The accession of Antiochus II. took place empire - Parthia, Bactria, and other provabout the middle of the reign of Ptolemy inces beyond the Tigris revolted from his Philadelphus in Egypt. This last-named dominion; this was in B. C. 250, from monarch was quite as tolerant and as friendly which the foundation of the Parthian empire to the Jews as his father had been. He may be dated; but it is perhaps better, with was a great encourager of learning and the Parthians themselves, to date it from the patron of learned men. Under his auspices ensuing reign, when they completely estabwas executed that valuable translation of the lished their independence. It is here howHebrew scriptures into Greek, called the ever we are to seek the real beginning of the Septuagint, from the seventy or seventy- Parthian empire, which was ultimately destwo translators said to have been employed tined to set bounds to the conquests of the thereon. Eleazar was still the high-priest, Romans, and to vanquish the vanquishers and appears to have interested himself much of the world. The immediate result was that in this undertaking, and was careful to fur- Antiochus was obliged, in the year B. C. nish for the purpose correct copies of the 249, to make peace with Philadelphus on sacred books. The date of B. C. 278 is such terms as he could obtain. These were, usually assigned to this translation. Thus that he should repudiate his beloved queen, the Jewish scriptures were made accessible who was his half-sister, and marry Berenice, to the heathen. It is unquestionable that a daughter of Philadelphus, and that the copies of this version, or, extracts from it, first male issue of the marriage should sucfound their way in process of time into the ceed to the throne. libraries of the learned and curious of Greece and Rome; and there is no means of calculating the full extent of its operation in opening the minds of the more educated and thoughtful class among the heathen to the perception of some of the great truths which they could learn only from that book, and which it was now becoming important that they should know. It was even a great matter that they should have the means of knowing clearly what the Jews believed, whatever they may themselves have thought of that belief. This version soon came into common use among the Jews themselves everywhere, even in Palestine, the original Hebrew having become a learned language. Indeed, the quotations from the Old Testament made by the evangelists and apostles, and even by Christ himself, are generally, if not always from this version.

i

In the third year of Antiochus a long and bloody war broke out between him and Ptolemy Philadelphus. The latter king, bending under the weight of years, commanded by his generals, while Antiochus, in the vigor of youth, led his armies in person. Neither monarch appears to have gained any very decided advantages over the other; while we know that much was lost by Antiochus; for while his attention was engaged by wars in the west the eastern provinces of his vast

* We may add in a note that this title (the Benefactor) was conferred on Ptolemy by his Egyptian subjects on his return from his Eastern expedition. He recovered and brought back,

As Philadelphus on his part gave for the dower of his daughter half the revenues of Palestine, Phoenicia and Cole-Syria, the Jews may seem to have come partly under the dominion of Antiochus. But as the king retained the other half in his own hands, and as the revenues of Judæa were always farmed by the high-priest, the circumstance made no change in their condition. Besides, the arrangement was too soon broken up to produce any marked effect. These were the important nuptials between the king of the north," and "the daughter of the king of the south," which the prophet Daniel had long before predicted (Dan. xi. 6). It was only two years after this (B. C. 247) that Philadelphus died immediately on which he put away Berenice and restored his beloved Laodicea; but she, fearing his fickleness, poisoned him, and set her son SELEUCUS CALLINICUS ("illustrious conqueror ") upon the throne (B. C. 246). On this Berenice sought shelter with her son (the heir by treaty) in the sacred groves of Daphne (near Antioch); but at the instigation of his mother, Callinicus tore her from that sanctuary, and slew her, with her infant son.

Now Berenice was full sister to the new king of Egypt, PTOLEMY III., surnamed EUERGETES,* who immediatey placed himwith other booty to an immense amount, 2,500 idolatrous images, chiefly those which Cambyses had taken away from the Egyptians. When he restored the idols to their temples, the Egyptians

self at the head of his army to avenge her | Joseph, the high-priest's nephew, who genwrongs. He was eminently successful. He erously borrowed the money upon his own entered Syria, slew the queen Laodicea, and credit, paid the tribute, and so ingratiated overran the whole empire, as far as the Tigris himself at the Egyptian court that he obon the east and Babylon on the south.* On tained the lucrative privilege of farming the he marched, from province to province, levy-king's revenues not only in Judæa and Saing heavy contributions, until commotions in maria, but in Phoenicia and Cole-Syria. Egypt obliged him to abandon his enterprise and return home. On his way he called at Jerusalem, where he offered many sacrifices, and made large presents to the temple. There is little doubt but that the high-priest took the opportunity of pointing out to him those prophecies of Daniel (xi. 6-8) which had been accomplished in the late events and his recent achievements; and this may probably have been the cause of his presents and offerings.

The high-priest of the Jews was then Onias II. Eleazar, the high-priest at the time the Greek translation of the Scriptures was made, died in B. C. 276, and was succeeded, not by his own son Onias, but by Manasses, a son of Jaddua. He died in B. C. 250, and Onias III. then became high-priest. As usual, Onias farmed the tribute exacted from Judea by the Egyptians. But growing covetous as he advanced in years, he withheld, under one pretence or another, the twenty talents which his predecessors had been accustomed to pay every year to the king of Egypt as a tribute for the whole people. This went on for twentyfour years, and, the arrears then amounting to four hundred and eighty talents, the king deemed it full time to take energetic measures to secure the payment of this portion of the royal revenues. He sent an officer named Athenion to demand the payment of what was already due, and to require a more punctual payment in future, with the threat that unless measures of compliance were taken, he would confiscate all the lands of Judæa, and send a colony of soldiers to occupy them. The infatuated priest was disposed to neglect the warning and brave the danger, which filled all the people with consternation. But the evils which might have been apprehended were averted through the policy and address of

manifested their gratitude by saluting with this title. They were less prone than the Greeks of Asia to defy their kings.

* The inscription found at Adule by Cosmas gives a more extensive range to his operations, affirming that after having subdued the west of

Seleucus Callinicus, in his emergencies, had promised to his younger brother Antiochus Hierax, who was governor of Asia Minor, the independent possession of several cities in that province, for his assistance in the war with P. Euergetes. But when he had (B. C. 243) obtained a truce of ten years from the Egyptian king, he refused to fulfil this engagement. This led to a bloody war between the two brothers, in which Seleucus was so generally unsuccess ful that it would appear as if the title of Callinicus (illustrious conqueror) had been bestowed upon him in derision. He was however ultimately successful through the losses and weakness which other enemies brought upon Antiochus Hierax ("the Hawk from his rapacity), who was in the end obliged to take refuge in Egypt, where he was put to death in B. C. 240. Toward the end of this war, Mesopotamia appears to have been the scene of action; for in that quarter occurred the battle in which eight thousand Babylonian Jews (subjects of Seleucus) and four thousand Macedonians defeated one hundred and twenty thousand Gauls whom Antiochus had in his pay (Macc. viii. 20).

S. Callinicus being now relieved from the western war, turned his attention to the recovery of the eastern provinces which had revolted in the time of his father. Renewed troubles in Syria prevented any result from his first attempt in B. C. 236; and in his second, in 230, he was defeated and taken prisoner by the Parthians, whose king, Arsaces, treated the royal captive with the respect becoming his rank, but never set him at liberty. He died in B. C. 225 by a fall from his horse. On this event Seleucus III. inherited the remains of his father's kingdom. This prince was equally weak in body and mind, and therefore most unaptly

Asia, he ultimately crossed the Euphrates, and brought under his dominion, not only Mesopotamia and Babylonia, but Media, Persia, and the whole country as far as Bactria. As this needs more collateral support than it has received, we adopt a more limited statement in the text.

surnamed Keraunus ('thunder'). When | made wild work in Jewish minds. Nothing a war broke out in B. C. 223, his imbecile manifests this more clearly than the rise of conduct so provoked his generals, that he the SADDUCEES, whose system was nothing was poisoned by their contrivance.

more than a very awkward attempt to graft Of these troubles and dissensions in Syria, the negations of Greek philosophy upon the Ptolemy Euergetes, in Egypt, took due ad- Hebrew creed. It confirms this view, that vantage in strengthening and extending his the sect of the Sadducees was never popular own empire. In B. C. 222, the year after with the mass of the nation - but was always the murder of Seleucus III., his reign was confined to those whose condition in life terminated through his murder by his own brought them the most into contact with the son Ptolemy, who succeeded him, and who, notions of the Greeks the wealthy, noble, on account of this horrid deed, was ironical- and ruling classes. Priests. even highly surnamed PHILOPATOR ("father-loving"). priests-sometimes adopted the views of P. Euergetes is popularly considered the this sect. last good king of Egypt, which is true in It has already been stated that the highthe sense that the succeeding Ptolemies gov-priest Simon the Just was counted as the erned far worse than the first three of that name — all of whom were just and humane men, and whose reigns were glorious and beneficent. If Euergetes was inferior in some respects to Lagus and Philadelphus, he was more than in the same degree superior to his own successors.

At this time the Jews had for about sixty years enjoyed almost uninterrupted tranquillity under the shadow of the Egyptian throne. During this period, circumstances led them into much intercourse with the Greeks, who were their masters and the ruling people in Egypt, Syria, Asia Minor and, in fact, in all the country west of the Tigris. A predominance of Greeks and of Grecian ideas, which has dotted the surface of westernmost Asia with frequent monuments of Grecian art, was not without much effect upon the Jews in this period. Among other indications, the increasing prevalence, in and after this period, of Greek proper names among the Jews, may be taken. There is ample evidence that the more opulent classes cultivated the language and imbibed some of the manners of the Greeks. It is also apparent that some acquaintance with the Greek philosophers was obtained, and

last of "the great synagogue," who had applied themselves to the great work of collecting, revising, and completing the canon of the Old Testament. To this followed “a new synagogue," which applied itself diligently to the work of expounding and commenting upon the completed canon. This school lasted until the time of Judah Hakkadosh, who to prevent these comments or

The

traditions" (which were deemed of equal authority with the text) from being lost, after the dispersion, committed them to writing, in the Mishna which, with its comments, has since constituted the great law-book of the Jews, from which, even more than from the Scriptures, they have deduced their religious and civil obligations. founder and first president of this school, or synagogue, was Antigonus Socho, or Sochæus. He (or, according to some accounts, his successor Joseph) was fond of teaching that God was to be served wholly from disinterested motives, of pure love and reverence, founded on the contemplation of his infinite perfections, without regard to the prospects of future reward, or to the dread of future punishment. This was either misunderstood or wilfully perverted by some of his scholars, and in particular by Sadoc and Baithos, who declared their disbelief that there was any future state of reward or punishment. Perhaps they stopped at this; but the views ultimately embodied in the creed of the sect which took its name from the first of these persons, inculcated that the soul was mortal like the body, and perished with it, and consequently that there was not, nor could be, any resurrection. They also held that there was no spiritual being, good or bad. (Matt. xxii. 23; Acts xxiii. 8.)

;

They rejected the doctrine of an overruling | which circumstances made desirable for both Providence, and maintained that all events parties before prosecuting the war. Negotiaresulted from the free and unconstrained tions for a peace were indeed entered into actions of men. That, like the Samaritans, but as both parties claimed Cole-Syria and they rejected all the sacred books save the Palestine in virtue of the treaty by which Pentateuch, is inferred from the unsupported the empire of Alexander was divided after authority of a passage of doubtful interpre- the fall of Antigonus, the truce expired withtation in Josephus.* And as there is some out any thing having been concluded. evidence to the contrary, it is safer to conclude that they admitted the authority of the other books, but ascribed to them an inferior value and importance than to the Pentateuch. But it is certain that they rejected absolutely the "traditions," to which such supreme importance was attached by the mass of the nation. This was a good thing in them; and in this they agreed with Jesus Christ and his apostles, who were opposed to them and by them on every other point. In fact, it would seem as if this sect in its beginning was intended merely as an opposition to the tradition party, which was likely to be regarded with apprehension by the more open and thinking minds. The doctrinal errors had no necessary connection with the anti-tradition zeal of the party, and were probably grafted on it through the speculative tendencies of some of its original leaders.

The war was therefore resumed in 218 B. C. Antiochus marched into the disputed territory and carried all things before him: forcing the passes of Lebanon, he penetrated into Phoenicia, and after securing the coast, marched into the interior, and brought under his power all the cities of Galilee; after which he passed beyond Jordan, and won the ancient territory of the tribes beyond that river, with the metropolis Rabbath-Ammon, which Ptolemy Philadelphus had fortified, and named after himself Philadelphia. At the same time, Antiochus subjugated some of the neighboring Arabs; and on his return threw garrisons into Samaria and some of the adjacent towns; and at the close of this brilliant campaign, he took up his winter quarters in Ptolemais (afterward Cæsarea).

These large and repeated losses at length roused all the energies which Ptolemy was capable of exerting. He forsook his drunken After the murder of Seleucus Keraunus, revels, and placing himself at the head of who left no son, the kingdom of Syria fell to an army of seventy thousand infantry, five his brother ANTIOCHUS III., who had been thousand cavalry, and seventy-three elebrought up at Seleucia on the Tigris. He phants, he marched from Pelusium through came to Antioch; and his reign was so pro- the desert, and encamped at Raphia, a place ductive in great events that he ultimately between Rhinoculura (El Arish) and Gaza. acquired the surname of “ THE GREAT." He Antiochus, with the confidence of victory carried on the wars against the revolted which his recent successes inspired, advanced provinces with such success that he soon to meet him at that place, with an army of recovered almost all Asia Minor, Media, sixty-two thousand infantry, six thousand Persia, and Babylonia. The effeminate cavalry, and one hundred and twenty elecharacter of Ptolemy Philopator who was phants. He was totally defeated, with such a mean voluptuary, abandoned to the most loss that he made no attempt to repair it, but shameful vices, and entirely governed by the abandoned all his conquests and withdrew to creatures and instruments of his pleasures Antioch. By a peace, concluded soon after, led Antiochus to contemplate the feasibility he relinquished all pretension to the disputed of obtaining possession of the valuable prov- territories. Philopator now recovered all the inces of Cele-Syria, Phoenicia, and Palestine. former possessions of his crown without strikGreat part of the first of these provinces, ing a blow; for the cities hastened to emulate with the city of Damascus, he easily acquired, through the defection of Theodotian the gova brave man rendered a traitor by the desire of revenge, and by contempt for the character of his master. The campaign was terminated by a truce for four months,

ernor

* Antiq. xiii. 10, 6.

each other in renewing their homage to him by their ambassadors. Among these the Jews, always partial to the Egyptian rule, were the most forward; and the king was induced to pay a visit to Jerusalem, as well as to the other principal cities. There he offered sacrifices according to the Jewish law, and presented gifts to the temple. But,

But

unhappily, the beauty of the building, and | so pointedly shunned, and excluded from the the peculiar order and solemnity of the society of their old associates, that the king, worship, excited the curiosity of the king to when acquainted with it, was highly enraged, see the interior. Simon II., who had but and regarded this as an opposition to his lately succeeded Onias II. in the high-priest- authority; he vowed to extirpate the whole hood, remonstrated against this intention, nation. To begin with the Jews in Egypt, intimating that it was unlawful even for the he ordered them all to be brought in chains priests to enter the inner sanctuary. Philop- to Alexandria. Having thus brought them ator answered haughtily, that although they all together, they were shut up in the hippowere deprived of that honor, he ought not to be; drome, which was a large enclosure outside and pressed forward to enter the sacred place. the city, built for the purpose of horse-racing But while he was passing through the inner and other public amusements, where he court for that purpose, he was shaken like intended to expose them as a spectacle, to be a reed, and fell speechless to the ground," destroyed by elephants. At the appointed overcome either by his own superstitious fears, time, the people assembled in crowds, and or, as the historian seems to intimate, by a the elephants were on the spot; but the supernatural dread and horror cast on him effects of a drunken bout, the preceding from above. He was carried out half dead, night, prevented the attendance of the king, and speedily departed from the city full of and caused the postponement of the show. displeasure against the Jewish people. He The next day, a similar disappointment protherefore commenced a most barbarous perse- ceeded from the same unseemly cause. cution against the Jews in Egypt on his on the third, the king managed to be present, return home. In the first place he caused a and the elephants were brought out after they decree to be inscribed on brazen pillars at the had been intoxicated with wine and frankinpalace-gate, that none should enter there who cense to render them more ferocious. did not sacrifice to the gods he worshipped-they spent their fury, not on the unhappy which effectually excluded the Jews from all Jews, but turned upon the spectators, of access to his person. Then he deprived the whom they destroyed great numbers. This, Jews in Alexandria of the high civil privi- connected with some unusual appearances leges they had enjoyed, degrading them from the air, appeared to the king and his attendthe first to the third or last class of inhabit- ants so manifest an interposition of a divine ants. He also ordered them to be formally Power in behalf of the Jews, that he enrolled, and that at the time of their enrol- instantly ordered them to be set at liberty; ment, the mark of an ivy-leaf (one of the and fearful of having provoked the veninsignia of his god, Bacchus) should be geance of Heaven, he hastened to restore the impressed upon them with a hot iron: if any Jews to their former privileges by rescinding refused this mark they were to be made all the decrees he had issued against them slaves; and whoever opposed the decree was Now also, his better reason gaining sway, to be put to death. Again, they were tempted considering that those who had so signally to apostasy by the promise of restoration to evinced their fidelity to their God were not the rank of citizens of the first class; but likely to be unfaithful to their king, he of the many thousands of Jews then at bestowed upon them many marks of his Alexandria, only three hundred appear to munificence and confidence. Among other have submitted to the humiliating condition, things, he abandoned to their disposal the and these were held in such abhorrence by three hundred apostates, who were speedily the majority of their countrymen, and were put to death by their offended brethren.*

*It is right to apprise the reader that the whole of this account of the visit of Philopator to Jerusalem and its consequences, down to this point, is not in Josephus, but is given on the sole authority of the author of the third book of Maccabees. In all, there are five books of Maccabees, of which two only are included in our Apocrypha. The third, which relates solely to this persecution of the Jews by Ptolemy Philopator, exists in Greek, and is found in some ancient manuscripts of the Greek Septuagint, particularly

But

in

in the Alexandrian and Vatican manuscripts. There is also a Syriac version of it from the Greck; but it has never been inserted in the Vulgate, or in our English Bibles, but English translations of it exist. It appears to have been the work of an Alexandrian Jew, and while we admit that the book is full of absurdities, and that the authority is of very little value in itself, yet we think that in the outline facts, as related in the text, there is so much appearance of probability, and so many small agreements with the