GENERAL INTRODUCTION. PART FIRST. REVIEW OF JEWISH HISTORY IN THE PERSIAN AND GRECIAN PERIODS. 1. The Jews under Persian Rule. General survey. FROM the time of Cyrus and the reëstablishment of the Jews in Palestine to Alexander lies a period of two hundred years. Eventful years in Israelitish history they can scarcely be called when considered apart from the notable event that preceded and shaped them. But in all that relates to the inner development of Judaism there is no period of greater importance. Up to this time the Jews had been simply a people existing under the shadow of other and more powerful peoples on their borders. They came back from the exile in Babylon to develop, and, as it were, become a religious system, a system so original, so universal and indestructible in its nature, that political revolutions and dynastic changes could have but little effect upon it. Political freedom had disappeared; but so, too, had idolatry and the traditional love for it. Tribal relations had fallen into confusion, but the controlling idea that underlay all Israelitish institutions was still safe. It was felt that Judaism was more than Judah, and the commonwealth than the nation. The conception of a world religion gradually took possession of the mind, and proselytism came to be included within the circle of the higher duties. Prophecy ceased; prayer, however, public and private, assumed on every hand a new importance. Beside the formal ceremonies of the temple sprang up the simpler and more spiritual worship of the synagogues. Inward conflicts, moreover, and outward oppression did for the Israel of this period what it did for the Israel of a later day, fixed needed attention on the written "oracles of God." A new office arose, unknown before the captivity, and the scribe became the equal of the priest. Above all, repeated disappointments in outward material things on which the heart had too exclusively fastened revealed a deeper need, awakened a spiritual apprehension such as no prophet's appeal had been able to do. Faith was recognized as something more than bare belief. The veil was drawn from the unseen world, and Jacob's vision became a reality in the experiences of men. But the false and the exaggerated were not always distinguished from the true. The wisest and best in Israel did not always avoid dangerous and wicked extremes. From this very period fanaticism has some of its worst examples, and the noble word "hierarchy" is stamped with its evil other sense. Still all had an evident purpose. Parallel instances are not wanting in history where something simply strong has seemed to be the almost sole resultant of the mightiest moral forces, but it has later proved to be the welcome strength of the iron casket that carries a precious jewel safely within it. Relation of Cyrus. It is no longer in dispute that the Cyrus of profane history and of the Old Testament are identical. That Greek historians did not know of the intimacy of the relations which sprang up between the great conqueror and the Israelitish people, or, know- the Jews to ing it, that they did not appreciate its real character, should not surprise us. And, on the other hand, admitting the reality of these relations, and estimating them at their full worth, it ought not to prevent us from acknowledging that Cyrus may also have had weighty political reasons for what he did. When, after the capture of Sardis, the Greek cities of Asia Minor unitedly made to him offers of allegiance, he refused the tender with one exception. The submission of Miletus, the strongest and most influential of these cities, he accepted; that of the others he preferred to enforce by the might and terror of his arms. The 1 See Studien u. Krit., 1853, pp. 624-700. policy clearly was to "divide and conquer." And it may also be safely assumed that political motives were not wanting in his peculiarly friendly treatment of the Jews. We know that, for many years, the conquest of Egypt had formed a part of his gigantic plans. Could he have acted more wisely than in binding to himself and his throne, through generous treatment, the land that lay between it and his own dominions? Others choose to say that, in this act of apparent clemency, Cyrus was simply true to himself, since it was a principle with him not to carry the subjection of conquered provinces to the point of extinguishing their nationality. Hence, regarding the wholesale deportation of the Jews from Palestine by Nebuchadnezzar as a political mistake, he did his best to repair the injury: removed at once this foreign element from Babylon, and won thereby the lasting gratitude of the liberated people. Be this as it may, it is clear that the simple fact of a generous deliverance and restoration to their homes was by no means the only event that served to awaken the thankfulness of the Jews, and nourish in them a warm attachment toward the Persian king. The same providential blow that struck off their fetters had also given a fatal wound to that vast system of idolatry which, for two thousand years, had been incorporated with the highest forms of Semitic civilization, and been the mightiest antagonistic and corrupting influence of the world to prevent the spread of a pure religion. From Baal to Ormuzd was a real step in advance, and Cyrus was its immediate promoter. If he had no special sympathy with the details of the Jewish faith, still he was the champion and foremost representative of the great monotheistic idea underlying and governing it. One has but to examine the picture that is given of him in Isaiah and Daniel to learn how fully this championship was realized, and how tenderly it was cherished by his Jewish wards. His personal character. In his personal character, moreover, Cyrus was not without noble qualities. His immense power he generally wielded with discretion. He was not upset by the suddenness of his elevation. Surrounded with all the splendors of an oriental court, he preserved, to a good extent, his previous simplicity of mind and manners. He was mild and generous in his treatment of the conquered. His personal ambition never led him to forget or ignore the interests of his people, or the religion of his fathers. He enjoyed more than the admiration of his subjects, their affection. It is a fact full of suggestion that they were wont to make his countenance the very type of perfect physical beauty. his domestic relations he was a model of abstemiousness in a corrupt age. Along with exhausting military duties and a restless spirit of conquest, he knew how to value and encourage the amenities of art. But suddenly, in the midst of vast, unexecuted plans which embraced a world-wide empire, he was wounded in battle, and died soon after, in the twentyninth year of his reign (B. C. 529). In The elder of his two sons, Cambyses, succeeded him. Cyrus had also made arrangements in his will that the younger son, Smerdis, should have a subordinate share Cambyses. in the government. The good intention, however, was defeated through the jealousy of Cambyses, who had the latter privately put to death. In fact, the deed was of so private a nature that it naturally furnished occasion, not long after, for the rise of a pseudoSmerdis, who impersonated the murdered brother, and introduced serious complications into the affairs of the empire. In the mean time, Cambyses determined on carrying out the uncompleted military conquests of his father. Four years were spent in maturing his plans and collecting the necessary forces for a descent upon Egypt. During this period self-interest, if there had been no other motive, would have led him to cherish the friendship of the late captive Israelites. The long-planned expedition, as far as simple subjugation was meditated, was in the end His expedisuccessful. But embittered by unlooked for resistance and revolt which had tion against sprung up during his temporary absence, Cambyses laid aside his earlier conciliaEgypt. tory policy, and enforced submission by the harshest measures. Inasmuch as the priests had been the chief promoters of the new rebellion, he expended upon them and the national religion the utmost violence of his fury and contempt. Their god Apis he ruthlessly stabbed, and publicly scourged its honored priests; forced his way into places held sacred, opened the receptacles of the dead, and gave to the flames the most revered and in1 Rawlinson, Ancient Mon., iii. 378. 2 Herod., i. 153. 8 Fritzsche in Schenkel's Bib. Lex., Art. "Cyrus " 4 Is. xliv. 28; xlv. 13; xlvi. 1; xlviii. 14; Dan. v. 28, 30; vi. 5 See, for instance, his alleged conversation with Croesus, Herod., i. 87-90. 6 Rawlinson, Ancient Mon., iii. 389. violable treasures. It is not strange that Herodotus should see in such conduct the vagaries of an uneasy conscience developing into the frenzy of a madman. "So it seems certain to me," he says, "by a great variety of proof, that Cambyses was stark mad; otherwise, he would not have gone about to pour contempt on holy rites and time-honored customs."1 Whatever may have been the real ground of his action, it had, for the time being, the desired effect, namely, thoroughly to cow the Egyptian people, and leave to the conqueror the way open to return to his capital. A great surprise, however, was in store for him. Having already led his army a part of the distance homeward, being in Syria, a herald suddenly entered his camp, one day, unannounced, and proclaimed before the astonished soldiers and their leader that Cambyses was no longer king, Smerdis, his brother, having ascended the throne of Cyrus. Amazed, confused, and half in doubt, as it would seem, whether his agents had really done the horrid work intrusted to them, the king utterly lost courage, and, although at the head of a victorious army, and as the elder son of his renowned father able, no doubt, to count on the support of the masses of the Persian people, he took refuge in cowardly suicide (B. C. 522). The details of his death as given by Herodotus, who regarded it as a judgment upon him for his crimes in Egypt, are more than suspicious, and have little historic worth as compared with the record of the great Behistun inscription, which distinctly states that Cambyses killed himself because of the insurrection.2 Pseudo The conspirators at the capital must have looked upon the king's death as an astounding omen of final success. Still, caution was needful. A thousand things must be thought of in order to prevent the suspicion from getting abroad that the Magus, Smerdis. Gomates, who impersonated him, was not actually the son of Cyrus. The greatest danger lay in the fact that the change of administration meditated involved a change in the national religion. The destruction of Zoroastrian temples, the general substitution of Magians in the place of the usual priest-caste, and other similar movements could not but attract attention, and might awaken a too powerful opposition if entered upon before the new king was fairly seated on his throne. Undue haste and bigotry seem, in fact, to have got the better of discretion. Whispered rumors of the great fraud that had been committed began to circulate among the Persian noblemen. The first uneasiness, which the pretender tried in vain to repress, grew, at last, to a counter conspiracy. A company of leading Persians, with Darius, the son of Hystaspes, at their head, forced their way into the presence of the false Smerdis, and put him to death, along with a number of his retainers, after a reign of only seven months. And now, religious fanaticism, combined with national pride, led the fully aroused Persians to take bloody vengeance on the Magian priests and their adherents who had betrayed them. One event that happened in a distant province serves to clothe this short reign of the pseudoSmerdis with a peculiar interest. The reaction in religion at Susa and Ecbatana was felt no less seriously at Jerusalem. The work on the temple, begun under Cyrus, had not been interrupted by Cambyses, notwithstanding the embittered efforts of the Samaritans in that direction. With the idol-loving Magian, however, the enemies of the Jews were immediately successful. The holy work ceased by his order, not again to be resumed till news had been received of the accession of Darius. A clearer proof could scarcely be asked that the friendliness of the Persian kings for the Israelitish people was prompted, at least in some degree, by a deeper and nobler motive than that of simple policy. Darius Darius Hystaspis was one of Persia's greatest rulers, second only to Cyrus, and even his superior as an organizer and administrator. His reign extended over a period of thirty-six years, and is marked by events that, without the coloring of a partial historian, are full of interest even when read amidst the absorbing concerns of the present day. The revolts that early broke out in various parts of his dominions He suppressed with a hand at once so firm and wise that it left him, later, the needed repose for his widereaching plans of administration. To him is due the honor of being the first to introduce a really stable form of government among the heterogeneous elements of power and weakness that had hitherto ruled in the empires of the East. He greatly improved the prevailing military system, and took wise precautions that the immense resources of his kingdom should not be needlessly wasted. If he did not originate and introduce among the Persians a metallic currency, its more general use certainly dates from him; and his gold and silver darics carried 1 iii. 38. 8 Cf. Ez. v. 2; Hag i. 14. 2 See Rawlinson's Herod., ii. 591 f. the name of Darius far beyond the bounds of his age and empire. He was before the Romans in appreciating the importance of safe and easy communication from place to place.1 His couriers found the streams already bridged for them and sped from station to station, like birds in their flight. "Nothing mortal," says Herodotus, "travels so fast as these Persian messengers. . . . The first rider delivers his despatch to the second, and the second passes it to the third; and so it is borne from hand to hand along the whole line, like the light in the torch race, which the Greeks celebrate to Vulcan." 2 Indeed, Darius Hystaspis was so great and wise a ruler, as the times then were, that it has served to obscure the genius which he also possessed as a military leader. He had not finished his preparations for suppressing a fresh revolt that had broken out in Egypt, where the wild severity of Cambyses still rankled, when death overtook him, in the sixty-third year of his age (B. C. 486). Xerxes. Artaxerxes and his suc cessors. The kingdom descended, by his own appointment, to Xerxes, the eldest of his sons. It would be interesting to dwell upon the latter's history, embracing as it does some of the most magnificent, if mistaken and unsuccessful, enterprises which the world has ever known, and which have made the names of Thermopyla, Salamis, and Platæa celebrated for more than twenty subsequent centuries. Especially would it be interesting because of his connection with the fascinating story of Queen Esther, the palace at "Shushan," and the averted destruction of the Jewish people. But for the purposes of the present work it would be an unjustifiable diversion. Notwithstanding all his magnificence, Xerxes ranked, both in character and achievements, far below his predecessor, with him beginning, indeed, the fatal deterioration and decline that made the Persian kingdom, less than a century and a half later, a comparatively easy conquest for the disciplined troops of Alexander. Xerxes was succeeded by Artaxerxes, with the surname Longimanus (B. C. 465), and the latter by Xerxes II. (B. C. 425), who reigned but five and forty days, when he was put to death by his half-brother, Sogdianus. Sogdianus himself, also, in less than seven months afterwards, lost his life at the hands of a brother, who followed him on the Persian throne under the title of Darius Nothus (B. C. 424). His sovereignty continued for nineteen years, but was little else than one uninterrupted scene of debauchery and crime at court, and of revolt and bloody strife in the provinces. Arsaces, a son, under the name of Artaxerxes II. (Mnemon), was the next in succession. But the ceremonies of his coronation were not yet over when he was called to confront a danger of a serious character at the hands of his brother, generally known as the younger Cyrus. Instigated by his mother, the latter sought to win the crown for himself by the murder of Artaxerxes. Foiled, for the time being, in his wicked purpose, it was none the less secretly cherished, and his subsequent rebellion while satrap in Asia Minor was made memorable by the famous battle of Cunaxa, in which he lost his life, and the still more famous victory and heroic retreat of the ten thousand Greek soldiers who had been his auxiliaries. The success of this retreat was no doubt largely due to the superior bravery and discipline of the Greeks. But it was also due to the inherent weakness and advanced decay of the Persian empire. It already tottered to its fall. Under this reign and that of the following king, Artaxerxes III. (Ochus, B. C. 359), the religious apostasy and deterioration of the Persians, which had already long since begun, made the most rapid progress. A vicious eclecticism that saw no danger in mingling Magian rites with the relatively pure tenets of Zoroaster ended by accepting Venus as a national deity, and lascivious orgies in place of the exercises of religion. As might have been expected, the Persians were not the only sufferers by the change. The bond of sympathy that had united to them in all their varying fortunes, until now, as obedient and faithful allies, the nation of the Jews, was violently rent asunder. By the tolerant Cyrus or Darius, not much difference could be observed between Jehovah and Ormuzd. But with a Mnemon or Ochus on the throne, and images of Anaitis by royal authority set up for worship at Susa and Persepolis, at Babylon and Damascus, and, as we may well suppose, at Jerusalem also, the circumstances were changed indeed. Sympathy and protection gave place to repugnance and persecution. If we may accept the account of Josephus, who quotes Hecateus, this much-oppressed people were obliged at the present time to suffer another cruel deportation. Moreover, a creature of Artaxerxes III., one Bagoas (Bagoses), who afterwards poisoned his master, taking the rejection of a certain candidate for the high priest's Artaxerxes ers. 1 See Xen., Cyrop., viii. 7. 18; and Duncker, iv. 537. 2 Rawlinson's Herod., iv. 335. 3 Contra Apion, i. 22; cf. Graetz, Geschichte, ii. (2) 209, note. The same fact is also mentioned by other ancient writSee Hitzig, Geschichte, i. 307. office, whose election he had favored, as a personal affront, laid the most oppressive burdens on the temple service, and even forced his way into the Holy of Holies, as if, thereby, to give a greater emphasis to his contempt. Sad omens these for a future that had in store a Heliodorus and an Antiochus Epiphanes ! Arses and the over throw of the Persian Arses, the last Persian king but one, was a son of Bagoas, and ascended the throne B. C. 338. Refusing to be the tool of his father, the latter, who had hitherto hesitated at no crime lying in the path of his ambition, ruthlessly murdered him, together with his infant children. His successor was Codomannus, or Darius III. (B. C. 336), the beginning of whose reign nearly synchronizes with that of Alexander Empire. of Macedon. And now followed, within the space of three short years, the bold invasion of Asia Minor by the Macedonian, and, in quick succession, the renowned and decisive battles of the Granicus, of Issus, and of Arbela, where the fate of the great Persian monarchy was effectually sealed. It had fully accomplished its purpose in the providence of God. Its yoke had indeed been heavy on the necks of many peoples. But it had also served some of the nobler ends of civilization and human progress; and, in the case of Israel, had helped to tide it over certain dangerous reefs and shallows in its progress towards the development of a world religion. Such development, though slow, could not wholly cease, or be long checked. Hence the new factors that at this point enter into human history, and especially into the history of the covenant people. What had called for a Cyrus two húndred years before now called no less loudly for an Alexander. Judaism had had its period of incubation; what it now needed was wings and liberty. Parseeism had been helpful as a protector, and to some degree, also, as it would seem, in the way of moral stimulus and suggestion. The Greek language and philosophy were to prove a still greater resource and auxiliary, and, though in ways they would never have chosen, and through the most painful as well as humiliating experiences in political and social life, the consecrated nation advanced towards its providential goal. The Jews. ism. It remains to us, in the present section, to treat more in detail what has been already given above in outline, - the internal history of Judaism; to show what it gained during the present period, and how far it felt the influence, and subsequently carried the impression, of the religious ideas of its Persian rulers. Naturally, the first thing that by its prominence and its bearings on the future suggests itself is the schism of the Samaritans, if so it may be called. It is a disputed point to what extent the kingdom of Israel, whose capital was Samaria, had been depopulated of its inhabitants in consequence of the great Assyrian invasions (2 Kings xvii. 6; xviii. 11). The later criticism, however, supported by the inscriptions of the monuments, assumes a far less thorough deportation of Israelites than has generally been supposed.1 From the testimony of the monuments, moreover, it is clear that the number and variety of foreign colonists that at this period were introduced into Palestine has been generally under-estimated. Certain it is that among these colonists, who naturally brought with them the sensuous idol-worship of their own lands, the worship of Jehovah was also adopted, and the rights and privileges appertaining to it boldly claimed. The repugnance which the native Jews, particularly in Judæa, could not but feel towards this mongrel religion, seems, previous to the Exile, to have come to no violent outbreaks. It may have been looked upon as simply a widening of the political breach that had long existed between Judah and Ephraim. There were also evident prudential reasons why at least the externals of peace should be maintained with the distasteful neighbors. After the return from the captivity, however, where new lessons concerning the sin and folly of serving idols had been learned, especially after the accession of the monotheistic Cyrus and his immediate successors to power, and the sweeping reforms inaugurated by Ezra and Nehemiah, it was not to be expected that the deep-seated aversion would fail to give itself emphatic expression. The occasion was the request of the Samaritans to be permitted to participate in the rebuilding of the walls and temple of Jerusalem. Sanballat, their "Horonite " leader, had made an alliance by marriage with the high priest's family, and it seems to have been expected on their part that now, by mutual participation in the sacred work of restoring the walls of Zion, the reconciliation would be complete. So much the greater, therefore, was their disappointment, and the more intense their hatred, when every offer of aid was, with ill-concealed disgust, rejected, and, in addition, the apostate sonin-law of Sanballat was banished from Judæa. 1 See Schrader in Schenkel's Bib. Lex., under "Samarien." 2 Schrader, idem, and Die Keilinschriften, p. 162. |