fin. De
Boisseau, _Inscr. Ant. de Lyon_, p. 136.]

[Footnote 2: 2 Sam. xxiv.]

[Footnote 3: Talmud of Babylon, _Baba Kama_, 113 _a_; _Shabbath_, 33
_b_.]

[Footnote 4: Jos., _Ant._, XVIII. i. 1 and 6; _B.J._, II. viii. 1;
_Acts_ v. 37. Previous to Judas the Gaulonite, the _Acts_ place
another agitator, Theudas; but this is an anachronism, the movement of
Theudas took place in the year 44 of the Christian era (Jos., _Ant._,
XX. v. 1).]

[Footnote 5: Jos., _B.J._, II. xvii. 8, and following.]

Galilee was thus an immense furnace wherein the most diverse elements
were seething.[1] An extraordinary contempt of life, or, more properly
speaking, a kind of longing for death,[2] was the consequence of these
agitations. Experience counts for nothing in these great fanatical
movements. Algeria, at the commencement of the French occupation, saw
arise, each spring, inspired men, who declared themselves
invulnerable, and sent by God to drive away the infidels; the
following year their death was forgotten, and their successors found
no less credence. The Roman power, very stern on the one hand, yet
little disposed to meddle, permitted a good deal of liberty. Those
great, brutal despotisms, terrible in repression, were not so
suspicious as powers which have a faith to defend. They allowed
everything up to the point when they thought it necessary to be
severe. It is not recorded that Jesus was even once interfered with by
the civil power, in his wandering career. Such freedom, and, above
all, the happiness which Galilee enjoyed in being much less confined
in the bonds of Pharisaic pedantry, gave to this district a real
superiority over Jerusalem. The revolution, or, in other words, the
belief in the Messiah, caused here a general fermentation. Men deemed
themselves on the eve of the great renovation; the Scriptures,
tortured into divers meanings, fostered the most colossal hopes. In
each line of the simple writings of the Old Testament they saw the
assurance, and, in a manner, the programme of the future reign, which
was to bring peace to the righteous, and to seal forever the work of
God.

[Footnote 1: Luke xiii. 1. The Galilean movement of Judas, son of
Hezekiah, does not appear to have been of a religious character;
perhaps, however, its character has been misrepresented by Josephus
(_Ant._, XVII. x. 5).]

[Footnote 2: Jos., _Ant._, XVI. vi. 2, 3; XVIII. i. 1.]

From all time, this division into two parties, opposed in