Palestine
during the ensuing millennium. 1 9 Not even its mighty walls could protect Jericho
indefinitely ; during this period it was conquered , devastated and abandoned ,
and the site was not reoccupied for nearly two thousand years . 20 By then there
was a new walled city , on the flat low plain of southern Mesopotamia: Eridu
of the Sumerians , apparently located on the shore of what was then a vast tidal
lake . " Al l the lands were sea , " runs an ancient Sumerian legend , " then Eridu
was made. ' ' It was 25 acres in size and had a population of about four thou­
sand , twice that of Jericho before it. 2 1
Eridu lay j ust twelve miles from what was t o b e the site o f the c ity o f Ur,
where Abraham was born . 22

As men migrated in the east, they found a plain in the land o f Shinar
and settled there . And they said to one another, " Come , let us make bricks,
and burn them thoroughly . ' ' And they had brick for stone, and b itumen
for mortar. Then they said, " Come, let us build ourselves a city , and a
tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves,
lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. "23

It is here, at the beginning of the eleventh chapter of the Book of Genesi s ,

that t h e Bible moves into history as the world knows it-history which is
elsewhere recorded . Henceforth the factual information found in Scripture can
often be checked from independent sources; and we shall see that the overwhelm­
ing verdict of recent archeological and historical research is that the history
 A DARKLING PLAIN 27

recorded in the B ible is highly reliable . One b y one the arguments and suppos­
ed evidence against Biblical historical veracity , so widely publicized in the past,
have been discredited , so that the renowned Palestinian archeologist Nelson
Glueck could state categorically that " no archeological discovery has ever con­
troverted a Biblical reference . " 24
The reference in the Book of Genesis to the settlement of the plain of Sumer
(Shinar) is the first example of this kind . The building of cities in the plain of
southern M esopotamia antedated the writing of the Book of Genesis by nearly
three thousand years . 25 Yet the passage quoted preserves almost perfectly the
memory of how it was done. Burnt brick and mud-brick, w ith bitumen (tar)
as mortar, were the raw materials of almost all Sumerian architecture, because
while there was plenty of clay in the alluvial plain of southern Mesopotamia,
there was almost no stone. And very early in thei r h istory , when they had just
begun to develop picture-writing into a medium which could represent the spoken
word , the Sumerians at Uruk and Uqair built prototypes Of the Tower of Babel :
the first examples of the great stepped temples called ziggurats erected upon
mounds rising h igh above the plain, 26 appearing even higher because of the ab­
solute flatness of the plain, so that to the wondering eyes of tribesmen from
the edges of the surrounding desert they might well seem to ' ' reach to heaven. ' '
I n those days ten c ities stood on the Sumerian plain between Eridu and the
point where the Tigris and the Euphrates R ivers approach each other near the
s ite of modern B aghdad and ancient Babylon. The greatest were Kish, Uruk
and Ur; the others were Adab, Larak , S ippar, Shuruppak , N ippur, Lagash and
Eshnunna . Far to the north two outlying cities, Ashur and Mari , were destined
to transmit the culture of the Sumerians to Assyria in northeastern Mesopotamia
and to the c ity of Harran in northwestern M esopotamia together with adjoining
regions of Syria. 27
At the moment in history (about 2700 B . C . ) when the kings of these c ities
begin to emerge from the m ists of myth and to stand forth in Sumer' s records
as personal ities in thei r own right, one titanic figure casts the longest shadow
across the dun clay plain: Gilgamesh, king of U ruk, who defended his city against
the aggression of Agga, king of Kish, and in consequence built Uru k ' s first
c ity wal l . 28 Sober history tells us this much of him; but for reasons we do not
know , thi s king, l ike Achilles and A rthur , left behind him a m ighty legend ,
woven into an epic tale of heroism against the dark background of an i nexorable
fate .
The epic of G ilgamesh is by far the most ancient compos ition of its kind.
Inscribed upon imperishable clay tablets i n the wedge-shaped characters of the
cuneiform writing developed in Sumer, copies of portions of this tale nearly
four thousand years old have come down to us; and the original sources un­
doubtedly went back several centuries earl ier . 29 No other major work of
l iterature-as distinct from royal or funerary inscriptions on monuments-
28 A HISTORY OF CHRISTENDOM

anywhere on earth dates from before 2000 B . C . and the age of Abraham . 30 I n
its final form the epic o f Gilgamesh w a s preserved as carefully b y the Mesopota­
mian scribes as the epics of Homer were later preserved by Greek intellectual s .
Most of i t came t o l ight when the great clay tablet l ibrary o f Ashurbanipal , one
of the last kings of A ssyria, was unearthed in the n ineteenth century .
As befits its very early origin, many passages in the cuneiform epic are naive
and childish, and it often lacks the kind of romance we expect in the tel ling
of such a tale; yet its hero, i n true epic fashion, sets forth w ith one brave com­
panion to slay a dragon in a dark cedar forest, and succeeds in his mission.
But the most striking characteristic of the epic of Gilgamesh is its absolute honesty
in facing the riddle of death. Gilgamesh of U ruk, triumphant king, perfect knight,
wall-builder, dragonslayer, goes forth in the end to meet the last enemy- for
his dear friend and comrade-in-arms, the heroic Enkidu , is dead .

Enkidu , whom I loved dearly ,

Who went with me through all hardships,
He has gone to the lot of mankind ,
Day and night I have wept over him.
For burial I did not want to give him up, thinking:
" My friend will rise after all at my lamentations ! "
Seven days and seven nights,
Until the worm fell upon his face.
Since he is gone, I find no life . .
I have roamed about like a hunter in the midst of the
steppe . 3 1

Before Enkidu died the nature of the after-life had been revealed t o h i m i n
a dream, the appalling vision described a t the head o f this chapter: the ' ' house
of darkness ' ' from which no man comes forth, the abode of dust for which king
and commoner alike are destined.
One man had cheated death: Utnapishtim " the d istant, " the only survivor
of the Deluge, to whom the gods-the quarrelling , capricious gods who were
all Gilgamesh knew or d reamed of- were said to have given eternal life .
Gilgamesh would find Utnapishtim, though Hell should bar h i s way :
" Barmaid, which is the way to Utnapishtim?
' ' The d irections? Give me, oh give me the
directions !
" If it is possible, the seas I will cross !
" If it is not possible, I will roam over the
steppe . "
The barmaid said to him, to G ilgamesh:
" Gilgamesh , there never has been a crossing ;
' ' And whoever from the days of old has come thus
far has not been able to cross the sea .
" Valiant Shamash [the sun-god] does cross the
sea, who besides Shamash crosses?
 A D A R K L I N G P LA I N 29

" D ifficult is the place of crossing, very

difficult its passage ;
" And deep are the waters of death , which bar
its approaches.
"Where , Gilgamesh , wilt thou cross the sea? " 32

Surpassing every barrier and danger by sheer power of w i l l , Gilgamesh at

last reaches U tnapishtim, only to be told:
D o we b u i l d a house [ t o stand] forever? D o w e
seal [a document t o be i n force] forever?
Do brothers divide [their inheritance to last]
forever?
Does hatred remain in [the land] forever?
Does the river raise [and carry] the flood
forever?
(line lost)
Does its face see the face of the sun [ forever]?
From the days of old there is no
[permanence] . "33

Utnapishtim ' s eternal life was a privilege reserved to him alone . He could
not share it, even if he would . The king and hero had gone upon his greatest
quest where no man had ever been before , only to find that even at trail ' s end
there was no hope :
Gilgamesh said to him, to U t napishtim the distant :
" [What] shall I do, Utnapishtim, where shall I go
' ' As the robber has taken hold of my [member] s?
" D eath is dwelling [in] my bedchamber,
" And wherever [I] set [my feet] there is
death . " 34

In the five millennia since man first learned to write, no more terrible passage
can be found than this cry of absolute despair stamped in strange wedges on
broken tablets of clay by the industrious and talented people who built man ' s
first civil ization , but are now vanished utterly from the face of the earth-no
more eloquent proof of the reality and consequences of original sin from a source
.
which never knew the story of the Garden of Eden . 3 5 Beside that one pitiless
fact that Gilgamesh at long last had to face, what mattered the pageant of c ities
and kings and conquerors w ith which early Mesopotamian history , like all tem­
poral human history , was filled? Where was Sargon of Agade, who came out
of the southern Mesopotamian plain to master the lands all the way to the Mediter­
ranean Sea about 2350 B . C . , the first great conqueror known to h istory? Where
was his far-famed descendant who took the epithet of a god, Naram-Sin, ' ' King
of the U niverse " ? 36

' ' They see no l ight and dwell in darkness.

30 A HISTORY OF CHRISTENDOM

"In the h [ouse of dus] t , which I entered ,

" I loo[ked at the kings] , and (behold ! ) the
crowns had been deposited . " 37

The honesty w ith which they faced the truth about the human condition is
the measure of the real stature of the people of early Mesopotamia. It was no
mere chance that it was from their homeland , however stifled and corrupted,
that Abraham emerged, for there can be neither hope nor promise for man unless
there be first the willingness to face truth.
The two other centers of civilization which came into existence before 2000
B . C . showed no such willingness . In Egypt, as never to a comparable extent
in Mesopotamia, the king himself was a god-no mere demigod , but a full­
fledged member of the pantheon-whose status was determined by the size of
the tomb which was to guarantee him a happy eternity . 38 So the most gigantic
rock-piles in the h istory of mankind, not excluding the largest stone structures
of modern times , were erected early in the recorded history of Egypt to house
the mortal remains of Pharaohs . One can imagine what Utnapishtim would have
told Gilgamesh about the v alue of a pyramid .
In contrast to Mesopotamia, which during most of its history was a more
or less loose aggregation of city-states, Egypt and the third civilization , in the
Indus valley far to the east, were monoliths. The whole life of the nation and
the culture centered upon one or two capital cities, and was locked in a pattern
which remained essentially unchanged century after century . The building of
Egypt ' s political , economic and cultural monolith began w ith K ing Menes or
Narmer, who about 3100 B . C . unified the whole of the long narrow valley of
the N ile south of the cataracts , and its lush delta, i nto one state with its capital
at the c ity of the W hite Wall , later known as Memphis . 39 Egyptian writing was
probably derived from that of Mesopotamia in its earliest stages-though the
forms and appearance of hieroglyphic and cuneiform later became very
different-and such originality and inventiveness as Egyptian civilization possess­
ed was exhausted after the first few centuries, by the beginning of the Pyramid
Age about 2600 B . C . 40 Though the unparalleled natural blessing of the fertility
created by the annual N ile flood gave rise to the greatest material abundance
in the ancient world-there is no better agricultural environment on earth than
the Nile valley-this only strengthened the monolithic character of the Egyp­
tian system . 4 1 The Pharaoh himself could not change it; the one true genius of
Egyptian history , K ing Akhenaten, tried and failed. 42 From the beginning Egypt
was a land of bondage, from which the only escape was to leave. Yet this was
never easy , since the fertile valley of the Nile was surrounded on all sides by
desert and sea .
The other monolith was the still stranger civilization known as the Harap­
pa, from one of its two chief cities in the Indus River valley in northwestern
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HOSANNA too HOSE A oval figure', and of fibrous texture,

one side of which is thinned away apparently to a keen edge of a
somewhat semicircular outline. But along this edge, and as it were
embedded into it fur about one-third of their length, are set between
seventy and eighty crystalline points, of highly refractive substance,
resembling glass. These points gradually decrease in size towards
one end of the series, and at length cease, leaving a portion of the
cutting edge toothless. At the end where they are largest, they are
nearly close together, but at luii'_rtli are separated by spaces
erini_>- the edi;v to face our eve, we discern that it is not an eduv
at all, but a narrow parallel .-ided margin of considerable breadth.
And the teeth are not conical points, as they seemed when we
viewed them sideways, but Hat triangular plates, \\ithadeepnotcli in
their lower edge. Thus they partly embrace and are partly inserted
in, the margin of the jaw. This apparatus admirably subserves the
purpose for which it is intended. Ity means of its sucker the leech
creates a vacuum upon a certain part of the skin, exactly like that
produce,! i,\ a cupping-glass. The skin covered is drawn into the
hollow so far as to render it quite t"ii>e by the pressure of the
surrounding air. Thus it is brought into contact \\ith the eduvs of the
three jaws, to which, by mean- of powerful muscles attached to
them, a see >a\\ nioti,,n is communicated, which causes the little
teeth soon to cut through the skin and ,-uperlicial vessels, from
\shich the Mood begins tofi,,w. The issue of the vital tluid is then
promoted bv the pressure around, and so goes on until the
enormous stomach of the leech is distended to repletion. This whole
contrivance, with the instinct hv which i'. is accompanied, has been
asserted to be for the ben, 'tit of man. and not of the leech. lilood
seems to be bv no means the natural food of the leech; it has been
ascer tained to remain in the stomach for a whole twelve month
without being digested, y* t remaining fluid and sound during the
entire period: while ordinarilv. such a Mib.-tanec cannot in one in-
tance out of a thousand be swall iwed by the animal in a state of
nature. Whether this be so or not: whether man's relief under
suff'erin-- were the noli object designed or not, it was certainly
<>n< object: and we may well be thankful to the mercy of (Jod,
who lias ordained comfort through so strange an instrumentality. [r.
ir. ,,.| HOSAN'NA is composed of two Hebrew words oc curring in Vs.
cxviii. ~1~> (x;-rj,"w;*Hb signifying *(ii'(J, /'/•'///. or Hoir. The
psalm was sung on joyful occa sions, and particularly at the feast of
tabernacles, which was the solemnity observed with the greatest
demonstrations of joy. Verses '_';"• and '2<> were sune; with loud
acclamation; and the feast itself was some times called the Hosanna.
Applied to the Messiah, as it is in .Mat. xxi. !», " Hosanna to the Son
of David," it simply means, all blessing and prosperity attend him: let
salvation be his ! HOSE'A [yv*r., 'S-'iTJ?!?, ilffircranrc, salratto'it]. 1.
A younger contemporary of the prophet Amos. To the article on
Amos we must refer the reader for a sketch of the political and
religious aspect of the period in which Hosea and Amos were called
of God to declare his word to Israel, and also for a notice of the
general character of the prophetic teaching of that period. I. The
prop/tit. — From the title of the book we learn that Hosea began to
prophesy under Ux.ziah. king of Judah, and -leroboam II. . of the
family of Jehu, king of Israel: and also that lie continued to prophesy
until the time of Hexekiah, the great grand son of I'zziah. That the
former part of this statement '• is correct does not admit of doubt;
and though the whole period assigned to his ministry is certainly
longer than is usually allotted to the active life of man, em bracing,
as it does, more than sixty years; yet this forms no suiticient reason
for injecting a tradition which must have had its origin in most
ancient times, and \\hich U not inconsistent with any information
which may be derived from other sources.1 Of the personal history
of Hosea nothing is known. Fnlikc Amos, he seems to have been
born in the northern kingdom, though of this we have no positive
information (Carpzov, Introductio ad lib. Proph. p. 274). It is certain
that in t'ie northern kingdom lay the sphere of his ministry. The
name Fphraim occurs in his pro phecies about thirty-live times, and
Israel with equal fre quency; \\hile .ludah is not mentioned more
than four teen times. Samaria is frequently spoken of, ch. vii.l;viii ,>,
i'.; x. :,. 7; xiv. l; .Jerusalem never. All the other localities introduced
are connected \\iththe northern kingdom, either as forming part of
it, or lying on its borders: Mi/pah. Talior. ch.v.l;( nlgal, rh.iv.i :,; i \.i.v
xii i-jfn : I'.ethel, c. i lied al-o llethavcli. ch.x.l.'i; xii. :.(P; iv.i:,; v.S;
\.,.,-; .Je/.reel, eh i. I; ( iibcall, eh. v -; ix. !•'; Kama, eh. v s; ( Jilead.
cli. vi. S;xii I.1 II ; Sheehem. ch. vi. •»; Lebanon, ch. xiv. l!,7;
Arbela, eh \. ii I'M. It mai'. however, be allowed that hi> usual
residence lay in tin- >outhern ] parts of the northern kingdom in
that border region tn_: been distinguished as the seat ot the
numerous schools of the prophets \\ hjcli Samuel had founded. We
know nothing of I'.ccri. \\lio is named in the title as the father of
Hosea. Still, though we think it probable that Hosea was connected
by birth and residence durinu the greater part of his life with the
northern kingdom, it has been conjectured, not without ground, that
in his later years, after having IODLT appealed in vain to his doomed
coun trymen, he retired to .ludea. feeling that his mission was
accomplished, and that now it only remained for him to make his
escape from that Sodom over which the destroying angel was
already hovering ( Kw;il/; p. 27 $. It is probable that Hosea In-
longed to the onlcr .if prophets, in this respect likewise differing from
Amos, who was neither prophet nor prophet's son: and that in the
schools of the prophets he had received the cus tomary training
preparatory to entering on the discharge of the prophetic functions.
His prophecy displays a very exact, and, so to speak, a professional
acquaintance with the law of Moses, by which latter character it is 1
Jernboani II. died, a.s is commonly thought, about 784 B.C., and
Hezekiah began his reign 72."> B.C. Hut it, is possible that the death
of Jeroboam ou-lit to be fixed twelve yeara later.— Ewald. (JMlucUti,
iii. 5.34.
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HOSE A HOSE A distinguished from that of Amos; for

though in Amos \vt; tiiul not ;i few references to the Pentateuch,
they have less the air of being the fruit of formal and sys tematic
study and preparation.1 Amos was a herdsman, and a great part of
the imagery lie employs is borrowed from the pastoral life. Jt is not
so with Jlosea, who was evidently much more familiar with
agricultural pursuits; and seems, like Elisha, to have been called
from the plough to be the Lord's prophet, eh. vi :'.; viii. 7; ix. l»; x.
1,11, ]ii; xiii. .",; XIV. 7. Tl. The prophecy. — The foundation and
general character and aim of the prophecies of Hosea are the same
as those of Amos, with whose history and writings he must have
been acquainted. Compare Ho. iv. 15 with Am. v. ">; and especially
Ho. viii. 1 1 with Am. i. •), 7, 10, &c. He announces and enforces, as
the only remedy for the evils of the times, a return to Jehovah. With
this he be gins, oh. i.L'; with this he ends, cli.xiv. i, Ac.; and to this
he auain and again recurs in the course of his teaching. As a return
to Jehovah, under the old dispensation, neces sarily involved the
restoration of the formal unity of the church, and the abolition of a
separate altar and priesthood, we meet with frequent denunciations
of the calf-worship established at liethel by Jeroboam, on his
successful revolt from the house of David. That wor ship had been
introduced by Jeroboam as a measure of state necessitv: and it
symbolized the ascendency of the political over the moral and
religious. That worship must be abolished, and the moral and
religious restored to their rightful pre-eminence: otherwise all
professions of regard to Jehovah shall be of no avail, and all gifts
and sacrifices He will abhor, ch. viii. :>, fi; x. n; xiii. a. Besides this,
which may be called the legitimate ecclesiastical result of true
repentance on the part of Israel, it was noticed in the article on
Amos that there were two other results no less essential — the
nioral and iho political. The return of Israel to Jehovah must be,
accompanied with a thorough reformation of the social and national
life. For it is the most distinctive prin ciple of the prophetic teaching
formally announced by Samuel, the founder of the order, that "to
obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams."
This principle each of the prophets, as he appeared, re- announced;
and none more distinctly than Hosea, whose words our Lord himself
deigned to make use of in relinking the hypocritical Pharisees : "Go
ye, and learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy, and not
sacrifice," Mat. ix. 13, compared with Ho. vt.C. In Hosea iv. 2 we
have a summary of the second table of the moral law; the breach of
which, the prophets show, must ever follow as a necessary
consequence the breach of the first table. And in various parts of the
pro phecy Israel is reminded of the ancient kindness of Jehovah, and
especially of the great national deliver ance by which he proved
himself to be indeed Jehovah, and the record of which he placed as
a sanction and powerful incentive to obedience in the very front of
his law, Elx.xx.2, compared with IIo.ii.l~Cl:)); xi. 1; xii. 10(9); xiii. I.
1 JVH3, (berith), covenant, is employed several times by Ilosea (ch.
ii.'20; vi. 7; viii.l; x. 4) to describe the union between God and
Israel; never by Amos. Sj?S and D'Sj?2 (ba'al be'aliiii), not found in
Amos, are of frequent occurrence in Ilosea Cch ii. 10, 15, 19; ix. 10;
xi. 2; xiii. 1). So |H3 (cohcn), priest (Ho. iv. 4,0, &c). See also ch. iv.
0; v. 10; and the root DW (((sham), which recurs - T five times in
Ilose.i, is not found in Amos. Compare also, on the close connection
between idolatry and immo rality, ch. iv. 12-11; vii. l,ic.; xii. sfr). The
po/ifinil result of Israel's repentance and hearty return to Jehovah,
was the re-establishment nf the kiii'jiloiii of David, and the reunion of
all the tribes under one government. This is distinctly announced by
Ho sea, ch. ii. a(i.ii); iii..">; viii. i; as it had already been by Amos,
ch. ix. 11. There is no safety for Israel but in returning to Jehovah
their God and to David their king. Out of this reunion alone flows
peace —that promised peace which the prophet delights to
anticipate, and which he describes in language of wonderful
elevation and beauty, ch. ii. ls-25 (ii. Hi-li.'i) ; xiv. 4-8. Such is the
remedy which the prophets of this period recommend to their
countrymen in its threefold aspect —ecclesiastical, moral, political; a
hearty repent ance and return to Jehovah being the central and
substantial element. And the prophet Hosea. being taught of God,
was quite sure that this remedy would be had recourse' to at last
that Israel would yet return to Jehovah and to David, and find
strength and peace, ch. iii. xiv. P>ut he knew, likewise, that this
return, with all its happy results, could not be immediate. The
apostate nation must spend all her living upon other physicians, and
all in vain, before she is con strained to cry to Jehovah to heal her.
Israel must be led back again into the wilderness, ch. ii. nm i); must
be east once more into the iron furnace of Egypt, ch. viii. i:i; cli.ix.:;,
before the promised era of peace and glory comes. The present to
the prophet's eye is dark, and must Vie dark; it is to the ''latter days"
he looks with hope, ch. iii. :">. In passing from Amos to Hosea, \\e
mark a decided advance in the historical a,nd /•< i/i/nf!-1
development. With regard to the former, the historical development,
we find anew power, formerly on the background, now brought
prominently to the front. The smaller king doms bordering upon
Israel, with the fate of which a considerable part of the prophecy of
Amos is occupied, have passed out of view — they are not once
mentioned by Hosea. In their room appears the great northern
power of Assyria, in which the prophets have already discovered the
rod of God for the punishment of his people's sins. As yet, however,
the blinded nation have not perceived this. Assyria they regard
rather as a friend than as a foe, ch. v. i:i; vii. n ; viii. 9; xii. i!(l); xiv.
4 (:;). They are so infatuated as not to perceive that that power only
helped them to their destruction, pursuing a crafty policy of which
every age has fur nished examples; and that if Damascus were
swallowed up by its powerful antagonist, Samaria should soon share
its fate. God hath blinded their eyes. But the prophet has penetrated
into the divine counsels; and in Assyria he beholds not the ally and
friend, but the destined destroyer of his nation. Already he sees
crowds of his countrymen led captive by the very power to which
they had looked for safety, and pining as strangers in a strange land,
ch. iii. 4; x. «; xi. 11. This is a new and most impressive view which
is opened up to us in the writings of Hosea. We had no hint in Amos
of the relation of dependence in which Israel stood to Assyria, its
destined destroyer. And we are thankful for another historical
illustration of a truth i which can never grow old, that the shifts to
which poli ticians have recourse to save from ruin a society which is
morally diseased and corrupt, have the effect only of 1 hastening the
ruin which they are intended to avert.
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HOSEA i Corresponding to this development and advance in

historical position, is the aspect which the prophetic teaching-
assumes in the writings of Hosea. As Assyria draws nearer to Israel,
and the crisis more evidently approaches, the prophet clings closer
to Jehovah, and realizes more vividly the intimacy of that relation in
which it is his privilege to stand to the Cod of heaven and earth. This
intimacy of relationship he can re present only by calling to his aid
the idea of marriage — the closest of earthly connections. It is not.
indeed, in the writings of Hosea that we first find this idea so
employed: Init in these writings, and in every part of them, though
chiefly at the commencement, it stands out with such prominence as
to constitute it their most marked characteristic. It is well to observe
the different aspects in which the Divine Being is contemplated liy
the several pro phets; for as these i;ivat teachers of the olden time
spoke and wrote only when and what they were moved liy the divine
Spirit to speak and to write, and thus put their whole souls into all
they uttered, we find that there is just such diversity in their modes
of conceiving and presenting the divine character, as we might
expect from the diversities iii their own individual tendencies and
sympathies. This divt r-;tv is vcrv marked in I Insea and Am»s. The
sublime d< .-oription.i'f the maje-ty and unapproachable ulory of
(n.d which we meet wit!) in the latter, are not found in the former.
Am. iv. 13; v.s,ic.;ix. '.,;;. Why' l'.c-cau>e that was not the aspect of
the divine character on which Hosea dwelt most fondly. He delighted
rather to conti mplate Cod in his nearness and love to his people; in
the close and endearing relationship which he had form., I with
them: in his long-suttering and tender companion drawing them with
the cords of lo\e, with the i>ands of a man. healing their
hack>lidin_r. and >till continuing to love them even when they had
ca>t him oil' and "were following afier other lovers." This aspect of
the divine character is liv no means wanting in Amos, ch.ii.ii; iii. i; vii
:t, ii; hut it is evidently not the aspecl in the contemplation of wliich
that prophet had most delight. Hi- svinpathies were with the more
LTraild. and majestic, and awful manifestations of Cod. Ac cordingly
he never uses the word /ut very fre([iientlv as Cod of hosts, which i-
altoovther a favourite appellation with him: whereas with Ho>ea
such expressions as mil '/•,«/. tlni '"«/ the pronoun having reference
to Israel — occur no fewer than seven teen times, while f lnmt* is
found only once, di. \ii. iii'')). It is for the same reason that the name
Adonai. so often used liv Amos, is altogether wanting in Hosea.
Such, then, was the aspect of the divine character, to present which
in a very striking and arresting man ner to the church and to the
world, Hosea was specially raised up and endowed. He was hy
nature of a gentle and tender spirit; his heart .formed to love. He
was not a man of action, like Amos, but of contemplation: in this
respect, as in some others, hearing to that older prophet a relation
somewhat resembling that of Ezekicl to Jeremiah. The Divine Spirit,
who imparts to each severally as he will, had endowed him with
these ten dencies and dispositions, that he might be a fitting
instrument for receiving and communicating a deep and lively
impression of the love of Jehovah to his people. / HOSEA In the first
three chapters we have an account of the mode in -which it pleased
Cod to call him to be his pro phet. These chapters have long been a
source of per plexity to commentators; and very different views have
been taken of the transactions recorded in them. To understand
them it is necessary first of all to con sider that the prophet stood in
the place (if Jehovah: that the word he spoke was not his own but
Jehovah's; and that in order to speak with power and success, he
must have a deep insight into the relation between Je hovah and his
people — must realize, so far as possible, in his own experience, the
nature and the conditions of that relation. Hence a vision of Jehovah
usually ac companied the call of each prophet. ]> \i ;Jc.i.; K/,c. i. ii.;
Am. vii.; the effect of such vision being to impart to the mind of the
prophet, in the most lively and impressive manner, a knowledge of
the being and character of Jehovah, and specially of such aspects of
his character as He de-iu'iied by tli- instrumentality of his prophet to
ma infest more clearly to the world. Now. the revelation which Cod
designed to make by the lips of Ho-,.a. related chiefly to the close
union between himself and Israel, the unfaithfulness of Israel to the
duties arising out of that union, and the course of discipline by
means of which he purposed to bring his pe, ,p!e to repentance and
reunion with himself. And in order that the prophet miuht himself
have, and be able to convey to others, a lively .-elise of these thini:-.
thi v wen- imparted to him not as naked truths, but clothed in a
pictorial representation— earthly rela tions and transactions being
employed to symbolize the divine and heavenly. Instead of having
revealed to him that Israel had proved unfaithful to Jehovah, and
gone after other gods, he i> told to take to himself an -•;»;: -•£ :x
c.-'/i i tli -.1 ii>iitin< i. because it is only by so doing that lie ''an
become a tittin-j- representative of J.-hoval; in his relation t» the
church of that day. cli. i. 2. Ami in.-tead of then Milt- of Israel's
apostasy bein- declared to him in plain terms, he is supposed to
have children by his unfaithful wife, and lie is commanded to give
them names descriptive of these results. The whole is simplv a
revelation in symbolical action of the unfaithtulness of Israel and its
certain and terrible consequences. It is not neccr-.-ary to suppose,
as many commentators have done, that what is narrated in eh. i.
and iii. really formed part of the outward life-history of the pro phet.
For just as the call of Uaiah to the prophetic otlice was accompanied
by the vi>ioii of Jehovah in the templt — a- the call of K/ekie] was
accompanied by that other remarkable vision which he de-cribes in
the first chapter of his prophecy — so there i- a ^r'una fac'u pro
bability that the transactions accompanying the call of Hosea also
took place in vision and not in the sphere of real life. It is true that in
the \isions of Isaiah and Kzekiel there is less of action on the part of
the prophet himself: but that does not appear a circumstance of
material consequence. Then; is more or less of action in all. K/ekicl,
for example, saw a hand stretched out, and in the hand was a
written roll, which he was com manded to eat: and he says. " I
opened my mouth and ate the roll, and it was in my mouth as honey
for sweet ness," Kxc. iii. i-;j. Now. if we allow, as we must do, that
this transaction took place in vision and not in reality, there seems
710 good reason why the same .supposition should not be perfectly
legitimate in the case of Hosea. The object of both transactions was
the same. The
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HUSK A HOSKA eating dl the roll represented the taking'

into the heart of the prophet the truth which the roll contained, K/e.
iii. lo And so Hosea's taking to himself au rvi'N C'J^T (y Bishop
Horslev. notwithstanding Ins decided advocacy of the opposite view.
And not a few similar transactions we tind narrated in the writ ings
of the prophets, which no judicious interpreter believes to have
taken place otherwise than in vision, Is. xx.; Kze. iv. In this
symbolical representation the principal parties are the prophet and
Gomer, the daughter of Diblaim, the female whom lie takes to wife.
There is no IV;I>'>M why the latter should not be regarded as a
person who actually lived at that time, any more than the former.
She may have been one whose name was connected in the public
mind with those lascivious rites which we know were associated with
the then prevalent idolatries, ch. iv. i::,!4. The union of the prophet
with such a person as a symbol of the relation subsisting between
God and Israel, must surely have had a stirring effect on the national
mind of Israel, as well as on the prophet's own mind. If he recoiled
from and loathed such a union, what must Israel be before God ?
And how marvellous His forbearance, that he has not separated
himself altogether and for ever f mm the polluted people; nay. that
he still loves them and has thoughts of peace towards them! We
have been induced to take this view of the symbolical wife of the
prophet, by the failure of all attempts to give an explanation of her
name, suit able to the nature and design of the vision (see Calvin's
Commentary on Ilosea, and Ilerigstenber/s Christology, vol. i. p. 1st!
of the Transl.) The names of the three children of this ill-assorted
pair are ,/c :rr< /, L'i-';'i/1i. The two visions are very clearly
distinguished; in the one, the guilt of Israel being more prominent
(eh. i. •>, fur the land, &c.); in the other, the love of Jehovah (ch. iii.
i, according to the love, \c.( In the one we have a representation of
the church's paradise lost; in the other of paradise regained, and
that altogether by the redeeming grace and unquench able love of
Jehovah." The arguments against the realistic view of these chapters
have not been insisted on, as they lie on the surface. They will be
found briefly but emphatically stated in Calvin, at great length in
Hengstenberg's Clirixtoloitji. It may be noticed here that Calvin and
others regard the whole rather as a parable than a I'ision. "Fieri
potest ac probabile est, ut propheta; nulla fuerit objecta visio; sed
tantum Deus proninlgari jussei'it hoc mandatum." This he says, in
answer 1<> the objection, that if the transactions were in vision
only, they would avail nothing for the instruction of the people. But
the objection has no weight. The vision, accompanying as it did the
call of Ilosea to be a prophet, was intended principally for his
instruction. But, like other visions, it was no less instructive to the
people, when communicated to them. God was accus tomed to
speak to his prophets in vision, Nu. xii. n, but for the benefit of the
people. Indeed there is no reason why we should regard the two
views as anta^oni>tic. For what was a vision to the prophet became
a parable to the people. The various views which have been taken of
this dif ficult portion of Scripture will be found stated with great
clearness and impartiality by the learned Pococke in his Commentary
on Iftwa (p. •>-;,). He concludes the review as follows:- "These are
the chief opinions concerning the acceptation of these words, of
which, seeing each is backed by great authority, and the inaintainers
thereof will not yield 'to one another's reasons, but keep to their
own way, and accuse those that go otherwise either of boldness or
blindness, and some very learned men have not dared positively to
determine in the matter, it must be still left to the considering reader
to use his own judgment; only with this caution, that lie conceive
nothing unworthy of God or unbeseeming his holy prophet, nor draw
from the word any unsa voury or unhandsome conclusions." It only
remains to notice that Ewald endeavours to combine the two leading
views upon this subject, by recognizing a slight historical basis
underlying a narra tive which is in the main symbolical. His opinion is
that Gomer was the actual wife of the prophet, who was thus
prepared for the mission assigned to him by the bitter experiences of
his own domestic life. - If the view we have taken of these chapters
is correct, it is of little consecjuence whether we suppose the woman
of eh. iii. to be Gomer the daughter of Diblaim or a different person.
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HOSEA I Of the second division of the prophecies of Hosea,

ch. iv.-xk.,1 we have not space even to offer a brief analysis. To the
Hebrew student they present not a few difficulties; yet their general
import is sufficiently obvious. They are just an expansion or
commentary OH the visions of the first part; the dark future being
the nearest, occupying much the larger part, but the bright
becoming more and more prominent towards the close, until in the
concluding verses it spreads itself over the prophet's whole range of
vision, and he exults in the anticipation of the peace and joys of the
latter days. Various attempts have been made to assign these
chapters to different periods in the life of Hosea, but without much
success. Whatever may have been the origin of the various parts of
the prophecy, it is evident that, as they now stand, they form part of
a well connected whole, in \\hic-b we cannot Fail to ob serve a
definite aim and regular M-(|iience in the train of thought. Still, it
mii-t be allowed, that some of the sections, such as the f;r>t, ,h.r. ,
are marked by pecu liarities which seem to indicate that prophecies
of dif ferent dates have been brought together and wrought up into
one composition. It has been remarked, for example, that the view
taken of the character and destinies of .ludali is more favourable
towards the com meiiceineiit of the book than in the fifth and
subsequent chapters. And while the fir.-t chapter evid--ntlv belongs
to tlie rei^-n of Jeroboam II.. the historical allusion in ch. \. ] I, it
tin; Shalinaii tin-re mentioned is the -aimas the Shalinan.-/.er if the
hi.-torical books, brinu- u> down to a much later pci iod. The
character of Hosea as a writer corresponds vcrv much with his
theme. His composition abounds with those soft and gentler
beauties which are the proper ornaments of a work, the leading
them.- .,f which is Jehovah's love. Wha' can I..- more >wvet and
exqni-ite than the contrasted comparisons we tneet with in ch. vi.
:'>, 1 ' "//(.< g.iin- forth is prepared as the morning. and he shall
come to us as the rain. >v; xiv. ."i-7. These ^ent leitendencies are
bv no nn-ans inconsi-teiit. nav. they are u-nially found in union, with
a highly impassioned nature; and of this we discover frequent trae.-
in the writings of Hosea. His lanuiiauv i> inm-e poetical than that of
most of the prophets; hence tin- frequent ellipses and sudden
transitions, and the copious use of words and forms of construction
which distinguish th-- poetic stvle, eh. v. n; vi. 1; vii.2; viii. r.'; x l,n
There are also some traces of an Aramean influence, which may be
accounted for by bis birth and residence in the northern kingdom. As
Hosea shows an intimate acquaintance with, and a close
dependence upon, the law of Moses and other scriptures written
before his time, so the prophets which succeeded him evidence, by
their allusions to his writ ings, the high estimation and authority in
which these writings were held by them, comp. ch. ii. 2 (i ID with K
xi. 1L', 13; iv. :;\vith/cp. i. :!; iv. liwitli Is. v. I.1!: vii. in with Is. ix. I'J,
13, x. 12 with .le. iv. :;, Xi-. Jeremiah and Ezekiel especially show
themselves familial' with his prophecy. The references to Hosea in
the New Testament are 1 Kwahl reirards di. iv.-xiv. us an expansion
of ch. iii.; in wliicli view he is followed by Dr. Pusey. - Mark tlie
frequent occurrence nf two verbs in apposition in the same tense,
&c. , without any connecting p.irtielo, which is much more common
in Syriac than in Hebrew, ch. i. (j; v. 11, \t>, ey; also
Hen^stenberg's C '/, ,-ifl,,li /;///, \ol. i.; Kwald on the l>,;,t,lM.-i; and
the /,t king of Israel: who was the son of Elah, and having conspired
against the reigning king I'ekah lie obtained possession of the
throne, lint his ill-gotten possession was not long re tained: for the
misunderstandings which had arisen be tween Israel and Assyria
reached a crisis, and in tinninth year of Hoshea's reign, Shalmanc/.er
kiiii;- of As.-yria came with a great force against Hoshe.-i. bt--ie-e.|
his capital and took it, and put a final end to the kindoin. The cup of
iniquity had become full both with the king and the people of Israel;
and the wrath of Heaven fell on them to the uttermost. This
catastrophe took place, according to the common computation, H.c.
7-21. L-K: x, i HOSPITALITY, is very strongly commended in
Scripture, both by example and by precept. The pa triarchs of early
times are set forth as eminent patterns of it, and believers in the
apostolic auv are exhorted to tread in this respect in their footsteps.
Those raised to the higher offices in the Christian church wen-
required, among other qualifications, to be "given to hospitality." to
be know 11 eVell as " lovers" of it, 1 Ti. iii. 2 ; Ti. i. >; and the
members -vnerallv of the Christian community were1 enjoined to
"use hospitality one to another without -nidifing," or, a< it is again
put, to be " not forgetful to entertain >trair_ri r-." i I1.- iv. U; II.- xiii.
2 Hospitality is a virtue which will always more or less di>tiii'_ruish
men of humane minds and charitable dispositions, lint the extent to
which it requires to be exercised, and the place it mav be said to
hold aniono- the relative and social virtues, will necessarily depend
on circumstances. It, will vary according to the state of society in
general, and the actual position of individual members of it. In the
ruder states of society, when communication is >low. and the public
means of accommodation provided for persons moving from one
region to another are scanty and insufficient, the rights anil claims of
hos pitality assume a kind of primary place; society can hardly exist
wit bout them: and any flagrant violation of them cannot fail to be
regarded as a great social enor mity. Hence even the wild and
predatory Aral is culti vate hospitalitv, and the stranger among them
counts himself safe when he has been admitted to the privi leges of
a o-uest. " In every village there is a public room, called a incnzil or
metidafc/i, devoted to the entertainment of strangers. The guest
lodges in the meii/il, and his food is supplied by the families to
whose circle it belongs. Sometimes they take turns in his
entertainment; at other times it is left to those who offer
themselves, or rather who claim the privilege'. If the guest be a
person of consequence, it is a matter of course, that a sheep, or
goat, or lamb is killed for him. The guest o-iyes nothing as a
remuneration when he leaves. To offer money would be taken as an
insult; and to receive it would be a great disgrace. Such (says
Robinson, ii. p. 3ir), is universally the manner of entainment in the
villages throughout the provinces of
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noru:HOUSE Jerusalem and Hebron, us well as in other

]>!irts of Syria." But as eivili/.ation advances, and the speed and
conveniences of travel increase, other arrangements to a large
extent take the place that in ruder times is supplied by the rites of
hospitality. Without inconi modin^ private families, people can
usually get !'t ;l moderate expense the temporary accommodation
and refreshments they need: and as tin- general comfort and well-
being nf society very materially depend nn these, it hemmes a duty
one owes to society, as well as a matter of personal convenience to
avail one's self of them. Still, opportunities will often occur in which
Christian kindness and liberality can be fitly exercised by the
hospitable entertainment of strangers. And in particular localities, as
well as on special occasions, believers may sometimes find
themselves so situated, that the duties of hospitality assume nearly
the same importance which belonged to them in earlier times. But
such cases must now be regarded as somewhat exceptional.
HOURS. ,S, -DAY. HOUSE. The house is contrasted in Scripture with
the tent, as indicative of that which is permanent, in op position to
that which admits of being readily moved from ] place to place. _<
Sa. vii. 5-7. It signifies a dwellingplace for men or cattle, or parts of
such dwellings: the palace of a king or the temple of a god: and in a
figurative wav is put for a man's family, kindred, people, or posterity.
(Jesenius says that in (le. xxxiii. 17, it is put for a tent to dwell in,
but we consider that it has there its usual sense. It is however often
applied to God's house while that house was yet a tent or
tabernacle. K\. xxiii. Hi; Stanley's Sinai and Palestine,)). M\ The
permanent house was built long before the tent came into use. The
tent was first devised by Jabal, the fifth in direct, descent from (Jain,
Go. iv. 20; while we read of Cain himself building a city, Oe. iv. 17.
(Jain's fear probably led him to change the simple and isolated form
of dwellings into something more compact and city-like. From the
very first the dwelling-house was known to men, Gc. iv. 7. Of what
kind the earliest houses were, very different ideas will be formed,
according to men's notions of the primitive state of man. The idea of
the rude wig wam or the dark cave as his original dwelling is simply
absurd. The poetic descriptions of such suit very well to the rude
tribes who have from time to time broken off' from the centres of
civilization and quickly degenerated, but they by no means accord
with the notions we are warranted to form of mankind before the
flood, nor of mankind for some time subse quent to that event. If
building be an art attendant upon civilization, we would attribute a
high proficiency in it to men sprung from Adam the divinely
constituted head of mankind, and who displayed their own claim to
its possession by their inventions in many of the arts that indicate a
high state of civilization, Ge. iv. 21, 22. In the building of the ark, for
which Noah derived no as sistance from God beyond its plan, Ge. vi.
14-10, we see the great constructive skill of the antediluvian age ;
and in the conception and partial execution of the vast architectural
idea in the plain of Shinar, Ge. xi. 3, 4, we may well imagine a
building before whose vastness the pyramids would look diminutive,
and a city whose general architecture may be supposed to have
borne some proportion to its tower. It is no objection to this to say
that they were to be built only of brick. These ancients understood
how tip prepare that material in the most perfect way, . Hence he
lived a nomade life', "dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob."
But neither he nor his children were unfamiliar with the house as a
fixed abode. In Egypt when they went down to sojourn there, and in
Canaan where they chiefly sojourned, they saw the cities of Pharaoh
and of the plain, Ge. xii. id; .\\iii.2o; and we have reason to believe
that Abraham occasionally lived in a house, Ge. xvii. 27. It is
probable also that Isaac in his old age lived in one, GO. xxvii. i~>.
Y\ e have ne. doubt that Jacob not only lived for a time in a house,
as distinguished from a tent, but that he himself built a house for his
dwelling, Go. xxxiii. 17. Whence we may conclude, that while the
tent was the usual domicile of the patriarchs, they were familiar with
the idea of the house, and would probably have preferred such a
habitation if they could have bad their choice. When the family of
Jacob went to settle in Kgypt until the time of the exodus, they came
into a land of majestic buildings and great architectural skill
(Wilkinson, Ane. Egypt, iii. 24D-332; oh. ix. andx.) In the works
executed in Egypt during the sojourn of Israel, it is thought the
Israelites took an important part. Very much of this indeed was the
drudgery of the com mon labourer. Ex. i. 14; but employed as they
were in the erection of the treasure cities of Pithom and (Jameses, it
is natural to suppose that they were not unacquainted with skilled
workmanship, Ex. i. n. When they yot. possession of Canaan they
came into a land of great and goodly cities, and houses full of all
good things, DC. vi. in, 11 ; Xu. xiii. 2\ We have thus reason to
believe that the Israelites, on assuming the place of an inde pendent
nation, were by no means ignorant of architec ture. The general plan
and style of their structures would hence naturally be derived from
the buildings of Egypt and Canaan, which in their more important
features resembled each other, though there were dif ferences, as
we shall hereafter note. In one, but that the greatest i pf all their
buildings, Israel copied after no model, whether of Egypt, Canaan,
or Phoenicia. The tabernacle in the wilderness was erected after the
pattern shown by God himself, Ex. xxv. r»; and Solomon's temple in
its central part was built after the model of the tabernacle, with a
fitting enlargement of the proportions. The part which the Tynans
took in this building is often exaggerated, to the unjust de 
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HOUSE 7(51 preciation <>f tlu- Israelites. The magnificent

idea of the building and its various details \veiv with the divine help
conceived by David, and by him communicated to Solomon, it'll,
xxviii. 2,11,12. It was by Solomon's direc tions that the work
proceeded in its various stages, 1 Ki. v. 17. It was Solomon's officers
who presided over and regulated the work, i Ki. v ir,, and it was Solo
mon's workmen who executed far the greater and chief parts of its
details. A comparison of the houses depicted on ancient monuments
and the ancient buildings of Kgvpt. with modern oriental houses,
affords the most satisfactory if not the only means of illustrating the
house of the Bible. Between these ancient and modern houses there
is a strong similarity. When a traveller in Palestine describes a house
of the present dav, he de scribes very much what existed in the age
of our Lord, or in still more ancient times. Tlie climate, which is one
ureat cause of the architectural arrangements of different countries,
is the same, and the unchanging habits of tin- Kast have always
been pro verbial. Intense heat and absence of rain prevail during the
trivater part of the year: heavy rains, however, fall at particular
seasons, and the- cold is occasionally severe. These circumstances,
combined with a love ot seclusion and privacy, give their prevail ing
characteri.-tics to the dwellings of Syria and Pales tine. Mere of
course as elseu here theiv i> every variety of house, according to
the \ar\in- requirements of city, of country, or the circumstances of
the owners; from the house of several stories and numerous
chambers, to that \\hichhas but the ground tl • and a single apart
ment. The references in Scripture an- natuiallv made for the most
part to houses of the better order, but we must not leave out of view
the more numerous houses of an inferior kind. In the whole ,,f them,
however, we find some leading characteristics, distinguishing them
all alike from the houses of northern climates. The exterior, of a
dwelling-house of the better kind in Pale-tine is for the most part
plain and unattractive, having but few openings, or such projections
as serve to uive relief and variety to ihe appearance. The part that
looks to the street presents only dull L'ray walls. with nothing to
relieve them but the d -way leading into the court, and two or three
latticed windows. The roof is commonly flat, has never any
chimneys, and does not overhair.' th-- external walls. The ground
plan is usually a parallelogram, or a series of parallelo grams, the
house consisting of one or several courts, arranged solely with
reference to the convenience of ; the interior, and regardle s of
external appearance. I though the result is generally highly
picturesque. The various apartments enter directly from the court or
HOUSE dislike to many stories, naturally endeavour, when in creased
accommodation is wanted, to gain their object by extending their
buildings horizontally. The corre spondence between this general
description and the houses of ancient Nineveh, engraving No. ?
>3~>. will be at once apparent. \Ve will now consider in detail the
several parts of which eastern houses are composed. The Purcli was
a very unusual feature in the houses of ancient Palestine, if indeed it
was then in use at all. Kxcept in the case of the temple and of
Solomon's palace, we find no reference to its use in any part of the
Old Testament. 1 Ki. vii. c, 7 ; 2fh. xv s ; KZL- xl 7. It was not
uncommon in Egyptian houses, however, where it was sometimes
supported on two columns before the Egyptian r.,ivl,) however
probably means only the gate, as it does in the other places where it
occurs (fur example, Ac. x. 17 ; xii. 14; xiv. 13 ; Re. xxi. 12). In .In.
V. '2, we read of five porches (o-rodr) as attached to the pool of
Bethesda. It is quite plain however that these bore no resemblance
to the porch of a dwelling-house. The ffrod was either attached to a
temple, a colonnade or cloisters, or was a distinct building used as a
place of resort in the heat of the day (Liddell and Scott's Lexicon)
Such evidently were the porches of Bethesda, distinct from any
house, and built for the use of the sick. The porch of the palace was
a place of judgment for the king, i Ki. vii. 7.x (.tyf GATK.) 96
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HOUSE HOUSE Tin /km,-. Of the Hebrew words for the

door we find r^T (i/ilit/i) frequently used in the dual, signifying then
generally double or folding-doors Hiescnins): we find the other
words u-ed only in the singular ami plural (FuerstV The door
consisted of the threshold, the sideposts, and the lintel. it is to be
remarked that

; but doors made of single slabs of stone, some inches

thick, occasion ally ten feet high, and turning on stone pivots, are
found in some of the old houses and se pulchres of Syria (Buck
ingham's Travels, p. 170; MaundreH, in Early Travels in Palestine, P.
447, 448). The doorways of eastern houses are some times
ornamented in a very rich manner, though they are generally mean
in appearance even when leading to sumptuous dwellings. Wilkinson
(Anc. Egypt, ii. u.'i, ill, ch. v.) gives us representations of different
Egyptian doorways, some of those in the tombs being charged with
a profusion of ornament. But for this, and the kind of locks and keys
usually employed for gates or doorways, see under (T.VTF. 77/i Cinn-
t is one of the great characteristics of the eastern house. Everv
house has one, even the very 1339 ] Part of the Court of a private
house in Cairo. Fivm u sketch by E. Fulkciu-r, Esq. meanest has
something of the kind. 2Sa. xvii. ix No. viii. i«; 1 1, 1, 4, Bro'ise pivot
hinges. 3, Basalt socket for pivot. The originals of figs. 1, 2, 3, were
found in the granite sanctuary of the great temple at Karnak.
Robinson's Bib. Res. ii 270, sec. :;. Some houses have one court,
others two, and three are not uncommon ; as many as seven arc
found in some very fine houses at 1 >amascus: large buildings such
as convents are divided into a great many courts opening by
passages into one another (liusc>n,Hib. Res. i. 130; Wilkinson, Anc.
Kg. ii. 101!, KM). The passage from the doorway into the court is
usually so contrived that no view can be had from the street into it;
this is sometimes done by the erection of a wall, or by giving a turn
to the passage that It-ads into the court. The court nearest the
entrance- of an eastern house is variously arranged, aecordino as it
is the onlv court, or as it is the first of two or three. We shall first
speak of houses which have but one court, and which differ very
much from one another in comfort and convenience. The court in
this case is an open space or quadrangle, round which the
apartments for the inmates, and in country places also the sheds for
the cattle, are arranged. In the very poorest of these there is merely
one apartment, and a shed for cattle (Robinson, Bih. Res. ii. 27'j),
and tincourt or yard is surrounded with a hedge of thorny boughs. A
house- of A somewhat better description nsuallv consisted ()f tin
court, three or four store- rooms on the ground floor, with a single
chamber above, to which a flight of steps leads from the court
(Wilkinson, Anc. Kcypt. ii. u>7). But there are other houses—
though perhaps they are not very commonly to be met with having
only one court, of a far superior kind. Enter ing into the courtyard
you see around you a number of little buildings, not deficient in
convenience, and oc casionally presenting a certain air of elegance
— though frequently constructed on no regular plan. In these are
found various little chambers, one piled upon the other, the half- roof
of which always forms a terrace for walking, from which a little flight
of steps or ladder leads to the dwelling-house, or to the upper
terrace. This court is well paved: on one side doors lead to the
apartments of the family, and on the other to those of the servants
inn-mer, Travels in Holy Land, i. 175). Maundrell (in Ivirly Travels, p.
I*--) describes the eastern courts in Damascus as very fine. In them,
he tells us. you generally find a large square court, beautified with a
number of fragrant trees and marble fountains, and compassed
round with splendid apartments and divans. The divans are floored
and adorned on the sides with a variety of inlaid marbles wrought in
interlacing patterns. They are placed on all sides of the court, so that
at one or other of them, shade or sunshine can always be enjoyed at
plea sure. In the summer season, or when a large company is to be
received, the Court is usually sheltered from the heat and
inclemencies of the weather by a curtain or awning, which, being
expanded upon ropes from one wall to the other, may be folded or
unfolded at pleasure (Shaw, Travels,!. 374, 376). To this Dr. Shaw
supposes the psalmist to refer when he speaks of God as spreading
out the heavens like a curtain, I's. civ. 2. At the side of the court,
opposite to tho entrance, is placed the public reception-room, or
guest-chamber, Lu. xxii n, open in front, and sup
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HOUSE 763 HOUSE ticular account in tho .-equel. When the

house has readilv the bearers of the sick man could brine; liiiu :i,
second or inner court, it is generally of a mud) [to the roof of the
dwelling-house, Ju. iii. -J3 ; Mar. ii. 4, Wilkinson indeed thinks it
probable that Eton's sum mer parlour was an isolated house on the
ground, such as were usual in ancient Egyptian dwellings, hut the
larger size than the outer, and more rii hly decorated In this case the
private apartments of the master of the house are in the inner court,
and here is also the hareem for the women and children, guarded
jealously from all intrusion (S!mv, Trav. p. LM7; Lane, Mod Kg. i 179,
2M7) The hareem however was not in use among the Jews. We find
it referred to as belonging to the palace of Ahasuerus, Es. ii. 3; but
we nowhere find allusion to it in strictly Jewish life. .V considerable
measure of the same freedom which women possess in Christian
soeietv wa.accorded to them amoiu: the Jews. In the inner court
there is often a fountain of water: occasionally there are trees, very
frequently two in number, such as the palm or eypre-.-., the olive or
pomegranate. In some houses these courts are laid out in beautiful
'.gardens (liremer'a . II ilj Land, ii 149,241; I;, binsoif - lie ! 137, l.»
1 11 others the v are handsomelv paved. A verandah or covered
gallery generally runs round the front of the house within th-' court.
In tin; woodcut No. ol11, \\e have a ur of the inner court of a
Turkish house. Hebrew (rv^-yi scarcely permits 1 illustration ieh
probably corresponds in its main features with the hctt'T houses
understand how public a plan of ancient Israel. The accounts of the
eastern courts must have been, and ho\\ sinta given by travellt rs
illustrate many pas-a-, - in Scrip ture. Thus the olive or the palm
planted in the court, and carefully tended, represent the righteous
planted in the house of the Lord, and flourishing in his courts. Ps. lii.
S; xi-ii 13. As the court, crowdid with its happy inmate,, ami
beautifully kept, was the si-n of national prosperity: so the court
desolate and forsaken, where the thorns come up. and the nettles
and brambles flourish, the habitation of jackals and owls, is the .-i-n
of national decay, Is. xxxiv. in. The fttalrs of the house are generally
a flight of steps or, in humble houses, a ladder leading from the
court the stairs are entirely outside of the s Land ;.nd Book, p I.;).
We can also the top of the stairs le it would be for pro clamations or
addresses of a public nature addressed to those assembled in the
courts below. Accordingly we find the Israelite captains placing Jehu
on a kind of tribunal on the top of the stairs, and th' re proclaiming
him king, j Ki ix 1:1. Tin //"•'/'. The roof of an eastern house is flat.
It is s [iially in Kgypt. Arabia. Syria. Persia, and Africa (Richardson,
Trav in Sahara, ii. 1.11; Thomson, Land and Jiook.p :v.>; Robinson.
Res. i. 31.1; Wilkinson, Anc. KL- ii. llliV Dut the flat roof of Ko-ypt has
peculiarities unknoun in the houses of Palestine. It i.- sometimes
supported by columns, sometimes by the ni'Te walls. Within the roof
is a large to the roof or terrace of the dwelling-house. When the
hole, to whieh is atiixed the weoden inulguf, or windhouse possesses
one or more stories, they are continued conductor (Wilkinson, An.
Kg ii ill', 120). The materials of from the gallery fronting on the court
to the top of which the roof is formed are of different kinds. ]t the
house, whither they lead up through a door, that is is sometimes
composed of boards or stone slabs (Thomson, constantly kept shut
to prevent the domestic animals p. 3.19; Buckn^hain.Tnn- p. 170).
A yery usual kind of roof from daubing the terrace, and so injuring
the water is constructed in the following manner: The beams or
rafters are placed about three feet apart; across these short sticks
are arranged close to-ethir, and covered with the' thickly matted
thorn bush called //<: over="" this="" is="" spread="" a="" coat=""
of="" thick="" mortar="" and="" then="" comes="" the="" marl=""
or="" earth="" which="" covers="" whole="" land="" i="">ok, p.
3,09'). A large stone roller is i. ;>7i-37iO. They are usually of simple
structure, and kept on the top of the house for the purpose of
hardenof stone or wood : but those mentioned in 1 Ki. vi. 8, ing and
flattening the layer of earth, to prevent the and distinguished by a
different name, seem to have ' rain from penetrating. Roofs however
are often of a been of a more complicated kind ; probably these j
very inferior description to this. They are at times latter stairs were
within, not outside of the building: composed of the palm-leaf, and
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