[312-204 B.C.] common standard, assumed that the era of the Seleucids had begun in the year 3448 after the creation of the world, and one thousand after the coming forth out of Egypt. They accordingly reduced any given date of the Seleucid era to the corresponding date after the creation of the world by adding 3447 to it, and to the corresponding date of the Christian era (with precision only for the first nine months of the year, as the Seleucid year begins in autumn) by deducting the Seleucid date from 312 to find the year B.C., or deducting 312 from it to find the year A.D. Asarja de' Rossi, in the twenty-third chapter of Meor Enajim, enlarges upon the error of Jewish chronologists, who identify the beginning of the Seleucid era with the beginning of Greek dominion in Asia.

For more than a century Judea remained under the rule of the Greek kings of Egypt, and on the whole enjoyed, with slight interruptions, a period of happy tranquillity and benevolent treatment. The relation of the kings of Egypt to the country cannot have been widely different from that of the kings of Persia, the commonwealth was represented abroad by the high priest, whose first business it was to see to the levying of the taxes. After Simon I, mentioned above, the office was held by his brother Eleazar (his son Onias being too young), who was succeeded by his uncle Manasseh (276), and then by Onias II (250).

An old tradition associates with the name of the second Ptolemy (Philadelphus) the origin of a literary undertaking in some respects unique in the literature of antiquity, the translation of the Holy Scriptures into the Greek language.

The high priest, Onias II, mentioned above, who is depicted as a morose and avaricious man, brought down upon himself the wrath of Ptolemy III, surnamed Euergetes, his Egyptian suzerain, by refusing to pay the annual tribute of twenty talents, and would have involved his country in a great calamity had not Joseph ben Tobiah, his sister's son, stepped into the breach. With his uncle's permission he undertook to go as ambassador to the Egyptian court, where by wise liberality he contrived first to win the favour of the courtiers, and then of the king himself. At the farming out of the taxes of Cole-Syria, Phoenicia, and Judea, for which purpose many nobles from those countries had come to the Egyptian court, Joseph, without more ado, offered twice as much as any of them, and, being provided by the king with adequate forces, was able by well-directed severity not only to levy the sum agreed upon but to gain great wealth and reputation for himself. For two and twenty years he filled the office of tax-farmer for the whole region known as Syria.

Josephus relates with great satisfaction that Ptolemy Euergetes, passing through Jerusalem on his way back from a victorious struggle with Seleucus Callinicus, king of Syria (245) offered sacrifices in the temple and bestowed great gifts on it; but Judea had nevertheless suffered from the perpetual friction between Egypt and Syria. She also endured many evils at the hands of the Samaritans under the administration of Onias.

These quarrels between the two great kingdoms between which Judea was wedged, did not cease in the reign of the fourth Ptolemy (Philopator, 221-204). Antiochus (the Great) of Syria had occupied Galilee and the land east of Jordan when Philopator took the field against him, defeated him at Raphia, and forced him to conclude peace. Among those who congratulated Philopator on this victory were ambassadors from the Jews, whom he received graciously, and desired to show his favour towards them by coming to Jerusalem and sacrificing in the temple. On this occasion he

[204-200 B.C.]

was inspired with a wish to enter the Holy of Holies, nor would he be restrained by the urgent remonstrances of the priests and the tumult of the whole city. But as he was about to set his foot within the hallowed space he was seized with sudden faintness and had to be carried away senseless.

Thirsting for vengeance, he departed, and promulgated harsh measures against the Jews, and, when they did not produce the effect he anticipated, he collected all the Jews in Egypt together on his return home, and shut them up in a circus, where they were to be trodden to death by elephants excited by intoxicating liquors for the purpose. At the decisive moment, however, the elephants turned against their drivers and wrought hideous havoc among the assembled crowds of Egyptians. This cruel act of Philopator and the miraculous deliverance of the Jews forms the subject of the third Book of the Maccabees and lacks historic confirmation. According to Josephus, the event took place in the reign of Ptolemy Physcon (146-117), the motive being revenge because the Jews had supported the claims of Cleopatra, widow of Ptolemy Philometor.

After the death of Philopator (204), and the accession of his son, a child of five, Antiochus succeeded in conquering Palestine, and it never again fell under the sway of Egypt.

Onias II was succeeded by his son, Simon II, who proved more worthy of his high office than his father had been. It is on this Simon that the name of "the Just" (ha-Zaddik) was bestowed, and in the Mishnah he is styled one of the last of the men of the Great Assembly. His motto as there given, "The world rests upon three things, doctrine, the service of God, and benevolence," is in sharp contrast to the views that dominated the world in his day, and is characteristic of the aspirations of the spiritual leaders of the time. The list of the Tannaim (teachers of the Mishnah) usually opens with his name. Joshua ben Sirach, a younger contemporary of his, lavishes encomiums on him, and he has been glorified even more by later legend. He embellished and fortified the temple, constructed aqueducts, and rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem which Ptolemy Lagi had broken down and left in a state of demolition. The means for this expenditure were promptly and liberally supplied by the numerous and valuable gifts and contributions which were bestowed on the temple from all quarters, and not by Jews only; and which served likewise to attract the envy and covetousness of many foreign rulers. Onias III, the son and successor of Simon the Just, filled the office of high priest no less worthily.

The labours of the Sofrim seem to have been unaffected by any of these political events; the storm which raged throughout the whole of Anterior Asia after the death of Alexander had only made the Jews, who had no political power whatever, devote themselves the more diligently to the consolidation of their religious inheritance, and in this occupation they found compensation for the loss of external splendour and constancy at the approach of their enemies. The 119th Psalm, that "hundred-fold echo of the excellence and needfulness of the Law," is typical of this spirit. The completion of the Book of Psalms and the composition of Chronicles, and the Book of Esther must be assigned to the first century of Greek dominion, i.e. to about 200 B.C. The language of these books leads us to infer a flagging of the primitive spirit of Jewish nationality; as a result of close intercourse with Syria, Aramaic gained ground, especially as the speech of the common people.

THE SYRIAN DOMINION; ANTIOCHUS THE GREAT

[300-187 B.C.]

On the disintegration of the Macedonian Empire, Syria fell first to Antigonus, and then (after the battle of Ipsus in 301) to Seleucus I, surnamed Nicator, who was assassinated in 281. His successors were-his son, Antiochus I, surnamed Soter (281-261), Antiochus II, surnamed Theos (261-247), Seleucus II, surnamed Callinicus (246-227), Seleucus III, surnamed Ceraunus (227-224), then the brother of the last-named monarch, Antiochus III, surnamed the Great (224-187), Seleucus IV, surnamed Philopator (187-176), Antiochus IV, surnamed Epiphanes (175-163). The son of Antiochus IV, Antiochus Eupator, who was only thirteen years of age at the time of his father's death, was assassinated, together with his guardian, Lysias, by Demetrius, the son of his father's brother Seleucus, in the year 161. The Greek language and literature, Greek ideas and habits, which had been making an abiding conquest of Anterior Asia since the days of Alexander the Great, had not failed to make their influence felt at length by the Jews. First, indeed, by those who lived away from Judea, remote from the centre of Jewish thought and Jewish life. We have already seen how, as a result of these conditions, the need of a Greek translation of the sacred books arose among the Egyptian Jews; to what kind of literature this translation itself gave rise we shall presently show. But while in Egypt, Asia Minor, and elsewhere, the Jewish and Greek spirit contrived to establish some sort of accord, a very different state of things prevailed in Palestine. Here the contrast of the Jewish and Greek conceptions of the universe was manifest in its full strength and bitterness. In Judea, in place of the conditions which had facilitated reciprocal approximation and partial amalgamation in Egypt, such as a preponderant Greek majority, brisk intercourse in civil life, and general culture on the part of the Jews, the situation was reversed. Jerusalem was the original seat of Jewish life, which constantly derived fresh strength from perpetual and minute study of the national scriptures and zealous practice of the divine precepts. This life, grave, strict, based on the inviolable ground of morality, tending always towards austerity and selfsacrifice, contrasted vividly with the blithe and sensuous mode of life of the Greeks, with its ready enjoyment of the moment and what it offered. The clear intellect of the Jewish thinker plainly perceived that this alluring existence hid the most shameful vices under an artificial veil.

The relations of the Syrian Empire with the Jews were at first of an amicable character. Seleucus Nicator had given Jews equal privileges with Macedonians and Greeks in the cities he founded in Asia Minor and Syria and in Antioch itself, and his example was followed by his grandson Antiochus Theos. After the death of Ptolemy Philopator the Jews gave a cordial welcome to Antiochus the Great, who had defeated Scopas, the Egyptian general, and Antiochus readily acknowledged their good will. He helped them to repair the damage done by the war, gave liberal gifts in money and natural objects for the service of the temple, permitted and advanced the completion of the temple buildings begun before his time, and granted the members of the senate, the priests, and other temple officers entire immunity from taxation. To increase the population of the capital, he granted exemption from taxation for three years to its inhabitants and to any who would remove thither within a fixed period, and remission of onethird of the taxes after that; any who were sold as slaves were to have their liberty and property restored. He gave evidence of the great confidence he reposed in the loyalty of the Jews by transplanting two thousand of them