THE BIBLE FOR HOME READING INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER JEWISH HISTORY AND LITERATURE, 430-130 B C. § 1. Three centuries and three periods.-The history of the Jews, so far as it is directly told us in the Bible, comes to an end with the second visit of Nehemiah to Jerusalem. But there are many passages in the Bible, there are even entire books, which were written after that visit. If the date of Nehemiah's second visit may roughly be fixed at 430 B. C. (that is, about 156 years after the capture of Jerusalem by Nebuchadrezzar, and 108 years after the capture of Babylon by Cyrus), then we may also assert that the Hebrew Bible, as we have it now, was not completed for three hundred years after Nehemiah. In other words, considerable portions of it were written at different, and often unknown, intervals between the two limiting years 430 and 130 B. C. It is therefore clearly desirable that we should know something about the history of the Jews during these three hundred years. For though none of those Biblical books and passages of books written between 430 and 130 deal directly with that history, they often cannot be properly understood without allusion to the events of the time, just as they often themselves contain references, either veiled or distinct, to the circumstances of their writers' age. Many of these references are obscure and disputed, and this is one reason why several passages in the Bible must, as it would seem, always remain dark and doubtful in their meaning. Nevertheless, it sometimes happens that such a passage becomes more intelligible if we adopt provisionally or hypothetically some historical explanation, than if we too carelessly suppose that the whole thing is a mere fantastic lucubration of the author. Thus, for the sake of appreciating and understanding better the very words of the Bible itself, it is necessary to set forth, if we can, the framework of history within which, as it were, these words were composed. It is therefore most unfortunate that our legitimate desire to know the history of the Jews from 430 to 130 can be so slenderly gratified. Direct Biblical history in narrative form there is, as I have just said, none. And if we seek for information, whether from Jewish or other writers, outside the Bible, for the first two hundred and fifty years of our three hundred we are very ill supplied. A glimpse, an incident, an allusion, an inference here and there, are all that we can ascertain. One reason for this silence is obvious enough. The Jews had no separate political life of their own. They no longer constituted an independent state as in the old days before the Exile. It is only when, in the last fifty years of our three hundred, under circumstances of severe trial and persecution, the Jews rebel against their masters, and a fresh period of national and political independence begins, that great personalities once more appear upon the stage and historical records begin again to flow. The three hundred years between 430 and 130 can be divided into three very unequal parts. The first part extends from 430 to 330. For these hundred years the Jews remained under the dominion of Persia. Judæa was a small province of the great Persian Empire. The second part extends from 330 to 175. In these 155 years the Jews are first subjects of the empire of Alexander the Great; secondly, subjects of the kingdoms which grew out of that empire. Lastly, in the third period of forty-five years, they revolt against their masters, and attain to a temporary and precarious independence of their own. It should, however, be noted that this third period does not really end at the year 130. That is only an artificial limit, chosen because it rounds off the three hundred years after Nehemiah, and because in all probability no words of the Hebrew Bible were written after that date. The precise year indeed at which the history of the Jews contained in this volume will close will not be 130, but five years earlier, namely, 135. That is the year in which a famous man, Simon the Maccabee, met his death, and the point at which a certain chronicle, called The First Book of the Maccabees, comes to an end. Thus of the three parts into which I have divided the three hundred years between 430 and 130, the first two parts are natural divisions, clearly formed and marked out by important historical events, while the third part is an artificial division, made to correspond roughly with the probable conclusion of that collection of many writings which is THE PERSIANS AND THE JEWS 3 called the Hebrew Bible, or which (for reasons that I may elsewhere perhaps explain) is generally known as the Old Testament. As to the natural or historical limit of that period of Jewish history which began in 175 B. C., and as to the events which happened in it after 135, information must be sought in other books than mine. § 2. The Persian period.-The visits of Nehemiah to Jerusalem took place in the reign of Artaxerxes I. He was king of Persia from 464 to 424 B. C. Nehemiah's second visit was about contemporaneous with the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War (432). The next Persian king, Darius II Ochus, reigned from 424 to 404 B. C. In Greece the years of his reign witnessed the Athenian expedition to Sicily and its disastrous issue (413 B. C.), while the year of his death was the year of Lysander's triumph and the surrender of Athens. But for Judæa these twenty-eight years between 432 and 404 B. C. are a blank. We at least have no event known to us to record in them. Darius II was succeeded by his son Artaxerxes II Mnemon (404-358). During these forty-six years there fall the retreat of the Ten Thousand (401-400 B.C.), the death of Socrates (399 B. c.), and the sack of Rome by the Gauls (390 B. C.). Now too began a period of distress and suffering for Judæa and Palestine. For during the last years of Darius II, Egypt had thrown off the Persian yoke, though it was not till Artaxerxes II that repeated efforts were made to bring back this most important province into subjection. Persian wars with Egypt were always calamitous for the Jews. Some of them were doubtless compelled to serve in the Persian army, forced contributions of money and provisions would be levied on them, and detachments of Persian troops marching through their territory would prove vexatious and oppressive. In the year 361 there was, according to the Greek historian Diodorus, a widespread insurrection of the inhabitants of the sea-coasts of Asia against the Persian rule.' It was headed by Ariobarzanes, the satrap of Phrygia, and the confederates included 'the Syrians and Phoenicians and almost all that bordered on the sea.' It is possible that the Jews, whether willingly or under compulsion, joined in this revolt and suffered at its suppression. In the year 358 B.C. Artaxerxes Mnemon was succeeded by Artaxerxes III Ochus, a cruel but vigorous despot, who set himself, with some success, to stem the growing tide of disorder and dissolution within his motley and disorganized empire. The opening of his reign was signalized by a fresh revolt in Syria, of which the best known and most dramatic incident is the siege and fate of Sidon. By treachery the city was betrayed into |