was, besides, an official reporter (so to speak) of Judean birth, who resided at the court, and was the great king's immediate adviser in matters relating to this province and its people.' The governor was assisted in his administration by the advice of the nobles and elders.2 But he was liable to be removed at any moment; and, except in purely religious concerns, the community possessed no further independence. This was the end of even that shadow of autonomy under foreign supremacy which had risen again under Zerubbabel; and it was now irrevocably decreed that this community, united on its ancient fatherland, must for the present either content itself with securing permanent independence and development on the basis of its peculiar religion alone, or else disappear entirely. Once reduced to this inexorable alternative, its choice could no longer be doubtful. Too healthy as yet were its efforts, and too grand and imperative the future towards which it had an innate tendency, and the pure hope of which upheld it still through all its difficulties. But instead of a Zerubbabel, far other men were needed to call forth and protect the blessings which were now most indispensable for its well-being. The office of high-priest remained henceforth hereditary in the house of Joshua, the colleague of Zerubbabel, described above, though certainly without the knowledge of the Persians at first, simply because the ancient religion allowed it to be so, and now even sanctioned it by the Pentateuch. Thus a kind of hereditary dignity, at the same time new and of primeval antiquity, rose unperceived in the community once more. In the entire absence of any other continuous authority of national extraction, it could put forth the more strength in support of its unity and permanence, and at the same time it afforded the first fixed centre round which the hagiocracy, which had hardly disclosed itself distinctly until now, could group itself. But every hereditary dignity, and especially the high-priesthood, gradually loses, from the very fact of its being inherited so quietly, much of the pure strength and activity which characterise it at first; nor was every high-priest equal to the new and difficult problems which the times produced. The consequence was that as soon as the office had by degrees acquired considerable importance and attracted the attention of the supreme authorities, it always remained subject to their dicta his power may be gathered to some ex As we see from the incidental remark tent from Nehemiah's description, espe- in Neh. xi. 24. 2 See above, p. 86 sq. tion. This state of things continued all through the Persian age, and even lasted into the Greek supremacy. Nor was it until the dignities of high-priest and prince were united in the person of the Asmonean Jonathan that the conditions of the office were essentially altered. Thus the thread of history could not be attached even to the hereditary succession of high-priests in the same way that it had been connected with that of the kings of Judah or Israel. Even in civic life, their government supplied no dates: the Persian and then the Greek eras continued the only chronologies in use. This also explains the fact that when, from the standpoint of the later high-priests who had become princes and kings of the nation, it was thought desirable to review and settle the chronology of their predecessors, the attempt could only be carried out with great difficulty, and was not very successful after all. The Chronicler gives the list of high-priests in due succession up to his own time, but without any dates.' Fl. Josephus, in a survey of all the high-priests of Israel from the time of Moses to that of Nero,2 states that between Cyrus and Antiochus Eupator (that is, from 538 B.C. to 161 B.C. at the outside), there were fifteen high-priests of the same family, beginning from Joshua, who ruled for 414 years; but although in the course of his history he mentions several of these fifteen, and attempts to assign them to their proper dates, yet he never defines accurately the time during which each of them held office individually, and, in recording the earlier names, he expresses himself in reference to this only in very general terms. In some cases, especially among the later members of the series, whose power increased with the progress of the hagiocracy, it was certainly known with sufficient accuracy how long they had individually been in office; but when at last the attempt was made to continue the thread of general government in Israel through them, and to fix them all firmly 1 According to Neh. xii. 10 sq., the series of high-priests for some 200 years after the foundation of the new Jerusalem was as follows: Joshua, Joiakim, Eliashib (often mentioned in Nehemiah's history), Joiada (which is made into Judas in Jos. Ant. xi. 7, 1), Jonathan, Jaddua (this is probably a diminutive of Joiada); for Jonathan, however, we should read Johanan, according to ver. 22 and Jos. Ant. xi. 7, 1, for the name Jannæus, , which later writers often insert here, might just as well be an abbreviation of Johanan as of Jonathan (see below under 3 the Asmoneans). As a general rule the two names were very frequently confused in later times. A decision of Joiada's on a passage of the Pentateuch about sacrifices is referred to in the Mishnah, Shekâlim, vi. 6. 2 Ant. xx. 10; comp. with his language Contr. Ap. i. 7. 3 This reading seems to be unimpeached, Ant. xx. 10, 2; but even if we reckon the years of Cyrus from the beginning of his ante-Babylonian reign, the number is still too high. in the great network of universal chronology, the extremely arbitrary and contradictory manner in which the records had to be dealt with, shows how little dependence could be placed on the sources of information available for the purpose.1 But the rapidity with which, as we have seen, the descendants of David sank into almost complete obscurity, and the want of success which attended the efforts of the high-priests The statement of G. Syncellus here given is taken from his Canon; in his chief work he gives many of the names and numbers after No. 13 very differently (see below). But if we compare the data of the two Chronicles we still find, in the midst of palpable contractions, transpositions, and other arbitrary and erroneous treatment, so much agreement even in the Persian and ante-Maccabean periods as to convince us that they are partly founded on very ancient records; for when the annals of the high-priests took the place of those of the kings (1 Mace. xvi. 24) they would certainly put in the most accurate list possible of all the pre-Asmonean high-priests. The dates supplied by the Chronicon Paschale are in many respects superior; for instance, in not assigning his place to the first Jonathan high-priest until the reign of Cyrus at Babylon. But it is also the Chronicon Paschale which shows most clearly how little this fabric as a whole may be trusted; for it distinctly asserts that the 21 high priests filled the space of 483 years, i.e. the 69 weeks of years of Daniel,' so that its chronology as given here rests on the ingenuity of an interpreter of Daniel. Moreover from the first to the sixteenth high-priest (selected because he was the first Maccabean high-priest) it reckons just 400 years; and whereas this period of 400 years and the above of 483 years are really much too great, the period of the first six high-priests, when estimated at 190 years, is made too small, for all the older accounts make Jaddua still alive in Alexander's time. to restore a real and permanent government, allowed the selfsacrificing activity of individuals who rose up from among the people to exercise a more powerful and beneficent influence than would otherwise have been possible. Soon enough the right men were found to render to the young community, in its continued weakness and disorganisation, the twofold services with which it could no longer permanently dispense. Another subject, however, claims our first consideration. V. LATER VIEWS OF ZERUBBABEL AND HIS TIME. In all times and places, the character of a man who is prominent in his own day strikes deepest into the national consciousness of posterity under that aspect in which it last appeared as he passed from earth. If, then, Zerubbabel, round whose head Messianic hopes had played in the early days of Jerusalem's rise, met with the gloomy end we have conjectured above, we need not wonder that his memory soon paled and in later times grew more and more obscure. However certain it may be that he ought to be regarded as the most prominent man of the first five-and-twenty years of the new Jerusalem, yet beyond the few broad features of his life and work described above we know nothing of him from trustworthy historical sources. When the Temple was consecrated on its completion, an event which took place almost at the end of the first quarter of a century of this new epoch, he was certainly still living. If, as is probable on many grounds, he was the author of the wonderfully profound Ps. cxxxviii., in which we hear the language of a man of princely family, thoroughly penetrated by the most exalted feelings excited at the fairest moment of this time, marked as it was by new aspiration and fresh and noble hope, we may then affirm that this descendant of David, as poet, also, must have been worthy of his great ancestor; and we shall understand still more fully how it was that he became the firmest support of the feeble steps of the new Judah, even though fate forbade him to mount the throne of David itself, and finally cast him deeper and deeper down. But when in the Greek times the recollection of the Persian period in general, and of its opening years in particular, retreated further into the distance, and at the same time the freedom of historical representation degenerated into greater 1 P. 105. and greater license, the memory of this hero, as well as others, was distorted and defaced in all kinds of ways. We still possess a tolerably large fragment of a strange historical work of this description,' and we must now devote to it at least a passing notice. In this book the whole history of the first Persian kings was brought, in the most extravagant style, into the closest connection with the liberation and restoration of Israel, just as if these kings had been in the habit of thinking of the God of Israel and the fate of his people at every critical moment of their lives, and the history of the whole world had strictly hinged, in consequence, upon the changes of its lot. And since nothing remained so firmly planted in the general mind as the recollection of the fact that Cyrus had granted permission for the building of the Temple, but that it had not been actually accomplished before the reign of Darius, this loose style of narrative concocted on this basis the following story. Cyrus, before his attack on Babylon, vowed to God that if he were victorious he would release Israel and restore the sacred vessels of the Temple; but for some reason or other the latter promise was not redeemed. When Darius, therefore, had (as we know) to attack and conquer Babylon a second time, he, too, vowed to God his willingness to rebuild Jerusalem and its Temple and to send back the sacred vessels; but he also subsequently failed to perform his vow. So once on a time there happened to be three young nobles at the court of Darius, who had agreed, in the exuberance of youthful spirits, to contend for a wager before the king and his assembled council, in a discussion on the philosophical question what is the strongest power among men?' and the victor was to receive the highest honours. They sealed up their proposals, together with the outline of the argument which each intended to support, and laid them under the pillow of the sleeping king. Darius, on waking, received the papers, and allowed the contest to be held with all solemnity. The first had undertaken to prove that wine was the strongest power among men; the second that it was the king (a trait in full accordance with the very corrupt conceptions of royal prerogative current in the last two centuries before Christ); but the third, who was no other than Zerubbabel, had advanced the twofold proposition that woman was incomparably the strongest power among men, but that stronger still, the strongest absolutely was the truth, i.e. ac 11 Esdras iii. sq. The work out of which this passage has been preserved, seems to have been still read by the oldest Sibylline poet. See my essay, über die 21 Esdras iv, 43-45, 57. |