Jerusalem as the great eternal sanctuary far away reappears as a last sublime prospect. This forms in fact the proper conclusion to the book; and as the poet keeps up with a firm hand the description of his hero as living in the Assyrian captivity before the first destruction of Jerusalem, he is able, in the prophecy of the dying Tobit about the glorification which is to be expected after its fall, to quicken at the same time many of the Messianic hopes of his own day.—This book, then, together with that already analysed, constitutes the fairest monument of the spirit of the Judeans in the distant east during those centuries, and, as a picture of the life and activity of many of the better-minded among them, possesses a peculiar importance. Produced somewhere in those remote countries, it certainly remained there a considerable time without becoming much known in the west, until, in the course of the last century B.C., or even later still, it was translated from the semi-Hebrew in which it was written into Greek.3 No sooner was this done than it found many readers, and, like all popular books, was speedily diffused in very different forms. In particular it was, in numerous manuscripts, more or less abridged, until at length, after the original text had been lost, it was translated back again into Hebrew as into other languages. That a work produced at that period among the Judeans of the east blossomed into many not dissimilar compositions may be concluded with certainty from its own words; but how much of Tob. xiii., and again in xiv. 1-6. 2 The exact contrast to this is supplied by southern Egypt, into the deserts of which the evil spirits were to be banished, Tob. viii. 3.-The Median Rages, iv. 1, the ruins of which are still visible at this day near Teheran, and bear the name of Rai, is said by Strabo, Geogr. xi. 13, 6, not to have been founded till the time of Seleucus I.; but that it was in existence much earlier is clear from the Vêndîdâd, i. 10, the great cuneiform inscriptions of Behistun, ii. 13, iii. 1, and Arrian, Hist. iii. 20. No doubt the Greek usage in passages like viii. 6, ii. 6, xiii. 17 sq., points with some force to the LXX, but we can only infer from this that the Greek translation of many of the books was already well known to the translator, not that the original language of the book was Greek. In fact, the Greek translation of this book is almost too literal, and is frequently unintelligible without knowledge of the later Hebrew and many passages quoted from the Old Testament sound quite differently 5 from what they do in the LXX. The Greek text now most widely adopted has larger and smaller hiatuses in many passages which might be supplied from old retranslations; and a new edition of the whole book is much to be desired. The long sentence in xiv. 10 contains an allusion to a similar production of earlier date on Haman and Achiachar; and though the name and conception of the wicked Haman occur again at any rate in the book of Esther, yet of Achiachar, who is here made the relative and protector of Tobit, we know absolutely nothing, although the indications in i. 21 sq., ii. 10 (where ropevon is to be read), imply that many and important facts about him were narrated elsewhere. The ,אֲחִיעָכָר name should probably be spelt and sounds quite historical.-These traces, in particular, render it probable that the book of Tobit is older than that of Esther. The author certainly had before him the whole of our present collection of the prophets (including the book of his materials our poet may have drawn from the domestic histories of the Israelite families, we can no longer determine in detail, and where the leading personages are pure creations of the imagination it is a matter of comparative indifference.Both books, however, are memorable in so far as they supply us with the latest testimonies to the spirit of the true religion in those regions of the east where Nahum, Ezekiel, and many another real prophet, had once laboured. III. THE TEMPLE ON GERÎZÎM-THE EXPEDITION OF ALEXANDER. There were now in Jerusalem itself, and probably also in Samaria, which was always closely dependent on the destinies of Phoenicia, two parties formed, corresponding to the division which, as we have already seen,' had already taken place in Phoenicia. One of these, although for the moment cast violently on the ground by the Persian supremacy, never surrendered its secret aversion towards it, and hoped for fresh and more prosperous times; the other, after the last great Persian victory, was all the more scrupulous in its obedience. Before, however, investigating this state of things more closely, at the time of the conquest of Alexander, we must not fail to notice another important occurrence, viz. the building of the Temple of the Samaritans. 2 These two events are connected together by the narrative in Josephus, the age of which has been already discussed,3 in the following manner. The son of the high-priest John, Jaddûa, who died at an advanced age soon after the victorious expedition of Alexander, had had a brother named Manasseh, to whom the Persian governor of Samaria, Sanballat, had given his daughter Nicaso in marriage. The elders of Jerusalem, however, faithfully representing the Jonah) and the Psalter; but there is no views of their fellow-citizens, coarse historical sense; but on the other hand, it is equally perverse to place this and the book of Baruch in still later times. I P. 206. 2 Ant. xi. 7, 2, c. 8, cf. xiii. 9, 1, and other passages, in which Josephus always repeats the same statement. Similar to this is the Greek narrative in the spurious Kallisthenes, printed in C. Müller's appendix to Dübner's Arrian (Paris, published by Didot, 1846), cap. 24, p. 82 sq. 3 P. 48 note 1. demanded the dissolution of this mixed marriage. Jaddûa, as high-priest, declared against his brother, who in consequence filed to Samaria to his father-in-law. He was accompanied by many other priests and citizens of Judea who were involved in similar marriages and did not wish to renounce them. All these fugitives were well received by Sanballat. He supported them by assignments of land in Samaria and by other means, and from love for Manasseh and his offspring, as well as at the zealous instigation of this apostate priest, resolved to ask Darius Codomannus for permission to build a temple for the Samaritans alone on Mount Gerîzîm, near Shechem. At the same time Darius III. marched against Alexander at the passes of the Taurus. Sanballat, accordingly, resolved to lay his request before him when he should return, as it was hoped, victorious over Alexander. But when, on the other hand, Alexander proved the conqueror, and advanced against Syria, laid siege to Tyre, and, while this was going on, in vain. summoned the high-priest in Jerusalem to revolt from Darius, Sanballat met him with submission and an auxiliary force of 8000 Samaritans, secured from him the concession of the separate temple on Gerîzîm, and maintained that it would be also advantageous to the king for the whole of the ancient people not to be united and of one accord.' Not long afterwards the crafty Sanballat died. After Tyre and Gaza had been reduced, Alexander followed up his former threat, and advanced against Jerusalem to punish it for its previous refusal. The high-priest, however, encouraged and instructed by a vision in the temple, arrayed himself in all his splendour, and calmly took up his post, accompanied by the priests in their white linen robes and the rest of the people in white garments, on the heights of Sapha.' This extraordinary reception, its sacred aspect, and in particular the figure of the high-priest, which seemed to him like a heavenly vision of strange memory, so moved Alexander to adoration, in spite of the dissuasions of Parmenio and others of his nobles, that he sacrificed in the temple in accordance with the instructions of the high-priest, accepted the application of the prophecy out of the book of Daniel to himself, and conceded all the ancient immunities of the Judeans (especially the exemption from taxes in the sabbatical year), allowing them to extend even to those who were dispersed According to the indications here given this lay south-west of Jerusalem, on the road to Gaza. It would be difficult to prove this place in the form ney, identical with, i.e. the Skopus north in the east, upon which many offered to serve in his army. The Samaritans, whose numbers had constantly been increased by deserters who were unwilling to accommodate themselves to the more rigid laws enforced in Jerusalem about the Sabbath and other practices, and who were in the habit of giving themselves out either as Hebrews or Sidonians (i.e. heathen) as best served their immediate interests, were now desirous, on the arrival of Alexander, of being included among the Judeans, in order to obtain the same liberties. By his pointed questions, however, the Macedonian saw through their deception; but he could not withdraw the permission which he had already given them for the erection of the temple. The whole tone of this narrative is obviously highly unhistorical. Moreover, it is easy to detect the two constituents, originally totally distinct, by the combination of which it was finally moulded into its present form. The Persian governor in Samaria is unquestionably the same Sanballat whom we have already seen in the full historical light of the days of Nehemiah.2 Nehemiah, moreover, mentions quite cursorily in his memoir that he had expelled a grandson of the high-priest Eliashib, then in office, on account of his relationship with Sanballat,3 and this great movement, by which a person in the position of Eliashib's grandson and many others who resisted the strictness just introduced were expelled, and the new Jerusalem fully cleansed from all the elements which would not combine with it, could not have found a place in the general historical development, except in the age of Ezra and Nehemiah. As Nehemiah does not mention the circumstance till just at the last, it probably did not occur till the reign of Darius II. (Nothus), for whom, therefore, it was all the more easy at a subsequent date to substitute Darius III. In other respects, however, these later traditions are in sufficient harmony with the brief record of Nehemiah to give us, in combination with other facts, a clear picture of the origin of Thus, for instance, Alexander was represented as having marched backwards from Gaza to Jerusalem, and even to Shechem, though from Gaza the way lay open to him direct to Egypt. The only digression of Alexander from the Tyrian coast related by the Greeks is that against the Arabic populations on the Lebanon (Arrian, ii. 20, Plut. Alex. cap. 134 sq.). That he should have left the centre of Palestine and the north-west of Arabia unsubdued after first reducing Tyre and 3 Neh. xiii. 28. According to this, Manasseh was not a son but a brother of John; not to be confounded, therefore, with the Jesus already mentioned, p. 205. the peculiar state of things in Samaria. From the time when the mixed inhabitants of Samaria were forbidden to co-operate in the establishment of the new temple at Jerusalem,' it was inevitable that their wish to take a closer part in the religion of Jahveh should either disappear altogether or should grow in intensity until they could rival the proud Judeans. It is, indeed, a remarkable sign of the inward truth and power of this religion, which was by this time so old, that the love of it even among this hybrid population, in spite of the bitter unfriendliness displayed by Jerusalem, became stronger and stronger as time advanced, and obliterated the traces of heathenism more and more completely. The only way in which this was practically possible was through the settlement among the Samaritans of a number of respectable Judeans, carrying over with them their own higher culture. Were this to take place, an extremely active rivalry might be gradually kindled between New-Samaria and New-Jerusalem, which might lead to important results. The central district of the holy land had always in earlier days been proud of its own superiority, and, after the time of David, had been particularly envious of the rising prosperity of Jerusalem, and one of the first consequences of the rigidness which marked the new Jerusalem was that by the repulsion of the Samaritans the old jealousies and claims were awakened from their sleep, and continually goaded on. In this way the further developments of this tendency to extreme scrupulousness which continued to gain ground in Jerusalem soon proved more and more favourable to those who had been repudiated, and the community of the Samaritans was gradually enabled to supply the deficiencies which made themselves felt the soonest and the most keenly by means of those who entertained for it the greatest contempt. Freedom from the narrow spirit which reigned in Jerusalem was now rendered possible in Samaria, both by its ancient history and by the power of opposition, and under this banner it became the rendezvous of all who. were driven from Jerusalem more or less against their will. Among these refugees were men of position and culture like Manasseh, son of the high-priest. These were able to transplant to Samaria the fully-developed science and art of holy things which were then flourishing in Jerusalem, and thus supplied the main want on account of which the Samaritans had previously desired to have their part in the sacred institutions at Jerusalem. This was actually accomplished, and 1 P. 103 sqq. |