The Sons of Tobiah. Book of Chronicles, including, as it doubtless did, in the same group the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah, received at this time its latest touches. 'Darius the Persian' is mentioned as belonging to an Empire which had by that time ceased to exist, and the priestly and royal lines are continued down to the contemporaries of Alexander. Of the peculiarities of the Chronicler we have already spoken. But it is a marked epoch in the story of the Jewish race, when we catch a parting glimpse of one who has accompanied us so long and with such varying interest. We bade farewell to the compiler of the prophetical Book of Kings on the banks of the Euphrates. We bid farewell to the compiler of the priestly Chronicles' under the shadow of the Grecian dominion in the fastness of Jerusalem. The priestly office still continued in the same corrupt condition as under the Persian dominion. The highest ambition of its occupants seems to have been the making of colossal fortunes by the farming of the revenues of the country, of which, as chief magistrate, the High Priest was made the collector, for the tribute to the Egyptian King. Out of this there grew a rival ambition of the head of a powerful clan, which, under the name of The Sons of 'Tobiah,' long exercised sway both in the Alexandrian Court and in the Temple of Jerusalem. It would seem that they claimed some descent from the House of David, and the cleverness of their representative at this time-Joseph, nephew of the High Priest Onias-established him in high favour with Ptolemy IV. It is needless to follow the course of this earlier Anastasius. One permanent monument remains of his family. His youngest son, Hyrcanus, inheritor Neh. xii. 11-22; 1 Chron. iii. 22, 23, 24. 2 See Lecture XXXVI. The tribute to the foreign Kings was made up from the yearly poll-tax of the half-shekel, called in Greek the didrachma. Sharpe's Egypt, i. 328. 4 Jos. Ant. xii. 4, 2. • Herzfeld (ii. 435) supposes the 'sons of mischief' and the 'visions' in Daniel xi. 14, to refer to the troubles and the pretensions of Hyrcanus. The name he regards as the Hellenic equivalent of Johanan (ii. 191). of his fortunes, deposited them in the bank,' which, as in Greece, so in Judæa, was established in the Temple, and then settled himself as an independent freebooting chief in a fastness beyond the Jordan. It was a castle of white marble, carved with colossal figures, and surrounded by a deep moat, and in face of it was a cliff honeycombed with a labyrinth of caverns. It was named 'the Rock.'" In this fantastic residence he reigned as an independent magnate amongst the neighbouring Arabs, till at last he was hunted down by the Syrian Kings. But the castle and the rock still remain, and preserve the name of Hyrcanus, the semi-Arabian chief, in the modern appellation of Arak-el-Emir.3 The fosse, the fragments of the colonnade, the entrance-gateway, with the colossal lions sculptured on its frieze, the mixture of Greek Ionic capitals with the palm-leaved architecture as of the Ptolemaic temples at Philæ, the vast stables hewn out of the adjacent rock, all attest the splendour of this upstart Prince this heir, if so be, of the lineage of David. Just. Amidst these intrigues and adventures there rises one Simon the stately figure, the High Priest, Simon the Just, towering above all who came before him and all who came after him in that office, from the time of Zerubbabel to the time of the Maccabees. According to one legend it was he who encountered Alexander the Great. According to another he was the last survivor of the members of the Great Syna 12 Macc. iii. 11, Josephus (Ant. xii. 4, 11) calls it 'Tyre.' This surely must be the Hebrew Tsur, which is 'rock.' See Sinai and Palestine, 278, 488. Tristram's Land of Israel, 529. Palestine Exploration Fund, Quarterly Statement, April 1872. Murray's Handbook. There are two High Priests in this period, both Simons and both sons of Onias. It is a question which of the two was Simon the Just and which of the two was the Simon de- gogue. According to another it was he who warned Ptolemy Philopator-the one exception to the friendly character of the Ptolemæan princes-not to enter the Temple. The expression of his intention had thrown (so it was said) the whole city into consternation. From the densely packed multitude there went up a cry so piercing that it would have seemed as if the very walls and foundations of the city shared in it. In the midst of the tumult was heard the prayer of Simon, invoking the All-seeing God. And then, like a reed broken by the wind, the Egyptian King fell on the pavement and was carried out by his guards. All the traditions combine in representing Simon as closing the better days of Judaism. Down to his time it was always the right hand of the High Priest that drew the lot of the consecrated goat: after his time the left and right wavered and varied. Down to his time the red thread round the neck of the scape-goat turned white, as a sign that the sins of the people were forgiven; afterwards, its change was quite uncertain. The candlestick at the entrance of the Temple burned in his time without fail: afterwards it often went out. Two faggots a day sufficed to keep the flame on the altar alive in his time: afterwards piles of wood were insufficient. In his last year he was said to have foretold his death, from the omen that whereas on all former occasions he was accompanied into the Holy of Holies on the Day of Atonement to the entrance only by an old man clothed in white from head to foot, in that year his companion was attired in black, and followed him as he went in and came out. These were the forms in which the later Jewish belief expressed the sentiment of his transcendent worth, and of the manifold changes 13 Macc. i. 28, 29; ii. 1, 21, 24. Comp. 2 Macc. iii. 25. An exactly similar story was related to me by the Imam of the Mosque of Hebron of another Egyptian potentate-Ibrahim Pacha-who was struck down in like manner on attempting to enter the shrine of Isaac. which were to follow him. But the more authentic indications convey the same impression. The very title of the 'Just' expressed the feeling, as always, that he stood alone in an untoward age. The description which has come down to us by his contemporaries, in whose judgment 2 he worthily closed the long succession of ancient heroes, is that of a venerable personage, who belonged to a nobler age and would be seen again no more. They remembered his splendid appearance when he came out from behind the sacred curtain of the Holy of Holies into the midst of the people as they crowded the Temple on the Great Fast-day. It was like the morning star bursting from a cloud, or the moon in her fulness. It was like the sunlight striking the golden pinnacles of the Temple, or the rainbow in the stormy cloud. It was as the freshly-blown rose, or the lilies clustering by the stream, the olive laden with fruit or the fir-tree reaching to the sky, with the fragrance as of frankincense, with the refinement as of a golden vessel set with gems. Every gesture. was followed with admiration. To the gorgeous robes of his office he gave additional grace by the way he wore them. When he stood among the priests he towered above them like a cedar in a grove of palms. When he poured out the libations or offered the offerings, the blast of the silver trumpets, the loud shout of the people, the harmony of the various voices, the profound prostrations, were all in keeping, and his final benediction was an event in the memory of those who had received it. On the material fabric of the city and Temple he left his permanent traces in the repairs and fortification and elevation of the walls, in its double cloister, and the brazen plates with which he encased the huge laver of ablutions. The respect which he won from Antiochus3 the Great pro1 Thus Noah, Gen. vi. 9; Joseph renbourg, 47. in the Koran, xii. 46, James in Josephus (in Eus. H. E. ii. 23). De 2 Ecclus. 1. 1–21. cured from him the timber and stone for the work. The precept which survived of his teaching was: "There are three 'foundations of the world-the Law, the Worship (and herein consisted his peculiar teaching), and Benevolence.' In accordance with this gentle humanity is the one anecdote handed down of his private thoughts. 'I never,' he said, 'could 'endure to receive the monastic dedication of the Nazarites. 'Yet once I made an exception. There came a youth from 'the south to consecrate himself. I looked at him—his eyes 'were beautiful, his air magnificent, his long hair fell clus'tering in rich curls over his face. "Why," I asked him, ""must you shave off these splendid locks?" "I was a ""shepherd of my father's flocks,” he replied, “in my native ❝"village. One day, drawing water at the well, I saw with ""undue complacency my reflection in the water. I should ""have given way to a wicked inclination and have been lost. "I said: "Wicked one, wilt thou be proud of that which ""does not belong to thee, who art but worms and dust? """O God, I will cut off these curls for the honour of “Heaven.' Then said Simon, I embraced his head 'and exclaimed: "Would that there were many such "Nazarites in Israel." " 1 There was yet one other character of this Ptolemæan period of Palestine, Joshua, the son of Sirach-contemporary or nearly contemporary of Simon-who was conspicuous in his time at once as the great student of the sacred Hebrew literature, as the collector of the grave and short sentences of the wise men who went before him, and as himself uttering some things of his own, full of understanding and judg 'ment.' But the characteristics of his work must be reserved for its appearance in the Greek form in which alone it is now known. 6 We turn from these brief and disjointed notices of the 1 Derenbourg, 47. |