Palladius of Galatia on the Jews

Palladius of Galatia isn't exactly a household name even among those who consider themselves fairly well-versed in early Christian history. This is in partially because we know very little about Palladius himself and all that we do know with some certainty is that he was a fifth century bishop of Helenopolis and was a devoted follower of Saint John Chrysostom.

Indeed, one of Palladius' two surviving works is a book about the life of Saint John Chrysostom: the other is his 'Lausiac History'. What we do know about Palladius is that he was well-regarded in his day and that he had a considerable amount of correspondence and relations with many senior Christians of his day.

That then gives us a basis for the authority and life of Palladius' teachings and in particular we find a significant amount of material in his two works on the subject of the jews.

To begin with in the 'Lausiac History' he writes that:

'But Pythagoras, Diogenes and Plato drank water; so did the Manichaeans and the rest of the band of soi-disant philosophers, and yet they reached such a pitch of vain-glory in their intemperance that they failed to know God and worshipped idols. The apostle Peter and his companions used wine to some extent, so that their Master, our Saviour, was himself reproached on account of their participation, by the Jews' saying: "Why do not thy disciples fast as do the disciples of John?" Again insulting the disciples with reproaches they said: "Your Master eats and drinks with the publicans and sinners."' (1)

Here we see Palladius casting the jews in the role as the fanatical opposition to Jesus and as being devoted agents of the Devil in casting aspersions on this character (i.e., his association with drunks and prostitutes or put another way on his association with the lowest of the low as opposed to hobnobbing with the great and the good of his day) and also trying to draw him into imitating others (why don't you abstain from sustenance like the disciples of John the Baptist did/do) [thus proving him not to be original or wholly truthful and thus not the Messiah].

Palladius continues thus:

'So before their eyes he took scissors and cut off his left ear to the base, saying to them: "Well, be convinced now that it is impossible for me to be ordained, since the law forbids a man with ear cut off to be raised to the priesthood." So then they left him and departed and went and told the bishop. And he said to them: "Let the Jews observe this law. For my part, if you bring a man with his nose cut off worthy in character, I'll ordain him." So they went off again and implored Ammonius. And he swore to them: "If you use force to me, I'll cut off my tongue." So then they left him and went their way.'' (2)

Here Palladius is casting the jews once again in the role of the fanatical opposition to Jesus and Christianity, but the emphasis he is using has changed. This change is that rather than the jews trying to actively lead the Christians by contradiction and error into the arms of the Devil: they are instead passively observing the old laws and if - as the jews say - 'it is written' then the they must do it because it is written so.

Palladius' point is simply that the old laws of the Torah (the 613 Mitzvoth in historic and modern Judaism) are absurd and the jews observe them rigidly without understanding them or seeing an obvious motive in them: so - as he says - if the Torah forbade a man to be a priest who had had an ear cut off then the jews would adhere to this without critical appraisal regardless of how pointless or unjustified it may actually be.

Essentially he is making the point that the jews observe the letter rather than the spirit of the law of  God and also observe those laws without understanding them, which is - in Palladius' view - in direct contradiction to Christian observance of the spirit of the law as opposed to the letter of the law as well as using the tools of logical analysis and philosophy to comprehend and make sense of those laws in quasi-scholastic fashion.

Palladius illustrates this adversarial nature later when he relates a personal anecdote to make a separate point.

To wit:

'I knew an old Palestinian named Gaddanas, who lived in the open air in the region round the Jordan. Some Jews once set about him in a fanatic outburst, in the region round the Dead Sea, and came against him with swords drawn. And this incident occurred. When a man lifted up his sword and wished to use it against Gaddanas, the hand of him who had drawn it was withered up, and the sword fell from the hand of its wielder.' (3)

In the above we can see that the jews are cast as having attacking a pious Christian named Gaddanas and he was attacked due to this strong Christian belief by jews 'with swords drawn'. However, God protected his devout follower and struck down his jewish attackers and thus miraculously saved Gaddanas from harm (i.e., proving the jews wrong and the Christians right).

We can see from this that Palladius means to suggest that the jews are the eternal persecutors of Christians and they have been filling this role ever since the crucifixion of Christ due to their persecution and hand in killing of him (i.e., the charge of Deicide). Indeed, Palladius casts the jews very much in the role of the devil's own mortal army who will stop at nothing to stop the spread of Christian truth to the peoples of the world.

This is brought out in particular in Palladius' 'Dialogue concerning the Life of Saint John Chrysostom' when he states that:

'So they held a gathering, and took steps to bring a suit against John. One of them suggested that they should present petitions to the king, and insist upon his appearing before the synod, however unwilling. This was the course adopted; as with the Jews, so with them, money made everything easy.' (4)

Palladius' point is not hard to discern here in that the Christian synod was aping the stratagem of the jews in dealing with Christian influence: simply bribe officials to get your way as every individual has their price regardless of ideological scruples and claims to the contrary. The sub-text to the remark is, of course, that the jews have long used bribery and the offer of money in exchange for political influence as a practical political tool to fight against Christians in the public and private spheres of life.

To Palladius' mind it seems that while the jews attacked Gaddanas with 'swords drawn' ready to stab: they tend to attack Christians less in this direct way, but rather with their cheque books drawn from their pockets and ready to bribe.

This is confirmed when Palladius tells us:

'The feast of Pentecost passed, and five days afterwards Acacius, Antiochus, Severianus, and Cyrinus came to the king, and said: "Your majesty, as by God's appointment you are not under our authority, but have authority over all, you can do whatever you will. Be not more mild than a priest, and more holy than a bishop; we said to you publicly, Upon our heads be the deposition of John. Do not then be unmerciful to all of us, in being merciful to one man." They employed the same language, I might say the same actions, as the Jews, to persuade the king.' (5)

Palladius here is clearly telling us that the jews use underhand and dishonourable tricks such as bribery to get their way, but it is also implied in what he says that the jews also use the additional trickery of slanders, lies and calumny. In order to achieve their ends as a bribe is accepted that much more easily when it is given a justification and can be portrayed by the bribed party to be - shall we say - 'in response to information received'.

In other words, the jewish assault on Christianity is two-fold according to Palladius: the jews spread lies, slanders and calumnies against the Christians and these are backed up by a campaign of bribery in order to grease the acceptance of these claims.

The object of this twin campaign against Christians is elucidated by what Palladius says happened as a result of it in the case of Saint John Chrysostom.

To wit:

'With him went forth the angel, unable to bear the desolation of the Church, brought about by wicked principalities and powers, who had produced a sort of theatrical exhibition. Yes, there was a roar, like that one hears in a theatre; the ungodly hissed and booed, Jews and Greeks yelled at the top of their voices. And there were blows and body wounds, inflicted by the soldiers, as if they were dealing with criminals in a prison; while every faculty of the soul was tortured by the withdrawal of the teacher, and by the blasphemy against God.' (6)

The above presents us with the simple object of this campaign by the jews in that it was to see the Christians persecuted by the authorities and ultimately for Christian blood to stain the sands of the arena with that of the common criminals, which would then slake the jewish thirst for blood for at least a time.

Palladius also tells us quite clearly where the jews got the money for their bribes from when he states as follows:

'So the synod ordered, that they should recover from the heirs of Antoninus, and should communicate within the sanctuary, but not be reckoned as priests, for fear that if their doings were condoned, a custom might arise worthy of Jews or Egyptians, of selling and buying the priesthood. They say that the pestilential patriarch of the Jews, whose acts belied his title, used to change the rulers of the synagogues every year, or every other year, as a means of raising money; and that the Patriarch of Egypt emulated him by doing the same, that the word of prophecy might be fulfilled, "Her priests made answer for gifts, and her prophets divined for money." (7)

Now in the above - quite aside from the delightfully pejorative comments Palladius makes about the 'pestilential patriarch' - we can see that he had identified that the jews have corrupted their own institutions into being ones that can be bought and sold for profit by those in authority. This then gives the purchaser a huge boost in socio-cultural - in addition to political - status which they then invariably use to enrich themselves in order to recoup their losses (in much the same way as jews often brought tax-farming rights from medieval monarchs in Eastern Europe [i.e., paying the monarch a fixed sum for the right to collect taxes in a given area thus meaning that you use every law possible to wring more money from the population]).

However, it also gives the jewish leadership caste a considerable flow of liquid capital/ready cash, which they can then use to bribe officials and influential individuals/groups into following their agenda rather than their own.

This also links nicely back to Palladius' comments in the 'Lausiac History' about the jews obeying the letter of the law as opposed to being in-tune with the spirit of the law. As to him the jews have debased their covenant with God so far that they are willing to sell even the highest of spiritual offices, because it is no specifically prohibited by the Torah but yet is clearly prohibited in the spirit of the Torah in relation to the formation of the priesthood of uncompromising Yahweh purists only beholden to God (i.e., the Levites).

This buying and selling of the priesthood; or simony in Christian theological vocabulary, for profit is then implicitly drawn on by Palladius when he remarks about jews seeking to become Christian priests and then deliberately causing the lowering of attendance at Churches so as to remove - what Marxists would call - the 'mass base' of the Church and thus remove a large segment of its political power in its ability to gather mobs together and fights its religious enemies.

To wit:

'So these companions of actors and Jews are entrusted by our clever friends with the secrets of the priesthood, as if they were friends of the Saviour, and in consequence the orthodox laity avoid the houses of prayer.' (8)

In essence Palladius is telling us that jewish converts to Christianity are 'wolves in sheep's clothing' who are interested only in promoting the agenda of the jews among the Christians by forcing the people away from the Churches and thus making war upon Jesus. This is clearly demonstrated by Palladius' reference to the jews as being the enemies of Jesus and the inference of his remark that the jews were as a people not the friends of Jesus and that jewish converts must accordingly be 'wolves in sheep's clothing' as opposed to genuine converts to Christianity.

We can then sum up Palladius' strident opposition to the jews and place him as one of the strongest critics of the jews among early Christian intellectuals by quoting his own last words on the subject of the jews, which find few parallels in Christian writing for their sheer strength of feeling and their obvious erudition.

He ends thus:

'Perhaps people who are always on the look-out for honours call this insolence; but John says to those who came to put themselves under his instruction, "O generation of vipers, who has warned you to flee from the wrath to come?" And Paul, in the Acts, says to the chief priest, "God shall smite thee, thou wailing wall;" and the Saviour in one place says to the Jews, "A wicked and adulterous generation seeks after a sign," and in another, to all the apostles, "O fools and slow of heart." In yet another He calls Peter, Satan" Get thee behind me, Satan; for thou art an offence unto me." Yet there was no grave offence, which called for these severe expressions.' (9)

References

(1) Pall. Lau. Hist. Pro. 9

(2) Pall. Lau. Hist. 11

(3) Ibid. 50

(4) Pall. Dia. Vit. John Chrys. 8

(5) Ibid. 10

(6) Ibid.

(7) Ibid. 15

(8) Ibid.

(9) Ibid. 19