are henceforth constantly mentioned in connection with him, while the simple heads of the people, with the members of their families, also bear a special name, viz. nobles or free men.1 Different from these, again, were the simple superintendents of the separate districts or the smaller cities. For the rest, all these various grades of elders were chosen by the people themselves, under the governor, so that the internal organisation and administration were established on a very independent footing, while the Persians were content with their supremacy. The nobles and elders (superintendents)' were the ordinary representatives of the people; but whenever an important change was proposed, requiring the exertion and co-operation of all, the people itself assembled to deliberate and decide."

3

Zerubbabel, however, as the descendant of David, was considered the recognised head of the new nation of Jerusalem, and was certainly entrusted by Cyrus with the control of his co-religionists, and we know that in this capacity he bore the Persian title of Tirshatha, that is High Sheriff. We further know that besides the family name of Zerubbabel he also bore the court name of Sheshbazzar, or rather Sasabazzar,' by which he was doubtless designated even under the Chaldean

it is true, whether Zerubbabel is intended under this official title; but it becomes certain on the comparison of Neh. vii. 65, 70; for it is only through an oversight that the words of Neh. vii. 70 are absent from Ezr. ii., and therefore from 1 Esdras v. 44, whereas it is quite a mistake of 1 Esdras v. 40 (where one MS. reads Neeuías ὁ καὶ ̓Ατθαρίας) to take the Tirshatha to be Nehemiah. For the rest, Zerubbabel is also known by his contemporaries under the name Pacha, which was introduced with the Assyrian supremacy, Hag. i. 1, 14, ii. 2, 21, cf. Ezr. vi. 7. The title Tirshatha, which reappears afterwards with Nehemiah, is, on the other hand, genuine Persian.

It is clear that the parents of this child, who was born in Babylon, made some reference to that city in the name; but it cannot be a contraction of ", 'scattered to Babylon,' for this signification would not be appropriate to the new-born child; perhaps it is rather from ', 'child of Babylon.'

It is certainly never said in the Book

3 Cf. the remarks on Neh. x. 2-28 of Ezra that this Sasabazzar was identical below.

This rests on such clear evidence as Ezr. x. 7-9, 15, Neh. ii. 16-18.

5 In Ezr. ii. 63 it is in itself doubtful,

with Zerubbabel; but since in i. 8, 11 he is called Nasi, i.e. royal prince of Judah, and in v. 14, 16, is designated as an equivalent by the Assyrian official title

supremacy.' But his privileges were circumscribed; close to him, and in important matters certainly superior to him, was one of the Persian governors of the whole of Syria, or the country west of the Euphrates.2 This was probably the officer resident in Samaria, who also went to Jerusalem for a few days every year to pass sentence in the most important cases, and there, at a north-eastern point of the wall, he established his dreaded tribunal.3

II. THE RETURN OF THE TEN TRIBES, AND THE STATE OF THE SEVERAL DISTRICTS OF THE ANCIENT LAND OF ISRAEL.

1. We may regard it, then, as certain, that the original permission of the Persian government for the restoration of a community in the ancient fatherland referred only to Jerusalem and its immediate vicinity, and by no means embraced the whole extent of the former kingdom of Judah. And yet, at any rate about a hundred years later, in Nehemiah's time, we see nearly the whole of this larger district once more inhabited by Israelites, and firmly consolidating itself round Jerusalem. We must suppose, therefore, that the original permission of the Persian government was gradually extended, and that the first expedition under Zerubbabel was followed by an increasing number of stragglers, until the southern and western portions of Judea were peopled more and more by the descendants of its ancient inhabitants, and the Idumeans, though not indeed compelled to retire within their ancient boundaries, were, nevertheless, obliged to tolerate Judean settlers on their territory. We can no longer recognise the particulars of all these subsequent expeditions. They must at any rate have attached themselves closely to the new ground now granted; but the expeditions of Ezra and Nehemiah, of which more below, may serve as instructive examples of them.

This phenomenon, moreover, receives additional significance

Pacha, it is impossible not to consider him and Zerubbabel to be the same. This is only a fresh proof that the Book of Ezra is compiled from very different sources.

The LXX give the name Zaraßao áp, 1 Esdras Zavaẞaooáp (in some MSS. less correctly Σαμανασσάρ and Σαβανασσάρ). These pronunciations, at any rate, have more of the ring of Assyrian than the Masoretic has. In Jos. Ant. xi. 1, 3, he is even called 'Αβασσάρ.

2 It follows from Neh. ii. 7-9, that there were at least two governors in Syria (perhaps at Damascus and at Tyre), on both of whom Jerusalem was dependent; but it was specially dependent on one of them, Ezr. v. 3, Neh. iii. 34, cf. Esth. i. 3.

This follows from the very important incidental remark in Neh. iii. 7. P. 82.

in connection with two other more important questions, which lie so close at our feet that we cannot pass them over. In the first place, we see at a subsequent period, in the great field of universal history lying open to our view, the non-heathen inhabitants of the extreme north of Palestine keeping up a connection with the temple at Jerusalem, and regarded as Israelites in the full sense. By descent, too, they were traced back to the ancient people, and even if individuals of heathen blood at length became just like Israelites among them, as we may admit without hesitation, yet the mass of them were always supposed to have sprung from the blood of Israel. Now, when did these men connect themselves with the new Jerusalem? and what was their character? had they always occupied that part of the country, or did descendants from the former kingdom of Judah gradually emigrate thither? or where else did they come from? We could form a safer judgment on these enquiries if we had documentary evidence of the character of the Chaldean division and administration of the whole country, after the destruction of Jerusalem; but no record of this has been preserved. So far as we can now judge, from a number of indications, the position of affairs was as follows. The Idumeans certainly demanded possession of all Israelite lands,' partly on account of their recent services, and partly in virtue of ancient hereditary claims; but Nabuchodrozzor only handed over to their jurisdiction the portions of the country already specified. The districts which did not pass into the possession of the Idumean vassal-king, viz. Jerusalem itself, the small territory round it which was still, in the first instance, placed under a Judean governor,3 and now, together with Jerusalem, formed the basis of the new community, and, in addition, Galilee in particular, were subject directly to the Chaldeans. Samaria, and a small district belonging to it, were, as we have seen, occupied by aliens; and elsewhere, too, numbers of foreigners had certainly by this time penetrated here and there into the land; for instance, the great city of Scythopolis, southwest of the Lake of Galilee, had acquired a territory even earlier, and remained an almost entirely free city far into the Greek period, at the time in question inclining rather to the

5

1 Cf. Ezekiel's very distinct utterances on this subject, especially xxxv. 10.

2 P. 81.

3 Vol. iv. p. 274 sq.

Ibid. p. 215 sqq.

› Ibid. p. 231.

According to such indications as Jos.

Ant. xiii. 15, 4, and elsewhere. Further evidence of an advance southwards of more Aramean-speaking peoples is found in the frequent occurrence in later times of, village, instead of -, house, in the composition of the names of places.

Samaritans than the Judeans. But certainly the central part of the country, as well as the district beyond the Jordan, and Galilee in particular more than the rest, were still inhabited by many descendants of Israel who remained true to their religion as far as the pressure of the times allowed. And this continued to be the condition of the country, thus closely pruned, until the time of the new Persian dynasty; and even this made no change designedly, except in putting Israel again in possession of Jerusalem, with the small district belonging to it. What further consequences, however, lay all concealed in this seemingly small alteration!

2. But here we are at once met by the second question, what became of the descendants of the Ten Tribes formerly carried away by the Assyrians? If they, too, were ever to come back again, the present circumstances and opportunity were the most suitable for doing so; and if the mass of them were eager for a return to their ancient home, it was now high time to accomplish it, for even where settlers have in the first instance been transported by force, their ancient fatherland tends more and more to become a foreign country to them. We do not, however, possess any such simple and explicit evidence as would enable us to settle this question easily, and we cannot be surprised that all kinds of conjectures were formed on the subject at a tolerably early period, or that in modern times they have multiplied still further, and in some cases assumed perfectly monstrous proportions.

From an early period the great prophets had foretold the certainty of a final return of the captive exiles of the Ten Tribes as well as of the others; and later ages always found a specially prominent example of this in the bold image which Isaiah had adopted of Israel returning across the Euphrates as safely and as mightily as it had once come home from Egypt across the sea.1 This prediction was fulfilled during these decades as completely as was in a general way possible in its immediate sense. But since it was more and more strongly felt in the following centuries how far the whole of the new kingdom lagged behind the expectations formed about it, this prediction, as then read in the holy scriptures, like the similar one of the seventy years,2 and, indeed, nearly all the ancient prophecies, came to be interpreted, by the narrow views which then prevailed, in too rigid a sense. It was considered as good

1 Is. xi. 15 sq.; cf. ver. 11 sq.; Zech. x. xxxi. 8 sq., 20 sq.; Ezek. iv., xxxvii. 15–28. 8-11; Micah vii. 14; Jer. iii. 12-19, 2 P. 72 699.

as unfulfilled in the letter; and its accomplishment was, therefore, relegated altogether to the future which still remained. Fl. Josephus,' accordingly, mentions on one occasion, though quite incidentally and without giving any further details, that the Ten Tribes still remained in his time beyond the Euphrates in countless hosts, and almost at the same date a later imitator of the prophets introduces a picture of their return across the Euphrates into the great design which he is sketching of the Messianic future. The calmer language of the earlier Talmudists never rises above general anticipations and hopes on behalf of the Ten Tribes ;3 but during the centuries which followed the final destruction of Jerusalem the belief took firmer and firmer root in the nation that somewhere in the far north-east a better people of Israel was to be found, living in happy union and hoping for the Messiah; and inasmuch as certain writers bound up this belief very closely with the stories of the Middle Ages concerning Alexander's expedition to the extreme north of Asia as to the end of the known world, there arose the strangest representations of these Judeans on the other side, belonging as it were to another world." Thus, in the ninth century after Christ, the learned Jew Eldad, himself descended from the tribe of Dan, undertook a fruitless journey, we are told, in search of the Ten Tribes," and other Jewish travellers, also, of the later Middle Ages were fond of discoursing of them. A zeal of a very different kind, however,

1 Ant. xi. 5, 2.

2 4 Esdras xiii. This remarkable representation shows that in the first century of the Christian era a great host of Israelites was believed to be living in peace in some remote country situated to the north-east, and that their origin was traced to the Ten Tribes; but it also proves that even at this early date nothing but misty notions of this kind were preserved about the history of the dispersion of these Ten Tribes.

In the Mishnah, Sanhedrin x. 3, at the end (cf. the Gemara thereon, fol. 110b), we find for the first time the general statement The Ten Tribes will never return,' which was the opinion of R. Akiba especially; but R. Eliezer thought he might promise them a certain restoration. In this as in other respects R. Akiba was too exclusively Judaic.

This is seen most clearly in the work of Josippon (mentioned on p. 71 sq.), ii. 16, compared with the conclusion of the whole work, vi. 56. This is the source of the greater part of the later Oriental accounts

of the expedition of Alexander against the barriers of the north. If, however, we refer back to the original works of Josephus, we see clearly how the Sabbatical stream which Josephus describes (Bell. Jud. vii. 5. 1) incidentally and quite intelligibly (though he goes beyond Pliny, Hist. Nat. xxxi. 18, ad fin.), might be ingeniously brought into connection with those boundaries of the world, and at last substituted, with reference to the Ten Tribes, in the place of the Euphrates of the ancient prophets, as was already done by Josippon, vi. 1, p. 546.

The little book which passes under Eldad's name is printed in various Hebrew collections, the latest of which is Jellinek's Bet ha Midrash, iii. pp. 6-11, ii. pp. 102– 113; but we must first settle with more precision how much of it is, generally speaking, true, for in those times the whole Islamite world was full of half fictitious stories of travel.

Travels of Benjamin of Tudela, ed. cit., pp. 104, 107, 110; Carmoly's Itinéraires, pp. 326-29, 336 sqq., 359 sq.