have contrived to agree with our own notions, against accounts given in so full and clear a manner. Suppose, for a moment, that we could find no traces of the custom of scourging in the synagogues, in other writers; ought that to be considered doubtful, which is thus stated by Christ and Paul, in the plainest terms, as a fact commonly and perfectly well known in their time? Nor is there any reason why scourging in the synagogues should seem so unaccountable to us, since it was a grade of discipline less than excommunication, and less disgraceful. For it is made to appear that some of the most eminent of the wise, when they broke the law, were thus punished,—not even excepting the head of the Senate, nor the high priest himself." (Witsius, § 1, ¶ xix.-xxi.) Witsius illustrates it still farther, by the stories which follow.
"But there are instances of flagellation in synagogues found in
other accounts. Grotius himself quotes from Epiphanius, that a
certain Jew who wished to revolt to Christianity, was whipped in
the synagogue. The story is to the following purport. 'A man,
named Joseph, a messenger of the Jewish patriarch, went into
Cilicia by order of the patriarch, to collect the tithes and first-*fruits
from the Jews of that province; and while on his tour of
duty, lodged in a house near a Christian church. Having, by
means of this, become acquainted with the pastor, he privately
begs the loan of the book of the gospels, and reads it. But the
Jews, getting wind of this, were so enraged against him, that on
a sudden they made an assault on the house, and caught Joseph
in the very act of reading the gospels. Snatching the book out
of his hands, they knocked him down, and crying out against
him with all sorts of abuse, they led him away to the synagogue,
where they whipped him with rods.'
"Very much like this is the more modern story which Uriel Acosta tells of himself, in a little book, entitled "the Pattern of Human Life." The thing took place in Amsterdam, about the year 1630. It seems this Uriel Acosta was a Jew by birth, but being a sort of Epicurean philosopher, had some rather heretical notions about most of the articles of the Jewish creed; and on this charge, being called to account by the rulers of the synagogue, stood on his trial. In the end of it, a paper was read to him, in which it was specified that he must come into the synagogue, clothed in a mourning garment, holding a black wax-light in his hand, and should utter openly before the congregation a certain form of words prescribed by them, in which the offenses he had committed were magnified beyond measure. After this, that he should be flogged with a cowskin or strap, publicly, in the synagogue, and then should lay himself down flat on the threshhold of the synagogue, that all might walk over him. How thoroughly this sentence was executed, is best learned from his own amusing and candid story, which are given in the very words,
