for the first time acquires historical importance, in these regions. The Arabs of Arabia Petræa, under a race of chieftains who bore the common name of Aretas (Hareth), held power along the western margin of the great Syrian Desert, as well as over the region of Mt. Seir, from which they had driven out the Edomites towards the west. Hence the Idumæa of this age is the region immediately south of Judæa towards the wilderness of Paran. The Nabathæan Arabs, fixing their capital at Petra, obtained great wealth and importance from the caravan traffic of which that city was the centre. The part which they had begun to play in the affairs of Judæa will claim our attention presently. After spending the winter at Antioch, in settling the affairs of these kingdoms, Pompey pursued his march southwards in the following spring, and annexed Phoenicia and Cole-Syria to the new Syrian province. In Palestine, however, he encountered a desperate resistance, arising out of that civil war between the degenerate Asmonæan princes, Hyrcanus and Aristobulus, the origin of which it is now time to trace down from the point at which we had our last glimpse of the history of the Jews. It belongs to the special province of sacred history to record the annals of the series of High Priests, who ruled over Judæa* from the restoration of the captives by Cyrus to the time of Alexander. During this period of their history, the Jews maintained greater religious purity than at any time since the reign of David. The lesson of the Captivity had not been lost, and they never again sank into idolatry. But even this high standard of religious steadfastness had some tendency to foster the spiritual pride and national selfishness which undermined the first principles of morality. In the very age of the restoration, the warnings of Ezra, Haggai, and Zechariah needed to be followed up by the stern reforms of Nehemiah, in order to check the grasping avarice which trifled with the divine law and ground down the poor; and the last prophet of the Old Testament denounces a state of society, in which the first sanctities of nature were violated, and predicts *This name, though first introduced by the Romans, may be properly used to describe the country occupied by the Israelites who returned from the Captivity, since they were for the most part the relics of the old kingdom of Judah. Still it is important to avoid the common error of supposing that they belonged, with only insig nificant exceptions, to the tribe of Judah. Much of the fanciful search after the "lost ten tribes" has been stimulated by oversight of the simple fact, that Cyrus included in his invitation to return to Palestine all the worshippers of Jehovah throughout his whole empire. There are positive proofs that the edict was obeyed by many victims of the earlier captivities; but they had not preserved their family registers and other distinctive marks of nationality, like the captives of Judah at Babylon. a reformation of which the special work should be "to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and of the children to the fathers, lest God should smite the land with a curse." This prophecy bridges over the gap, which most readers find so unintelligible, between the Old and New Testament History. The cry of John in the wilderness, calling to repentance a priest-ridden people, who were as demoralized as they boasted to be devout, is but the echo of the warning voice raised by Malachi when the first promise of the days of Ezra and Zerubbabel began to fade away: the fruitless trees, at the root of which the axe was laid, were the same that had already then begun to wither. This one great truth, which was alone needed to introduce the Gospel History-a history intelligible only in its light-is filled up in its details by the records of Josephus and other writers.* From the age of Cyrus to that of Alexander, a splendid worship and a system of active religious teaching covered the gradual decline of morals; while the generally tolerant government of Persia secured the blessings of peace, amidst which the Jews enriched themselves by a share in the commerce of Phoenicia on the one side, and the trade of the caravans on the other. The chief interruption of their tranquillity was from the hostility of the Samaritans, who occupied the central portion of the Holy Land, including the sacred sites of Shechem, Gerizim, and Ebal. This district was that to which the kingdom of Israël had been restricted in its last days; and when Samaria was destroyed, and the remnant of the people carried captive by Shalmaneser (B.c. 721), the land was for a time left desolate.† The new heathen settlers, who were brought from Babylon and the neighbouring cities by Esarhaddon, the son of Sennacherib (about B.C. 678), were plagued by the wild beasts that had multiplied in the deserted country. Attributing their sufferings to the local deity on whom they had intruded, they at length petitioned Esar-haddon for some one to teach them "the manner of the god of the land." The king sent them a priest of the tribe of Levi, who fixed his residence at Bethel, and the settlers learnt to worship Jehovah without ceasing to serve their own gods. Mingled with these heathen settlers there were of course Israelites who had found a lurking-place in * For the two centuries from Cyrus to Alexander (B. C. 536–332) our information is very scanty. About half of this period is covered by the books of Ezra and Nehemiah (B.c. 536-420); and the remainder, from the end of Nehemiah's second administration to Alexander's visit to Jerusalem (B. c. 420—332), is passed over by Josephus with a very brief notice. See Vol. I., p. 178. for the first time acquires historical importar tribes to the m; and from latrous people, d preserved their Ezekiel and Daniel, ezzar and the lions of of pious horror at idolatry, the Samaritans to a share in e revengeful efforts of the Samad its completion through the influAfter spending the wrtaxerxes Longimanus, are familiar to these kingdoms, Pom Testament history, which ends with the following spring, an of the temple and city. In alluding to new Syrian provir it is not necessary here to recount in detail, desperate resistan the strange but characteristic episode of the generate Asmor ich lifts the veil from the inner life and inof which it is of Xerxes, and shows how the care of Jehovah had our last ruled the artful plot laid for their extermination It belong annals of the resto During religiou lesson ment of their power against their enemies, not debut in every province of the Persian Empire. The erents is doubtless to be fixed in the middle part of Xerxes, when he had returned to solace him his defeat in Greece amidst the luxurious enjoyment of As the wife of Xerxes, whose horrible cruelty is recorded by In the whole of this history we have glimpses of the incipient crruption of the Jews by Samaria and the other heathen nations around them, especially by means of alliances and intermarriages. find the people putting away their strange wives; but about thirty As early as the first reformation effected by Ezra (B.c. 457), we found that the high-priest Eliashib had made an alliance with years later, when Nehemiah paid his second visit to Jerusalem, he There is no clear evidence to identify Esther with The identification of the Ahasuerus of Esther with Xerxes is now thoroughly established. The former name (properly Achashverosh) is the etymological equivalent Artners The following list exhibits the Medo-Persian kings mentioned in Scripof the Median and Persian names Cyaxares, Xerxes, and (with the prefix Arta, noble) (4)sers (Cambyses), Ezra iv. 6: (5.) Artaxerxes (Pseudo-Smerdis), Ezra iv. 7: (2) Darius the Mede (Astyages), Dan. v. 31, ix. 1: (3.) Cyrus (Cyrus the Great): (6)Darias (Darius Hystaspis), Ezra iv. 6: (7.) Ahasuerus (Xerxes), Esther: (8.) Artat with their probable identifications:-(1.) Ahasuerus (Cyaxares), Dan. ix. 1: SATs Longimanus), Ezra vii., Nehemiah. lat, whom he makes governor of Samaria e last king," that is, Darius Codomannus. Being ‚e up his wife, on pain of expulsion from his office, penly set up a Samaritan faction at Jerusalem, and t used his influence with Darius to obtain permission for erection of a rival temple on Mount Gerizim. Meanwhile lexander appeared in Palestine; and Sanballat, who joined him. with 7000 men, persuaded him of the policy of dividing the strength of the Jewish nation by the erection of a separate worship in Samaria: so the temple was built on Mount Gerizim, and Manasseh was made the first high-priest. Such, stripped of some very suspicious embellishments, is the story of Josephus, a writer notoriously inaccurate as to chronology. Its points of coincidence with the narrative in Nehemiah suggest the simple explanation, that he has substituted the name of "the last Darius" for that of Darius Nothus (B.C. 424-405). But, though the question of chronology must be left with this conjecture, the fact is well known, of the existence of the temple on Mount Gerizim, with its schismatical worship, and the rejection of all the Jewish Scriptures, except the First Book of Moses. That temple was the standing sign of the religious hatred of Samaritans and Jews, till its destruction by John Hyrcanus (about B.c. 127); and even after it was laid in ruins, the profligate Samaritan woman could utter to the wayfaring Jew the taunt:-" Our fathers worshipped in this mountain; and ye say, that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship." The scattered Hebrews of northern Palestine, though intermixed with so large a proportion of the heathen as to give their country the appellation of "Galilee of the Gentiles," retained John iv. 20. The words doubtless contain an allusion to that most ancient worship of Abraham, Jacob, and the Israelites after the Exodus, at Shechem and its hills, in which the Samaritans sought a justification of their schism. of fifty-seven years, though still but in his sixty-ninth year. Pompey received the news of his death in Palestine. On his return from Syria, the body of Mithridates was sent to him at Amisus; and he gave the king a royal burial in the sepulchre of his fathers at Sinope. In the settlement of the affairs of Asia, which Pompey made in Pontus during the following winter, Pharnaces was confirmed in the kingdom of Bosporus. The civil war tempted him to strike a blow for his hereditary crown, and he had conquered Colchis and the Lesser Armenia, when Cæsar marched against him in person, and gained at Zela, in Pontus, the decisive victory which he announced in the despatch-" VENI: VIDI: VICI" (B.C. 47). Pharnaces was killed in the following year by his general Asander, whom Augustus confirmed in the kingdom of Bosporus. Meanwhile Pompey, knowing that Mithridates was in no condition to resume the offensive, turned his attention to the regulation of Syria, which had been ceded by Tigranes, though after the defeat of that king by Lucullus (B.C. 69) the throne had been recovered by Antiochus XIII., the last of the Seleucidæ. The annals of that house, since the defeat of Antiochus the Great by the Romans, have little interest, except in their connection with Jewish history, which we reserve for separate consideration. Antiochus IV., surnamed by himself Epiphanes (the Illustrious), and by his subjects Epimanes (the Madman),* had some claim to the former title by his energetic efforts to retrieve his father's losses. We have seen how he recovered Armenia; and the success with which he carried on hostilities against Egypt, till he was stopped by the peremptory mandate of Rome, has already been related.† He was well trained in Hellenic culture; and his career, like that of Nero, is a striking proof of how little a taste for art can avail to check the savage excesses of an arbitrary will. It was after his repulse from Egypt, and perhaps provoked by that rebuff to show that his will should at all events be supreme throughout his newly acquired dominions, that he commenced those efforts to force the Jews to worship the Greek gods, which caused the revolt of the Maccabees and the independence of Judæa. We shall presently see how the ill success of his furious persecution drove him to frenzy, and how, after repeating the attempt, in which his father had lost his life, to plunder the rich temple of Elymaïs in Chaldæa, he died in a state of raving madness (B.c. 164). In the century that elapsed between his death and the extinction of the kingdom, fifteen kings reigned in Syria; but it is needless to pursue the details of *He reigned B.C. 175-164. + Vol. p. 511. |