The life and work of St. Paul

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APPENDIX.
Such was the prince who came to salute Festus, and he was accompanied by his sister,
who was unhappily notorious even among the too notorious ladies of rank in that evil
time. Berenice was the Lucrozia Borgia of the Herodian family. She was beautiful,
like all the princesses of her house. Before the age of sixteen she had been married to
her uncle Herod of Chalcis, and being left a widow before she was twenty, went to live
in Borne with her equally youthful brother. Her beauty, her rank, the splendour of her
jewels, the interest and curiosity attaching to her race and her house, made her a prominent
figure in the society of the capital ; and a diamond, however lustrous and valuable,
was enhanced in price if it was known that it had once sparkled on the finger of Berenice,
and had been a present to her from her brother. 1 The relations between the two gave
rise to the darkest rumours, which gained credence, because there was nothing to
contradict them in the bearing or character of the defamed persons. So rife indeed did
these stories become, that Berenice looked out for a new marriage. She contracted an
alliance with Polemo II., King of Cilicia, insisting, however, that he should save her from
any violation of the Jewish law by submitting to the rite of circumcision. 2
Circumcision,
not conversion, was all that she required. So true is the charge brought alike by St.
Paul in his Epistles, and by the writers of the Talmud, that the reason why the Jews
insisted upon circumcision was only that they might have whereof to glory in the flesh. 1
The lowering of the Gentile fasces in token of external respect was all that they cared
for, and when that was done, the Ger might go his own vile way not improbably to
Gehenna.* Circumcision to them was greater than all affirmative precepts, and was
therefore exalted above love to God or love to our neighbour. 5 No doubt it cost Polemo
something to accept concision, in order to satisfy the orthodox scrupulosity of an
abandoned Jewess ; but her wealth was an inducement too powerful to resist. It was
hardly likely that such a marriage could last. It was broken off very rapidly by the
elopement of Berenice, after which Polemo immediately repudiated every shadow and
semblance of allegiance to the Jewish religion, and Berenice returned to the house of her
brother, until her well-preserved but elderly beauty, added to the munificence of her
presents, first won the old Vespasian, and then his son Titus. 6 The conqueror of Judaea
was so infatuated by his love for its dishonoured princess that he took her with him to
Borne, and seriously contemplated making her a partner of his imperial throne.? But
this was more than the Bomans could stand, far gone as they were in servitude and
adulation. The murmurs which the rumoured match stirred up were so wrathful in their
indignation, that Titus saw how unsafe it would bo to wed a Jewess whose name had
been dragged through the worst infamy. He dismissed her invitus invitam and we
hear of her no more. Thus in the fifth generation did the sun of the Herodian house set
in obscure darkness, as it had dawned in blood ; and with it set also the older and purer
splendour of the Asmonaean princes. They had mingled the honourable blood of Judas
the Maccabee with that of Idumsean adventurers, and the inheritors of the grandest
traditions of Jewish patriotism were involved in a common extinction with the repre-
sentatives of the basest intrigues of Jewish degradation.
1 " Adamas nottissimns, et Berenices
In digito factus pretiosior ; hunc dedlt olim '
Barbaras incestae, dedit hunc Agrippa sororl."
Juv. Sat. vi. 156; Jos. Antl. n. 6, S.
Jos. Antt. xx. 7, 8.
Gal. vi. 13. It was, of course, a Judaic triumph to make a king not only a Ger Thoshabh, or a
proselyte of the gate (Ex. xx. 14), but even a Ger "
hatsedek, a proselyte of righteousness," or " of tho
Covenant." These latter were despised alike by Jews and GentUes (Suet. Claud. 25 ; Domit. 12 ;
Yebhamoth, xlvii. 4 ; see Wetstein on Matt, xxiii. 151
See McCaul, Old Paths, pp. 63 tq^.
*
Nedarim, t. 82, c. 2.
Jos. Antt. XX. 7, | 8.
Boot. Tit 7 ; Tac. H. ii 81.