under the rigid form of the hagiocracy greater violence was exerted than had ever been attempted before; and it was certainly easier in the end to bring a heathen people to submit to it than to compel the Samaritans. But the entry of these wild and warlike Idumeans into the hagiocracy did not contribute in the sequel to make it more peaceful and mild. Rather was it the destiny, as will soon appear, of an Idumean family to exercise speedily enough a destructive influence upon the Asmonean, and the use of force was to be violently avenged upon the house that used it. By a solemn embassy to Rome, John further sought to secure the recognition of his conquests at the expense of the Syrian kingdom. At a later period, also, the maintenance of friendship with Rome continued one of his chief objects. The disputes and wars of the Seleucidæ, which from this time became if possible more and more mischievous and suicidal, greatly facilitated the efforts of John to attain complete independence. At Rome, moreover, where the endeavours of the Gracchi and other internal movements were beginning to produce a dangerous fermentation, there was not much disposition to interfere in the affairs of Syria; and besides the Judeans, several others of the surrounding provinces took the opportunity to secure their freedom,2 as the example and new power of Israel exerted an influence in the same direction on all neighbouring peoples. John, also, had sufficient discretion to take but little part in the proceedings of Syria. When, in the year 126 B.C., Ptolemy Physcon sent Alexander Zebina,3 a pretended descendant of Balas, from Alexandria to the Syrians as their rightful king, John did not reject his overtures of friendship, such was still the strength of the previous inclination of the Judeans in favour of Balas; yet from his fall, in the year 123, John found no disadvantage accrue to himself. He had therefore leisure enough to take measures for the success of commerce and trade and the prosperity of all beneath his sway; but if ever any warlike faction made an incursion into his territory in search of booty he repulsed them with vigour. The only subjugated people who would not long remain quiet were the Samaritans. They were fond of making alliances in According to the Roman document in Jos. Ant. xiii. 9, 2, which may have been reproduced more faithfully than the earlier ones. 2 Such as Ascalon, which commenced a new chronological reckoning about this time; see the Chron. Pasch. i. p. 346; Eckhel, Doctr. iii. p. 436 sq., Numism. 3 Cf. 1 as a Syrian personal name in Assemâni's Bibl. Or. ii. p. 230; for coins of his reign and that of Alex. Balas, see Lenormant-Behr, p. 137 sqq. secret with the Syrian kings, and at their instigation maltreated on one occasion some inhabitants of Mareshah who had now become Judeans. Upon this John resolved to inflict the severest punishment upon these irreconcilable enemies. He besieged the city of Samaria, surrounded it by a trench and double wall, and then, in consequence of his advanced age, entrusted the further conduct of the siege to his two eldest sons, Aristobulus and Antigonus. The famished Samaritans called Antiochus Cyzicenus to their aid, but the sons of John defeated him, and pursued him as far as Scythopolis (Bethsheân) on the north-east. They were equally successful against Ptolemy Lathûrus, who intended to come to the rescue of the city with six thousand men; they then repulsed his generals, Callimander and the corruptible Epicrates, and after a siege of a year captured the city, upon which it was entirely destroyed. When this was done they chastised Scythopolis,3 further to the north, which was still inhabited by heathen, and the country on Carmel, which had promoted the rising. This merciless severity against the Samaritans was clearly only practised by John because the hagiocracy drove him to it. The Samaritans, however, were not to be completely bent and changed by the Judeans, as the subsequent course of events showed speedily enough; they had in fact good reasons for not passing into their community so entirely as the Idumeans." But it was only now that the mutual hostility between the two reached the frightful height in which it continued almost ever after with scarcely any interruption and abatement, extending from the simplest acts of life even into literature, where it at length finally perpetuated itself. It was at this date that some Judean, impelled by the temper of the age, wrote a book in which he intended to set forth historically, by half fictitious tales, how Alexander, when he first entered Asia, had paid high honours to the Judeans, but had rejected the Samaritans ; and how, under Ptolemy Philomêtor in Alexandria, a similar but purely learned dispute about the pre-eminence of Jerusalem or Gerîzîm had become so violent that in order to settle their respective claims the king had summoned before him the most learned men on both sides, Sabbæus and Theodosius representing the Samaritans, Andronicus, son of Messalam,' the Judeans; but at the end of their arguments the two Samaritans were completely beaten by the one Judean, and were executed as false accusers.2 It was from this time that the Judeans3 habituated themselves to designate the Samaritans simply by the opprobrious name Cutheans," following an empty witticism with which some learned writer had once thought to shine. 2. The Temple at Leontopolis and the Egyptian Judeans. The Judeans in the holy land, under the guidance of valiant and sagacious leaders, seemed now to be winning lasting reverence and fame among the peoples of the earth, and even to be rising to the greatness and power of their ancestors in the fairest days of the ancient kingdom. This could not fail to react advantageously on the honour and esteem in which the numbers dispersed in foreign countries were held. We have already seen how low the regard for them threatened to sink in the age immediately preceding the Maccabean elevation. Since that time, however, we may trace almost contemporaneously with the new rise in the fatherland an increase in the importance of the Hellenistic Judeans. To this subject belongs in particular the history of the origin and position of the temple at Leontopolis in Egypt." .in R מַסְכֶת כּוּתִים to a Jerusalem Kirchheim's inɔop yaw (Frankf. 1851), pp. 31-37. From this it is clear that there was then a great deal of intercourse between men of the two creeds, because there were still large numbers of Samaritans, but also that the Rabbis continued to attribute to the Samaritans, like the Sadducees (p. 278), a disbelief in the resurrection. $ P. 296. If this temple, which was destroyed about A.D. 73, really stood for 343 years, as Josephus states, Bell. Jud. vii. 10, 4, we should be obliged to assign it quite a different origin from that to which Josephus himself so often alludes, Bell. Jud. vii. 10, 2 sq.; Ant. xiii. 3, 2; 10, 4; xx. 10, that this number rests on an error, so 13; but we are probably safe in saying that we should read 243. Supposing therefore that this temple was destroyed in 73 A.D. (the exact year is not given by Josephus), the foundation would have been laid in 170 B.C., and this would harmonise well with the circumstances of the period. But in Ant. xii. 9, 7, Josephus relates that at the time of his father's death, Onias was not yet of age, and that When the high-priest Onias III.' had been so unjustly deposed and finally murdered, while men so unworthy in every respect as Jason, Menelaus, and Alcimus were instituted in his office, it is easy to understand why Onias, his son, sought refuge with Ptolemy Philomêtor, who readily protected him on account of the hostility between the two royal houses. Nor is it surprising that, looking at the desperate circumstances of the legalists in Palestine, at the hopelessness of his own position, and the friendship manifested towards his ancestors by the first Ptolemies, he should even conceive the idea of founding and maintaining a temple in Egypt itself, which should be free from the perversions then creeping in at Jerusalem, and could serve at any rate for the Hellenists as an unmolested and worthy place of purification. It was not forgotten that Israel had for more than a century been most closely connected with the Ptolemies, and had been truly prosperous under their sway. Of this, indeed, they could not help being reminded vividly enough under the fresh abominations of the Syrian rule. In particular, the high-priestly house had formerly stood by the Ptolemies almost (as it now seemed) like one princely family beside another, and the Alexandrian Judeans were distinguished for their wealth and culture. Moreover, the jealousy and bitter hostility existing between the governments of the Ptolemies and the Seleucidæ might promote the design of a greater independence on the part of the Hellenists. Onias himself was not one of the lawless undisciplined spirits of his time. He wished to maintain the whole law as it was then expounded. It could not therefore seriously occur to him to question the right of the temple at Jerusalem to precedence, or to deter the Hellenists who wished to offer their gifts and sacrifices there from doing so. Yet the sanctuary in Egypt was to be more than a synagogue,3 so little did even the synagogues appear able to take the place of a regular holy centre, and the practice which grew up of bringing gifts thither, particularly in times when the temple at Jerusalem was desecrated and they could not be offered there, seemed perfectly he did not flee to Egypt till the rule of A similar expatriation of a strong party took place, ‘a little more than three hundred years after the restoration of the second temple,' to Babylonia, if we may believe the narrative of Makrîzî (Sacy's Chrestom. Ar. i. p. 100 sq.): but the whole narrative, in the form in which it there appears, is extremely uncertain and obscure. 3 P. 242 sq. 2 appropriate. Nor was there any want of arguments from the sacred books in aid of a new enterprise of this nature, and some words at the end of the unique divine utterance in Is. xix.' supplied in abundance a very close support. Onias, accordingly, applied with his request to Ptolemy Philomêtor and his consort Cleopatra. In the district of Heliopolis, a part of Egypt already consecrated by the memory of Moses,3 near the city of Leontopolis, he had observed a spot where a sanctuary of Bubastis, the goddess of the country, was languishing amid the thousand other Egyptian sanctuaries. This place he requested for himself, and it was reported that Philomêtor granted it with the joking remark that he wondered how Onias could think of making a sanctuary out of a spot which, though inhabited by sacred animals, was yet in the Judean sense polluted, for the animals were among those reckoned unclean by the Judeans. In the sanctuary itself was placed an altar exactly resembling that at Jerusalem. Instead of the seven-lighted candlestick, which seems to have been regarded as too holy to be imitated, a single golden lamp was suspended in it by a golden chain. The sacred house was built somewhat in the form of a tower; the forecourt was enclosed with a wall of brick and gates of stone;" and the whole of the fortified little town, with the district which gathered round the temple, was probably called Oniôn. It is clear, therefore, that the object in this case was not a mere imitation of the temple at Jerusalem. Involuntarily, however, a blow had been inflicted on the current doctrine of the necessity of but one temple; whether its effects were to be strengthened or mitigated depended on the subsequent development of various circumstances. The immediate purpose of this Egyptian temple disappeared, it is true, after the great Maccabean war and the elevation of the Asmoneans by general consent to the high-priesthood. The Ptolemies, however, naturally sought to protect it as far as possible, if only to prevent the too abundant flow of the money may certainly, as in most other cases of the kind, be reproduced freely; but Josephus evidently read it in an older work, and its author certainly relied upon trustworthy ancient narratives. 5 Jos. Bell. Jud. vii. 10, 3. 6 Jos. Bell. Jud. i. 1, 1; Ant. xiv. 8, 1, and elsewhere. On the situation of Onion see further Champollion's L'Égypte, ii. p. 274, Wilkinson's Egypt and Thebes, p. 297 sq., Lepsius' Chronologie der Agypter, i. p. 358. |