1

2

Persian supremacy; but though Ezra genuinely submitted himself to it and exhorted all his contemporaries to acknowledge its benefits, yet, at the same time, he considered it due alone to the sins of the people that they had been made the slaves of the stranger; and he therefore hoped from the bottom of his heart that by-and-by the relation might be again reversed. And so, in the times which succeeded Ezra's, when the Persian empire kept losing in prestige and internal strength,3 when the rule of the satraps became more and more arbitrary and pernicious, and Palestine especially had much to suffer from the protracted and devastating wars between the Persians and the Egyptians whose craving for independence could never be stilled, we find in the book of Koheleth expressions of profound dissatisfaction with the external supremacy, which the sage author can only attempt laboriously to smooth down. The events and the religion of its primitive history had strengthened the nation in a hatred of arbitrary despotism; and at this very moment the hagiocracy was endeavouring to restore it to that position which it had occupied a thousand years before.

In all this lay just so many germs of dissolution, threatening this form of constitution and government also, as soon as it should begin to rise in power and to unfold its specific genius. It is true indeed that the propitious tendencies and germs of the hagiocracy were far more powerful, and that this whole stage of the history is occupied with their growing ascendancy, but still we shall see the others constantly returning under more and more highly developed forms. We are now sufficiently prepared to form at once a correct estimate of the general results of this period.

D. THE ISSUE OF THE PERSIAN EPOCH.

About this time of transition, it is true, we only possess very scanty and obscure information; and, indeed, at this point we come upon an interval of nearly two hundred years of which our knowledge is very slender and disconnected. The age of Ezra and Nehemiah falls between the antiquity proper of

1 P. 122 sqq.

2 Ezr. ix. 7-9, Neh. ix. 36 sq.; also Bar. i. 11-13, iv. 6 sqq., and elsewhere.

intended to glorify Cyrus and the noble early history of his empire, Cyrop. viii. 8, 2 sqq.

4 See the Dichter des A. Bs. vol. iv.

3 This is nowhere described more vividly or intelligibly than by Xenophon p. 180 sq. at the end of the same book which is

the nation and the fully-developed hagiocracy in which the sun of its long course was finally to sink for ever, but it has preserved for us the last records which give us the most trustworthy insight into the activity of these noble individuals and the condition of their time; and they supply the last proof that great epochs always produce and preserve testimonies to their own glory as splendid as themselves.

This much, however, we know with certainty, that in Judea the peaceful and prosperous co-operation with the Persian supremacy which had become the true basis of the external rise and progress of the new kingdom of Jahveh at Jerusalem, was at last most profoundly disturbed. The indications above mentioned in the book of Koheleth have already prepared us to expect that all the accumulated dissatisfaction with the Persian supremacy would at last break out under various forms; and certain obscure traditions, here and there preserved, imply that this really took place. These considerations bring us unavoidably to the closer examination of an institution which now rises into fresh relations and is henceforth of the utmost importance for all the remaining course of the history, almost down to its very end.

I. THE RISE AND CHARACTER OF THE HIGH-PRIESTLY POWER UNDER THE HAGIOCRACY.

The high-priestly power in Israel was perfectly legitimate and indispensable. It was rendered so by its remote origin, and also, in accordance with the spirit of the age, by the support conferred on it, in common with everything relating to the priesthood, the sanctuary, and religion, by the sacred book of law and the inferences now drawn from it. Intended originally simply to knit the priestly tribe firmly together and to provide for the performance of certain high offices in the sacred ceremonial, the high-priesthood, in virtue of its inheritance by the right of primogeniture, had in early times become a powerful support and pillar at first of the lofty edifice of the sacred objects, and then, by its means, of the whole community of the people of the true religion. In the premonarchical times of Israel, when the other supreme powers were relaxed, it stepped into their place from time to time as the leader of the whole nation;' and then in the separate kingdom of Judah, after the disruption of the old kingdom, it was most eminently

1 Vol. ii. p. 312 sq., 408 sqq.

favourable to the unbroken maintenance at least of the sacred objects of the people and the priestly life of the old religion through every change in kingly government. The glory of ancient sanctity and high deserts from a hoary antiquity downwards, intensified by a great book of sacred law, cast a glow upon the whole Levitic priesthood, but especially upon the office of the high-priest, at the time of the destruction of the Davidic kingdom. From the position which it then occupied, the true religion could not yet quite free itself from the tutelage of the Levitical priesthood, although, with the support it had derived from it for a thousand years, it had learned long before to move with growing freedom. True prophecy, however, had then looked forward to its complete release,' and only lamented the profound indignities which the chief-priests experienced at the hands of the heathen, as though for a sign that they too knew how to suffer for the true religion. And, indeed, we have already 3 noticed what benefits resulted from the fact that so many priests felt themselves moved by their birth and their ancient privileges to contribute everything they could to the foundation of the new Jerusalem, so that it is at least doubtful whether it could have risen again from its ruins at all without their burning zeal. But in the high-priest and in the firm establishment of his supremacy over every visible expression of the holy, this new Jerusalem now found its firmest and most inalienable support against the heathen power. This fact could not fail to be soon demonstrated by experience, and remained henceforth unshaken, as we have already observed, through all the subsequent changes of heathen supremacy. But the necessity which compelled the hagiocracy to rest on the ancient priesthood, and the readiness with which the priesthood recognised in it a powerful means of exalting its own strength, which, at the beginning of this period, had been so miserably impaired, tended to unite the high-priestly power more closely with the hagiocracy, till it became one of its most powerful instruments, and then learned in its turn to make the hagiocracy a source of prestige and power to itself not easily to be exhausted.

5

When once, however, the hagiocracy is firmly established, as it was now among the people of Israel, it may succeed in maintaining in the lower classes for a considerable time a certain uniform culture of religion and morals; but its intrinsic hollowness will speedily be disclosed in the higher ranks, and its in

fluence may be most prejudicial where its life has taken its deepest root. We have already seen what vexation Nehemiah had to endure in his strife with the selfishness and stupidity of many of the nobles of his day in Jerusalem; and, by the time of Malachi, the avarice of many of the priests had developed to a most culpable extent. On the high-priest of his later years Nehemiah was compelled to inflict a rebuke for a grave transgression, and it can surprise no one that during the growing dissolution of the Persian empire the high-priestly house rapidly rose in power, but at the same time fell into the danger of the deepest moral degeneration.

Josephus relates that the high-priest John, grandson of Eliashib," who lived under Nehemiah, murdered his own brother Jesus (Joshua) during a ceremony in the Temple, in consequence of a promise made to the latter, in mere friendship, by a Persian general, named Bagôsês, to promote him to the high-priesthood. In reliance upon this, so he alleged, his brother had provoked him to a quarrel. The result was that Bagôsês zealously took up the cause of his murdered friend, bitterly reproached the Judeans with the enormity of such a murder, committed in the very sanctuary, made his way in spite of every dissuasion into the sanctuary, affirming that he was at any rate cleaner than a murdered corpse, and laid on the country for seven years the burden of paying fifty drachmæ for every lamb offered as the law directed in the daily sacrifice. This case presents us with the first clear indication of the ruinous discord of the high-priestly house. Like a worm, it ate its way into the whole institution, and we shall find it spreading further and further during the Greek supremacy towards its destruction. The succession by primogeniture brought to the high-priesthood the same advantages of a continuous development which it secures to every princely dignity, but it also tended to make those who were called to the office, whether by near or distant ties, far too lax. We have already seen that Eliashib was by no means a pattern for his age; and the same cause provoked a state of dissension between the actual occupant and his expectant successor, which readily led under a foreign despotism to the most frightful crimes.

7

The Johanan, son of Eliashib, Ezr. x. 6,
who must have lived much earlier, is
only known to us by the fact that he had
founded a hall in the new temple, which
was called by his name.

See the Alterth. p. 132.
P. 159.

Whether this event took place under Artaxerxes II. (Mnemon), or Artaxerxes III. (Ochus), cannot be determined with certainty from the words of Josephus as they stand.' We shall, however, find the son of John, Jaddûa, high-priest and advanced in years at the conquest of Alexander, and this might warrant us in fixing on Artaxerxes II., especially if John himself was (as is probable) still young at the time of the murder. So far as our present knowledge goes, at any rate, we may affirm that this event must not be confounded with the dangerous insurrection against Ochus, which terminated with the destruction of Jericho, and the deportation of a number of Judeans to Hyrcania. Of this Josephus says not one word; and the accounts of it preserved elsewhere are extremely scanty, a deficiency which is fully explained by its disastrous consequences. This probably led to the union of a strong party of Judeans with the Phoenicians and Cyprians, who, about the years 358-356 B.C., in alliance with Egypt and King Nectanebus, endeavoured permanently to shake off the Persian yoke.-Soon afterwards Ochus once more subdued Egypt; and quite possibly it was at this time that the numerous captive Judeans were compulsorily removed to Egypt, of whom, however, nothing but obscure traditions remain.3

2

II. THE BOOKS OF BARUCH AND TOBIT.

The new government of the hagiocracy in Jerusalem was, then, seriously tottering already, after an existence of little more than a century and a half, during which it had had the opportunity of establishing itself more firmly. But, even in its wide dispersion, the nation still retained too much of the

The reading Ochus Artaxerxes, which is adopted in a newer edition, rests on a mere conjecture of Scaliger. It might further be conjectured that the general Bagôsês was identical with the well known eunuch Bagoas, who was all-powerful under Ochus; but this receives no further confirmation elsewhere Josephus distinguishes between the two names.

2 These are the very brief narratives in Eus. Chron. ii. p. 221, and G. Syncellus, Chron. i. p. 486, the equally sketchy and condensed account in Solinus, Memorab. or Polyhist. cap. 44, and that in Orosius, Hist. iii. 7. Of these the last sounds the most circumstantial; and the war here referred to as being carried on at the same time against the Phoenicians, who had been

treated by Ochus with the greatest cruelty, as well as that against the Cyprians, is described with great minuteness by Diodorus, Hist. xvi. 40-45. Moreover, Eusebius places this deportation to Hyrcania many years earlier than the conquest of Egypt, which is probably correct; and the Romans there named, together with the Judeans, may originally have been Idu

means.

In the book of Aristeas, at the end of Haverkamp's edition of Josephus, vol. ii. p. 103 sq. Hecatæus also speaks in general terms of ill-treatment endured by the Judeans at the hands of the Persian satraps and kings. See Jos. Contr. Ap. i. 22, p. 456.