subjugation of Jerusalem or Samaria by the Greek army and the overthrow of the Persian power, we no longer possess any accurate information; but since they were at that time merely dependencies of larger cities and countries, it is a matter of comparative indifference. Our ignorance, however, increases the importance of the consequences which speedily developed themselves, and which we must now examine with more attention. later history. The one object which they serve is to show that the Samaritans also in later times were fond of reversing the historical narratives which came to them from other books, on account of their one sided character, and that the one-sidedness only became more blind and hardened among themselves. Thus an uncorrected error actually passes current amid a whole community for thousands of years. SECTION II. THE HAGIOCRACY UNDER THE GREEKS AND MACCABEES DOWN TO THE OMNIPOTENCE OF ROME. THE conquests of Alexander and the varied characters of his ambitious successors effected a rapid and wonderful transformation in the relations of the nations of Asia. Those which had lived on from a fairer youth had become aged and languishing. Only a few in this hour of trial remembered the fame of their ancient greatness with the desperate courage of the Tyrians; and Israel alone, under the oppression of the Persian government, regained so much strength in its immortal possessions as to enable it to look forward in the midst of this great change to a new and better future. But the Greco-Macedonian storm was powerful enough to convulse them all to the very depths and hurl them against one another, and, if they were not instantly dashed to pieces, to rouse them violently to assume new forms; yet its action was not pure or continuous enough to create any pure or healthy results, or even to secure the permanent success of any new advantages which might spring from it. All the youthfulness and beauty which peculiarly distinguished the Greek spirit, was finally combined in the person of Alexander with the rarest intensity and power to produce the most marvellous daring; but the incurable corruption already lurking in the fair youth of this spirit of humanity was exhibited strongly enough in his own case, and to a much greater degree by the majority of his successors.1 In Israel, also, at once so old and so young, far more violent changes were speedily produced by this storm and its after effects than by the Persian supremacy. On the soil of its ancient fatherland it had again acquired sufficient strength and The biographies of Alexander the Great hitherto produced, even the most recent, are all composed too exclusively from the purely Greek and heathen point of view to give a correct estimate of the hero in his connection with the history of the world. Even in the case of the greatest of all the military and royal heroes of antiquity we ought not to forget those features in his career which made it a prolific source of injury and wrong. I consider that every biography of Alexander takes a wrong view which does not point out that in him were prefigured not alone Seleucus I. and the three first Ptolemies, but all the other Ptolemies and Antiochuses and Seleucids, together with the Antigonids. firmness to take a more active part in the mighty efforts and new destinies of the world. The past had secured to it enough preparatory culture, and recent vicissitudes had sufficiently excited and strained its attention, to prevent it from remaining unaffected by the peculiar characteristics of the Greek spirit, to render it susceptible to the powerful attractions of its charm, and to enable it speedily to rival it in everything. Besides this it had been for a long time yearning after a greater freedom of national development, of which Alexander brought the promise to the nations which he subdued, and the Greek dawn of which even his successors could not wholly hide. Long ere this it had attained sufficient flexibility to enable it to enter with ease on all the arts and sciences and manners of its new sovereigns; but at the same time it had preserved enough of the spiritual blessings which had descended to it from the past, and had been trained with sufficient earnestness during the last years of its history, nay, under the growing hagiocracy, had been disciplined with sufficient severity, to prevent it from falling a prey without resistance to the new charm of the Greek character. When the Israelite and the Greek were first brought into contact it was inevitable that the union and fusion of the two should appear easy. Israel had saved enough from the high culture of its ancient days. Activity of mind and a readiness to learn were common to both nations; and there were in addition many reasons why the greater purity of morals for which Israel was distinguished among many Asiatic nations could be nothing but acceptable to the Greek ruler. But the growing fusion only brought the deeper-seated antagonisms between the nationalities and religions on either side into sharper collision. In breaking, therefore, the heavy shell which still covered Israel, and bringing in the largest amount of activity and freedom possible at the time, the Greek age forced the whole spirit which prevailed in this third stage of the history into the most violent labour and an attitude of the most energetic decision. If it was still possible for a great independent nation to arise out of Israel, and a government prosperous at home and respected abroad out of the hagiocracy, this was the crisis at which it must make its appearance. It was at this stage in its history that the requisite opportunity and conditions were supplied. A. THE GREEK AGE DOWN TO THE DECLINE OF THE I. THE PREVAILING FEELING AGAINST THE HEATHEN AND THE INTRODUCTION OF THE FEAST OF PÛRÎM. The first decades of this period passed away amid the continuous wars of Alexander and the still more devastating campaigns of his successors, which were little favourable to the fusion of the two nationalities. Beneath the tinsel of Greek culture the times were extremely disordered, and all the nations of Asia had much to suffer from the craving for new dominions and the perpetual wars of the successors of Alexander, whose own thirst for conquest was only quenched by death. This was the case, in particular, with the numerous petty nationalities on the great highway from Asia into Egypt to such an extraordinary degree that these forty or fifty years are an almost total void in the memory aud the history of Israel. During the centuries which intervened between Nabuchodrozzor and Antiochus Epiphanes, it was, it is true, so far from independent, and its fortunes were so closely interwoven with the manycoloured changes of foreign potentates, that it is not a matter of wonder that in a period of such length and yet such incessant confusion and so little serenity many separate spots in its recollection should have become extremely obscure. Nor, in the absence of any clear and continuous thread, were the materials for any copious or coherent representation to be found, until Josephus attempted to fill up the interval as well as he could by a narrative of the most broken and unsatisfactory character, derived from dim and scanty sources. But in no case is the deficiency in Josephus so surprising as in this half century. It seems as though in the ceaseless change of the masters who had suddenly come upon it from a great distance, the nation had at length lost all heed for the names of the generals, satraps, and kings who invaded it. Even the accounts which we now possess from other quarters leave many points in this period in great obscurity, although in default of an accurate knowledge of the events of the first fifty or sixty years after the Greek conquest much of the subsequent history, as it emerges into the light, remains far from intelligible. Immediately after the fall of Perdiccas, in the year 320 B.C., Ptolemy Lagi obtained possession of Phoenicia and Cole-Syria by expelling the satrap Laomedon. His next step, as a very abrupt statement informs us, appears to have been to seize Jerusalem by cunningly making a sudden attack on a sabbath.1 Both Judeans and Samaritans hesitated to submit themselves to the Egyptian sway, and not without reason, as at that time the empire of Alexander was still fairly in existence. In punishment for their resistance, however, the victor transported large numbers of captives and hostages out of the entire country, some to Egypt and some to Phoenicia; and besides these many seem to have been sold as slaves of war into wealthy Egypt.2 Had the country remained from that time under the power of Ptolemy, it might, like Egypt, have enjoyed the wise and mild government of the century of the three first Ptolemies; but Antigonus must soon have obtained possession again of the whole of Syria, until, in the year 312, after his victory near Gaza Gaza over Demetrius (Poliorcêtes), son of Antigonus, and his reconquest of Tyre, Ptolemy occupied Jerusalem also a second time. On this occasion he seems to have acted with much greater mildness, so that many of the most highly respected and learned Judeans accompanied him voluntarily to Egypt, among whom was a member of the highpriestly family named Hezekiah, with whom Hecateus had much intercourse there.3 Still, however, the sovereignty of southern Syria remained in dispute, which still continued in the year 302 B.C., when Ptolemy made another attempt to gain possession of the whole of Syria, but, before the battle at Ipsus, again retreated to Egypt. For a considerable time afterwards Demetrius, son of Antigonus, seems to have held his ground in Jerusalem and the Phoenician cities, but at length his power 1 Jos. Ant. xii. 1, following Agatharchides. The same fact is mentioned on the same authority in Jos. Contr. Ap. i. 22, p. 458, and in another passage; but no precise dates are supplied anywhere, so that we might conjecture that this treatment of Jerusalem by Ptolemy was subsequent to his victory at Gaza in 312 B.C., since Diodorus, at any rate, Hist. xviii. 43, and Appian, Syr. Hist. lii., say nothing about it. But the words of Hecatæus, which will be adduced immediately, make it appear that he was, on the contrary, very well disposed on that occasion, and Eusebius, Chron. ii. p. 225, also places the event at this point. 2 According to the book of Aristeas at the end of Haverkamp's Josephus, ii. p. 104, and Jos. Ant. xii. 1; of the transportations to Phoenicia we learn from Hecatæus, cited in Jos. Contr. Ap. i. 22, p. 456. When we reflect in addition that every previous disaster of a similar kind, even in the latest years of the Persian period, had been followed by the transportation of a number of Judeans to Egypt (p. 206), it is easy to understand how Ptolemy Philadelphus could have liberated a hundred thousand Egyptian Jews; see the book of Aristeas, p. 165, Jos. Ant. xiii. 21. 3 See the extracts from his work in Jos. Contr. Ap. i. 22, p. 455. At this point our extant accounts are entirely silent; strangely enough, however, in the midst of all the confusion, Ben-Gorion (ii. 23, p. 154 Breith.) inserts Demetrius Poliorcêtes into the series of sovereigns of Palestine between the two first Ptolemies.-There is no reason whatever for inferring from the language of Sulpicius Severus, Hist. Sacr. ii. 17, that Seleucus I. occupied Judea and received from it a yearly tribute of three |