Part 2 — Chapter III. (These four articles abrogated by the four articles following them, 118-122.) Article 118. The Federal Constitution may at any time be amended. (continued 93)

W. Robertson Smith, The Prophets of Israel, lecture 5.

In the year B. C. 745 the throne of Assyria was seized by a soldier of great ability, called Pul, or Pulu, who took the name of Tiglath-pileser III. and who promptly entered on an ambitious career of conquest, with imperial aims and plans. "In B. C. 738 we find him receiving tribute from Menahem of Samaria, Rezon of Damascus, and Hiram of Tyre. … The throne of Israel was occupied at the time by Pekah, a successful general who had murdered his predecessor, but who was evidently a man of vigour and ability. He and Rezon endeavoured to form a confederacy of the Syrian and Palestinian states against their common Assyrian foe. In order to effect their object they considered it necessary to displace the reigning king of Judah, Ahaz, and substitute for him a creature of their own. … They were aided by a party of malcontents in Judah itself (Isaiah viii. 6), and the position of Ahaz seemed desperate. … In this moment of peril Isaiah was instructed to meet and comfort Ahaz. He bade him 'fear not, neither be fainthearted,' for the confederacy against the dynasty of David should be broken and overthrown. … But Ahaz … had no faith either in the prophet or in the message he was commissioned to deliver. He saw safety in one course only—that of invoking the assistance of the Assyrian king, and bribing him by the offer of homage and tribute to march against his enemies. In vain Isaiah denounced so suicidal and unpatriotic a policy. In vain he foretold that when Damascus and Samaria had been crushed, the next victim of the Assyrian king would be Judah itself. The infatuated Ahaz would not listen. He 'sent messengers to Tiglath-pileser king of Assyria, saying, I am thy servant and thy son: come up and save me out of the hand of the king of Syria, and out of the hand of the king of Israel, which rise up against me.'" The king of Assyria responded to the call (B. C. 734). He defeated Rezon in battle, laid siege to Damascus, swept the tribes east of the Jordan into captivity, overran the territory of Israel, captured Samaria and put to death Pekah the king. In place of Pekah he set up a vassal-king Hoshea. Six years later, Tiglath-pileser having died, and the Assyrian throne having been seized by another strong soldier, Shalmaneser IV., Hoshea attempted a revolt, looking to Egypt for help. But before Sabako king of Egypt could move to his assistance, "Hoshea was defeated by the Assyrian king or his satraps, and thrown into chains. The ruling classes of Samaria, however, still held out. An Assyrian army, accordingly, once more devastated the land of Israel, and laid siege to the capital. For three years Samaria remained untaken. Another revolution had meanwhile broken out in Assyria; Shalmaneser had died or been put to death, and a fresh military adventurer had seized the crown, taking the name of Sargon, after a famous monarch of ancient Babylonia. Sargon had hardly established himself upon the throne when Samaria fell (B. C. 722). … He contented himself with transporting only 27,280 of its inhabitants into captivity, only the upper classes, in fact, who were implicated in the revolt of Hoshea. An Assyrian satrap, or governor, was appointed over Samaria, while the bulk of the population was allowed to remain peaceably in their old homes."

A. H. Sayce, Life and Times of Isaiah, chapter 3.

"Much light is thrown upon the conditions of the national religion then and upon its subsequent development by the single fact that the exiled Israelites were absorbed by the surrounding heathenism without leaving a trace behind them, while the population of Judah, who had the benefit of a hundred years of respite, held their faith fast throughout the period of the Babylonian exile, and by means of it were able to maintain their own individuality afterwards in all the circumstances that arose. The fact that the fall of Samaria did not hinder but helped the religion of Jehovah is entirely due to the prophets."

J. Wellhausen, Sketch of the History of Israel and Judah, chapter 6.

"The first generation of the exiles lived to see the fall of their conquerors. … After this it is difficult to discover any distinct trace of the northern tribes. Some returned with their countrymen of the southern kingdom. … The immense Jewish population which made Babylonia a second Palestine was in part derived from them; and the Jewish customs that have been discovered in the Nestorian Christians, with the traditions of the sect itself, may indicate at any rate a mixture of Jewish descent. That they [the 'lost Ten Tribes'] are concealed in some unknown region of the earth, is a fable with no foundation either in history or prophecy."

Dean Stanley, Lectures on the History of the Jewish Church, lecture 34 (volume 2).

See, also, JERUSALEM.

{1905}

JEWS: B. C. 724-604. The kingdom of Judah to the end of the Egyptian domination.

Three years before Sargon's destruction of Samaria, "Hezekiah had succeeded his father Ahaz upon the throne of Jerusalem. … Judah was tributary to Assyria, and owed to Assyria its deliverance from a great danger. But the deliverer and his designs were extremely dangerous, and made Judah apprehensive of being swallowed up presently, when its turn came. The neighbouring countries,—Phœnicia on the north, Moab, Ammon, and the Arabian nations on the east, Philistia on the west, Egypt and Ethiopia on the south,—shared Judah's apprehensions. There were risings, and they were sternly quelled; Judah, however, remained tranquil. But the scheme of an anti-Assyrian alliance was gradually becoming popular. Egypt was the great pillar of hope. By its size, wealth, resources, pretensions, and fame, Egypt seemed a possible rival to Assyria. Time went on. Sargon was murdered in 705; Sennacherib succeeded him. Then on all sides there was an explosion of revolts against the Assyrian rule. The first years of Sennacherib's reign were spent by him in quelling a formidable rising of Merodach Baladan, king of Babylon. The court and ministers of Hezekiah seized this opportunity for detaching their master from Assyria, for joining in the movement of the insurgent states of Palestine and its borders, and for allying themselves with Egypt. … In the year 701, Sennacherib, victorious in Babylonia, marched upon Palestine."

M. Arnold, Isaiah of Jerusalem, introduction.

Sennacherib advanced along the Phœnician coast. "Having captured Ascalon, he next laid siege to Ekron, which, after the Egyptian army sent to its relief had been defeated at Eltekeh, fell into the enemy's hand, and was severely dealt with. Simultaneously various fortresses of Judah were occupied, and the level country was devastated (Isaiah i.). The consequence was that Hezekiah, in a state of panic, offered to the Assyrians his submission, which was accepted on payment of a heavy penalty, he being permitted, however, to retain possession of Jerusalem. He seemed to have got cheaply off from the unequal contest. The way being thus cleared, Sennacherib pressed on southwards, for the Egyptians were collecting their forces against him. The nearer he came to the enemy the more undesirable did he find it that he should leave in his rear so important a fortress as Jerusalem in the hands of a doubtful vassal. Notwithstanding the recently ratified treaty, therefore, he demanded the surrender of the city, believing that a policy of intimidation would be enough to secure it from Hezekiah. But there was another personality in Jerusalem of whom his plans had taken no account. Isaiah had indeed regarded the revolt from Assyria as a rebellion against Jehovah Himself, and therefore as a perfectly hopeless undertaking, which could only result in the utmost humiliation and sternest chastisement for Judah. But much more distinctly than Amos and Hosea before him did he hold firm as an article of faith the conviction that the kingdom would not be utterly annihilated; all his speeches of solemn warning closed with the announcement that a remnant should return and form the kernel of a new commonwealth to be fashioned after Jehovah's own heart. … Over against the vain confidence of the multitude Isaiah had hitherto brought into prominence the darker obverse of his religious belief, but now he confronted their present depression with its bright reverse; faintheartedness was still more alien to his nature than temerity. In the name of Jehovah he bade King Hezekiah be of good courage, and urged that he should by no means surrender. The Assyrians would not be able to take the city, not even to shoot an arrow into it, nor to bring up their siege train against it. 'I know thy sitting, thy going, and thy standing,' is Jehovah's language to the Assyrian, 'and also thy rage against Me. And I will put my ring in thy nose, and my bridle in thy lips, and I will turn thee back by the way by which thou camest.' And thus it proved in the issue. By a still unexplained catastrophe, the main army of Sennacherib was annihilated on the frontier between Egypt and Palestine, and Jerusalem thereby freed from all danger. The Assyrian king had to save himself by a hurried retreat to Nineveh; Isaiah was triumphant. A more magnificent close of a period of influential public life can hardly be imagined."

J. Wellhausen, Sketch of the History of Israel and Judah, chapter 7.

"We possess in duplicate, on the Taylor Cylinder, found at Nineveh in 1830, and now in the British Museum, and on the Bull-inscription of Kouyunjik, Sennacherib's own account of the stages of his campaign. Sidon and the cities of Phœnicia were the first to be attacked; and, after reducing these, and receiving homage from several of the kings of the countries bordering on Palestine, who apparently were not this time implicated in the plan of revolt, Sennacherib started southwards, aiming to recover similarly Ashkelon, Ekron, and Jerusalem. In Ashkelon he deprived Zedek of his crown, which he bestowed upon Sarludari, the son of a former king, doubtless on the ground that he was friendly to Assyrian interests: at the same time four subject-cities belonging to Zedek, Beth-dagon, Joppa, Bene-Barak, and Azuru were captured and plundered. Sennacherib next proceeds to deal with Ekron. The people of Ekron, in order to carry through their plan for the recovery of independence without hindrance, had deposed their king Padi, who remained loyal to Assyria, and sent him bound in chains to Hezekiah. Upon news of the approach of the Assyrians, they had summoned the Egyptians to their aid; they arrive now 'with forces innumerable;' the encounter takes place at Altaku (probably not far from Ekron); victory declares for the Assyrian; and the Egyptians retire without effecting the desired relief. After this Sennacherib soon reduces Ekron; he obtains, moreover, the surrender of Padi from Jerusalem, and restores him to his throne. Now follows the account of the aggressive measures adopted by him against Judah and Jerusalem. 'And Hezekiah of Judah, who had not submitted to my yoke, forty-six of his strong cities, fortresses and smaller towns round about their border without number, with laying low of the walls, and with open (?) attack, with battle … of feet, … hewing about and trampling down (?), I besieged, I took 200,150 people, small and great, male and female, horses, mules,' asses, camels, oxen, and sheep without number, from the midst of them I brought out, and I counted them as spoil. {1906} Himself, as a bird in a cage, in the midst of Jerusalem, his royal city, I shut up. Siege-works against him I erected, and the exit of the great gate of his city I blocked up. His cities which I had plundered, from his domain I cut off; and to Mitinti, king of Ashdod, to Padi, king of Ekron, and to Zilbel, king of Gaza, I gave them; I diminished his territory. To the former payment of their yearly tribute, the tribute of subjection to my sovereignty I added; I laid it upon them. Himself, Hezekiah, the terror of the splendour of my sovereignty overwhelmed: the Arabians and his dependents, whom he had introduced, for the defence of Jerusalem, his royal city, and to whom he had granted pay, together with 30 talents of gold, 800 talents of silver, bullion (?) … precious (?) stones of large size, couches of ivory, lofty thrones of ivory, elephant-skins, ivory, … wood, … woods of every kind, an abundant treasure, and in addition, his daughters, the women of his palace, his male and female harem(?)-attendants unto Nineveh, my royal city, he caused to be brought after me. For the payment of tribute, and the rendering of homage: he sent his envoy.' Here the account on the Inscription closes, the lines which follow relating to the campaign of the subsequent year."

S. R. Driver, Isaiah: His Life and Times, chapter 7.

"Between the retreat of Sennacherib's army and the capture of the capital by Nebuchadrezzar there was an interval of little more than a century, yet, meanwhile, upon the basis of the prophetical teaching, the foundations of Judaism were laid. … But though Sennacherib had retreated from Palestine, Judah still remained the vassal of Assyria. The empire of Assyria was scarcely affected by the event which was to change the face of the world, and for more than half-a-century its power was undiminished and supreme. Yet, as regards the internal condition of Judah, the great deliverance was the occasion of a reform which at first may well have made Isaiah's heart beat high. … Influential as he was at the court and with the king, and with reputation enormously enhanced by the fulfilment of his promise of deliverance, he probably urged and prompted Hezekiah to the execution of a religious reform. The meagre verse in the Book of Kings which describes this reform is both inaccurate and misplaced. There is no hint in the authentic writings of Isaiah or Micah that any religious innovations had been attempted before the Assyrian war. It was the startling issue of Sennacherib's invasion which afforded the opportunity and suggested the idea. Moreover, wider changes are attributed to Hezekiah than he can actually have effected. … The residuum of fact contained in the 18th chapter of the Second Book of Kings must be probably limited to the destruction of the Nehushtan, or brazen serpent, that mysterious image in which the contemporaries of Hezekiah, whatever may have been its original signification, doubtless recognized a symbol of Yahveh. Yet indirect evidence would incline us to believe that Hezekiah's reform involved more than the annihilation of a single idol; it is more probably to be regarded as an attempt at a general abolition of images, as well as a suppression of the new Assyrian star-worship and of the 'Moloch' sacrifices which had been introduced into Judah in the reign of Ahaz. Whether this material iconoclasm betokened or generated any wide moral reformation is more than doubtful. … Hezekiah's reign extended for about fourteen years after the deliverance of Jerusalem in 701. To the early part of this, its second division, the religious reformation must be assigned. A successful campaign against the Philistines, alluded to in the Book of Kings, probably fell within the same period. Beyond this, we know nothing, though we would gladly know much, of these fourteen concluding years of an eventful reign. In 686 Hezekiah died, and was succeeded by his son Manasseh, who occupied the throne for forty-five years (686-641). The Book of Kings does not record a single external incident throughout his long reign. It must have been a time of profound peace and of comparative prosperity. Manasseh remained the vassal of Assyria, and the Assyrian inscriptions speak of him as paying tribute to the two kings, Esarhaddon (681-669), Sennacherib's successor, and Asurbanipal (669-626), till whose death the supremacy of Assyria in Palestine was wholly undisputed. Uneventful as Manasseh's reign was in foreign politics, it was all the more important in its internal and religious history. In it, and in the short reign of Amon, who maintained the policy of his father, there set in a period of strong religious reaction, extending over nearly half-a-century (686-638). Manasseh is singled out by the historian for special and repeated reprobation. In the eyes of the exilic redactor, his iniquities were the immediate cause of the destruction of the national life. Not even Josiah's reformation could turn Yahveh 'from the fierceness of his great wrath, wherewith his anger was kindled against Judah, because of all the provocations that Manasseh had provoked him withal.' Jeremiah had said the same. Exile and dispersion are to come 'because of Manasseh, the son of Hezekiah, king of Judah, for that which he did in Jerusalem.' … What were the sins of Manasseh? It has already been indicated that the Assyrians made their influence felt, not only in politics, but also in religion. It was the old Babylonian worship of the luminaries of heaven which was introduced into Judah in the eighth century, and which, after receiving a short check during the reign of Hezekiah, became very widely prevalent under his son. … There are many tokens in the literature of the seventh century that the idolatrous reaction of Manasseh penetrated deep, making many converts. … Manasseh would apparently brook no opposition to the idolatrous proclivities of his court; he met the indignation of Isaiah's disciples and of the prophetical party by open and relentless persecution. … The older historian of the Book of Kings speaks of 'Manasseh shedding innocent blood very much, till he had filled Jerusalem from one end to another.' This innocent blood must have mainly flowed from those who opposed his idolatrous tendencies. … From the accession of Manasseh to the death of Amon (686-638), a period of forty-eight years, this internal conflict continued; and in it, as always, the blood of martyrs was the seed of the Church. In 638, Amon was succeeded by his son Josiah; then only eight years old. {1907} It is possible that his accession brought about some amelioration in the condition of the prophetical party, and that active persecution ceased. But the syncretistic and idolatrous worship was still maintained for another eighteen years, though those years are passed over without any notice in the Book of Kings. They were, however, years of great importance in the history of Asia, for they witnessed the break-up of the Assyrian empire, and the inroads of the Scythians. The collapse of Assyria followed hard upon the death of Asurbanipal in 626: Babylon revolted, the northern and north-western provinces of the empire fell into the hands of the Medes, and the authority of Assyria over the vassal kingdoms of the west was gradually weakened."

C. G. Montefiore, Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion, as illustrated by the Religion of the ancient Hebrews, (Hibbert Lectures, 1892), lecture 4.

"The Assyrian empire was much weakened and the king could not think of maintaining his power in the more distant provinces. … In the year 610 B. C., Nineveh was again besieged, this time by the Medes and Babylonians in league together. In the same year Psammetichus, king of Egypt, died and was succeeded by his son Necho. If Psammetichus had already tried to enlarge his kingdom at the expense of Assyria, Necho was not the man to miss the golden opportunity that now presented itself: he proposed to seize Syria and Palestine, the Assyrian provinces that bordered on his own kingdom, and thus to obtain his share of the spoil, even if he did not help to bring down the giant. By the second year after his accession to the throne he was on the march to Syria with a large army. Probably it was transported by sea and landed at Acco, on the Mediterranean, whence it was to proceed overland. But in carrying out this plan he encountered an unexpected obstacle: Josiah went to meet him with an army and attempted to prevent his march to Syria. … Josiah must have firmly believed that Jahveh would fight for his people and defeat the Egyptian ruler. From what Jeremiah tells us of the attitude of the prophets in the reigns of Jehoiakim and Zedekiah, we must infer that many of them strengthened the king in his intention not to endure an encroachment such as that of the Pharaoh. The Chronicler relates that Necho himself endeavored to dissuade Josiah from the unequal contest. But [uselessly]. … The decisive battle was fought in the valley of Megiddo: Judah was defeated; Josiah perished. … After the victory in the valley of Megiddo and the death of Josiah, Necho was master of the kingdom of Judah. Before he arrived there, 'the people of the land' made Jehoahaz, a younger son of Josiah, king, presumably because he was more attached than his elder brother to his father's policy. At all events, Necho hastened to depose him and send him to Egypt. He was superseded by Eliakim, henceforward called Jehoiakim. At first Jehoiakim was a vassal of Egypt, and it does not appear that he made any attempt to escape from this servitude. But it was not long before events occurred elsewhere in Asia that entirely changed his position. Nineveh had fallen; the Medes and the Chaldeans or Babylonians now ruled over the former territory of the Assyrians; Syria and Palestine fell to the share of the Babylonians. Of course, the Egyptians were not inclined to let them have undisputed possession. A battle was fought at Carchemish (Circesium), on the Euphrates, between the armies of Necho and Nebuchadnezzar, who then commanded in the name of his father, Nabopolassar, but very shortly afterwards succeeded him. The Egyptians sustained a crushing defeat (604 B. C). This decided the fate of Western Asia, including Judæa."

A. Kuenen, The Religion of Israel, chapter 6 (volume 2).

JEWS: B. C. 604-536. Fall of the kingdom of Judah. The Babylonian captivity.

"In the fourth year of Jehoiakim (B. C. 604) the mightiest monarch who had wielded the Assyrian power, Nebuchadnezzar, was associated in the empire with his father, and assumed the command of the armies of Assyria. Babylon now takes the place of Nineveh as the capital of the Assyrian empire. … Vassalage to the dominion of Egypt or of Babylon is now the ignominious doom of the king of Judah. … Nebuchadnezzar, having retaken Carchemish (B. C. 601), passed the Euphrates, and rapidly overran the whole of Syria and Palestine. Jerusalem made little resistance. The king was put in chains to be carried as a prisoner to Babylon. On his submission, he was reinstated on the throne; but the Temple was plundered of many of its treasures, and a number of well-born youths, among whom were Daniel, and three others, best known by their Persian names, Shadrach, Meshech, and Abednego. From this date commence the seventy years of the Captivity. Jehoiakim had learned neither wisdom nor moderation from his misfortunes. Three years after, he attempted to throw off the yoke of Chaldea. … At length this weak and cruel king was slain (B. C. 598). … Jehoiachin (Jeconias or Coniah), his son, had scarcely mounted the throne, when Nebuchadnezzar himself appeared at the gates of Jerusalem. The city surrendered at discretion. The king and all the royal family, the remaining treasures of the Temple, the strength of the army and the nobility, and all the more useful artisans, were carried away to Babylon. Over this wreck of a kingdom, Zedekiah (Mattaniah), the younger son of Josiah, was permitted to enjoy an inglorious and precarious sovereignty of eleven years, during which he abused his powers, even worse than his imbecile predecessors. In his ninth year, notwithstanding the remonstrances of the wise Jeremiah, he endeavoured to assert his independence; and Jerusalem, though besieged by Nebuchadnezzar in person, now made some resistance. … At length, in the city, famine reduced the fatal obstinacy of despair. Jerusalem opened its gates to the irresistible conqueror. The king, in an attempt to break through the besieging forces, or meditating flight towards his ally, the king of Ammon, was seized on the plain of Jericho. His children were slain before his face, his eyes put out, and thus the last king of the royal house of David, blind and childless, was led away into a foreign prison. The capture of Jerusalem took place on the ninth day of the fourth month: on the seventh day of the fifth month (two days on which Hebrew devotion still commemorates the desolation of the city by solemn fast and humiliation) the relentless Nebuzaradan executed the orders of his master by levelling the city, the palaces, and the Temple, in one common ruin. The few remaining treasures, particularly the two brazen pillars which stood before the Temple, were sent to Babylon; the chief priests were put to death, the rest carried into captivity. … {1908} The miserable remnant of the people were placed under the command of Gedaliah, as a pasha of the great Assyrian monarch; the seat of government was fixed at Mizpeh. … Nebuzaradan (the general of Nebuchadnezzar) only left, according to the strong language of the Second Book of Kings, xxv. 12, 'of the poor of the land, to be vine-dressers and husbandmen.' … In general it seems that the Jewish exiles [in Babylonia] were allowed to dwell together in considerable bodies, not sold as household or personal or prædial slaves, at least not those of the better order of whom the Captivity chiefly consisted. They were colonists rather than captives, and became by degrees possessed of considerable property. … They had free enjoyment of their religion, such at least as adhered faithfully to their belief in Jehovah. We hear of no special and general religious persecution. The first deportation of chosen beautiful youths, after the earlier defeat of Jehoiakim, for hostages, or as a kind of court-pages, was not numerous. The second transportation swept away the king, his wife, all the officers and attendants of his court, 7,000 of the best of the army, 1,000 picked artisans, armourers, and others, amounting to 10,023 men. The last was more general: it comprehended the mass of the people, according to some calculations towards 300,000 or 400,000 souls."

H. H. Milman, History of the Jews, books 8-9, with foot-note (volume 1).

The inhabitants left behind in Judæa "formed but a pitiful remnant of the former kingdom of Judah. Part of them had grown wild and led the lives of freebooters. Others busied themselves with agriculture, but they had much to suffer from the bands of Chaldean soldiers that roved about the land, and from the neighbouring tribes, who took advantage of Israel's abasement to extend their territories. … We do not know with certainty the number of the exiles carried off by Nebuchadnezzar: the returns given in the Old Testament are evidently incomplete. But that their number was very considerable, can be gathered from the number of those who afterwards went back. For their intrinsic worth, even more than for their numerical strength, these exiles had a right to be regarded as the real representatives of the kingdom of Judah and thus of all Israel. … It was … the kernel of the nation that was brought to Babylonia. Our information as to the social condition of the exiles is very defective. Even to the question, where they had to settle, we can only return an imperfect answer. We meet with a colony of exiles, companions of Jeconiah, at Tel-abib, in the neighbourhood of the river Chebar, usually supposed to be the Chaboras, which runs into the Euphrates not far from Circesium, but considered by others to be a smaller river, nearer to Babylon. It lay in the nature of the case, that the second and third company of captives received another destination. Even had it been possible, prudence would have opposed their settling in the immediate vicinity of their predecessors. We are not surprised therefore that Ezekiel, who lived at Tel-abib, does not mention their arrival there. Where they did go we are not told. The historian says 'to Babylon,' to which place, according to him, the first exiles (597 B. C.) were also brought; probably he does not, in either passage, mean only the capital of the Chaldean kingdom, but rather the province of that name to which the city of course belonged. … Nebuchadnezzar's purpose, the prevention of fresh disturbances, having been attained by their removal from Judæa, he could now leave them to develop their resources. It was even for the interest of the districts in which they settled, that their development should not be obstructed. Many unnecessary and troublesome conflicts were avoided and the best provision was made for the maintenance of order, by leaving them free, within certain limits, to regulate their own affairs. So the elders of the families and tribes remained in possession of the authority which they had formerly exercised."

A. Kuenen, The Religion of Israel, chapter 7 (volume 2).

"About the middle of the sixth century before Christ, Cyrus, King of Elam, began the career of conquest which left him master of Western Asia. Greek writers of history have done full justice to the character of this extraordinary man, but what they tell of his origin, his early adventures and rise to power, is for the most part mere fable. … Within recent years a new light has been thrown on one of the dimmest figures of the old world by the discovery of contemporary documents, in which the Conqueror of Babylon himself records his victories and the policy of his reign. … It appears from the Inscriptions that the founder of the Persian Empire was by no means the parvenu prince described by Herodotus. Cyrus was a king's son, and in early youth, by legitimate succession, himself became a king. From Susa (Shushan) on the Choaspes, his capital city, he ruled over the fertile and populous region lying eastward of the Lower Tigris which bore the name of Elam or Susiana. This realm was one of the most ancient in Western Asia. … Nabonidus became king of Babylon in the year 555 B. C. He had raised himself to the throne by conspiracy and murder, and his position at first was insecure. The eastern provinces, Syria and Phœnicia, rose in revolt against the usurper, while the Medes on the north began a harassing warfare and threatened an invasion of Babylonia. This latter danger was averted for the time by an unlooked-for deliverance. In the sixth year of Nabonidus (550 B. C.) Cyrus led his army against Astyages, the Median king. The discontented soldiery of Astyages mutinied on the eve of battle, seized the person of their sovereign, and delivered him up to the enemy. … This bloodless victory added Media to the dominions of Cyrus, gave him Ecbatana as a second capital and place of arms, and more than doubled his military strength. … The real aim of Cyrus was the overthrow of Babylon, and the construction of a new and still wider empire on the ruins of the old. … Within the two years following his conquest of the Medes he had extended his sway over the kindred race of the Persians, from which he himself had sprung. The wild tribes of Iran had long looked greedily on the rich Chaldæan plains and cities, and only waited a leader before swooping down like ravenous birds on their prey. This leader appeared in Cyrus. … Forty years had passed since the destruction of Jerusalem and the deportation of the great mass of the Jewish people to Babylonia (588 B. C.). During this period, under Nebuchadnezzar and his immediate successors on the throne, the exiles had lived in peace, following without interference their own customs, religious and social. … Nothing hindered them from leading a quiet and comfortable life among the Chaldæans, if only they were content to break with their past and give up hope for the future. {1909} But this was impossible for all true Israelites. They could not forget what they had been, or reconcile themselves to be what they now were. They had the means of livelihood in abundance, but to them their drink was as vinegar, their meat as gall. … The home-sickness of the people finds manifold expression in the literature of the Exile. … Now, as at every crisis in the national history, the Prophets stood forth, the true leaders of Israel. They kept the people constantly in mind of their high destinies, and comforted and encouraged them in their darkest hours. … Among the Jewish exiles, enlightened by the prophetic word, the name Koresh passed from lip to lip, and the movements of this new Conqueror were followed with straining eyes. … In the month Nisan (March) of the year 547 B. C., the ninth year of Nabonidus, Cyrus crossed the Tigris at the fords of Arbela, eastward of the modern Mosul, and began his first invasion of Babylonia. … Meanwhile the fainéant king Nabonidus lingered in his palace near Babylon, leaving the defence of the empire to his eldest son, the Prince Royal Belshazzar. Whether worsted in battle or, as is more likely, baffled by the difficulties in the way of an invader—the country seamed with water-courses, the numerous fortified towns, the Median Wall—Cyrus was forced to retreat. … In the seventeenth year of Nabonidus (539 B. C.) the King of Elam once more took the field against Babylon. This time the attack was made from the southeast. An opportune revolt of the southern provinces, probably fomented by Cyrus himself, opened the way for him into the heart of the land. … On all sides the disaffected subjects of Nabonidus went over to the invader, who passed on at the head of his 'vast army, innumerable, like the waters of a river,' without meeting any serious resistance. The last hope of Nabonidus rested on his Army of the North. In the month Tammuz (June) a pitched battle was fought near Routou, a town in Accad, and ended in the defeat of the Babylonians. A revolution followed at once. … Some days later the victorious army, under a lieutenant of the King, appeared before the walls of Babylon. The collapse of all authority made useless defences which were the wonder of the world; friendly hands threw open the brazen gates, and without a struggle the great city fell. … Four months later Cyrus entered Babylon in triumph. … The hitherto accepted opinion that Cyrus was an Aryan monotheist, a worshipper of Ormazd, and therefore so far in religious sympathy with the Jews, is seriously shaken if not overthrown by the Inscriptions which record his Babylonian conquest. Even if allowance be made for the fact that these are state documents, and reveal only what the monarch professed, not necessarily what he believed, there still remains the strong probability that Cyrus was not Zoroastrian in creed, but polytheist like his people of Elam. The Cyrus of the Inscriptions is either a fanatical idolater or simply an opportunist in matters of religion. The latter alternative is the more probable."

P. H. Hunter, After the Exile, part 1, chapters 1-2.

JEWS: B. C. 537. The return from Babylon.

"The fall of the metropolis had decided the fortune of the Babylonian kingdom, and the provinces. The most important of these was Syria, with the great trading places of the Phenicians on the Mediterranean. … The hopes of the Jews were at last fulfilled. The fall of Babylon had avenged the fall of Jerusalem, and the subjugation of Syria to the armies of Babylon opened the way for their return. Cyrus did not belie the confidence which the Jews had so eagerly offered him; without hesitation he gave the exiles permission to return and erect again their shrine at Jerusalem. The return of the captives and the foundation of a new state of the Jews was very much to his interest; it might contribute to support his empire in Syria. He did not merely count on the gratitude of the returning exiles, but as any revival of the Babylonian kingdom, or rebellion of the Syrians against the Persian empire, imperilled the existence of this community, which had not only to be established anew, but would never be very strong, it must necessarily oppose any such attempts. Forty-nine years—seven Sabbatical years, instead of the ten announced by Jeremiah—had passed since the destruction of Jerusalem, and more than sixty since Jeremiah had first announced the seventy years of servitude to Babylon. Cyrus commissioned Zerubbabel, the son of Salathiel, a grandson of Jechoniah, the king who had been carried away captive, and therefore a scion of the ancient royal race, and a descendant of David, to be the leader of the returning exiles, to establish them in their abode, and be the head of the community; he bade his treasurer Mithridates give out to him the sacred vessels, which Nebuchadnezzar had carried away as trophies to Babylon, and placed in the temple of Bel; there are said to have been more than 5,000 utensils of gold and silver, baskets, goblets, cups, knives, etc. But all the Jews in Babylon did not avail themselves of the permission. Like the Israelites deported by Sargon into Media and Assyria some 180 years previously, many of the Jews brought to Mesopotamia and Babylonia at the time of Jechoniah and Zedekiah, had found there a new home, which they preferred to the land of their fathers. But the priests (to the number of more than 3,000), many of the families of the heads of the tribes, all who cared for the sanctuary and the old country, all in whom Jehovah 'awoke the spirit,' as the Book of Ezra says, began the march over the Euphrates. With Zerubbabel was Joshua, the high priest, the most distinguished among all the Jews, a grandson of the high priest, Zeraiah, whom Nebuchadnezzar had executed after the capture of Jerusalem. … It was a considerable multitude which left the land 'beyond the stream,' the waters of Babylon, to sit once more under the fig-tree in their ancient home, and build up the city of David and the temple of Jehovah from their ruins; 42,360 freemen, with 7,337 Hebrew men-servants and maid-servants; their goods were carried by 435 camels, 736 horses, 250 mules, and 6,720 asses (537 B. C.). The exodus of the Jews from Babylon is accompanied by a prophet with cries of joy, and announcements filled with the wildest hopes. … 'Go forth from Babylon,' he cries; 'fly from the land of the Chaldæans! Proclaim it with shouts of joy, tell it to the end of the earth and say: "Jehovah hath redeemed his servant Jacob."' {1910} 'How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth glad tidings, that publisheth peace, that saith unto Zion, Thy God reigneth. Up, up, go forth, touch no unclean person; go forth from among them. Cleanse yourselves, ye that bear Jehovah's vessels. Ye shall go forth in joy, and be led in peace; the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees shall clap their hands. Jehovah goes before you, and the God of Israel brings up the rear. … Jehovah calls thee as an outcast sorrowful woman, and thy God speaks to thee as to a bride who has been put away; thy ruins, and deserts, and wasted land, which was destroyed from generation to generation—thy people build up the ruins, and renew the ancient cities. Behold, I will make thy desert like Eden, and thy wilderness like the garden of the Lord; I will lay thy stones with bright lead, and thy foundations with sapphires, and make thy towers of rubies and thy gates of carbuncles. Joy and delight is in them, thanksgiving and the sound of strings. The wealth of the sea shall come to thee, and the treasures of the nations shall be thine; like a stream will I bring salvation upon Israel, and the treasures of the nations like an overflowing river. Thy sons hasten onward; those that laid thee waste go forth from thee. Lift up thine eyes and see; thy sons come from far, and I will gather them to those that are gathered together. The islands and the ships of Tarshish wait to bring thy children from afar, their gold and their silver with them. The land will be too narrow for the inhabitants; widen the place for thy tent, let the carpets of thy habitation be spread—delay not. Draw out the rope; to the right and to the left must thou be widened. I will set up my banner for the nations, that they bring thy sons in their arm, and thy daughters shall be carried on the shoulders. Kings shall be thy guardians, and queens thy nursing-mothers; I will bow them to the earth before thee, and they shall lick the dust of thy feet, and thou shalt know that I am Jehovah, and they who wait patiently for me shall not be put to shame.' Such expectations and hopes were far from being realised. The Edomites had, in the mean-time, extended their borders and obtained possession of the South of Judah, but the land immediately round Jerusalem was free and no doubt almost depopulated. As the returning exiles contented themselves with the settlement at Jerusalem, the towns to the North, Anathoth, Gebah, Michmash, Kirjath-Jearim, and some others—only Bethlehem is mentioned to the South—they found nothing to impede them. Their first care was the restoration of the worship, according to the law and the custom of their fathers. … Then voluntary gifts were collected from all for the rebuilding of the temple; contributions even came in from those who had remained in Babylonia, so that 70,000 pieces of gold and 5,000 mimæ of silver are said to have been amassed. Tyrian masons were hired, and agreements made with Tyrian carpenters, to fell cedars in Lebanon, and bring them to Joppa, for which Cyrus had given his permission. The foundation of the temple was laid in the second year of the return (536 B. C.). … The fortunate beginning of the restoration of the city and temple soon met with difficulties. The people of Samaria, who were a mixture of the remnant of the Israelites and the strangers whom Sargon had brought there after the capture of Samaria, … and Esarhaddon at a later date, … came to meet the exiles in a friendly spirit, and offered them assistance, from which we must conclude that in spite of the foreign admixture the Israelitish blood and the worship of Jehovah were preponderant in Samaria. The new temple would thus have been the common sanctuary of the united people of Israel. But the 'sons of captivity' were too proud of the sorrows which they had undergone, and the fidelity which they had preserved to Jehovah, and their pure descent, to accept this offer. Hence the old quarrel between Israel and Judah broke out anew, and the exiles soon felt the result. After their repulse the Samaritans set themselves to hinder the building by force; 'they terrified the exiles that they built no more, and hired counsellors to make the attempt vain during the whole of the remainder of the reign of Cyrus.'"

M. Duncker, History of Antiquity, book 8, chapter 8 (volume 6).

The duration of the Captivity, strictly speaking, "was only forty-seven years, if we reckon by the Canon of Ptolemy, from the 19th year of Nabuchodrozzor to the first of Cyrus; or, better, forty-nine years, if we add on, as we probably ought to do, the two years' reign of the Median king whom Cyrus set on the throne of Babylon."

H. Ewald, History of Israel, book 5, introduction.

"The decree of Cyrus, at the close of the captivity, extended only to the rebuilding of the Temple. 'Thus saith Cyrus, king of Persia, The Lord God of heaven … hath charged me to build him an house at Jerusalem.' And under this decree Jeshua and Zerubbabel 'builded the altar of the God of Israel. … But the foundation of the Temple of the Lord was not yet laid.' Afterwards they 'laid the foundation of the Temple of the Lord,' including, apparently, the outer wall, for their enemies made a representation to the king of Persia that the Jews were rebuilding the walls of their city: 'The Jews which came up from thee to us are … building the rebellious and the bad city, and have set up the walls thereof, and joined the foundations.' And as the wall of the Temple, which was about twelve feet thick, gave a colour to the charge, a decree was issued by Artaxerxes to prohibit the further prosecution of the work. 'Then ceased the work of the house of God, which is at Jerusalem.' On the accession of Darius to the throne of Persia, Jeshua and Zerubbabel recommenced the restoration of the Temple, including the wall of the Outer Temple, for they 'began to build the house of God,' when their enemies again stepped forward, saying, 'Who hath commanded you to build this house, and to make up this wall?' And on a renewed complaint to the king of Persia, search was made for the decree of Cyrus, and when it was found, Darius permitted the Jews to proceed with the Temple; 'Let the governor of the Jews and the 'elders of the Jews build this house of God in his place;' and thereupon the structure and the outer walls thereof (the square of 600 feet) were completed: 'They builded and finished it … on the third day of the month Adar, which was in the sixth year of the reign of Darius the king.' Thus far the rebuilding extended to the Temple only, and not to the walls of the city. Ezra afterwards obtained a decree to restore the nationality of the Jews, viz., to 'set magistrates and judges, which might judge all the people;' and afterwards Nehemiah, the cupbearer to the king, was enabled in a favourable moment to win from him express permission to rebuild the Baris, or Vestry, afterwards Antonia, and also the city: 'Send me unto Judah, unto the city of my fathers' sepulchres, that I may build it;' and a direction was given to the governors beyond the Euphrates to forward Nehemiah and his company to Jerusalem; and the king's forester was required to supply the necessary timber."

T. Lewin, Jerusalem, chapter 2.

{1911}

"The Jews returned home sobered and improved by their sufferings in exile, and entirely cured of their early hankering after idolatry. Having no political independence, and living under a governor, they devoted themselves all the more to religion, the only source and support of their nationality, and became zealots for the law, and for a devout carrying out of all its precepts, as far as practicable. All, indeed, could not be again restored, The most holy of the new temple was empty, for it was without the lost and irreplaceable ark of the covenant; the oracular ornaments of the high-priest had disappeared. As Jerusalem was now, far more than formerly, the head and heart of the nation, the high-priesthood … was the authority to which the nation willingly submitted; it served as the representative and pillar of unity, and the sons of David were forgotten. Another of the abiding consequences of their exile was, the altered mode of life which the nation led. At first they had been exclusively devoted to agriculture; but after mixing with strangers they learnt to engage in trade, and this inclination went on always increasing; it contributed essentially to their being spread far beyond the borders of Palestine, and to their multiplying their settlements in foreign lands."

J. J. I. Dollinger, The Gentile and the Jew in the Courts of the Temple of Christ, book 10, section 1 (volume 2).

ALSO IN: H. H. Milman, History of the Jews, book 9.

JEWS: B. C. 536-A. D. 50. The Babylonian Jews.

"There is something very remarkable in the history of this race, for the most part descendants of those families which had refused to listen to the summons of Zorobabel, Ezra, and Nehemiah, and to return to the possession of their native country. … The singular part of their history is this, that, though willing aliens from their native Palestine, they remained Jews in character and religion; they continued to be a separate people, and refused to mingle themselves with the population of the country in which they were domiciliated. While those who returned to the Holy Land were in danger of forming a mixed race, by intermarriages with the neighbouring tribes, which it required all the sternest exercise of authority in their rulers to prevent, the Babylonian Jews were still as distinct a people as the whole race of Israel has been since the final dispersion. … Nor did they, like the Jews of Alexandria, become in any degree independent of the great place of national worship; they were as rigid Jews as if they had grown up within sight of the Temple. … The Temple became what the Caaba of Mecca is to the Mohammedans, the object of the profoundest reverence, and sometimes of a pious pilgrimage; but the land of their fathers had lost its hold on their affections; they had no desire to exchange the level plains of Babylonia for the rich pastures, the golden cornfields, or the rocky vineyards of Galilee and Judæa. This Babylonian settlement was so numerous and flourishing, that Philo more than once intimates the possibility of their marching in such force to the assistance of their brethren in Palestine, in case the Roman oppression was carried to excess, as to make the fate of the war very doubtful. Their chief city Nearda, was strongly situated in a bend of the river Euphrates, which almost surrounded the town." About the middle of the first century (of the Christian era) a band of freebooters, formed by two brothers of this Jewish community, gave great provocation to the Babylonians, and to the Parthian king whose subjects they then were. They were finally, but with much difficulty, destroyed, and the Babylonians then "began to commit dreadful reprisals on the whole Jewish population. The Jews, unable to resist, fled in great numbers to Seleucia; six years after many more took refuge from a pestilence in the same city. Seleucia happened to be divided into two factions: one of the Greeks, the other of the Syrians. The Jews threw themselves into the scale of the Syrians, who thus obtained a superiority, till the Greeks came to terms with the Syrians; and both parties agreed to fall upon the unhappy Jews. As many as 50,000 men were slain. The few who escaped fled to Ctesiphon. Even there the enmity of the Seleucians pursued them; and at length the survivors took refuge in their old quarters, Nearda and Nisibis."

H. H. Milman, History of the Jews, book 12 (volume 2).

JEWS: B. C. 433-332. The century of Silence.

"The interval between the Testaments has been called 'The Centuries of Silence.' The phrase is most untrue; for, as a whole, this time was vocal with the cry of a battle in which empire contended with empire, and philosophy with philosophy: it was an age of earnest and angry contention. But the hundred years succeeding the death of Nehemiah are for us, so far as any record remains of that Judæan history, a century of silence. For some reason which does not appear, the period from the death of this sturdy old captain at Jerusalem to the time of the Greek conquest of Persia has no Jewish history. That it was a period of growth and development with the Judæans—especially in their theological and ecclesiastical life—is evident from the changes which the close of the century shows. The stress of external events made it a time of heavy taxation and distress,—a time of struggle with Samaria, and of internal conflict for the control of the high priest's office."

T. R Slicer, Between the Testaments (The New World, March, 1892).

JEWS: B. C. 413-332. The rule of the High Priests.

"After the death of Nehemiah and the high priest, Eliashib (413 B. C.), the Persian Court did not appoint governors of Judea. Samaria was the seat of the Persian Satrap for Syria, Phœnicia and Palestine. The sons of David had lost prestige under Nehemiah (Psalm lxxxix.). The ruler acknowledged by the Law, the prophet (Deuteronomy xviii. 15), was no more; the last prophets under Nehemiah, with the exception of Malachi, had proved unworthy of their illustrious predecessors. Therefore, the high priest was now the first man in the theocracy, and, contrary to the Laws of Moses (Leviticus x. 3), he was acknowledged the chief ruler of the nation, although he was no longer the bearer of the Urim and Thumim (Ezra ii. 63). He presided over the Great Synod, was the representative of the people before the king and his satrap, and gradually he established himself in the highest dignity of the nation."

I. M. Wise, History of the Hebrews' Second Commonwealth, 1st period, chapter 4.

{1912}

JEWS: B. C. 332-167. The Greek domination. Jewish dispersion. Hellenism.

On the fall of the Persian monarchy, Judea, with all the rest of western Asia, was gathered into the empire of Alexander the Great (see MACEDONIA: B. C. 334-330, and after), Jerusalem submitting to him without a siege, and so avoiding the fate of Tyre. In the wars between Alexander's generals and successors, which followed his death, Palestine changed masters several times, but does not seem to have been much disturbed. The High Priests continued to be the chiefs of the nation, and neither the religion nor the internal government of the Hebrew state suffered much interference. The final partition made among the new Macedonian kings (B. C. 302), gave Palestine to Ptolemy of Egypt, and it remained subject to Egypt for a century. This period was a happy one, on the whole, for the Jews. The Ptolemies were friendly to them, with one exception, respecting their religion and laws. Large numbers of them settled in Egypt, and especially in the rising new capital and emporium of trade—Alexandria. But in 201 B. C. Antiochus the Great, king of the Syrian or Seleucid monarchy, wrested Cœlosyria and Palestine from the Ptolemies and added it to his own dominions.

See SELEUCIDÆ: B. C. 224-187.

Antiochus dealt favorably with the Jews, but his successors proved harder masters than the Egyptian Greeks.

H. Ewald, History of Israel, book 5, section 2 (volume 5).

"These kings promoted the settlement of Greeks and Syrians in Palestine, so that it was by degrees all covered with cities and towns of Grecian nomenclature. The narrow territory of Judea alone kept free of them, but was surrounded with settlers whose speech, customs, and creed were Greek. On the other hand, the Jews went on spreading in lands where Greek was spoken. A good many of these were planted in Egypt, in the newly founded capital Antioch, in Lydia and Phrygia. Led on by their love of trade, they soon became numerous in the commercial cities of western Asia, Ephesus, Pergamus, Miletus, Sardis, &c. From Egypt and Alexandria, in which city, at a later period, they formed two-fifths of the inhabitants, they drew along the coast of Africa to Cyrene and the towns of the Pentapolis, and from Asia Anterior to the Macedonian and Greek marts; for the national love of commerce became more and more developed, till it absorbed all other occupations, and to this certainly the general inclination for commercial intercourse, prevalent at that period, greatly contributed. Thus it happened that two movements, identical in their operation, crossed each other, viz., an influx of Greek, or of Asiatic but hellenised, settlers into Palestine, and an outpouring of Jews and Samaritans into the cities speaking the Greek tongue. In olden times, while the Israelites still possessed a national kingdom, they felt their isolation from other people as a burden. It was as an oppressive yoke to them, which they bore impatiently, and were always trying to shake off. They wanted to live like other nations, to eat, drink, and intermarry with them, and, together with their own God, to honour the gods of the stranger also; for many raw and carnally-minded Jews only looked upon the one special God and protector of their nation as one god amongst many. But now there was a complete change in this respect. The Jews everywhere lived and acted upon the fundamental principle, that between them and all other nations there was an insurmountable barrier; they shut themselves off, and formed in every town separate corporations, with officers of their own; while at the same time they kept up a constant connexion with the sanctuary at Jerusalem. They paid a tribute to the temple there, which was carefully collected everywhere, and from time to time conveyed in solemn procession to Jerusalem. There alone, too, could the sacrifices and gifts which were demanded by the law be offered. In this wise they preserved a centre and a metropolis. And yet there followed from all this an event, which in its consequences was one of the most important in history, namely, the hellenising of the Jews who were living out of Judea, and even, in a degree, of those who remained in their own land. They were a people too gifted intellectually to resist the magnetic power by which the Hellenistic tongue and modes of thought and action worked even upon such as were disposed to resist them on principle. The Jews in the commercial towns readily acquired the Greek, and soon forgot their mother tongue; and as the younger generation already in their domestic circle were not taught Greek by natives, as might be supposed, this Jewish Greek grew into a peculiar idiom, the Hellenistic. During the reign of the second Ptolemy, 284-247 B. C., the law of Moses was translated at Alexandria into Greek, probably more to meet the religious wants of the Jews of the dispersion than to gratify the desire of the king. The necessity of a knowledge of Hebrew for the use of the holy Scriptures was thereby done away with, and Greek language and customs became more and more prevalent. Individuals began to join this or that school of philosophy, according to predilection and intellectual bias. The Platonic philosophy had necessarily most attractions for the disciples of Moses. The intrusion of Hellenism into Judea itself met with a much more considerable resistance from the old believing and conservative Jews. Those of the heathen dispersion were obliged to be satisfied with mere prayer, Bible readings and expositions, in their proseuchæ and synagogues, and to do without the solemn worship and sacrifices of the temple; but in Jerusalem the temple-worship was carried out with all its ancient usages and symbols. There presided the Sopherim, the Scribes or skilled expounders of the law, a title first appropriated to Esdras (about 450 B. C.). He was one of the founders of the new arrangements in the restored state, and was a priest, and at the same time a judge appointed by the king of Persia. … From that time forth dependence on the law, pride in its possession as the pledge of divine election, and the careful custody of this wall of partition, sank deep into the character of the nation, and became the source of many advantages as well as of serious faults. … The later Jewish tradition makes much mention of the great synagogue believed to have existed already in the time of Esdras, or to have been founded by him. It is supposed to have mustered 120 members, and, under the presidency of the high-priest, was to be the guardian of the law and doctrine. {1913} One of its last rulers was Simon the Just, who was high-priest, and the most distinguished doctor of his time (that of the first Ptolemys). Afterwards this threefold dignity or function of high-priest, scribe or rabbi, and of Nasi or prince of the synagogue, were never united in one person. … The high-priesthood fell into contempt, the more it served foreign rulers as the venal instrument of their caprice; but the Scribes flourished as being the preservers of all theological and juridical knowledge, and were supported by the respect and confidence of the people. … By the year 170 B. C., Hellenism had undoubtedly made such progress among the Jews, in Palestine even, that the Assyrian king, Antiochus Epiphanes, was able to plan the extirpation of the Jewish religion, and the conversion of the temple at Jerusalem into a temple of Jupiter Olympius."

J. J. I. Döllinger, The Gentile and the Jew in the Courts of the Temple of Christ, book 10, section 1 (volume 2).

Twice, Antiochus Epiphanes crushed rebellion in Jerusalem with awful ferocity. On the last occasion, the slain were believed to number 80,000, while 10,000 captives were led away and sold as slaves. The city was sacked and partly burned; the Temple was plundered and polluted. "Not content with these enormities, Antiochus determined to abolish altogether the Jewish religion, and, if possible, entirely to exterminate the race. With this intention, he issued an edict throughout his dominions, calling upon all the nations who were subject to his authority to renounce their religion and worship his gods, and this order he enforced with the most severe pains and penalties. The Jews were the only people who ventured to disobey the edict, whereupon, Antiochus ordered them to be treated with the utmost rigour, and sent to Jerusalem an old man named Atheneas, who was well versed in the rites of the Greek worship, as commissioner, to enforce obedience to his commands. This old pagan dedicated the Temple to Jupiter Olympus, and placed a statue of that false deity upon the altar of burnt offering. This desecration was not confined to Jerusalem, for everywhere throughout the Syrian empire groves and temples were dedicated, and statues and altars erected, to the heathen deities, and the worship of the true God was everywhere prohibited, and punished as the worst of crimes. That the chief fury of Antiochus's impious rage was directed against the Jews is evident from the fact that, whilst a general edict was published, condemning to death or torture all those who refused to worship the idols, a special decree was promulgated, by which it was made death to offer sacrifices to the God of Israel, observe the Sabbath, practise circumcision, or indeed to conform in the smallest degree to the precepts of the Mosaic law. Every effort was also made to destroy the copies of the Holy Scriptures; and persons refusing to deliver them up were punished by death. In this terrible distress, many of the Jews abandoned their homes and took shelter in the wilderness, where 'they lived in the mountains after the manner of beasts, and fed on herbs continuously lest they should be partakers of the pollution' (Maccabees v.). Of those who remained behind, some few yielded to the temptation, and saved themselves by apostacy, but the majority remained faithful to the God of their forefathers, Who, in His own good time, hearkened to the prayers of His people, and sent them a deliverer."

E. H. Palmer, History of the Jewish Nation, chapter 7.

JEWS: B. C. 166-40. Revolt of the Maccabees. Reign of the Asmoneans. Rise of Herod.

The heroic family called The Maccabees, which began and led the revolt of the Jewish people against the oppression and persecution of the Seleucidæan kings, bore, also, the name of the Asmonean or Hasmonean family, derived from the name of "its chief of four generations back, Chasmon, or Asmon, 'the magnate.'" The head of the family at the time of the outbreak of the revolt, and who precipitated it, was Mattathias. He had five sons, the third of whom, Judas, became the military leader and great hero of the nation in its struggle. To Judas was given the surname or appellation of Makkabi, from whence came his historical name of Judas Maccabæus, and the general name of The Maccabees by which his family at large is commonly designated. The surname "Makkabi" is conjectured to have had the same meaning as that of Charles the "Martel"—viz., the "Hammerer"; but this is questioned. "Under Judas the revolt assumed larger proportions, and in a short time he was able to meet and defeat the Syrians in the open field. The situation which the Romans had created in Syria was favourable to the Jewish cause. In order to find money to pay the tribute imposed by Rome upon his house; Antiochus had to undertake an expedition into the Far East, which depleted Syria of a large number of troops. During the king's absence the government of the country was entrusted to a high functionary named Lysias. Lysias took a serious view of the rebellion in Judæa, and despatched a force under the command of three generals to suppress it. But this army met with alarming reverses at the hands of Judas, and Lysias was obliged to go to Palestine in person to conduct the campaign. Meanwhile Antiochus had been apprised of the disasters which had befallen his captains, and was hastening homewards to assume the supreme direction of affairs, when death put a termination to his career (B. C. 164). The pressure of Roman policy upon Antiochus was the indirect cause of the Jewish revolt, and the immediate cause of the king's inability to suppress it. After the death of Antiochus, the distracted state of Syria and the struggles of rival pretenders for the crown strengthened the position of the Jewish patriots. Antiochus V., son of the late king, was only nine years old when he began to reign (B. C. 164). His father had appointed a courtier named Philip regent during his son's minority. But this arrangement did not satisfy Lysias, who had the young king in his custody, and who was carrying on the campaign in Palestine when the news of his supersession by Philip arrived. Lysias immediately left off the contest with Judas, and devoted his energies to the task of resisting Philip's claims. At this juncture, if any historic value can be attached to a statement in the Second Book of the Maccabees, two Roman envoys, Quintus Memmius and Titus Manlius, who were probably on their way from Alexandria to Antioch, offered to take charge of Jewish interests at the Syrian capital. Peace is said to have been the outcome of their efforts (B. C. 162). But it was a peace which did not endure. {1914} In the following year the Syrian king once more invaded Palestine at the head of a great army, and, in spite of the strenuous opposition of Judas, laid siege to the Holy City. Famine soon reduced the garrison to the last extremities, and their fate would have been a hard one had not the disordered condition of Syria compelled the besiegers to accept honourable terms. Whilst the siege was in progress news came to the Syrian camp that Philip had put himself at the head of a large army, with the intention of enforcing his claims to the regency. No time was to be lost, and the king, acting on the advice of Lysias, accorded the Jews religious liberty. Jerusalem capitulated; and the same order of things was established as had existed previous to the insurrection. Soon after these events Antiochus V. was dethroned and executed by his relative, Demetrius I. In Judæa the new monarch allowed the people to retain the religious liberties granted them by his predecessor, and had he exercised more judgment in the selection of a High Priest it would have been impossible for Judas to renew the struggle against Syria with any prospect of success. The Assidæans, or Pious Ones, who afterwards developed into the party known as the Pharisees, and who, while their religion was at stake, were devoted followers of Judas, were satisfied with the attainment of religious freedom. But Judas and his friends, who formed the party which afterwards became the Sadducees, … were unwilling to relax their efforts till the country was completely independent. The Assidæans, consisting of the scribes and the bulk of the population, accepted Alcimus, the High Priest whom Demetrius had appointed, and were disposed for peace. But the senseless barbarities of Alcimus threw the Assidæans once more into the arms of the war party, and the struggle began afresh. The High Priest was obliged to flee from Jerusalem; Demetrius sent an army to reinstate him, but Judas defeated the Syrian forces, and the Jews enjoyed a short period of repose. … Two Jewish delegates, Eupolemos and Jason, were sent to Italy to form an alliance with Rome. The Senate, which never neglected an opportunity of crippling the Syrian monarchy, accorded a favourable reception to the Jewish envoys, and acknowledged the independence of their country. … While these negotiations were taking place the Syrian army again invaded Palestine. Judas went forth to meet them, and, after a desperate conflict, was defeated and slain [at Beer-Zath] (B. C. 161). The death of their leader shattered the party of freedom, and the Romans, probably because they saw no distinct centre of authority left standing in the country, ignored the treaty they had just made with the Jewish envoys, and left Judæa to its fate. It was not by direct intervention that the Romans helped the Jews forward on the path of independence; it was by the disintegrating action of Roman policy on the kingdom of Syria. The Jewish leaders did not fail to take advantage of the opportunities which were thus afforded them. About nine years after the death of Judas Maccabæus, the Romans started a new pretender to the Syrian crown in the person of Alexander Balas, a young man of unknown origin (B. C. 152). Supported by the allies of Rome, Balas was able to take the field against Demetrius, who became alarmed at the threatening aspect of affairs: Jonathan, a brother of Judas, was then at the head of the Jewish patriots (B. C. 161-142), and Demetrius attempted by concessions to win him over to his side. When the pretender Balas heard of this, he immediately outbade Demetrius, and offered Jonathan the High Priesthood as the price of his support. Jonathan sold himself to the highest bidder, and, notwithstanding further profuse promises from Demetrius, the Jewish leader remained true to his allegiance. The war between the two rivals did not last long; Demetrius was overthrown and slain (B. C. 151), and at the marriage of the new king, Jonathan was appointed civil and military governor of Judæa." The spiritual and the temporal government of the Jews was now united in the office of High Priest. Jonathan, captured and murdered by one of the Syrian pretenders, was succeeded in the office (B. C. 142), by another brother, Simon, who was assassinated, B. C. 135, by an ambitious son-in-law. Simon's son, John Hyrcanus, took his place.

W. D. Morrison, The Jews under Roman Rule, chapter 1.

The Asmonean family had now become so established in its princely character that the next of the line, Judas (who took the Greek name Aristobulus), assumed the crown and title of King (B. C. 105). Aristobulus reigned less than two years, and was succeeded by his brother Jonathan (Jannæus) Alexander. "These Jewish princes were as wide apart in character as in name from the house whose honours they inherited. Aristobulus, the bloody, … starved in prison his mother, whom John had left as regent. … Alexander, named Jannæus, in a reign of five and twenty years, was mostly occupied in petty wars,—generally unsuccessful, but indefatigable to begin afresh. He signalized himself in successive revolts of his people, first by the barbarous slaughter of 6,000, then by a civil war of some six years, which cost 10,000 lives, and finally by crucifying 800. … A restless, dissolute, ambitious man, called 'the Thracian' for his barbarities, his rule abhorred except for the comparative mercy he showed in the cities he had conquered, he died [B. C. 79] before the age of fifty, having done the one service of confirming the Jewish power upon the soil of Palestine."

J. H. Allen, Hebrew Men and Times, chapter 10.

"When … Jannæus Alexander died, the Jewish kingdom stretched towards the south over the whole Philistian territory as far as the Egyptian frontier; towards the south-east as far as the Nabatæan kingdom of Petra, from which Jannæus had wrested considerable tracts on the right bank of the Jordan and the Dead Sea; towards the north over Samaria and the Decapolis up to the lake of Gennesareth; here he was already making arrangements to occupy Ptolemais (Acco) and victoriously to repel the aggressions of the Ityræans. The coast obeyed the Jews from Mount Carmel as far as Rhinocorura, including the important Gaza—Ascalon alone was still free; so that the territory of the Jews, once almost cut off from the sea, could now be enumerated among the asylums of piracy. Now that the Armenian invasion, just as it approached the borders of Judæa, was averted by the intervention of Lucullus, … the gifted rulers of the Hasmonæan house would probably have carried their arms still further, had not the development of the power of that remarkable conquering sacerdotal state been arrested by internal divisions. {1915} The spirit of religious independence and the national patriotism—the energetic union of which had called the Maccabee state into life—very soon became dissociated and even antagonistic. The Jewish orthodoxy [or Pharisaism] gaining fresh strength in the times of the Maccabees, … proposed as its practical aim a community of Jews composed of the orthodox in all lands essentially irrespective of the secular government—a community which found its visible points of union in the tribute to the temple at Jerusalem obligatory on every conscientious Jew and in the schools of religion and spiritual courts, and its canonical superintendence in the great temple consistory at Jerusalem, which was reconstituted in the first period of the Maccabees and may be compared as respects its sphere of jurisdiction to the Roman pontifical college. Against this orthodoxy, which was becoming more and more ossified into theological formalism and a painful ceremonial service, was arrayed the opposition of the so-called Sadducees—partly dogmatic, in so far as these innovators acknowledged only the sacred books themselves and conceded authority merely, not canonicity, to the 'bequests of the scribes,' that is canonical tradition; partly political, in so far as instead of a fatalistic waiting for the strong arm of the Lord of Zebaoth they taught that the salvation of the nation was to be expected from the weapons of this world, and above all from the internal and external strengthening of the kingdom of David as re-established in the glorious times of the Maccabees. The partisans of orthodoxy found their support in the priesthood and the multitude. … Jannæus had kept down the priesthood with a strong hand; under his two sons there arose … a civil and fraternal war, since the Pharisees opposed the vigorous Aristobulus and attempted to obtain their objects under the nominal rule of his brother, the good-natured and indolent Hyrcanus. This dissension not merely put a stop to the Jewish conquests, but gave also foreign nations opportunity to interfere and to obtain a commanding position in southern Syria. This was the case first of all with the Nabatæans. This remarkable nation has often been confounded with its eastern neighbours, the wandering Arabs, but it is more closely related to the Aramæan branch than to the proper children of Ishmael. This Aramæan, or, according to the designation of the Occidentals, Syrian, stock must have in very early times sent forth from its most ancient settlements about Babylon a colony, probably for the sake of trade, to the northern end of the Arabian gulf; these were the Nabatæans on the Sinaitic peninsula, between the gulf of Suez and Aila, and in the region of Petra (Wadi Mousa). In their ports the wares of the Mediterranean were exchanged for those of India; the great southern caravan-route, which ran from Gaza to the mouth of the Euphrates and the Persian gulf, passed through the capital of the Nabatæans—Petra—whose still magnificent rock-palaces and rock-tombs furnish clearer evidence of the Nabatæan civilization than does an almost extinct tradition. The party of the Pharisees, to whom after the manner of priests the victory of their faction seemed not too dearly bought at the price of the independence and integrity of their country, solicited Aretas the king of the Nabatæans for aid against Aristobulus, in return for which they promised to give back to him all the conquests wrested from him by Jannæus. Thereupon Aretas had advanced with, it was said, 50,000 men into Judæa and, reinforced by the adherents of the Pharisees, he kept king Aristobulus besieged in his capital."

T. Mommsen, History of Rome, book 5, chapter 4 (volume 4).

"While this was going on, Pompey had meanwhile begun his victorious campaign in Asia [see ROME: B. C. 69-63]. He had conquered Mithridates in B. C. 66, and had in the same year received the voluntary submission of Tigranes. While he himself now pressed on farther into Asia, he sent Scaurus to Syria in B. C. 65. When that general arrived at Damascus he heard of the war between the brothers in Judea, and pushed forward without delay to see how he might turn to account this strife between the rival princes. He had scarcely reached Judea when ambassadors presented themselves before him, both from Aristobulus and from Hyrcanus. They both sought his favour and support. Aristobulus offered him in return four hundred talents; and Hyrcanus could not be behind, and so promised the same sum. But Scaurus trusted Aristobulus rather because he was in a better position to fulfil his engagement, and so decided to take his side. He ordered Aretas to withdraw if he did not wish to be declared an enemy of the Romans. Aretas did not venture to show opposition. He therefore raised the siege, and thereupon Scaurus returned to Damascus. But Aristobulus pursued Aretas on his way homeward, and inflicted upon him a crushing defeat. But the Roman favour which Aristobulus had so exerted himself to secure, under the protection of which he believed himself to be safe, soon proved fatal to his well-being and that of his country. He himself left no stone unturned in order to win the goodwill of Pompey as well as of Scaurus. He sent Pompey a costly present, a skilfully wrought golden vine worth five hundred talents, which Strabo found still on view at Rome in the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus. But all this could not save Aristobulus, whenever Pompey found it to be for his advantage to withdraw his favour and take the side of Hyrcanus. In the spring of B. C. 63, Pompey proceeded from his winter quarters into Syria, subdued the greater and smaller princes in the Lebanon, and advanced by way of Heliopolis and Chalcis upon Damascus. There he was met at one and the same time by representatives of three Jewish parties. Not only did Aristobulus and Hyrcanus appear, but the Jewish people also sent an embassy. Hyrcanus complained that Aristobulus, in defiance of all law, had violently assumed the government; Aristobulus justified his conduct by pointing out the incapacity of Hyrcanus. But the people wished to have nothing to do with either, asked for the abolition of the monarchy and the restoration of the old theocratic constitution of the priests. Pompey heard them, but cautiously deferred any decision, and declared that he would put all things in order when he had accomplished his contemplated expedition against the Nabatheans. Till then all parties were to maintain the peace. Aristobulus, however, was by no means satisfied with this arrangement, and betrayed his discontent by suddenly quitting Dium, whither he had accompanied Pompey on his expedition against the Nabatheans. Pompey grew suspicious, postponed his campaign against the Nabatheans, and marched immediately against Aristobulus. {1916} He … pursued him through Jericho, and soon appeared in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem. But now Aristobulus lost heart. He betook himself to the camp of Pompey, gave him further presents, and promised to surrender to him the city if Pompey would suspend hostilities. Pompey was satisfied with this, and sent his general Gabinius to take possession of the city, while he retained Aristobulus in the camp. But Gabinius returned without having obtained his object, for the people in the city had shut the gates against him. Pompey was so enraged at this that he put Aristobulus in prison, and immediately advanced against the city. … The city was surrendered to Pompey, who sent in his legate Piso, and without drawing sword took possession of it. But the war faction gathered together on the temple mount and there prepared themselves for resistance. The temple mount was then, as afterwards, the strongest point in Jerusalem. It presented to the east and the south a sheer precipice. Also on the west it was separated from the city by a deep ravine. Only on the north was there a gradual slope; but even there approach was made almost impossible by the construction of strong fortifications. In this fortress, well nigh impregnable, the adherents of Aristobulus had now taken refuge, and Pompey, whether he would or not, had to engage upon a regular siege. … After a three months' siege, a breach was made in the wall. A son of the dictator Sulla was the first to make way through it with his troops. Others quickly followed. Then began a frightful massacre. The priests, who were then engaged offering sacrifice, would not desist from the execution of their office, and were hewn down at the altar. No less than 12,000 Jews are said to have lost their lives in this general butchery. It was towards the close of autumn of the year B. C. 63, under Cicero's consulship, according to Josephus on the very day of atonement, according to Dio Cassius on a Sabbath, that this holy city bowed its head before the Roman commander. Pompey himself forced his way into the Most Holy Place, into which only the feet of the high priest had ever before entered. But he left the treasures and precious things of the temple untouched, and also took care that the service of God should be continued without interruption. On the besieged he passed a severe sentence. Those who had promoted the war were beheaded; the city and the country were made tributary. … The boundaries of the Jewish territories were greatly curtailed. All the coast towns from Raphia to Dora were taken from the Jews; and also all non-Jewish towns on the east of the Jordan, such as Hippos, Gadara, Pella, Dium, and others; also Scythopolis and Samaria, with the regions around them. All these towns were immediately put under the rule of the governor of the newly-formed Roman province of Syria. The contracted Jewish territory was given over to Hyrcanus II., who was recognised as high priest, without the title of king. … With the institutions of Pompey the freedom of the Jewish people, after having existed for scarcely eighty years, if we reckon it as beginning in B. C. 142, was completely overthrown. Pompey, indeed, was acute enough to insist upon no essential change in the internal government of the country. He suffered the hierarchical constitution to remain intact, and gave the people as their high priest Hyrcanus II., who was favoured by the Pharisees. But the independence of the nation was at an end, and the Jewish high priest was a vassal of the Romans."

E. Schürer, History of the Jewish People in the Time of Jesus Christ, division 1, volume 1, pages 317-324.

Hyrcanus II. was not merely the vassal of the Romans; he was the puppet of one of his own partisans—the able Idumean, Antipater, who gathered the reins of government into his own hands. "Antipater ruled without interfering with Hyrcanus; he rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem, and appointed Phasael, the eldest of his four heroic sons (whose mother was Kypros, an Arabian), to be ruler of the district of the holy city, and Herod the younger to be ruler of Galilee. This young man, who was at that time scarcely twenty-five years old, was soon able to surpass even his father. … He purified Galilee from the robber-bands, of which Hezekiah was the most dreaded leader, and by so doing, although he was already a mark for the hatred borne by the national and priestly party against the Edomites, as friends of their new tyrants the Romans, he distinguished himself by dealing summarily with the robbers, without appealing to the legal authorities. He therefore appeared before the Sanhedrim of Jerusalem, to which he was summoned by Hyrcanus, with a military escort, wearing purple, with his head anointed, and bearing a letter of safe-conduct from his patron Sextus Cæsar, the ruler of Syria. … Hyrcanus allowed him to withdraw in defiance: he hastened to Syria, bought the governments of Cœle-Syria and Samaria (B. C. 46), marched thence with an army towards Jerusalem, and when he had with difficulty been persuaded by his father and brother to return, he rejoiced that he had at least menaced the country. Neither the death of Julius Cæsar (B. C. March 44), the civil war at Rome, nor the poisoning of his father Antipater at the table of Hyrcanus in the year 43, interfered with Herod's success: He bought the favour of Cæsar's murderers by the unexampled haste with which he brought in large contributions, amounting to a hundred talents (more than £20,000) from Galilee alone, so that Cassius appointed him Procurator of Syria, and promised him the dignity of king, in the event of a victory over Anthony and Octavianus, a prospect which indeed cost his father his life. Nor was Herod's power destroyed by the unfortunate battle of Philippi in the autumn of B. C. 42. He succeeded in gaining Anthony by the influence of his person and of his wealth; and in spite of all the embassies of the Jews, Phasael and Herod were appointed tetrarchs of the whole of Judea in the year B. C. 41. His betrothal to Mariamne, grand-child of Hyrcanus, which took place at the same time, added the illusion of national and hereditary right to Herod's previous good fortune. But there was first an interval of hardship. Immediately afterwards, the Parthian armies overran Upper Asia, while Anthony remained in Egypt, ensnared by Cleopatra: they took Jerusalem [B. C. 40], and to please that place as well as the Jews of Babylon, they installed Antigonus, the son of Aristobulus, as king, taking Phasael and Hyrcanus prisoners, while Herod escaped with difficulty. All was ended with a blow, Herod was put to flight, Phasael killed himself, and Antigonus cut off the cars of Hyrcanus the high priest. Herod landed in Italy as an adventurer. {1917} He met Anthony, and by his means also gained over Octavianus. Fear and hatred of the Parthians effected even more than old acquaintance and new engagements: and beyond his most daring hopes a decree of the senate [B. C. 40] bestowed the kingdom of Judea upon him."

T. Keim, History of Jesus of Nazara, volume I, page 231.

JEWS: B. C. 40-A. D. 44. Herod and the Herodians. Roman rule.

Returning to Judæa with his new rank and the confirmed support of Rome, "Herod slowly obtained possession of the country, not without the help of Roman legions, and in a third campaign, in June (Sivan), B. C. 37, occupied Jerusalem [after a siege of half a year] and the Temple, in the halls of which fire raged, contrary to his wish, and blood streamed through its courts. This was the second Roman occupation of Jerusalem, after an interval of twenty-six years, even to a day. Antigonus fell, by the king's wish, beneath the axe of Anthony, and the Maccabean house had ceased to reign. The new kingdom underwent its final crisis in the war between Octavianus and Anthony, in which Herod was constrained to take part with Anthony. … The frankness with which, after the battle of Actium (September, B. C. 31), he proclaimed his friendship for Anthony to Octavianus at the island of Rhodes, in order to set before him the prospect of a like faithfulness, procured the crown for him afresh, which Octavianus set upon his head." Octavianus "restored to him all the possessions which his intriguing enemy Cleopatra had obtained at his expense in the south of the country and on its western coast, giving to him Gadra, Hippo, Samaria, and on the coast Gaza, Anthedon, Joppa, the tower of Strato, and in short the whole country, and even more than he had lost by Pompey's conquests. A few years later the same benefactor enlarged the kingdom on the north-east, by making over to Herod, between the years B. C. 24-21, the wide extent of territory reaching to Anti-Lebanon, and Damascus, in order to protect that city from attacks on the side of the desert. He was appointed Procurator-General of Syria, and afterwards nearly obtained the government of Arabia. It was in fact almost the kingdom of David which was again united under Herod. Herod enjoyed the favour of Octavianus, with few intervals, to the last. … Herod did not merely owe his success to that officious attention which displayed the greatness of Rome in costly hospitalities, gifts, and edifices of every kind, but to his genuine fidelity and manly heroism, his pre-eminent wisdom and readiness to accept the culture of the West, qualities which were recognized as adapting him to be a most useful ally in the territory which bounded the eastern empire of Rome, where the inhabitants were so ready to take offence. Herod, in a certain sense, emulated his friend in Rome, in introducing an Augustan era into his land. He, as well as Octavianus, put an end to war, and the dominion which had been cemented together by the blood of its citizens enjoyed a long peace, lasting for almost forty years. … The prosperity of the country increased so much in these quiet times that Herod, when he began to build the Temple, boasted of the wealth and income which had accumulated in an unprecedented manner, so as to confirm the most fabulous accounts of the luxurious expenditure of his reign. … Herod was not devoid of nobler qualities, even although they have been forgotten by the Jews and Christians. He was not merely a brave leader in war, a bold hunter and rider, and a sagacious ruler; there was in him a large-heartedness and an innate nobility of mind which enabled him to be a benefactor of his people. This fundamental characteristic of his nature, inherited from his father, is admitted by the Jewish historian, times out of number, and has been shown by his affection for his father, mother, and brothers, and also for his friends, by his beneficence in good fortune, and even in adversity. … When in the thirteenth year of his reign (B. C. 25), some years before the building of the Temple, famine and sickness devastated the land, he sold the gold and silver treasures in his house, and himself became poor, while he bespoke great quantities of grain from Egypt, which he dispensed, and caused to be made into bread: he clothed the poor, and fed 50,000 men at his own expense: he himself sent help to the towns of Syria, and obtained the immediate, and indeed the enduring gratitude of the people as a second Joseph. Yet it was only the large-heartedness of a barbarian, without true culture, or deeper morality. Hence came the unscrupulousness, the want of consideration for the national peculiarities which he opposed, the base cunning and vanity which coloured all his actions, and hence again, especially in later life, he became subject to caprices, to anger and repentance, to mistrust and cruelty, to the wiles of women and of eunuchs. He was, in short, only the petty tyrant, the successful upstart who was self-seeking, and at once rash and timid; a beggar before Augustus; a foolish time-server before the Greek and Roman world; a tyrant in his own house, and incapable either of resisting influence or of enduring contradiction. … The dangerous position of the upstart, with respect to the earlier royal family and to the national aversion, the divisions of his numerous family, the intrigues of a court of women, eunuchs, barbers, and frivolous flatterers of every description, drew him on, as if with demoniacal power, from one stage of cruelty to another. … Daily executions began on his entry into Jerusalem in the year B. C. 37 with the execution of Antigonus, of the nephew of Hyrcanus, and of his own dependants. … He pardoned no one whom he suspected: he enforced obedience by an oath, and whoever would not swear forfeited his life. Innumerable people disappeared mysteriously in the fortress of Hyrcania. Life was forfeited even for the offence of meeting or standing together, when it was noticed by the countless spies in the city and on the highways, and indeed by himself in his rounds by night. The bloody decimation of his own family was most revolting. About the year B. C. 35 he caused his wife's brother Aristobulus, who had been high priest for eighteen years, to be stifled by his Gallic guards in a pond at Jericho, because he was popular, and belonged to the old family: in the year B. C. 31, after the battle of Actium, he murdered his grandfather-in-law Hyrcanus, aged eighty years, and in the year B. C. 30 or 29 his wife Mariamne, and a little later her intriguing mother Alexandra, since they had become objects of suspicion to him: in the year B. C. 25 his brother-in-law, Kostobar, find a long line of friends were slain: about the year B. C. 6, the sons of Mariamne, Alexander and Aristobulus, were judicially condemned and strangled in Samaria: and finally the diabolical Antipater, the son of the first marriage, who, together with Salome, Herod's sister, and with Alexandra, his mother-in-law, had taken the greatest part in the crimes of the family."

T. Keim, History of Jesus of Nazara, volume 1, pages 233-246.

{1918}

Herod died within the year (B. C. 4) which has been most generally agreed upon as that of the birth of Jesus. By ten wives he had had many children, and had slain not a few; but a large family survived, to quarrel over the heritage, disputing a will which Herod left. There was a hearing of the disputants at Rome, and also a hearing given to deputies of the Jewish people, who prayed to be delivered from the Herodian family, all and singly. The latter prayer, however, received small consideration. The imperial judgment established Archelaus, eldest son of Herod's sixth wife, Malthace, in the sovereignty of Judæa, Idumæa, and Samaria, with the title of Ethnarch. To Herod Antipas, second son of the same mother, it gave Galilee and Peræa. Philip, another son, by a seventh wife, was made tetrarch of a small principality. Archelaus governed so oppressively that, after some years (A. D. 6), he was deposed by the Romans and banished to Gaul. Judæa was then joined to the præfecture of Syria, under a succession of Roman governors, the fifth of whom was Pontius Pilate. "Judaea thus became in the year 6 A. D. a Roman province of the second rank, and, apart from the ephemeral restoration of the kingdom of Jerusalem under Claudius in the years 41-44, thenceforth remained a Roman province. Instead of the previous native princes holding office for life and, under reservation of their being confirmed by the Roman government, hereditary, came an official of the equestrian order, nominated and liable to recall by the emperor. The port of Caesarea rebuilt by Herod after a Hellenic model became, probably at once, the seat of Roman administration. The exemption of the land from Roman garrison, as a matter of course, ceased, but, as throughout in provinces of second rank, the Roman military force consisted only of a moderate number of cavalry and infantry divisions of the inferior class; subsequently one ala and five cohorts—about 3,000 men—were stationed there. These troops were perhaps taken over from the earlier government, at least in great part formed in the country itself, mostly, however, from Samaritans and Syrian Greeks. The province did not obtain a legionary garrison, and even in the territories adjoining Judaea there was stationed at the most one of the four Syrian legions. To Jerusalem there came a standing Roman commandant, who took up his abode in the royal castle, with a weak standing garrison; only during the time of the Passover, when the whole land and countless strangers flocked to the temple, a stronger division of Roman soldiers was stationed in a colonnade belonging to the temple. … For the native authorities in Judaea as everywhere the urban communities were, as far as possible, taken as a basis. Samaria, or as the town was now called, Sebaste, the newly laid out Caesarea, and the other urban communities contained in the former kingdom of Archelaus, were self-administering, under superintendence of the Roman authority. The government also of the capital with the large territory belonging to it was organised in a similar way. Already in the pre-Roman period under the Seleucids there was formed … in Jerusalem a council of the elders, the Synhedrion, or as Judaised, the Sanhedrin. The presidency in it was held by the high priest, whom each ruler of the land, if he was not possibly himself high priest, appointed for the time. To the college belonged the former high priests and esteemed experts in the law. This assembly, in which the aristocratic element preponderated, acted as the supreme spiritual representative of the whole body of Jews, and, so far as this was not to be separated from it, also as the secular representative in particular of the community of Jerusalem. It is only the later Rabbinism that has by a pious fiction transformed the Sanhedrion of Jerusalem into a spiritual institute of Mosaic appointment. It corresponded essentially to the council of the Greek urban constitution, but certainly bore, as respected its composition as well as its sphere of working, a more spiritual character than belonged to the Greek representations of the community. To this Synhedrion and its high priest, who was now nominated by the procurator as representative of the imperial suzerain, the Roman government left or committed that jurisdiction which in the Hellenic subject communities belonged to the urban authorities and the common councils. With indifferent short-sightedness it allowed to the transcendental Messianism of the Pharisees free course, and to the by no means transcendental land-consistory—acting until the Messiah should arrive—tolerably free sway in affairs of faith, of manners, and of law, where Roman interests were not directly affected thereby. This applied in particular to the administration of justice. It is true that, as far as Roman burgesses were concerned in the matter, justice in civil as in criminal affairs must have been reserved for the Roman tribunals even already before the annexation of the land. But civil justice over the Jews remained even after that annexation chiefly with the local authority. Criminal justice over them was exercised by the latter probably in general concurrently with the Roman procurator; only sentences of death could not be executed by it otherwise than after confirmation by the imperial magistrate. In the main those arrangements were the inevitable consequences of the abolition of the principality, and when the Jews had obtained this request of theirs, they in fact obtained those arrangements along with it. … The local coining of petty moneys, as formerly practised by the kings, now took place in the name of the Roman ruler; but on account of the Jewish abhorrence of images the head of the emperor was not even placed on the coins. Setting foot within the interior of the temple continued to be forbidden in the case of every non-Jew under penalty of death. … In the very beginning of the reign of Tiberius the Jews, like the Syrians, complained of the pressure of the taxes; especially the prolonged administration of Pontius Pilatus is charged with all the usual official crimes by a not unfair observer. But Tiberius, as the same Jew says, had during the twenty-three years of his reign maintained the time-hallowed holy customs, and in no part set them aside or violated them. This is the more to be recognised, seeing that the same emperor in the West interfered against the Jews more emphatically than any other, and thus the long-suffering and caution shown by him in Judaea cannot be traced back to personal favour for Judaism. In spite of all this both the opposition on principle to the Roman government and the violent efforts at self-help on the part of the faithful developed themselves even in this time of peace."