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COMMENTARY
ON THE
HOLY SCKIPTURES:
CRITICAL, DOCTRIML, AND HOMILETICAL,
WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO MINISTERS AND STUDENTS.
BT
JOHN PETER LAISTGE, D. D.,
ASSISTED BY A NTJMBEE OF EMINTINT EUEOPEAN DIVINES.
TRANSLATED FROM TBE GERMAN, REVISED, ENLARGED, AND EDITED
BT
PHILIP SCHAPF, D. D., LL. D.,
m CONNECTION WITH AMERICAN SCHOLARS OF VARIOUS EV.iNGELICAL DENOMINATIONS.
VOLUME XV. OF THE OLD TESTAMENT, CONTAINING
THE APOCRYPHA.
NEW YORK:
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS.
1886.
THE
APOCKYPHA
OF
THE OLD TESTAMENT.
■WITH
HISTORICAL INTRODUCTIONS, A REVISED TRANSLATION, AND NOTES CRITICAL AND EXPLANATORY.
BT
EDWIN CONE BISSELL, D.D.
04 yip tma/tt^a n KorSt T^f &X)i9dac, uM.' inip r^f o^j^tSeiaf.
2 Cob. xiii. 8.
NEW YORK:
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS,
188&
CopjT^ight, 1880,
Bt chaeles scribner'S sons.
BITEBSIDB, OAHBRIDOX:
■ TBBEOTTPED AND PRINTED B»
B. 0< H0XtaHT^O^j4NI> OOUf AHT*
PREFACE.
The apocryphal books of the Old Testament-have been greatly neglected by English divines. No critical commentary in the English I^ua|;e has appeared since that of Richard Arnald (died 1756), first published in London 1744, and for the fourth time (with correc- tions by Pitman), in 1822, and embodied in the Critical Commentary of Patrick, Lowth, Arnald, Whitby, and Lowman. Since the British and Foreign, and the American Bible Societies have ceased to circulate them, it is even difficult for the ordinary reader to obtain them.
They are, it is true, not equal in authority to the canonical books: they did not belong to the Hebrew canon ; they were written after the extinction oE prophecy ; they are not quoted in the New Testament (the Book of Enoch referred to by Jude is not among the Apocrypha); the most learned among the Christian fathers, Origen, Eusebius, and Jerome, excluded them from the canon in its strict sense, although they made frequent use of them; they contain some Jewish superstitions, and furnish the Roman Catholics pi'oof-texts for their doctrines of purgatory, prayers for the dead, and the meritoriousness of good works.
Nevertheless they have very great historical importance : they fill the gap between the Old and New Testaments; they explain the rise of that condition of the Jewish people, their society and religion, in which we find it at the time of Christ and the Apostles; they contain much valuable and useful information. The books of the Maccabees make us acquainted with the heroic period of Jewish history; Ecelesiasticus is almost equal to the Proverbs for its treasures of practical wisdom; Tobit and Judith are among the earliest and most interesting specimens of religious fiction. The Apocrypha are first found in the Greek Version of the Old Testament (the Septuagint), from this they passed into the Latin Vulgate, and from this into all the older Protestant versions and editions, though sometimes in smaller type, or with the heading that, while they are useful and edifying reading, they must not be put on a par with the inspired books of the Bible.
It has been deemed timely to issue, as a supplementary volume to Lange's Bible-work (which is confined to the canonical books), a revised version of the Apocrypha, with critical and historical introductions and explanations. Homiletical hints would, of course, be super- fluous for Protestant ministers and students.
This work has been intrusted to the Rev. Dr. Edwin Cone Bissei.i,, who is well known as the author of a work on " The Historic Origin of the Bible " (New York, 1873), and who has for several years devoted special attention to the Apocrypha, in Germany and in this country. Fritzsche's Greek text (Libri Apocryphi Veteris Testament^ Lipsiie, 1871) has been used as the basis, and carefully collated with the Vatican Codex (II.) in the new edition of Cozza, as well as with other important publications.
The author desires to express his very deep sense of obligation to Dr. Eberhard Nestle, of the University of Tubingen, and to Dr. Ezra Abbot, of Cambridge, Mass., for invaluable sug- gestions and corrections as the work was passing through the press.
Biblical students will welcome this book as an important contribution to exegetical litera- ture.
It is not without profound gratitude to God, and to the many friends and patrons, that now, after sixteen years of editorial labor, I take leave of this voluminous Commentary, the success of which in America and England has surpassed my most sanguine expectations.
PHILIP SCHAFF.
New York, June 14, 1880.
GENERAL INTRODUCTION.
PART FIRST.
EEVIEW OF JEWISH HISTORY IN THE PERSIAN AND GRECIAN PERIODS.
1. The Jems under Persian Rule.
From the time of Cyrus and the reestabUshnient of the Jews in Palestine to Alexander lies a period of two Imrulred 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 Ju<hiism there is no period of greater importance. Up to this time tlie Jews had been simply a peo- ple existing under the sliadow of other and more powerful peoples on their borders. They came back fiom 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 liad disappeared; but BO, 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 Judali, and the commonwealth than the nation. The conception of a world religion gradually took possession of the minil, and proselytisni came to be included within the circle of the higher duties. Prophecy ceased; prayer, however, pulilic 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 outvfard 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 crjual of the priest. Above all, repeated dis- appointments in outward material things on which the heart had too exclusively fastened re- vealed a deeper need, awakened a spiritual apprehension such as no prophet's appeal had been able to do. Faith was recognized as somelhing more tlian bare belief. The veil was drawn from the unseen world, and Jacob's vision became a reality in the experiences of men. But tlie false and the exaggerated were not always distinguished from the true. Tlie wisest and best in Israel did not always avoid dangerous and wicked extremes. From this very period fanaticism lias 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 want- ing' in history where something simply strong has feemed 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.
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 jjj,„ti„„ „j which sprang up between the great conqueror and the Israelitish peoj)le, or, know- ihe.iews to ing it, that they dlil 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 Siirdis, the Greek cities of Asia Minor unitedly made to him offers of allegiance, he refused the tender with one excep- tion. The submission of Jliletus, the strongest and most influential of these cities, he ac- cepted; that of the others he preferred to enforce by the might and terror of his arms. The
1 See Studien u. Kril., 1833, pp. 624-700.
THE APOCRYPHA.
policy clearly was to "divide and conquer."^ And it may also be safely assumed that political motives were not wanting in liis 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, throu;^h 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 (he 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 liber- ated 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 providen- tial 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 mono- theistic 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 ten- derly it was cherished by his Jewish wards. ^
In his personal character, moreover, Cyrus was not without noble qualities. His immense
His per- power he generally wielded with discretion. He was not upset by the suddenness
Bonal char- of his elevation. Surrounded with all the splendors of an oriental court, he pre- acter. ... ' r
served, 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.^ lu his domestic relations he was a model of abstemiousness in a corrupt age. Along with ex- hausting military duties and a restless spirit of conquest, he knew how to value and encour- age 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 twenty ninth year of his reign (b. c. 529).
The elder of his two sons, Cambyses, succeeded him. Cyrus had also made arrange- ments in his will that the younger son, Smerdis, should have a subordinate share in the government. The good intention, however, was defeated through the jeal- ousy 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 pseudo- Smerdis, 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 un- completed 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-inter- est, 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 liiaexpedi- successful. But embittered by unlocked for resistance and revolt which had tion against sprung up during his temporary absence, Cambyses laid aside his earlier concilia- '^^ ' 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 ruth- lessly 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 in-
1 Rawlinson, Ancient Man., iii. 378. 2 TJerofl., i. 153.
8 Fritzsche in Scllenkel's Bib. Lex.. Art. " Cyrus " 4 Is, xliv. 28 ;. xlv. 13 ; xlvi. 1 J xl?iii. 14 ; Dan. y. 28, 30 ; vi.
6 See, for instance, bis alleged conversation ^vith Croesus, Herod. ^ i. 87-00.
6 KawUnson, Ancient Man., iii. 389.
GENERAL INTRODUCTION.
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." ^ "Whatever may have been the real ground of his action, it had, for the time being, the desired effect, namely, tlioroughly to cow the Egyptian people, and leave to the conqueror the way open to return to his capital. A great surpiise, however, was in store for him. Having already led his army a part of the distance homeward, being in Syria, a herald suddenly en- tered 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 lialf in doubt, as it would seem, whether his agents had really (lone the horrid work intrusted to them, the king uttferly lost courage, and, although at the head of a victorious army, and as tlie 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 cowardlv 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 inscriptifin, which distinctly states that Cambyses killed himself because of tlie insurrection.^
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 iu 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 tlie usual priest-caste, and other similar movements could not but attract at- tention, and might awaken a too powerful opposition if entered upon before the new king was fairly seated on his throne. Undue baste and bigotry seem, in fact, to have got the bet- ter 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 liea^, 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 pseudo- Smerdis 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 inter- rupted by Cambyses, notwithstanding the embittered efforts of the Samaritans in that direc- tion. With the idol-loving Magian, however, the enemies of the Jews were immediately suc- cessful. 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 friend- liness 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 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 his- Hystaspis. torian, 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 liis dominions he suppressed with a hand at once so firm and wise that it left him, later, the needed repose for his wide- reaching 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 mili- tary 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 metnllic currency, its more general use certainly dates from him ; and his gold and silver darics carried
J jii 38, 2 See Bawlioson's Herod.^ ii. 591 ff.
8 Cf. Ez V 2 ; Hag i. 14.
6 THE APOCRYPHA.
the name of Darius far buyond 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.^ His couriers found Ihe streams already l)ridged for them and sped from station to station, like birds in (lieir ilight. "Notliing 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 liand to hand along the whole line, like the light in tlie torch race, which the Greeks celebrate to Vulcan." ^ Indeed, Darius Hystaspis was so great and wise a ruler, as the times tlien were, that it has served to obscure Ihe genius which lie 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 ranklea, wlien death overtook liim, in the sixty-tliird year of liis age (n. c. 48G).
The kingdom descended, by his own appointment, to Xer.xes, tlie eldest of liis sons. It „ would be interesting to dwell upon the hitter's liistory, embracing as it does some
of the most magnificent, if mistaken and unsuccessful, enterprises wliich the world has ever known, and which liave made the names of Thermopylae, Salaniis, and Plata;a cele- brated for more than twenty subsequent centuries. Especially would it be interesting be- cause of his connection with the fascinating story of Queen Estlier, the palace at " Shushan," and the averted destruction of the Jewisli people. But for the purposes of the present work it would be an unjustifiable diversion. Notwitlistanding all liis 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 Artaxer.xes, with the surname Longimanus (b. c. 4Co), and the
latter by Xerxes TI. (b. c. 425), who reigned but five and forty days, when he was andhigsuo- put to death by his half-brother, Sogdianus. Sogdianus himself, also, in less than cessors. 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 con- tinued 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 cor- onation wei-e 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 hitter sought to win the crown for himself by the murdtr of Artaxerxes. Eoileil, for the time being, in his wicked purpose, it was none the less secretly cherished, and his subsequent rebellion wliile 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 tun 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 inher- ent 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. (Ochiis, b. c. 359), the re
ligious apostasy and deterioration of the Persians, which had already Ion"- since ^rtaxerxes |,gg|,f,^ made the most rapid progress. A vicious eclecticism that saw no dan"-ei
in mingling Magian rites with the relatively pure tenets of Zoroaster ended l)j accepting Venus as a national deity, and lascivious orgies in place of the exercises of relii'ion As might have been expected, the Persians were not the only sufferers by the change. Tht bond of sympathy that had united to them in all their varying fortunes, until now, as obedi- ent 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 Orinuzd. But with a Mnemon or Ochus on the throne, and images of Anaitis by royal authority set up foi worship at Susa and Persepolis, at Babylon and Damascus, and, as we may well suppose, at Jerusalem also, the circumstances were changed indeed. Sympathy anil protection cave place to repugnance and jiersecution. If we may accept the account of Joscphns, who quotes Ileeateus,^ this niuch-oppre.'-scd people were obliged at the present time to suffer aiiotliei cruel deportation. Moreover, a creature of Artaxerxes HI., one Bagoas (Bagoses), who after- wards poisoned his master, taking the rejection of a certain candidate for the high priest's
1 See Xen., Cijrop., yili. 7. 18; and Duncl;er, It. 537. 2 RawlSnson's Hrrod., Iv. 335.
8 Contra Apion, i. 22 ; cf. Oraetz, GtscliidUe, ii. (2) 209, Doto. The same fact is also montionca by otlier ancient wril. era. S(« llitzig, GtscMdite^ i. 307.
GENERAL INTRODUCTION.
office, whose election he had favored, as a personal affront, laid the most oppressive burdens on tlie 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 Uel- iodorus and an. Antiochus Epiphanes !
Arses, the last Persian king bnt one, was a son of Bagons, and ascended the throne B. C. 338. Refusing to be the tool of his father, the latter, who had hitherto hesitated Arses and at no crime lying in the path of his ambition, ruthlessly murdered him, together JIj" "J*^^,' jv with his infant children. His successor was Codomannus, or Darius HI. (b. C. Persian 336), (he beginning oE whose reign nearly synchronizes with that of Alexander ^""l""- of Maeedon. 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 mon- archy was effectually scaled. 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 devel- opment of a world religion. Such development, though slow, could not wlioUy 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 hun- dred 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. Parsceism had been helpful as a protector, and to some degree, also, as it would seem, in the way of moral stimulus and sug- gestion. The Greek language and philosophy were to prove a still greater resource and aux- iliary, and, though in ways they would never have chosen, and through the most painful as well" as humiliating experiences in poUtical and social life, the consecrated nation advanced towards its providential goal.
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, ajid how far it felt the influence, and subsequently carried the origia of' impression, of the religious ideas of its Persian riders. Naturally, the first thing f™"'"*"" 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. G; 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.i From the testimony of the monuments, more- over, 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 Judaea, 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 pru- dential reasons why at least the externals of peace should be maintained with the distaste- ful nei<rhbors. After the return from the captivity, however, where new lessons eoncernmg the sin°and folly of serving idols had been learned, especially after the accession of the mono- theistic 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 "•ivo itself emphatic expression. The occasiou 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 eacred 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 son- in-law of Sanballat was banished from Judaa. X Sm Sclir»d«r in Schenkel'. Bib. Lex., under « Samftrto." i Sohrader, idum, and Die EeiUmchriflen, p. 162.
THE APOCRYPHA.
The separation was final and decisive. Nothing remained for the Samaritans but to make the best of their defeat. They also had descendants of the priestly Aaronic ItanTempte. f^^i'j among them. That the same had been driven from their homes on ac- count of wicked practices was in their eyes no discredit. They too had some claim to the name of Israelites, and where it failed were at no loss to supply its place with the most baseless and egregious assumptions. Why should they not, then, have a, temple and service of their own, and win, as far as possible, the repute of being the only true successors of Abraham? The .central and fertile Mount Gerizim, where under Joshua the blessings had been spoken, might at least hope to rival and share, if not eclipse, the glories of Mount Moriah and of Jernsiilein. And thus the bold undertaking, in itself proof that along with Assyrian cunning and duplicity there was associated also not a little Isriielitish persist- ence, was entered upon. The temple was built on Gerizim. The Pentateuch was forced to give its support to the new Zion. And to this day " the foolish people that dwell in Sicheni " as the Son of Sirach (I. 26) calls them, though insignificant in numbers, have continued to maintain a separate existence. In all these centuries, moreover, they have lost none of their capacity for groundless assertions, or their superstitious reverence for Gerizim. Heaven, as they claim, lies directly over or near this spot. Here Adam built his first altar, and was him- self made from its sacred earth. Here the ark rested after the flood, for it is the real Ararat of the Bible, and the exact place is shown where Noah disembarked and offered thankful sacrifices. Here, too, Abraham brought his son Isaac as a burnt-offering to the Lord, and here as well, strange to say, the patrinrch Jacob on his way to Padan-Aram found his Bethel and dreamed sweet dreams of heaven.'-
It was inevitable that the whole movement would react powerfully upon the little Jewish community, and, as might have been expected in the end, with good results, the diTision. '^^^'^ temple on Gerizim and its spurious service was, in the first place, a perpetual mi'nace. The Samaritans, moreover, lost no occasion, fitting or unfitting, for show- ing their hostility. By means of flaming torches, for instance, simultaneously waved from mountain-top to mountain-top, the Israelites had been wont, since the Exile, to announce to their brethren still in Assyria the exact time for holding the sacred yearly festivals. The adherents of Sanballat and the banished Manasseh set a similar line of beacons blazing, but at the wrong time, in order to confuse and mislead. In one way and another, to escape punishment or with hope of reward, not a few native Jews from Judaea cast in their lot with them. The Persian officials were probably indifferent, if not acquiescent. Insolence and as- sumption grew with apparent success. All reserve was finally laid aside. The covenant peo- ple were fairly challenged to show what right they had to exist, and to bear the revered, his- toric name. Not only as over against heathenism, therefore, but especially in sharp distinc- tion from those who falsely professed to worship the same God and to be governed by the same Mosaic institutions, they were called upon to determine and declare what it was that really characterized them as a people. From this point, as we have already intimated, al- though the name itself does not appear until a later period, ^ properly dates the orinin of Judaism. In its struggles with what was false and baneful it came to the first real knowl- edge of itself.
The Law, for instance, had been caricatured and perverted. What, then, was the Law and what were its demands? Were there not other sacred books in addition to toes^"*' t''°^'^ g'^'^" t° Moses which were entitled to holy regard ? It had been denied by them of Gerizim, and hence from such a quarter that the denial itself was al- most equal to a proof of the fact. And so investigation arose. The Scriptures were studied as they had never been before. The different parts were classified as Law, Prophets, and Hagiographa.8 New copies were assiduously made. The goodly custom of public readino-s introduced by Ezra, was perpetuated. The Sabbaths and festivals were given ii new sacred- ness and even market days were ennobled by reverent communion with Moses and the proph- ets. The Torah was divided into sections so that in the public readings the whole of it could be gone over either in a single year or in three years, as the case might be. The old Hebrew character, which had become antiquated and was understood only by a few, was exchanged
1 See Petermaiin in Herzog's Rial-Encyk.,mi. 376, and, in general, concerning the history and literature of the Sa Biaritans, vols, ix, and xlii. of Eichhorn's Alls. Bib. d. bib. Litttralur ; De Saoy, vol. xii. of Notices a E.rlrails des Manti, scnts ; .luynboll, " Comment de Versione Arabico-Samaritana,'' in vol. ii. of the Orientalia, edited by JuynboU Koorda and Weijers : and Gesenius. Oc Pnitaleiichi Samaricani origine, indole et auctortiate. ' ' ''
2 See 2 Mace. ii. 21 ; viii. 1, B See Ecolus , Prol.
GENEUAL INTRODUCTION. 9
for an alphabet with which the Israelites had become familiar during their sojourn on the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates. For convenience in reading, also, vowel points were intro- duced. In short, for the people of Israel, the seals were taken from the holy books. Not so with the Samaritans. They were governed by another principle. They chose to retain their Bible, that is, the Pentateuch, in its ancient form. They left it with all its seals upon it, where to this day they still remain. They may be regarded indeed, as the first champions of the doctrine, not yet extinct, that the Bible was not intended for general circulation.
Another great and far-reaching change of this period was the introduction of synagogues. To the idea of worshiping elsewhere than in the temple the people had become somewhat accustomed during the exile. And when, after their return, Ezra set •^•"^ Syna- the example of a similar service under the very shadow of the temple, it was read- ily taken up and carried, little by little, into every part of the land. There were, however, other reasons which contributed to this result. The second temple was itself a disappoint- ment. It could never quite take the place, in the affections of the people, of that which had been destroyed. It was destitute of some of its chief attractions. This made it easier to be reconciled to the simple forms of the synagogue, and to grasp, in some measure, the sublime thought, which for its full development, however, required other centuries of bitter experience, that God is a spirit and that they who worship Him should worship Him in spirit and in truth. We cannot help feeling, moreover, that the existence of the temple on Gerizim also had some- thing to do with the popularity of synagogues. To Sanballat and his coadjutors the temple was the principal thing in Judaism. To build its counterpart, therefore, or its superior at another point; to introduce into it a more imposing liturgy; to claim for it, equally with any other, the sanctions of the ancient legislation ; and to hallow it with the memories and tradi- tions of Israel which were also theirs, — this, they thought, would be a, fatal blow at the heart of Jewish exclusiveness. And a noble answer it was which was returned to them: God is greater than the temple. To understand the Law and to do it — for this was really the teaching of the new system — is more than all burnt offering. Obedience is better than sacrifice, the offering up of the heart to God than a multitude of costly gifts in his house.
The temple was not ignored. Synagogues, in their outward form, were constructed with due reference to it. Their simple services were made, as far as possible, a re- flex of its revered ritual. But the false notion that worship was a matter of priestly functions and of brilliant shrines was greatly weakened. A new system was intro- duced more in harmony with the real, inner nature of Judaism, and one which afterwards, Christianity, represented by Christ and his Apostles, found not to be ill adapted to serve as one of the most powerful means for its propagation. From the New Testament, in fact, we may easily learn almost the entire order of proceeding in the worship of the synagogues. The service began with prayer, which, indeed, like the sacrifices in the temple, formed its prin- cipal feature. The leader was not a priest, but one of the elders of the little communion. The language used was that of the people. Following the prayers, which differed in num- ber and length according to the occasion, came invariably the reading oE a portion from the Pentateuch in the original, and generally, also, from the Prophets. The reader was selected by the person officiating from among those present. A translator stood by his side and ren- dered the sacred oracles, verse by verse, into the vernacular. Explanatory remarks and ex- hortations, moreover, were not excluded.! The blessing of the minister and the loud respon- sive amen of the assembled worshipers marked the close of the impressive service. ^ What could have been better calculated to give to the masses of the Jewish people a knowledge oi" the Scriptures, or unite them in reverence and love for their religion? " Our houses of prayer in the various cities," says Philo, " are nothing else than schools of prudence, cour- age, temperance, and righteousness, in short, of every virtue which is recognized or enjoined by God or man."8 It was through the synagogues, also, that the poor of the community were reUeved and other friendly services rendered, a special office being instituted for the purpose. Here, too, the minor differences and offenses of the people were considered and adjudicated. The synagogue represents, in fact, politically the democratic side of Judaism. On one side, it was a pronounced hierarchy. Here, on the contrary, all interests and classes were repre- sented and could make their influence felt. And if, through its more hearty, spiritual wor- ship it served as a healthful check on the formalizing influences of the temple, the synagogue
1 Cf. Luke iv. 16-20. r, ir- nf • •■ IM
a See Zanz, Die Rilus des synagogaien OottesdiensUs, passim. 8 De VUa Mosis, u. IW).
10 THE APOCRYPHA.
was also, perhaps, and in a no less degree, a providential restraint as over against an ever powerful drift towards centralization, aristocratic assumption, and partisanship. How much such a rcstndnt was needoil will soon appear.
Among tlie other agencies at work to mold the Jewish life and institutions of this period
the so-called Great Synagogue cannot be overlooked. Its origin, Iho date of its Sjuago^'(j" "''G and of ihc cessation of its activities, what and how many members composed
it, or what special ends it served, cannot bo ascertained with any degree of cer- tainty.i It is clear, however, that such a body of men existed, and that if it does not date from the period of Ezra it must have occupied itself in general with the work begun by him. It is not to lie confounded with the Sanhedrin, which oi'iginated in the following period and had to a considerable e.\tent other aims." It is further, not to be identified simply with the synagogue at Jerusalem, altliough the latter may have furnished many of its members and have exercised a controlling influence over it.^ It is not credible, moreover, that its activity- extended merely ovei- a period of half a dozen years, and that its object was simply to admin- ister pulilic affairs during an interim, while the high priest's office was without an incumbent (b. c. 348-342).* This could never account for the form or the strength of the tradition that relates to it, much less for the actual impression which it has left upon the institutions of the present period. The oldest and most trustworthy notice of the Great Assembly -which has been found occurs in a fragment of the Mishna. It is as follows: " Moses received the Law from Sinai; lie transmitted it to Joshua, Joshua to the elders, the elders to tlie prophets; the pro|)hets to the men of the Great Assembly, who uttered three words [laid down three lules]: 'Be circumspect in judging, make many disciples, make a hedge about the law.' " It goes on to say : " Simon the Just was one of the survivors of the Great Assembly." ' The oldest extant fragments of the Mishna, of which the above forms a part, cannot have origi- nated earlier than in the first century before Christ, though naturally, like the extant manu- scripts of the New Testament, they may be accepted as a witness for a much earlier period.
That now something historical and actual really lies at the basis of this tradition there is ,, no just reason fur doubtin"- and it is, indeed, not improbable that the eijchty-five
fion imd du- priests, who, according to the book of Nehemiah (xi. ff.), as representatives of the
people, bound themselves by oath to the observance of the law, may have been the first members of the Great Assembly.'' On the other hand, the three precepts which are ascribed to it cannot have originated with Ezra or his contemporaries. They bear the stamp of a later day. They indicate a state of things which might well have followed a century after the Samaritan schism, seem indeed, to speak out of the hard experiences of the later Persian period. Simon the Just (('. e., as we hold, Simon L, B. c. 310-291), who is said to have been one of the latest survivors of this body, expressed liimself in quite a similar way. " The world," he said, " rests upon three things : on the law, on worship, and on the re- ward of benevolent deeds." ' Hence, it is likely that what began as a simple company vol- untarilj' pledging themselves to keep the law, became, under the stress of circumstances, a well-defined and powerful organization whose sphere of duties varied with the demand made upon it. The products of its activity, in general, have been already noticed. They were such as the gathering and sifting of the sacred books, so far as they had been rescued from the great catastrophe of the Exile; their threefold division ; the introduction of a new alpha- bet, as well as of vowel signs and accents; the separation of the Pentateuch into sections; the establishment of an order of worship for the synagogues; the adoption of various liturn-ieal forms, particularly the eighteen so-called benedictions; ^ and altogether an effort, not always put forth with tlie highest wisdom or with freedom from exaggeration and prejudice, to carry out the injunction of their great legislator : " Ye shall not add unto the word which I com- mand you, neither shall ye diminish aught from it."^ What came, in fact, to be under- stood by " a hedge about the law " may be still seen in the lumbered pages of the Mishna and Gemara. A so-called oral law, for which the claim was made that it was handed down
1 Cr, for example, Ueldenheim's unsuccessful attempt to construct an acceptable theory of the subject In Stud, u Kril., 1863, p. 93, £t., and Uertheau, Die Eiiclur Esm, Kelt., etc., p. 101.
2 ContM, Graetz, ii. (2), 178, and otiiers.
8 Contra, Iloltzniann, Die Apofc. Backer, Einleit., p, 4.
4 Contra. Uitzig, Gtschichte, 315, ff., and Knencker in Schenkers ^16. X^a;., advoc.
6 Piike Aboth, i. 1, 2.
6 So Josf, (resMcMe, i. 42. 7 Cf Hartmann, p. 129.
8 See Stanley, Ui, ISl. g Deul;. iv, g.
GENERA!- INTRODUCTION. H
from Moses himself, assumed an ever increasing, and in the end, fatal importance. And even modern Judaism is far enough from divesting itself of the spirit that was rebuktd in the words of the Master: " For laying aside the commandments of God ye hold the tradition of men." ^
The second precept of the Gi-cat Assembly, moreover, was practically attended to. Schools for (he stndy of the sacred books were established. Tlie teacliL'rs went under the high-Pounding title of " the wise" or the Sopherim; their pupils were known as ^uUon™"' " the disciples of the wise." ' In subsequent limes, so extraordinary became iheir "'"?""'"'• authority that it was held for even a greater crime to dispute tlio word of the scribes than to call in question the Torah itself.^ Stricter rules for the observance of the Sabbath and other festival days were also introduced at this period; the year, which hitlierto bad bei'un with Nisan, was made to begin with Tisri ; the institution of slavery for native born Israel- ites was abolished; the provisions for the observance of the Sabbatic year rigorously carried out; regulations relating to things clean and unclean greatly extended ; alms-givino- rose to the dignity of a system, and the virtue that " sheweth mercy and lendeth" became the lead- ing idea of )ighteousness.
It is a questitni of no small importance how far the institutions of the Israelitish people during this formative period were modified by contact with the religious ideas and practices of their Persian rulers. To us now, the matter is one of special interest th^"™''' °*
lerslan
simply in so far as it relates to the Old Testament apocryphal writings. They r'^i'Sious clearly contain new developments of docti-ine that are of the utmost consequence, "^^ ""' and which cannot be accounted for, solely, on the theory that they have their root in the teachings of the older canonical Scri[)tures. And that the development of pure Judaism it- self, by a kind of forcing process, should have been quickened, and to some extent modified in consequence of its intimate relations with Parseeism, seems to us in no way inconsistent with any right view of Jewish history, or of the divine plan of salvation. .The book of Esther, in fact, and the feast of Purim, which has been ajjtly called the " Passover of the Dispersion," are themselves a standing protest against the assumption of many critics that such an influence could not have been felt. There remained in Persia, after the Exile, no small number of Jewish colonists who were agents, as well as I'ecipients in the history of this pei-iod. The relation of the Jews to at least one of the Persian governors were of the most friendly and intimate character.* The decrees and letters of the Persian kings found a place on the pages of the Bible, and it is not strange that he whose spirit the Lord " stirred up " ^ should become himself in turn the means of setting in operation moral forces which were still active and powerful, after the kingdom which he had founded had long since passed away.
The comparative elevation and purity of the original religious beliif of the Persians is well known. Its creed was simple and highly spiritual. If its monotheism was second to that of the Jews, as we must admit, still it was only second, and approximated tlie Persian it in many respects. Its hatred of idol-worship was most pronounced. And among no other people of antiquity was such an antithesis recognized, imperfect though it still was, between the evil and the good. It was no longer a crude and sensuous idola- try with which the Israelites had to do. The old Persian spirit that lived again in the re- vered Cyrus and his immediate successors was almost fiercely iconoclastic.' The Persian worship, in its prayers and thanksgivings to Ormuzd, the recitation of hymns and the offering of sacrifices, had nothing that could specially produce aversion in the Israelitish min<l. They greeted the break of day with adoration, prayed over their food, at the lighting of the lamps, on mountain tops, at the sight of water, or of any extraordinary appearance. Was it a mere coincidence that such customs were introduced, also, among the Jews of later times? The priesthood and temple had with them, in general, a far less important role than in other religions. Had this fact nothing to do with the surprising ease with which the Israelites
X Mttrlt vii. 8 ; cf. Geiger, Judaism and Us Hist., 1. 134 f. 2 Graetz, ii. (2), 182.
8 Uartmann, p. 144.
4 Cf. Neh; xiii. 4-9; Jos., Antig., xi. 7; and Kuenen, iii. 32, 33.
6 2 Caron. xxxvi. 22, 23.
6 Cf. on the genenil subject : Rawlinson, Ancient Mon., ii. and iii., ad loc. ; the fame author's Herod., i. Essay V. j Hang's Essatj.'. etc. ; ProssenacS, i. 25-34 ; Graetji, ii. (2), note 14 : Spiegel's Aorsta. and ErinUclu Alttrthumskmile, ad loc.j Duiicker, iv 37-180 ; Dollinger, Jiulmthnm und Heidenthum, pp..8ol-3?0 ; Nicolas, pp. 61r63 i Westergaard, Zt»davtstai Tiele, De Godsdienst van Zaralkrastra 1 Spiess, 260-272.
1 Cf. B«inL,>> ISl, and BawUnaoD, Juaent Mm., ill. 839.
12 THE APOCRYPHA.
after the Captivity adapted themselves to the simple ceremonies of the village synagogue?' The Persians, influenced by their dualistic creed, were most rigorous in making distinctions' between things clean and unclean. So were the Jews, although for a different reason. But it is worthy of notice that the latter, during the present period, adopted a strictness and par- ticularity in this respect that were a gross exaggeration of the Levitical precepts. It is a wholly new interpretation of the Mosaic law concerning ceremonial purity and impurity that we meet with in the books of Tobit, Judith, and the Maccabees, and especially in the Phari- saism of the New Testament. We can have no doubt that while influenced by the political history of the period, more especially by the sufferings experienced at tlie hands of foreign powers in their efforts to force a false religion upon them, the Jewish nation was also not a little affected by the doctrines of Parseeism. According to its creed the fearful influence of Ahriman was everywhere in operation, and the life of man became a continual struggle by means of the most burdensome outward purifications to rid himself of his fatal defilements. Even the hair and nails of the human body were regarded as unclean and spiritually polluting. " What," asked Zoroaster of Ormuzd, "is the greatest of mortal sins? " " Wlien they who are endowed witli bodies " was the answer, " cut their hair and pare their nails, there assem- ble on the contaminated spot the devils (devas) together." ^
The antreloloo'y and demonology of the apocryplial books, as is shown in connection with the Commentary below, is most strikingly and demonstratively Persian in its the'persian stamp : so the evil Asmodieus of the Book of Tobit with his home in the desert faith (con- wastes of Egypt, and, no less, the good Raphael and his five associates. An old' Jewish tradition declares: " The names of the angels emigrated with tlie Jews into their mother country." ° Prayers to the spirits of supposed saints were allowed by the Persian religion. One such petition began as follows: " I call to thee, I praise the mighty souls (fervers) of holy men, the souls of the men of the old statutes, the souls of the new men, my relatives, my own guardian spirit." * So, too, prayers were offered for the dead, by which means, it was thought, they were greatly aided in their difficult passage to everlasting blessedness. Dollinger,^ referring to the Vendidad (xii. 9 ff., Spiegel, p. 183), says: " For departed relatives continual prayers were offered up and for sinners twice as many as for the pure. These prayers won for the soul — as was supposed — the protection of the heav- enly spirits, particularly of Serosh against Ahriman." On certain days of the year the souls of the dead were thought to revisit the earth, and at such times two forms of petition were repeated for them and by each person twelve liundred times. Especially at these periods was the hope strong of being able through prayers and good deeds to release them from the retributive pains of the lower world. With this fact in view, we are the less surprised at the appearance of the same strange and unbiblical custom in the apocryphal books. ^ The belief in a future judgment was also one of the tenets of Zoroastrianism. Three days after death, it was held, all human souls, both those of the good and of the evil, went their ap- pointed way to the so-called "bridge of tlie gatherers." It was a narrow path that con- ducted to the regions of light. An abyss of darkness yawned beneath it. Here their exam- ination by Ormuzd took place and their destiny was decided.
The Zend religion was far removed from encouraging asceticism. It was more a religion of Other traits action than of reflection. It impelled its followers to a continual struggle with the of the Zend powers of death and decay. The first commandment of the Avesta enjoined that re igion. ^j^^ fields should be cultivated, trees planted, and food provided for human wants. " With the fruits of the field grows the rule of Ormuzd, and with them it spreads itself by thousands and other thousands abroad. The earth is happy when a man builds his house upon it, when his herds increase, when surrounded by wife and children he lets the grass, the corn, and fruit trees in abundance spring up about him." " There is somethino- noble and inspiring in such a spirit. We may well recognize its influence in the mighty enterprises of a Cyrus and a Darius, and see how it was possible for the Persian empire with so apparently feeble a basis, to maintain its existence for two hundred years. On the Jews, with whom also the interests of agriculture were so closely connected with those of government and relio-iou such an example must have acted with powerful effect. But it is not by any means to be in- ferred from what has gone before, that they discovered only what was inviting, or even worthy of respect, in the customs and habits of their Persian neighbors. Parseeism had also its repuo-.
1 Cf. Graetz, p. 419, and Kuenen, iii. 35. 2 Vendidad cited by Qraetz, p, 198.
5 Geiger, Lectures, i. 128. 4 The Tapna, cited by Pres8ens6, p. SO.
6 Judtntimm, etc., p. 374. 6 See 2 Mace. xii. 43-45. 7 Vendidad, iii. 1, 20, 85, 86.
GENERAL INTRODUCTION.
13
nant side. Its fundamental principle of dualism indeed, could find no place in a system where Jehovah was God.i As compared with the licentious rites of the Phoenicians, the sensuous worship of the Babylonians, or even the more ideal and spiritual cultus of the Eo-yptians there had been real progress. But here, still, there was no sufficient distinction between the material and the moral. And especially in the later deterioration of the Persian faith under an Artaxerxes Mnemon and an Ochus, all bonds of religious sympathy and affinity must have been wholly rent asunder. In short, Parseeism acted upon essential Judaism, in the main, only in the way of suggestion and stimulus. The great basal truths that characterize the latter are its own independent possession, and indigenous to it. It is principally in the by-ways of Jewish thought and national life that we are able to trace most clearly the impression of other and alien systems of belief.
And noF another and still more important stage in the life of the covenant people is to pass under review. Up to this time, they had had to do only with the races and lands of the East. Religious differences, diverse national traditions and aims, and the S'^'e'riod'' steep passes of Lebanon had not so far secluded them that they had not been ""^ ^''"° ' called upon to bear their fearful part in the tragic history that had unrolled itself along the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates. The waters of the Mediterranean would avail just as little now to shut them out from the still mightier and more penetrating influences of the advancing West. The victories of Alexander were in fact victories of the Occident over the Orient, of Europe over Asia. Whatever of truth may be contained in the narrative of the solemn meeting between the Jewish high-priest, arrayed in his sacred vestments, and the Macedonian conqueror, it may at least be taken as strikingly typical of a wholly new order of events. Henceforth, Judaism faced in another direction, confronted a civilization whose power it would feel to its very centre. It had unlearned among its Assyrian neighbors only the outward form of its mother tongue. But the new forces that now begin to operate are at once so winning and so intense, that it soon forgets the very mother tongue itself, and institutions and customs that had been gaining strength through two centuries of comparative rest, are tested by conflicts such as hitherto the world had never known.
2. The Grecian Period. Judaism had now had sufficient time, since the Exile, to collect itself and gather streno-th to meet the whirlwind of political change that was again approaching. Still The new more, it had brought to a certain degree of ripeness those deep-lying ethical prin- factors in ciples which were to become the germs of a universal religion. But if there is *'''^ ^'^'""y- any lesson that human history teaches more than another, it is that development, social and moral as well as physical, is never in straight lines. It is the result of forces that to a greater or less degree are antagonistic. Hence the spiral is its aptest representative. The politienl necessity that brought the Indo-Germanic races into living contact with the Semitic was but the sign of a higher moral necessitj'. What represented widely different tendencies, what had been wrought out in widely different spheres, was now to meet, to interpenetrate, and by a subtile interaction produce results that neither in itself would have been capable of achieving. Where, indeed, could have been found a greater contrast than between the ordi- nary currents of thought, the social plane, the manner of life, of the Hebrew and the Greek? What could have been more unlike the deep religious spirit of the one than the pervasive worldly spirit of the other? So, too, the Semitic mind was serious, slow to act, eminently conservative; held tenaciously to the past; was deeply reverent, almost fatalistic, indeed, in its regard for that which was. The Greek, on the other hand, was proverbially quick in thought and movement, sprightly, idealistic, admitting perfection in nothing, striving always for the new, bold even to recklessness, and ready to confront, sword in hand, the gods them- selves in defense of an ideal right. Especially was the radical dissimilarity of the two peo- ples stamped on the languages they used. The one was simple and picturesque ; the other, cultivated and refined to the highest degree of art. " The Semitic tongue was the symbol, the Greek the vesture, of the spirit." ^ Now, from the conjunction of two such gigantic moral forces great results, under the present circumstances, were justly to be expected, par- ticularly in the direction of developing a religion for man which, like man himself, must be cosmopolitan, above the question of climates, able to adapt itself to the popular life every- where, and show its harmony with all the higher and purer forms of human culture.
1 Cf. Is. ilT. 1, 7.
3 Holtzmaun, Die Apok. Bucker^ Einleit., p. 6 (found also in Bunaen's Bibekoerk).
14 THE APOCKYPHA.
The way had been prepared for the entrance of Greek civilization into Asia by the great Persian expeditions of the previous century. But with the triumph of the arms Alexander.i ^j Alexander, who extended his empire from the Adriatic to the sources of the Ganges, and from the Danube to the cataracts of the Nile, the entire Orient was thrown open to the philosophy, art, language, and social usages of this classic land, and they swept over it Uke a flood. If these peoples, for the most part, especially those living east of the Euphrates, showed -in their subsequent history but faint traces of any such refining influ- ence, retained to the last their Asiatic and barbaric character, it but serves to enhance, by contrast, the remarkable changes that were elsewhere produced, especially in the valleys of the Orontes and the Jordan, and along the banks of the Nile. How much of truth is mixed with the fabulous and legendary in the accounts of Josephus and the Talmud ' concerning the visit of Alexander to Jerusalem, it is impossible to say. But there can be no reasonable doubt that either during or subsequent to the siege of Tyre and Gaza (b. c. 332) he re- ceived a delegation from Jerusalem, who tendered him the unconditional homage of the Jew- ish people. It is also clear that, for some reason, never perhaps to be wholly explained, the youthful conqueror treated them with a magnanimity and friendliness that they had not before experienced since the days of Cyrus. This conciliatory spirit had its natural effect. Alexander took his place henceforth, in the sacred list of heroic worthies who were honored by the Jewish nation. His name Was coupled with that of Solomon, and became its synonym in the later history. And when his victorious army began its march southward for the con- quest of Egypt, not a few Jews voluntarily entered its ranks. The founding of the city that still bears his name, one of the most brilliant capitals of antiquity, the commercial, moral, and social metropolis of both the Occident and Orient, for centuries the highest representative and nurse of civilization and learning, and especially the arena where Grecian philosophy and the Hebrew religion were at once to meet and discover what common grounds of interest might justify their going henceforth hand in hand, — this was the most memorable result of Alexander's expedition to the land of the Pharaohs. Not many years after (b. c. 323), in the midst of vast unexecuted military plans, his voracious appetite for conquest still unsated, . he died at the age of thirty-two years and eight months.
The last words of Alexander on being asked to whom he bequeathed his kingdom are said to have been: " To the strongest." ' When one considers the training to which successors, ii's generals had been subject, and the spirit that had ever ruled in the breast of The pia- their leader, the consequences of such a legacy, conveyed in such a form, were easy to predict. In fact, the body of their chief was not yet buried before the struggle for supremacy began among his generals. Perdikkas, however, whom Alexander had distinguished by leaving him his signet ring, was, by way of compromise and until the expected birth of an heir to Alexander, made administrator of the realm. The armistice really proved to be of short duration. Less than two years after the death of Alexander, in a battle with Ptolemy, whom he had made satrap of Egypt, Perdikkas lost his life. And this was but the first act in a bloody tragedy, lasting more than a score of years, in which the family of Alexander disappeared, his generals slew one another and thousands upon thousands of their subjects, and the great empire, so lately acquired, destitute of any sub- stantial bonds of union, went hopelessly in pieces. " The living political question at the time of the Diadochi, namely, whether and how the empire of Alexander could be maintained in its unity, after every possible solution of it, every possible form, every substitute had been tried in vain, finally disappeared. The impossibility had been demonstrated, politically speaking, of uniting in one kingdom, one universal monarchy, the people of the East and the West; irrevocable judgment pronounced on what Alexander had desired and sought to achieve. That alone which he, daring and doing with reckless idealism, had meant should serve as the means and support of his work still remained, ceaselessly propagated itself in ever increasing waves of influence, — the introduction of Greek hfe among the Asiatic peo- ples, the production of a new civilization made up of that of the Orient and the Occident, the unity of the historic world in Hellenistic culture." *
1 Cf. on tlie general subject : Droyaen, 1 -ill. ; Flathe, 11. j Stark, pp. 353-42.3 ; Ewald, Gtschichte, It. 274-286 ! and for briefer summaries the histories of Qraets, Hitzig, Herzfeld, and Holtzmann, idem.
3 Stanley, 111. 237-249; Jos., Anti^., xi. 8; Spiegel, Lie Alexandmage, etc.) and Henniiohsen, Slui, u. Krit. 1871.
8 See Grote, xii. 264, ff 4 Diojaen, U. (2), 368.
GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 15
Notwithstanding his ohscure origin Ptolemy I. Soter, known also as the son of Lagus, is one of the most conspicuous figures of the period next succeeding Alexander. It was a sagacious choice that secured to him, as one of the latter's most success- ^j^i ful oflScers, the satrapy of Egypt, where, in a measure apart from the quarrels of his fellow generals, he might lay the foundations of the empire which he projected. While skillfully avoiding conflict, as far as possible, he knew how to defend himself when attacked, as against Perdikkas in b. c. 321, and more than once against Antigonus, until the decisive battle of Ipsus, b. c. 301. He assumed the title of king in B. c. 305. The bounds of his empire he extended by uniting to it Cyrene on the East, and, after B. c. 301, Palestine and Coele-Syria on the West. The island of Cyprus, too, came at this time into the permanent possession of Egypt. The native Egyptians he left in the undisturbed enjoyment of their social and religious customs, but admitted none of them to the ruling class, which was distinc- tively Macedonian. His relation to the Jews, and the influence of Greek civilization under him and his successors, will be later considered. Apparently in order to guard against any possible dispute over the succession, Ptolemy I. Soter, two years before his death (b. c. 284), abdicated in favor of his youngest son, Ptolemy II. Philadelphus.
The second Ptolemy was perhaps the most distinguished of the name. Less hindered than his father had been by the necessity of defending the empire against the arabi- ptoi^my n. tious designs of the Syrian rulers, he was able to devote himself with all the im- Phiiadel- mense resources at his command to the object of making his capital the brilliant, undisputed centre of literature and of commerce for the entire civilized world. Alexandria became at this time, in fact, intellectually and commercially what Rome became two centu- ries later politically, — the world's metropolis. Its magnificent lighthouse, which gave its name to all subsequent structures of the kind ; its world-renowned museum and library, the depository even during the present reign, it is said, of 700,000 papyrus rolls ; the home of artists and scholars from every land, among whom history mentions a Stilpo of Megara, Strato the Peripatetic, Theodore, Euclid, Diodorus, Theophrastus, and Menander; the breadth of its culture, which found room for every kind of human learning and furnished us the first translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, — this was the most fitting tribute which the successors of Alexander could have paid to his grand designs, the most splendid monument they could have reared to his memory.
Ptolemy III. Euergetes, as eldest son, succeeded his father on the throne of Egypt (b. c. 246-221). Under him the empire reached the highest pitch of its prosperity. ^^^^^^^ ^jj_ During a brilliant campaign against Antiochus II. of Syria he pushed his way as Euergetes far as Antioch and Babylon, securing in the latter place some of the trophies ™*„^jg„„ which Cambyses had carried away from Egypt three hundred years before, and received, in consequence, from his grateful subjects the surname of " Benefactor," which he ever afterwards bore. Under Ptolemy IV. Philopator, the next monarch (b. c. 221-204), the period of de<reneration set in. He preserved, indeed, the integrity of the empire, signally defeatino- in the°noted battle of Raphia (b. c. 217) the skillful and energetic Antiochus III. the Gre^t, but in his private life was effeminate and sensual in the extreme, and by oppres- sive measures provoked among his Egyptian subjects the first rebellion that had broken out since the Greeks had begun to rule. His only son, Ptolemy V. Epiphanes, a child of five years, succeeded him. Antiochus III. the Great now found the opportunity for which he had been waiting, to retrieve the disaster of Raphia. Joining his forces with those of Philip III. of Macedon he attacked those of Egypt under Skopas in the Valley of the Jordan near Paneas (b. c. 199), and won a victory by which Phoenicia and Ccele-Syria, with Judsea, passed Out of the hands of the Ptolemies into those of the SeleucidiE.
"In this world's debate," as Stanley " calls the series of conflicts between the kings ot Syria and En-ypt, " Palestine was the principal stage across which ' the kings of Affairs in the South,' the Alexandrian Ptolemies, and ' the kings of the North,' the Seleu- P-lestme.
1 Cf. Letronne, Recherch<:s pour servir d VHisMre de VE?ypte, etc. ; LepBius, f "'«'"«* ^'I ^X^uI'^'nL^^"' Re. FtoUmm La-ndi Vita; Champollion-Iigeao, Annates des Lagides, and rey.ew of the same by St. Mart n. .™"'«" j"
Z^P^olemJLgi, der Grunder der S2sUn dgyp.i.chen Dynastie ; ^'''■^^';,^'\^'Y PZtZ So too Th^ vaZs Mslory of Egypt from the Earliest Times; Bernhardy, Grundriss der Oriechmhen f-'''""'«r; . ^ '°° '"^ ™°^^ oil Lai 4te'rs'of the period, and the exceedingly interesting records of the "^onumente^ SklTo/^rP^^ o< Assyrian and Egyptian monuments have been published by Bagster and Sons, under the title Hecords oj uie rast, o. which eleven vols, hare already appeared. See, especially, vol. TiU., pp. 81-90. ■i iii 213.
16 THE APOCRYPHA.
cidse from Antioch, passed to and fro wltli their court intrigues and their incessant armies, their Indian elephants, their Grecian cavalry, their Oriental pomp." Coele-Syria, including Judaea, on the partition of Alexander's empire, had been assigned to Laomedon. It was taken from him by Ptolemy 1. Soter, in the year following his victorious campaign against Perdikkas (b. c. 320), and the walls of Jerusalem, which he entered on the Sabbath, were razed to the ground. At the same time, if the historians of the period are to be trusted, as many as a hundred thousand Jews were carried off to Egypt.^ becoming permanent settlers there, a part in Alexandria, and others in Cyrene, Libya, and even more distant districts of Africa. But the wooded heights of Lebanon and the sea-coasts of Phoenicia were a prize too much coveted to be left uncontested in the hands of Ptolemy. They were wrested from him by Antigonus in the year b. c. 314, to be won back in the great battle of Gaza, two years later, which period (b. c. 312), moreover, was rendered still more memorable as the begin- ning of the Seleucian era. Singularly enough, Seleucus himself was at this time a fugitive in the camp of Ptolemy, where he served as one of the royal guards. The latter's triumph, in turn, was of short duration. Demetrius, who had been defeated at Gaaa, having united his forces with those of his father, succeeded in driving the Egyptians once more from the de- batable provinces, and retained possession of them until the eventful battle of Ipsus (b. c. 301), from which time, for the next hundred years, dates the permanent rule of the Ptolemies in Palestine. It was a fearful scourge to which this little land had been exposed during the twenty-two years of almost incessant war between the forces of Syria and Egypt. It does not surprise us to learn that in addition to those who were forcibly removed, great numbers of Jews voluntarily exiled themselves from their native land. Ptolemy II. Philadelphus manumitted 130,000 who, as the result of the wars under the previous reign, had been brouo-ht as slaves into his empire. It was no less an act of political sagacity than of human- ity. As loyal and useful subjects of Persia and of Alexander the Jews had proved their worth as a support to the throne. Alexander himself had accorded them equal rights with the Macedonians as citizens of Alexandria.^ They were known as a people that could safely be trusted. They had the fear of God before them, and their moral purity and steadfastness were something that, as elements of political strength, even an Oriental monarch knew how to appreciate. In Palestine during the entire reign of the Ptolemies the people were left, for the most part, in the uninterrupted enjoyment of civil and religious freedom. Their pecul- iarities of belief and social usages seem to have been carefully respected. The high priest remained undisturbed in his more than royal prerogatives. If the twenty Syrian talents of silver appointed as yearly tribute were regularly paid, the rest was a matter of comparative indifference.
The following is a list of those who held the high priest's office in the period extending
from the death of Alexander to the reign of Antiochus IV. Epiphanes: Onias I. ^esti^'' (^- "• 331-299); Simon I. the Just (b. c. 299-287); Eleazer (b. c. 287-266);
Manasse (b. c. 266-240); Onias II. (b. c. 240-227); Simon IL (b. c. 226-198); Onias III. (b. o. 198-175); Jason. Under Onias I., was made the treaty of the Jews with the Lacedemonians, an account of which, in an embellished form, is given in 1 Mace. (xii. 20- 23). During the term of office of the next high priest, Simon I., nothing of note occurred. It was under Eleazer that the translation of the Septuagint was undertaken in Alexandria.. Onias II., who seemed, at least in his later years, to have represented the Syrian as over against the Egyptian party in Palestine, came near having serious difficulty with the latter country. For once, the usual tribute was refused. The energetic measures of his ambitious nephew Joseph, who himself collected the money and carried it to the Egyptian court, alone averted the catastrophe. After the battle of Raphia, Ptolemy IV. Phifopator, elated by his victory, entered the temple at Jerusalem, and not only offered sacrifices there, but in spite of the remonstrances of the priests, and the consternation and tears of the entire peo- ple, forced his way into the Holy of Holies. What actually took place there in consequence it is not possible to learn, the account in 3 Maccabees (i. 9, ii. 24) being wholly legendary. But it is certain that he left Jerusalem, inflamed with the deepest hatred towards the Jewish people, and proceeded to vent the same on their innocent brethren in Egypt. A similar case occurred under Onias III. Palestine being at that time already joined to Syria, Heliodorus the treasurer of Seleucus IV. Philopator, inspired by the hope of booty, also made an at- tempt to force his way into the Holy of Holies, but, as we are informed, was miraculously 1 Joa., Antiq., jdl. 1, § 1. 2 Jm., Contra Ap., u. 6.
GENERAL INTRODUCTION. fj
struck down on the threshold as Ptolemy had been, and at last owed Ufe itself to the friendly intercession of the high priest on his behalf.i
Grecian colonization had been one of the controlling ideas of Alexander. Aristotle wrote aibook concerning him which he entitled, " Alexander, or about Colonies." 2 And a marked peculiarity of Alexander's colonies, as of Greek life in general, as it de- eSTu?' veloped itself in foreign lands, was the city. In this it particularly distinguished '"'•"° itself from that of the Asiatics. The one was distinctively ethnic (^e^os) , the other ^"■""''°^- polite (■^■i\is, woKlrns), to use tlie word in its etymological sense. An old Ephesian inscrip- tion erf the Roman period reads : •E(|>6mW i, eo«\), koI i dij^ios Kal tSv &\Ko,y -^XK-hvuiv ai iv r^ •Afft? KaroiKioSam ir.ii^«s K«l r& ?«.-„. It was in this way also, that the Greek civilization extended itself in Palestine. Perdikkas, who wore the signet ring of Alexander, showed his loyalty to the memory of his chief by engaging at once in the rebuilding and Grecizing of Samaria. Dan, to the extreme north, received the name of Paneas in honor of the god Pan, to whom also a temple was built on the neighboring slopes of Hermon. Bethshean, west of Jordan, became Scythopolis, under which name it is known in the second book of Maccabees (xii. 29). On the other side of the river sprang up new cities, with such names as Hippos, Gadara; and further to the souda, Pella and Dion; forming with some others, the Decapolis of Josephus and the New Testament, and all being, as is evident from their names, of Macedo- nian or Greek origin. In honor of the second of the Ptolemies, the place known as Rabbath Ammon was changed to Philadelphia, and the ancient capital of the Moabites, Ar-Moab, received at about the same time the more euphonious titie of Areopolis. Along the Phoeni- cian coast, the evidences of Greek life were still more marked. Old cities were rebuilt and repeopled, and new cities founded with a zeal and rapidity unknown before in the Orient. Straton's Tower, — afterwards known as CiBsarea on the sea, — Gaza, Dora, Apollonia, An- thedon, were some of the many seaports which sprang up during these eventful years, and drew to them across the blue Mediterranean, a swarming, adventurous population from the fatherland. In all these places Greek life dominated, the Greek language was spoken, the morals and the immorality of Hellas practiced with but little change. Of the whole of Pales- tine, Judaea alone remained, as yet, comparatively free from the transforming influence of Greek ideas. There was but little in its thin soil to tempt cupidity, and its people were not of the sort to take kindly to an influx of strangers. Still it was completely girdled with the new civilization. It could not shut wholly out, if it would, the silvery tones of the Greek tongue; it could not remain insensible to the charms of Greek art ; it might even have its weak side for the feasts, games, and holiday extravagances of its neighbors from the West. It was, at least, a question whose answer could not long be delayed.
It is, however, by no means to be supposed that Judaism was confined to Judsea. We have already seen that as a result of the fearful devastations to which Palestine was continually subject under the successors of Alexander, large numbers of Jews Alexandria" were forced to seek an asylum in other lands. Of all the peoples of the Orient »°<l "'^i- naturally the most seelusive and exclusive, they came, at last, by the mere force of circumstances, that is, the force of divine Providence, to rival the Greeks themselves in their capacity for diffusion and their cosmopolitan character. If we had reason to wonder that so many of them, two centuries before, firmly declined to return from their banishment in Persia and Babylon, much more is it now an occasion of surprise that they voluntarily leave their homes — it is true that emigration was also sometimes compulsory — to go forth as merchants, bankers, artisans, but always as Jews, into every part of the inhabited globe, and that in all the great cities of Syria, Asia Minor, Greece, and Italy, they make their homes side by side with the teeming colonists of Hellas and Macedon. The higher explana- tion is found in the fact that Judaism had something to give as well as to receive. We are too likely to forget, in contemplating the magnificent service which the Grecian language and philosophy did for the Jewish faith and people, the still more magnificent and beneficent ser- vice that a developed and transformed Jewish faith did for Greece and for all mankind. Especially in Alexandria did the Jewish influence make itself felt. The first colonists had been particularly favored with the friendship and patronage of Alexander and the early Ptolemies. If many went, at first, unwillingly into the land of their former bondage, a larger number soon followed them of their own choice. All departments of industry were open to them. While devoting themselves principally to trade, some also rose to eminence as soldiers, 1 See 2 Maec. iii. 4-40 2 Cf. Starke, p. 449, and Droysen, iii. (1), 32.
2
18 THE APOCRYPHA.
statesmen, and men of learning. In the practice of their religion and the observance of their national customs they were, for a long time, unmolested. To such an extent did they thrive and increase that at the time of Philo they numbered a million souls, and two of the five wards of Alexandria were exclusively occupied by them. Not only were the Alexandrian Jews the most numerous of the Dispersion, they were also the most influential. Of this en- tire class, indeed, wherever they might be, Alexandria was the intellectual and spiritual centre, as was Jerusalem for the Jews of Palestine.
It is a significant fact, on whatever ground it may rest, and looked at either from an Egyp- tian or Palestinian point of view, that in the ancient, sacred city of Heliopolis otHcibpo- a rival temple could be erected (b. c. 160?), and that henceforth, until the time '■'• of Vespasian, it should continue to maintain its service and have its own priests,
Levites, and landed property. No better evidence of the relaxing influence of Greek civiliza- tion could be desired than this willingness to accept a dilapidated shrine of heathenism as the basis of a temple to Jehovah, or of the growth of a new method of Scripture interpreta- tion such as afterwards culminated in the writings of Philo, than the ability to twist the poetic language of Isaiah so that it should be made to contain a direct approval of this more than doubtful undertaking.! It was regarded with distrust in Palestine, and although having no very deep or permanent influence in Egypt was still a marked symptom of the divisive spirit that characterized the later Judaism. Already under Ptolemy IV. Philopator, the Jews in Egypt, for reasons not difficult to conceive, had begun to lose favor alike with prince and people. Some envied them their prosperity. More hated them on account of their ex- clusiveness, their extravagant assumptions as an elect people, and especially, their ill-con- cealed disgust at the ignorant idolatry that prevailed about them. Hence, the favor of the court being withdrawn, the proverbial lawlessness of the Egyptians broke forth into open and bitter persecutions, some faint reflection of which has been preserved in the fabulous stories of the Third Book of Maccabees.
AVe have already alluded to the brilliant constellation of learned men, who, from the times of the Ptolemies, for hundreds of years made Alexandria the acknowledged literary The Septua- metropolis of the entire world. Until the second century after Christ the most renowned physicinns, philosophers, astronomers, philologists, and even theolo- gians, received here their training. The first five librarians, Zenodotus, Callimachus, Eras- tostbenes, Apollonius, and Aristophanes the Byzantine, were as distinguished for their culture as for the high position which they occupied. Two of the Ptolemies themselves did not think it beneath them to be reckoned with Manetho as writers of history. Among the poets may be mentioned Aratus, Nicander, and Theocritus. The astronomers of Alexandria were the first to reduce the science to a system, introduced the improved calendar at the time of Julius Cae- sar, and gave the names and divisions to the fixed stars, which they still bear. Naturally, all this literary activity could not but make a deep impression on the hundreds of thousands of Israelites who had their home in the Egyptian capital. And among them too, at this period, sprang up a literature of no inconsiderable proportions, fragments of which still remain. They had their own historians : Demetrius, Eupolemus, Cleodemus, and Jason of Cyrene; and their own poets: the dramatist Ezekiel, Philo the elder, and Theodotus. Aristobulus, at the same time a Jewish priest and a disciple of Aristotle, as also a teacher or counselor to the king, even made the attempt to Hebraize the entire literature of Greece, inaun-uratino' a movement whose best known representative before the Christian era was the youno-er Philo and whose culmination was in the Neo-Platonic philosophy of Ammonius Saccas in the third century after Christ. In the midst of this intellectual ferment it is scarcely needful to say that the Hebrew Scriptures, outside as well as inside the circle of those who invested them with a sacred character, attracted to themselves serious attention. That a demand arose for their complete translation into Greek, the language here universally spoken, was a necessity of the case. And the demand was not confined to Egypt. Greek colonization, in whose quick steps a Jewish colonization almost as extensive had followed, had gone into all lands to mark the favored spots for new life and prepare the way for it. Commerce with its thou- sands of white-winged messengers awaited its orders under the friendly shadow of the Alex- andrian Pharos. The time was, evidently, already ripe for the first beginnings of the move-
1 Cf. Stanley, iii. 251-2B4.
'i Of. Bohl ; Srankel's Vorstudien: Pritisohe In Herzog's Real-Encyk.,ti.ni in Sohenkel's Bib. Lex., ad voc. ; and Smith'. a'6. Diet., Art. "Scptuaglnt." o""ui .
GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 19
oient in whose crowning issue an apostle Paul afterwards found the goal and glory of his earthly life.
There are stories enough concerning the origin of the LXX., but their utter untrustworthi- ness, in many respects, can easily be proved. They sprang from a natural desire to give to the translation the character of an authoritative, inspired work. It is, t'k'LXX. perhaps, the wisest course to reject them all, in their details, and to fall back on *''°''"™^ '• the simple necessity that ruled the hour. The work was doubtless begun as early as under Ptolemy 11. Philadelphus, and was essentially complete when the son of Sirach came to Egypt in the reign of Ptolemy VII. Physeon.i That the translators were exclusively learned men, invited from Palestine to Egypt for this purpose, is incredible, almost as much so as that each one of the Seventy, without collusion with the others, made precisely the same version. The feeling in Palestine concerning it is better represented by the words used to signalize the day when it was first introduced into the synagogues of Alexandria and Egypt : " The Law is Greek! Darkness! Let there be a three days' fast!" Among the Jews of the world- capital, on the other hand, the event was greeted with every expression of joy. Unlike their brethren of Palestine, they looked forward rather than backward and expected only the best results from a closer comparison of Moses with Pythagoras and Plato. Of the criti- cal value of the version of the LXX. this is not the place to speak.^ And we reserve also, until a later period, a description of the various works of a mixed Jewish and Greek char- acter, which followed close upon it and of which it was the more or less direct occasion.
It is now time to return to the political history of the Jews of Palestine, which we left at the point where, subsequent to the battle of Paneas (b. o. 199), it fell with Phoe- The seleud- nicia and the whole of Coele-Syria into the hands of Antioehus III. the Great. <'»'• Antio- This change of rulers well accorded with the wishes of the masses of the people, and Seleu- especially after the first mild treatment of the Syrian king led them to contrast °™ it favorably with that to which they had more recently been subjected. But the satisfaction. experienced was of short duration. Under Egyptian rule Palestine and especially Judsea, as we have seen, had been left, for the most part, to itself, except when the exigencies of the unceasing conflict with Syria called temporarily into it the armies of its rulers. So it could not remain under the Seleucidse. Greek influence had already become too deeply rooted on every side. The social and commercial as well as geographical connections with Antiooh and Damascus were other than those with Alexandria had been. From the first transfer- rence, therefore, of political allegiance from the kingdom of the South to that of the North, a strong Syrian party showed itself at Jerusalem. A Syrian party, it may becalled, for that was the special direction which it took, although it aimed at nothing less than a radical mod- ification, if not the total abolishment of that which had hitherto separated the Jews from their heathen neighbors, in short, a thorough Hellenizing of Judaism in its stronghold. ^ What the immediate results would have been, if the sagacious Antioehus III. had been free to foster in the beginning this movement having its origin in a deteriorated popular taste, it is impossible to say. But his attention and entire resources were soon absorbed in the great campaign against the Romans under the two Scipios, which ended so disastrously for him at Mao-nesia (b. c. 190). And being now compelled to purchase a peace at the most extrava- gant pecuniary cost, he did not hesitate to lay his hands on the needed treasures wherever in his kingdom he could find them. He lost his life, in fact, while engaged in pillaging a tem- ple (b. c. 187). The policy of his son, Seleucus IV. Philopator, significantly called in the book of Daniel (xi. 20) a, " raiser of taxes," was not, on the whole, of such a nature in its relation to the Jews as to strengthen the hands of a Syrian party in Palestine, but quite the contrary. It was his treasurer, Heliodorus, of whom we have before spoken as having made an unsuccessful and humiliating attempt to secure for his master the supposed untold sums that were concealed in the temple on Mount Moriah. A short time subsequently (b. c. 176) the king perished at the hands of this same Heliodorus, after an unimportant reign of eleven years.
It was during the sovereignty of his successor and brother, the unscrupulous Antioehus IV. Epiphanes, tha° affairs in Juda;a reached the fearful crisis towards which they had long been tending. The importance of this reign in its bearings on the whole subsequent history of Ju-
1 Cf. remarks in Intrnd. to Bcclesiasticus, under Date. .no .„t,.„ki oh.
2 Of. Kuenen, iii. 214-216 ; the works of Frankel cited in the Index of Authorities, and Thiersch, De fmtaleucu, »m. S See 1 Mace. i. 11, ff.
20 THE APOCRYPHA;
daism will justify our dwelling more at length upon it. Such a character as that of Antioohus , J. . Epiphanes it is difficult to comprehend, much less to describe. It is marked by the
IV. Epph- most startling contrasts, well illustrated in the double name the people gave him: °"^°' Epiphanes, the illustrious, and Epimanes, the madman. Personally brave, gener-
ous, at times, even to prodigality, a lover of art, spending immense sums on the erection of magnificent buildings, he was, at the same time, possessed of an ineffable self-esteem, a self- esteem which did not keep him from the most abominable vices, and never rose to the dig- nity of true self-respect. While treating the noblemen about him with the utmost haughti- ness, arrogating to himself both the title and the prerogatives of deity, he was, at the same time, on familiar terms with the lowest of the people; offered himself as a candidate for petty offices; went tooting about the streets in the character of a strolling musician, and shared with the actors at the theatres in their lewdest scenes. The historian Polybius (xxvi. 10) deemed some of his eccentricities worthy of record. He says of him: "Just as though, at times, he had slipped away from the servants of the palace, he made his appearance, here and therej in the city, sauntering about in the company of one or two persons. Quite often he might be found in the workshops of the gold and silver smiths where he chatted with the molders and other workmen, and gave them to understand that he was a lover of art. Then again, he gave himself up to confidential intercourse with the next best fellows among the people and chaffered with strangers of the common sort who happened to be present. When, how- ever, he learned that young people, somewhere or other, were having a carousal, without waiting to be announced, he came marching up with horn and bagpipe in revelling style so
that the majority of the guests, horrified at the strange spectacle, took themselves off
Intelligent people, therefore, did not know what to make of him. Some thought he was a
simple, unaffected man; others, that he had lost his wits In the sacrifices which he
caused to be offered up in the cities, and in the honors which he paid to the gods, he was sur- passed by no other king. Of this the temple of Jupiter at Athens and the statues about the altar at Delos are proof. He used, also, to frequent the public baths when they were quite full of common people, at which times, moreover, he had brought to him vessels of the most costly ointment. A person once said to him: ' How happy are you kings that you can have such ointment, and exhale such delightful odors? ' Thereupon, on the following day, with- out having said anything to the man, he went to the place where he bathed and had a huge vessel of the most precious ointment, the so-called stacte, poured over his head. Upon this all got up and plunged in, in order to bathe themselves with the ointment. But on account of the slipperiness of the floor they fell down and excited laughter. The king himself, also, was one of them." Such was tie kind of man that the people of Judasa now had over them. The throne he had got by treachery, and began his reign by a war against Egypt in defense
of an injustice. In the first campaign he was successful, and in the beginning IV. Epipha- of tiie second also, but being finally compelled to retreat, he vented his discomfi- "cOTtinued). *"'"^ "" *'^^ temple at Jerusalem. Four times in as many successive years (b. c.
171-168), his armies marched the now familiar road to the land of the pyramids. The last time it was the Roman legate, Popilius Laenas, whom he was obliged to face, and who drawing a circle around him in the sand, bade him decide before he crossed it, for peace or war with the great empire of the West. With gnashing of teeth Antiochus betook him- self homeward, letting out the full flood of his ungovernable passions, as once before, on the people of Judaea and Jerusalem. It was his conduct at this time, that was the direct occasion of the so-called revolt of the Maccabees. Immediately on his accession, had begun at Jerusa- lem the struggle between the sympathizers with Greek customs, and their determined oppo- nents. ^ For one hundred and fifty years, Greek civilization had been developing itself on every side. It had made startling progress in the very centre of the Israelltish religion. The moral nerve was beginning also here to lose its tensity. It was a sad omen for the future, that about this time, under one pretense or another, an embassy could be sent from Jerusa- lem to witness the heathenish games in honor of Hercules at Tyre.'
Onias HI. was now high priest, and a firm and courageous representative of the ancestral Profanation ^*'"'' '^" °^'' brother, Jason, who had become Hellenized, as it will be seen, of the high even to his name, stood at the head of the opposing party, and persuaded the pnost'8 of- king to transfer by force, to him, the sacred office held by Onias. Once in power
he used all the influence at his command to induce a wide-spread apostasy amon» 1 Cf 2 Mace. iv. 9-20. °
GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 21
the people. Among other devices he caused to be erected close beside the temple-mountain, a gymnasium, after the Greek style, and invited to its frivolous sports, not only the youth of Jerusalem, but found means also, to seduce even the priests from their duties at the altar, that they might be present at its thronged entertainments. But as Jason had unjustly possessed liimself of the high priesthood, so he lost it through injustice. Menelaus, another devotee of the new ideas, simply offered Antiochus a higher tribute than Jason was paying, and got the office. The latter, however, did not leave him long in peace. While the king was absent on his second expedition against Egypt, he took possession of Jerusalem for a time with his retainers, and compelled his rival to flee to the citadel. Antiochus. professing to look upon this act of Jason as a rebellion on the part of his Jewish subjects, on his return took fearful vengeance on temple and people. But their cup was not yet full. Two years later, as we have said, after his humiliating rencontre with the legate of Rome, he came back to give full proof of the intensity and demoniacal depths of his passionate nature. The Jews seem to have given him no new occasion for fresh complaints.
But it was quite unnecessary. He was in one of his hellish moods. Before the ivTav6a PovXfiov of the Roman power he had been compelled to give way. Here, at least, „ j^^umim- were those who were weftker than he; they should feel the weight of his iron hand, tion of deso- Besides, Judaism had never had the opportunity of showing to him, as to Cyrus and Alexander, its better side. Perhaps he would have been incapable of appreciating it, if he had seen it. If unusual moral stamina, and a rare industry and prosperity were developed within it, the one might have served simply to challenge his hostility, and the other have been a temptation to his cupidity and chronic impecuniosity. What he had seen most of, the ambition of a Jason, and the meanness of a Menelaus, were certainly not of a nature to en- courage him to prosecute his inquiries. Enough that he who began by despising Judaism, had now come bitterly to hate it, and resolved to sweep it at a stroke from the face of the earth. At a review of troops in the environs of Jerusalem, on the Sabbath, Apolloniiis, his general, began an indiscriminate massacre of the spectators, and followed it up with the plundering of the defenseless city. Antiochus had given orders further, that on pain of death, all sacrifices and services peculiar to the temple should cease, the Sabbath be no more observed, circumcision nowhere practiced, the sacred books be destroyed, and that idol wor- ship should be universally introduced. The altar of the temple on Mount Moriah was spe- cially named as a place to be thus desecrated. With terrific thoroughness did the unfeeling soldiery enter upon the execution of these orders of the king. And as it was not simply a place, but a people and a system, which had been devoted to overthrow, so it mattered not where in the Syrian empire a Jew might be found, he was exposed to the same frenzied as- saults. To have in one's possession a copy of the law, to refuse, on being commanded, to eat swine's flesh, sacrifice to an idol, or to participate in Bacchanalian processions crowned with garlands of ivy in honor of Dionysos, was a sufficient pretext for the most unheard-of cruel- ties. On the 16th of Chisleu — the date could never be forgotten — Mount Moriah itself was dedicated to Jupiter, and a heathen shrine placed over the sacred altar. Ten days later a herd of swine were driven into the temple precincts, and their subsequent sacrifice com- pleted the desecration. This was the " abomination of desolation " ($S(\vy,ia. ipm^d.a^''^, 1 Mace. i. 54), the synonym, in all later Jewish history, of infamous wickedness and of humiUation to the uttermost. With not a few these efforts to enforce submission succeeded. They were those who had been the first to run to the gymnastic performances which Jason and Mene- laus maintained at the expense of the temple. But there were many others who still pre- ferred death to paganism, and Antiochus, to his astonishment, soon discovered that an army of twenty-two thousand men was quite too small for the object he had in view. At first, re- sistance was passive, but none the less heroic and inspiring. A few such examples as that of the gray-haired Eleazer, who manfully confronted his tormentors with the words: "I will «how myself such an one as my age requires, and leave a notable example to those who are young, to die willingly and courageously for our honored and holy laws," could not long re- main without effect. j- i i • i ^
The immediate occasion of the armed revolt was as follows: Emissaries of the king naQ erected a heathen altar at the little village of Modein, a few miles out from Jerusa- ^^^ ^^^^^^^ lem. It was the home of an aged priest Mattathias, with the family name Asmo- nsBUS, the father of five stalwart sons, and a man widely known and respected. He, amon„ others was summoned to offer idolatrous sacrifices on this altar. He publicly and boldly re-
22 THE APOCRYPHA.
fused, and seeing a man who was a Jew upon the point of doing it, he rushed upon him and slew him. Whereupon the Syrian officers also were put to death, and the altar they had erected destroyed with the cry: "Whosoever is zealous for the law and maintaineth the covenant let him follow me." Mattathias with his two sons, and a few others, now plunged info the neio-hboring wilderness where forces might be safely collected, and time gained for reflection o °er the course to be pursued. This was the small beginning of that great politico- religious movement, by means of which the Jewish people, after more than four hundred years of foreign domination, gained again their independence. It is a thrilling story, which will never los"e its cliarrp as long as men love freedom, admire unselfish heroism, and hate oppression. It is only possible for us here to touch upon the more salient points of the history, and it is also unnecessary, since it is to be found in full in the books of the Maccabees that follow. Mattathias himself continued but for a little while at the head of the patriotic band which flocked to his standard, but in dying, recommended Judas, his son, as leader, with the words : "But as for Judas Maccabajus, he has been mighty and strong, even from his youth up; let him be your captain, and fight the battles of the people." i The sequel proved that the choice had been well made.
Judas Maceabajus was really the hero of the whole conflict, and properly gave his name to the party and movement of which he was the soul. A childlike piety, a womanly Steur""" tenderness towards the weak, good common sense that could see at once the point at issue,- were united in his nature with a courage that flinched at no hardship and was appalled at no danger. The army that followed him, if so it might be called, was always scanty enough, but like Gideon he did not hesitate, at times, to reduce its numbers still more by sifting out the timid and the unresolved. The blast of his trumpet, as his ene- mies soon discovered, meant nothing less than doing and daring to the utmost limit of human strength. He first defeated ApoUonius, entering upon the engagement with the battle cry : "Eleazer, the help of God ; " then Seron; and again, an immense army under Nicanor and Gorgias ; and finally, Lysias himself, and opened thereby for his troops once more the way to Jerusalem and the temple. On the 25(h of Chisleu, exactly three years from the date of its desecration, the purified altar was again dedicated to Jehovah and sacrifices offered amidst universal rejoicings. Since this time the Jews have ever continued to observe the recurrence of the day as the " Feast of Dedication," and no festival awakens among them more grateful memories. Soon after occurred in the far East the death of Antioehus Epipha- nes (b. c. 164) under circumstances that could not but encourage the persecuted people still more to hope for the final success of their cause. Judas Maccabseus, in the mean time, set forward his well-begun work. At first, he engaged in a successful expedition against the Edomites to the south, then met, for the second time, Lysias at Bethsur, where, for once, -his little band were forced to retire before the overwhelming odds that were brought against them, and a beloved brother, the brave Eleazer, lost his life. Then followed the brief truce and apparently friendly intercourse with Nicanor, broken off by his treachery, and the battle of Caphar Salama, in which this Syrian general was among the slain. It was at this time that Judas, recognizing the importance of securing auxiliaries, against the advice of some of his adherents sent a delegation to Rome to ask for an alliance.^ He did it the more willingly because he had learned that " none of them wore a crown, or was clothed in purple, to be exalted above his fellow citizens." A treaty was made, but, as it would seem, before its con- ditions could well have been known, Judas was called upon to meet once more, and for the last time, the hosts of the Syrians under Bacchides. The disparity between his forces and those of his antagonist would have driven any other than the lion-hearted Maccabee to de- spair. His officers sought to dissuade him from the conflict with the promise to take it up afterwards when circumstances were more favorable. But his memorable answer was : " God forbid that I should do this thing and flee away from them. If our time be come let us die manfully for our brethren and leave behind no stain upon our honor! " These are the last recorded words of the heroic soldier. The battle was accepted. Judas personally fought with bis usual intrepidity and success. But his followers being overpowered, he was set upon from behind and lost his life (b. c. 160). His two brothers, however, Jonathan and Simon, thoughtless of danger to themselves, rescued his body from the thronging, exultant foe, and it was buried in the family tomb at Modein. Great was the lamentation which went up for him throughout Judaea, and its burden was like that which had been heard for Saul 1 1 Mace. U. 66. 2 Cf. 1 Maoo. viU.
GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 23
and for Jonathan: " How is the valiant fallen that delivered Israel ! " We are not surnrised that m the olden time fancy loved to dwell upon this inspiring name, or that so many friendiv pens were ready to depict with heightened coloring the struggle in which so noble a life was
63FCriIlC6Cl>
It was a serious task which Jonathan, the youngest son of Mattathias, who had been elected to hll the place of Judas, had now before him. Without the presti<re of Judas Maccabaeus, called upon with a dispirited handful of troops to confront the victo- Jo^th^"- rious army of Bacchides, it is doubtful how the conflict would have terminated if a "•°""~^*^- diversion in his favor had not occurred in the political affairs of Syria. One Alexander Balas, who gave himself out for a son of Antiochus Epiphanes, laid claim to the throne which Demetrms I. Soter (b. c. '162-150), had already, for ten years, had in possession. Both parties naturally sought an alliance with the Asmonajan chief and strove to outdo each other m the magnificence of their offers for his support. From Alexander Jonathan received in addition to all the rest, a purple mantle, a golden crown, and the promise of the hio-h priest's office, which, since the death of the infamous Alcimus (b. c. 159), had remained vacant. As the party which Alexander represented was supported by nearly all the kin<Ts of the neighboring lands and had, by far, the best promise of success, Jonathan did not fono- hesi- tate to give it his own influence. At the same time, also, he accepted the generous°terms offered, and put on the pontifical robes at the Feast of Tabernacles in the year b. c. 152. From this time the Asmonasau family ruled in Judaea. The dependence on Syria, however,' still continued, arid the land for a considerable period was more or less involved in the strug- gles among rival claimants for the crown. One of these, named Tryphon, having by artifice got Jonathan into his power, treacherously put him to death in the year B. c. 143.
But one son of Mattathias, Simon, already an old man, now remained. He had been the trusted counselor of the family from the first. He was still vigorous in mind and body. In a speech that he made at this time for the encouragement of the people, b'? T43-135 he said: "You yourselves know what great things I and my brothers and my father's house have done for the laws and the sanctuary, the battles also, and troubles we have seen by reason whereof all my brethren are slain for Israel's sake, and I am left alone. Now, therefore, be it far from me that I should spare my own life in any time of trouble, for I am no better than my brethren." Under the influence of these touching words the people were roused to the highest pitch of enthusiasm, and cried out, with a loud voice: "Thou shalt be our leader instead of Judas and Jonathan thy .brother." 1 There was no one better fitted than he to execute the sacred trust which by natural right, as well as the vote of the people, had been thus committed to him. What Judas by hard blows had won, what Jona- than by a sagacious policy had preserved and increased, that was now to be carried on to its natural conclusion, namely, complete freedom from a foreign yoke and the reestablishment of the Jewish commonwealth unimpaired. In accomplishing this object, Simon was greatly aided, as Jonathan had been, by the internal divisions of the Syrian empire. Tryphon, who in the murder of the child Antiochus VI., whose interests he had professed to represent, had thrown off the mask he had hitherto worn, was contesting by force of arms the throne with Demetrius II. The latter, in order to win for himself their support, at the request of Simon, not only remitted to the Jews all past and future dues for taxes, but confirmet! them in the possession of certain fortresses which for prudential reasons they had occupied and provis- ioned against any political emergency that might arise, and expressed his willingness, for the future, to receive Jewish ofiicers into his army and at his court. It was a high day for Israel when this news was proclaimed, and from this year (b. c. 143), they were accustomed, as well on coins as on public and private contracts, to date their national independence. Beautiful is the picture which the historian gives of the latter part of the reign of Simon, especially when contrasted with the stormy, troublous times of Judas and of Jonathan. He "made peace in the land; and Israel rejoiced with great joy ; for every man sat under his fig-tree and there was none to terrify him, nor was any left in the land to fight against them." ' In the midst of great public rejoicings Simon drove out the remnants of the Syrian party which for forty years had held possession of the citadel in Jerusalem. He enlarged the boundaries of the country, encouraged the peaceful pursuits of agriculture, had an excellent harbor con- structed at Joppa, cleared the land of idolaters, enriched and beautified the temple, renewed under the most friendly auspices former treaties with the LacedEemonians and Romans; and by 1 1 Mace. xiii. 3-8. 2 See 1 Mace. xiT. 11, 12.
24 THE APOCRYPHA.
a course at once firm and conciliatory held in check that factious and partisan spirit which was already beginning to manifest itself with ominous power among the people. So great was the gratitude and admiration that were felt for Simon that a brazen tablet inscribed with his deeds and those of his family was set up to his honor in the temple, and the office of prince and hitrh priest (rijovij.€vos Kai apxiepevs) was made hereditary in his house " until there should arise a faithful prophet." ^ But like every other member of his family he, too, was destined to meet a violent death. Through the treachery of an ambitious son-in-law, Ptolemy, whom he had made governor of the district of Jericho, he together with his two sons, Mattathias and Judas, was assassinated in a most dastardly manner after a reign of eight years (b. C. 135).
Simon was succeeded in both the offices which he had clothed with so much honor by his T ^ TT son, John Hyrcanus. The first part of his reign was marked by ill success. Hin-
Jonn Hyrca- ' .' ^ , . -i i -rt^ i i. j * i •
nns. dered, through fear of evil consequences to his mother, whom Jrtolemy bad in ms
B. 0. 136-105. po^gy^ froin avenging the murder of Simon, he was at the same time compelled to make a humiliating treaty with Antiochus "VII. Sidetes, who had invaded Palestine and shut Hyrcanus up in Jerusalem. Subsequently, thanks anew to the contentions of rival fac- tions in Syria, and the friendship of the Romans, he gradually threw off again the foreign yoke, conquered, and thoroughly wasted Samaria to the north, and on the south compelled the Edomites to adopt the Jewish faith, including the rite of circumcision. This is one of the most memorable examples in Israelitish history of an attempt to enforce conversion, and is especially noticeable as having brought with it its own swift retribution. To these same cir- cumcised Edomites belonged the family of that Herod who afterwards became the "evil genius of the Asmonjeans." ^ We reserve until later an account of the violent party spirit, especially between the Pharisees and Sadducees, which now began to rage. Hyrcanus had the sagacity to adopt, in general, a wise middle course, although driven, as it would seem, late in life to take sides positively with the Sadducees. The extant coins of this reign are interesting as showing that the people still retained their political rights tinimpaired. They bear the inscription: " John the high priest and the Commonwealth of the Jews;" or "John, the high priest. Head of the Jewish Commonwealth." The assembly (yepovtrla), afterwards developing into the Sanhedrin, was able to make its voice heard in all matters afifeoting the public weal. On the whole, the long reign of Hyrcanus may be characterized as brilliantly successful. Josephus,' while giving him the title of prince and high priest, also ascribes to him the gift of prophecy. Under liim the Jewish people reached a degree of prosperity which had been unknown before, since the days of Solomon and David. But with him, too, that prosperity reached its culmination. The history that follows is little else than a sad record of domestic feuds and the intrigues of rival parties, until, after a little more than a single generation, the Roman power, at first invited in to arbitrate, stayed to dictate and to rule.
Aristobulus I., the eldest of the sons of Hyrcanus, was designated by the latter for the Aristobulus ^^°^ priesthood, while the political sovereignty was left to his widow. Such a I. B. 0. 105- change in the traditional order of government did not at all suit the ambitious Aristobulus, and he soon found means to remove his mother from the throne and cast her, together with his brothers, into prison. One brother alone, Antigonus, he per- mitted to share the government with him. Aristobulus was the first of the Asmonsean family who claimed for himself the title of king, and of all that had hitherto ruled he was the least worthy of it. His real name was Judas, and one might suppose that he would have borne it with pride in honor of the heroic Maccabasus, but his devotion to Greek ideas was predomi- nant. He was even known among his subjects under the contemptuous nickname of Phil- hellen (^iXeWnv), lover of the Greeks. He caused a Greek title to be inscribed on the national coins along with various emblems, which, in the eyes of a real Pharisee of the time, must have made contact with them seem almost like a transgression of the ceremonial law.* In the mean time, the leaven of dissension continued ominously to do its work. Antio-onus, the best loved brother, fell a victim to the intrigues of the court and the suspicions of the king, whose own painful death followed soon after.
It was one of the hitherto imprisoned brothers of Aristobulus I., Alexander Jannseus, who succeeded him, making Alexandra (Heb., Salome), the former's widow, who had released him
1 See 1 Maco. xiv. 41. 2 Cf. Holtzmann, idem, p. 28.
8 Anliq., xiii. 10, §§ 6, 7. 4 Cf. Graetz, iii. 103, and Sohuier, p 118.
GENBEAIi INTRODUCTION. 25
from prison, his wife. His long reign was one continued series of conflicts with foreign and domestic foes. He had inherited the warlike spirit and taste of his ancestors, but ,,
.... . IP lA'i Alexanaer
Without their sagacity or sell control. At one time his whole kingdjom was at the Jannrous.
mercy of Ptolemy of Cyprus, and was saved to liim only by the friendly inter- "'"' ^''*"^^- vention of the latter's mother and bitter opponent, Cleopatra of Egypt. At a later period his arms were more successful, and he made important conquests on the western coasts. But in its fearfully disastrous effects on the land of Judaea these troubles from without were greatly overshadowed by those from within. Partisan spirit had made gigantic strides among the people since the death of Simon. The going over of the court, at the time of Hyrcanus, to the side of the Sadducees, liad not been the means of weakening the opposing, popular party, but quite the contrary. During his campaign against foreign enemies Alexan- der had been able to keep tolerably clear of strife at home. But it was rather due, on both sides, to lack of occasion than of will. The high priest and king seems, indeed, to have been thoroughly despised and hated by the majority of his subjects. That there were sufficient grounds for it other than the mere spirit of party is evident. His ideas of ruling as well as his vices, were but little removed from those of a Belshazzar or an Ahasuerus. Daily, at his repasts, he flouted the self-respect of his subjects by intercourse with courtesans and the wildest sensual excesses. How could it be overlooked by those in whom the memory of the simplicity and self-renunciation of the Maccabasan period was still green ? The first overt acts of rebellion took place at the Feast of Tabernacles. It was customary for the high priest on. this occasion to make a libation of water from a silver basin upon the altar. But the practice was of Pharisaic origin, and, therefore, with the intention of casting contempt upon it, the king, in this case, instead of pouring the water upon the altar simply poured it upon the ground. A fearful popular tumult was the result, and those who were present in the temple, excited almost to frenzy, ventured even to pelt the king and high priest while en- gao'ed in his ofiicial duties with the citrons and other soft fruits with which, at such times, they were abundantly provided. The irascible Alexander was not the person to submit tamely to such an insult. He called up at once his foreign mercenaries, and six thousand persons were mercilessly cut down within the precincts of the temple. The hatred of the Pharisaic party was now inflamed to the last degree and the land became divided, as it were, into two great hostile camps, such as had existed in the evil times of the feuds between Judah and Israel. Shortly afterwards, Alexander, in a conflict with an Arab prince, fell into an ambuscade, lost his entire army, and escaped himself to Jerusalem only with his lite. This was the opportunity for which his enemies had waited. A rebellion broke out that lasted si.^ years, and was suppressed only with the aid of foreign troops, and at the cost of fifty thou- sand lives of Jewish subjects. In one stage of it the king was desirous of peace. He in- quhed of the Pharisees with what terms they would be satisfied. Their reply well illustrates the utter impassableness of the gulf that divided the conflicting parties : " The first condition to a permanent peace," was the defiant answer, "is thy death." Success subsequently crowning the arms of the king he had eight hundred of the leading rebels crucified in his presence, and while they were still alive their wives and children slaughtered before their eyes. Eicrht thousand others sought an asylum in foreign lands, a part in Syria and the rest in E«ryptr The last days of Alexander, if we may trust the account of Josephus, were clcwded with misgivings, and he bitterly regretted the unwise course he had taken with his opponents. Accordmg to another authority, however, he cherished his old feehngs to the end, and strove to dispel the anxious forebodings of the queen with the words : " Fear not the Pharisees, and fear not those who are not Pharisees. But fear the hypocrites -the varnished Pharisees — whose acts are the acts of Zimri, and who claim the reward ot i^hme- has." Be this as it may, the Pharisees did not change in their feelings toward the king, but, with a rare display of intolerance and narrow-mindedness, long celebrated the anniversary
o£ his death as a festival. .,
Alexandra, who now became regent, appointed her eldest son, Hyrcanus H., a facile young man without, strength of character, as high priest. Whatever may have been the ^^^^^^ advice given her by the late king, she acted, at least, on the principle that his poi- ^, „. j8-69. icy toward the Pharisees had been radically wrong. Her own was j,ust the op- posite of it. They were among her chief counselors. Josephus says of her: She ruled oyer others whUe she herself was ruled by the Pharisees." ^ She restored again to their full
1 Antiq., xiii. 16, § 2.
26 THE APOCRYPHA.
force the various statutes which they had introduced and which, since the time of John Hyr- canus, had to a greater or less extent been disregarded. Thousands of prominent citizens, who, during the previous reign, had fled tlie country, were invited to return. The Sanhe- drin, under the direction of the queen's supposed brother, Simon ben Shetah, and that of Judah ben Tabbai, took on a wholly different character. Important alterations were made in the services of the temple; new festivals were appointed, and the code relating to punish- ments not a Uttle changed. In short, a general reaction took place, and, like all reactions of this cliaracter, especially when occurring under the influence of partisan zeal, it went too far. The Sadducees, in turn, became the persecuted party, and, among others, one of their most noted leaders, Diogenes, a favorite counselor of Alexander Jannseus, fell a victim to the bloody excesses of their opponents. A spirit of retaliation ruled the hour. At last, the queen's own son, Aristobulus II., headed a delegation, which petitioned the crown for a ces- sation of tliese unjustly discriminating, partisan measures. Still later, the same son revolted against the government, and bad already got some of the most important fortresses of the land into his possession, when tlie queen died.
And now began, between the two brothers Aristobulus and Hyrcanus, with their adherents, Aristobulus t'""^ eventful struggle for supremacy which ended with the haughty interference of II., B. c. 69- the Roman power and the irremediable loss of national independence. Unable to Roman arbi- withstand the superior force which Aristobulus brouglit against him, Hyrcanus tration. capitulated after a short resistance, and agreed to renounce his claim both to the
office of high priest and to the crown. Subsequently, however, supported by the Idumtean Antipater and the Arabian prince, Aretas, he again took up the contest and defeated his brother in a battle that soon followed. Forsaken by most of his army, Aristobulus now took refuge on the temple-mountain and was there besieged. It was at this time that the interest- ing episode related by Josephus took place, in which a certain Onias, distinguished for the supposed efficacy of his prayers, had the leading part. He was, one day, brought by the partisans of Hyrcanus, who represented the Pharisees, to pray for the success of their efforts in subduing the party of Aristobulus. And this is said to have been his noble, courageous prayer: " O God, the king of the whole world, since those that stand with me are thy peo- ple, and those that are besieged are thy priests [i. e. the party of the Sadducees], I beseech thee that thou wilt neither hearken to the prayers of those against these nor of these against those." 1 Without capacity to comprehend the grandeur of such a spirit the fanatical crowd, it is said, stoned the heroic old man till he died. Before this wretched, internecine conflict was finally decided, a messenger arrived from the victorious Pompey, already advancing through Asia Minor, who for the time being gave his influence in favor of the younger brother. Later, however, Pompey himself espoused the cause of Hyrcanus, and after a siege of three months took possession of the temple-mountain, where the party of Aristobulus were strongly intrenched. A fearful massacre of twelve thousand Jews, inclusive of many priests who fell ministering at the altar, signalized the victory of the Roman arms. It was in the fall of the year B. c. 63, and during the consulate of Marcus Tullius Cicero, that the Roman eagles waved, for the first time, over the holy city. A sad change, indeed, it seems, when one re- flects simply on the loss of the national freedom which had been bought at so dear a price and enjoyed for a period of scarcely eighty years. But a change, on the other hand, not wholly unwelcome, when one thinks of the high priesthood in the hands of an Alexander Jannseus and the fratricidal sword in those of an Aristobulus II. In the mean time the Ro- man military power itself, as much as the Greek language and Greek philosopliy, had its providential mission. And this mission was beautifully foreshadowed in the fact that the very captives whom Pompey dragged to Rome, to grace his triumphal entry, became, on the bank of the far-off Tiber, the nucleus and germ of a. Christian church and an important centre of early Christian life.
From one point of view, the Maccabasan struggle, looked upon as a whole, has almost the Scope of the appearance of triviality. Such questions as those of Sabbath observance, the rite straggle"™ °^ circumcision, distinction in food as clean or unclean, or even the freedom of temple worship, might not be supposed to be of sufficient importance to lead an entire people to stake its existence upon them. It is certainly not such questions that shape the politics and control the movements of armies at the present day. But it is to be remem- bered that under the theocratic government of the Jews, every matter of religion, however
1 Afitiq., xiv. 2, § 1.
GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 27
trifling it might seem in itself, was also a matter of political and social economy. ' Moreover, it is clear from other and various considerations, that it was not simply zeal for ceremonial observances, that inspired the hearts of the Maccabsean heroes, important as these were felt to be by every right-thinking Israelite. It was a noble patriotism; it was a determination to defend at any cost, the right; it was an unselfish devotion to principles of righteousness and honor, such as found utterance from time to time, in the speeches of the great Asmonasan chief and his successors: "We fight for our lives and our laws." "The jeopardizino' of a gallant soldier is to the end that he may deliver his people and win for himself a perpetual name." And those last memorable words of Judas: " If our time be come, let us die man- fully for our brethren, and leave behind no stain upon our honor." More than once these men showed that a broader spirit than that which developed itself in the later partisan con- flicts, characterized and inspired them. They did not hesitate, when circumstances required it, boldly to cut the web of irritating formalities with which they were invested. When, for instance, their enemies so far presumed upon their reverence for the Sabbath, as always to attack them on that day, they were not long in discovering a principle that lay deeper: that the Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath. They knew how to comfort themselves when deprived of the services of the temple, with the thought, not unworthy of the Epistle to the Hebrews, that " God did not choose the people for the place's sake, but the place for the people's sake." ^ They thought it no crime to seek to strengthen themselves politically by means of alliances with foreign powers. Here and there, in short, there is pleasant evidence that these Maccabsean heroes fought for ideas as well as institutions, that, indeed, they were inspired by unutterable hopes of a better time to come. At the coronation of Simon as high priest and prince, we meet with an intimation whose mystery is solved only in the predictions of Isaiah and Malachi. These offices, it was said, were to remain heredi- tary in his family until there should " arise a faithful prophet." For him, then, in some sense, they still waited, and this expectation it was, so far as it had force, that gave to the whole contest with the Syrian oppressors an elevation of purpose, that of itself sufficed to redeem it from the charge of narrowness or triviality. The eye was sometimes, at least, turned toward the future. And especially after the struggle had ceased to be one almost of despair, and had become a victory, a real success, and the newly consecrated temple on Mount Moriah could be looked upon in friendly prophetic vision, as likely after all to become the gathering point of myriads from East and West, North and South, the stream of sacred exultant song began to flow again, and the mind to dwell with quickened courage and confi- dence on the glories of that kingdom, whose bounds were to reach from the rising of the sun to the going down of the same.
But they were " not all Israel that were of Israel." There were those who disputed, at times, the authority of the Maccabjean leaders; disliked their breadth of spirit; j^ij^ofp^,. preferred defeat to defending themselves on the seventh day; slavish submission Hes. The rather than an alliance with heathen states; and, in fact, carried their conserva- ^™'°'' tism. not infrequently, to the verge of treason. Once, for example, a number of Scribes went over to the side of Bacchides and the infamous Alcimus. And the " Assidffians were the first among the children of Israel that sought peace of them." = The secret was, that Alci- mus, ungodly wretch though he was known to be, happened to be in the regular Aaronio suc- cession r That was enough to draw these short-sighted Scribes away from the patriotic party at a most critical period of its history. So it came to pass that the brave little company that rallied around the banner of Judas and of Jonathan had to contend with divisions in its own ranks. There were Israelitish brethren who were ready to lend them their influence only so far as the contest was carried on in the interests of their own theological views. And hence, it happened, that one marked result of the struggle itself was the strengthenmg of such views, the tenfold bracing and hardening of the peculiar opinions respecting what it was that constituted Judaism and its mission. These opinions and prepossessions were sanctified, so to speak, by the sufferings that had been endured, and the blood that had been shed on their supposed behalf, so that they were lifted into ever greater prominence, became the shibboleth of parties and the matter of overshadowing importance in all subsequent history. We have spoken of the Assidsans, or Chasidim of the time of Judas Maccabseus. There is little doubt that the principles which they advocated became afterwards the prevailing ones in Israel, were developed into those of the Pharisees, who early represented the party of the overwhelm- 1 2 Maco. T. 19. ^ 1 M"""- ™- ^' ^-
28 THE APOCRYPHA.
ing majority of the Jewish people. They were those who would have found fault with Judas for carrying in his battles the sword which he had won from the Syrian general, Apollonius, although there might have been adduced for it the excellent Scriptural example of David, who had wielded with such success the weapon of the uncircumcised Goliath. But they had another Scripture, a companion volume to Moses and the Prophets, whose leading principle was ceremonial purity. Since the days of Ezra it had been one of the absorbing tasks of the Scribes to bring this new Bible to perfection. And if, at the time of the Asmon^ans, it was still incomplete, its essential requirements at least were well understood and were already in process of being carried out in the most painfully scrupulous observances. It was, in a word, a system of special, infinitesimal prohibitions and commands which was meant to reach, what the more ancient legislation, as it was supposed, did not, every separate detail of the daily life. As a matter of fact, however, it served to weaken at its centre the very principle of obedience. It laid the emphasis on the letter more than on the spirit, and the commandment of God was made of no effect by the tradition. ' The Pharisees, indeed, did not hesitate while the Scriptures and tradition thus existed, and were used side by side, to give the de- cided preference to the latter.^ A certain rabbi, Eleazer from Modein, once said: "Who- ever interprets the Scriptures in opposition to tradition has no part in the future world." * We get from the books of the New Testament not a few graphic hints of what the system essentially and practically was. It required the making " clean the outside of the cup and platter;" had extended the rule of tithes to include "mint, anise, and cummin," while neglecting the " weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and truth;" had greatly multiphed the number of fasts and encouraged the unseemly custom of prayers at the street corners " to be seen of men." A painful minuteness and strictness attached particularly to tlie observance of the Sabbath. No one, for example, on that day was permitted to go more than a thousand steps from his dwelling. Even the rubbing out of kernels of wheat, or the healing of the .sick, was looked upon as a transgression of the later code. The Mishna enu- merates thirty-nine diiferent kinds of activity that were positively forbidden on the Sabbath. The day itself was lengthened and made to begin before the setting of Friday's sun in har- mony with the exaggerated character of the whole system. And such, in general, was the burdensome nature of its myriad precepts, effectually crushing out not only all spontaneity of soul but all sensitiveness of conscience and making the spiritual life solely a matter of ma- chine-like routine and dreary outward observances.
To say, now, tiiat Phariseeism was the immediate result of the Maccabsean contest would he to take no account of forces that began to work before it sprang up and which, as we have seen, continued to work to its close. But this contest, from its very nature, served greatly to strengthen that which formed the nerve and sinew of Phariseeism, that which is clearly represented in the name Pharisee (CT^IS)? that is, national and moral separatism. Still it ought to have been known that all efforts at mere outward uniformity, resting on no deep moral and universally acknowledged principles, however violent and long continued they might be, could never produce a real unity. How often since and at what fearful costs has the experiment been made, to end as that of the Pharisees ended, and sometimes with even, more fatal results I
Sadduceeism was a natural reaction from the teachings of the Chasidim and their succes-
sors and became its theological, political, and social counterpoise. What strength ducees. " the Pharisaic party had already gained at the time of John Hyrcanus, appears
from the circumstance that certain of its leaders on one occasion dared to insult and brave the king himself when surrounded by his courtiers, in his own palace. On the ground of an old scandal, that his mother had not always been true to her marriage vows, they openly called in question his right to the position he occupied. Up to this peri°od, as it would seem, the Macoabasan family had been identified, to a greater or less degree, with the Pharisaic party. But this public insult they made the occasion for demonstratively break- ing with it and going over to the side of its opponents, and Sadduceeism comes, for the first time, into special prominence. The origin of the name Sadducee is in dispute, but most likely it is derived from Zadok, who was high priest at the time of David.* They were de- scendants or adherents of this family just as the Herodians mentioned in the New Testa- ment 5 were adherents and partisans of the family of Herod. All that we know of their
1 n^. ^f-^ ™' ^^,i„, ^ °^- ^'"'■' -*""■'■' "">• 1> § S- 8 Aboth iii. 11, cited by Schiirer, p. 430.
* Cf. Sohurer, p. 427. 6 Matt. xxii. 16. j , r ™v
GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 29
histol-y serves to confirm this view of their origin. As over against the Pharisees, who were the party of the people, they were the gentry, the aristocracy, nobility of the land. The priests, generally, though not universally, were Sadducees. So it continued to be in the time of the Apostles, as we read in the Acts (v. 17) : " Then the high priest rose up, and all that were with him — which is the sect of the Sadducees — and were filled with indio-na- tion." They were those who insisted on the preeminence of the temple and its services, as opposed to the growing influence of the synagogues, where Pharisaism had its stronghold. The Pharisees, on the other hand, relatively depreciated the temple, anil as the Saviour him- self showed, often foolishly and inconsistently, holding, for example, the gold of the temple, i. e., its golden vessels and ornamentation, as of greater sacredness than the buildincr.i While accepting the Scriptures as their rule of faith and practice, — although without dis- playing any great devotion to them, — the Sadducees did not accept anything else as on an equality with them, rejecting with ridicule and contempt the oral law held in such high es- teem by their opponents. "See," they were accustomed to say, "these Pharisees will purify in the end the sun itself." ^ So, too, the hair-splitting of the latter with respect to moral precepts and rules was utterly distasteful to them. It was held by the Pharisees, for example, that the Scriptures must be copied on parchment made from the skins of animals ceremonially clean, since, otherwise, these holy books themselves could not be safely handled. To which the Sadducees ironically replied : " We complain of you, Pharisees, who affirm that the Scriptures will pollute the hands while the writings of Homer do not." ' With respect to dogmas ; the rule of Providence ; the destiny of the soul ; the existence of angels and the like, 'their attitude, in general, was not one of special partisanship but rather of indifference. Still they not only would not go beyond what the Scriptures taught on these subjects, but from a natural spirit of opposition to Pharisaism did not allow to them their full force.* The priestly aristocracy, moreover, could not but have been more influenced than others by foreign life and ideas as coming into closer contact with them. Hence, too, it would be a matter of personal interest with them to reject the popular notion of national isolation, and, with their wealth and love of ease, it was not strange that they had no taste for the subtile refinements and burdensome precepts inculcated by their opponents. But their own hereditary rights they were ever ready to defend against encroachments. Fearful, indeed, was the struggle that went on during the last century before Clirist, one example of which we have already noticed in connection with the reign of Alexander Jannseus. Yet, it was not doubtful how such a conflict would finally end : the people against the aristocracy, the synagoo-ues against the temple. In the very next reign, after Alexander Jannaeus had striven with all his might to crush them out, the Pharisees come again into power and wield an influence that is wider than ever. The circle of the one was ever increasing, that of the other continually diminishing. The Pharisee compassed sea and land to make one proselyte. He artfully insinuated himself into the good-will of the masses. " Do not separate thyself from the congregation," was one of his maxims. And it is mentioned as a marked excellence of a certain predecessor of Hillel, — and an excellence it was if prompted by a real humanity, ^ that his house opened toward the street, and that the poor found with him the welcome of children. 6 Thus, one point after another was slowly won : the management of the temple services; the regulation of the festivals; the mitigation of the severities of the penal code as in the interests of the people; the control of the Sanhedrin; and the final grapple was just at hand when both parties went down together in the common ruin.
It will not be out of place to speak here, also, of the sect of the Essenes, since their origin may, apparently, be traced to the same general causes which produced the two ^j^^j.^^^^^^ great national parties just described. They first make their appearance in the time of the Asmonsean Jonathan, and Josephus relates that one of their prophets predicted the murder of Antigonus by his royal brother. They never gained, however, a very exten- sive following, their numbers in Palestine at the beginning of the Christian era being reck- oned at only four thousand. They were ascetics, and their asceticism, if we may trust Jose- phns,« was rather Pythagorean than Jewish. Excluded from the temple on account of their rejection of sacrifices, they formed a class by themselves. A prolonged and severe probation was necessary in order to gain admission to it. An axe and an apron were given to candi- dates during the first year's novitiate, the first as a symbol of labor, the second, of purifica-
1 Matt, xxiii. 17. » Graete, iii. 461. ' Gi^^''' '"*™;.. ,„
4 Cf. Mark xii. 26. 6 See Hausrath, Zeitgesckichte, i. 130. 6 (Jf. Kuenen, m. La.
30 THE APOCRYPHA.
tion. They abstained from the eating of meat, and as a rule, from marriage. Their meals they- regarded as a sort of religious exercise. To the Sabbath they accorded an even stricter observance than the Pharisees, their rules not allowing that so much as a call of nature be attended to on that day. The practice of ceremonial purification, also, was carried to a pain- ful extreme. No food could be eaten that was not prepared by a member of the order. They showed a special reverence for the sun, which amounted, in fact, to little less than idolatry. Their pursuits were peaceful, and they opposed alike war and slavery. Their few wants were supplied from a common treasury and all luxury and pleasure were carefully eschewed. In short, this body represents within itself a strange mixture of exaggerated Pharisaic tradi- tions, combined with some unmistakable elements of pure heathenism. Its origin must be sought in the extraordinary associations and influences to which the Jewish people were at this time exposed. The Therapeutae have been regarded by some as simply a branch of the Essenes, whose principles led them to the adoption of a contemplative rather than an active life. But there seems to be, at present, a growing conviction that the work attributed to Philo, in which this sect is described, is a forgery, and that the sect itself had an existence only in the brain of some person who meant to give a picture of ideal asceticism.^
Naturally, the government of the purely Greek cities of Palestine, as of the neighboring Political countries of which we have spoken, was modeled after that to which the inhabi- constitutioa. tants had been accustomed in their native land. It consisted of a council, often
The local ,
governing made up of Several hundred persons, to which all matters of public interest were, boaies.2 ^y general consent, referred. In the distinctively Jewish regions of Palestine, on
the other hand, that is to say, in Judsea and in parts of Galilee, regulations derived from the Mosaic code remained, to a considerable extent, in force down to the late New Testament times. As far as these had been dependent on the constitution and relations of the variou.i tribes and families they ceased, as a matter of course, to be in operation as soon as the tribal relations and genealogies of families fell into confusion. Every place of any considerable size was provided with a local court, consisting of not less than seven persons, who took cogni- zance of all civil and ecclesiastical questions requiring judicial decision. ^ At first, these local courts were composed exclusively of Levites; later, however, they were made up of a class of Scribes, who might be specially fitted by knowledge and experience for the responsible post. Trials and hearings took place in the synagogue, and were held ordinarily on market days, in order the better to accommodate those living at a distance. Punishment, also, on convic- tion, was not infrequently administered on the spot, " Beware of men," said our Saviour to the twelve, " for they will deliver you up to the councils, and they will scourge you in their synagogues." ^ The Mosaic law permitted, in no case of chastisement, more than forty blows to be given. And the rabbis, in order to be on the safe side, had them limited to thirty-nine. Paul, it will be remembered, relates that five times he had received, of the Jews, forty stripes save one. 5 Such cases alone as involved points about which the judges of the local courts were not clear what decision ought to be given, were referred to Jerusalem. In the larger places the number of judges seems to have been greater, the Mishna stating that a city which had at least one hundred and twenty men, was entitled to a Sanhedrim of twenty-three per- sons.8 In Jerusalem, in fact, there were several such smaller courts, which, however, were naturally limiteci and overshadowed in their activity by the so-called Great Sanhedrim.
The origin of the Great Sanhedrin of seventy-one members in Jerusalem is uncertain. The Great -^""""S ^^^^ '^t^r suppositions is that of Kuenen, encouraged by Schurer,' that it Sanhedrin. ^''^t arose in the time of the earlier Ptolemies, who sought in this way to win for themselves the support of the Jewish nobility; and that of Keim.s that it dates from about the year B. c. 107, when Pbilhellenism began, in a noticeable manner, to force its way into Judaja. The name is of Greek derivation, and its first appearance as the title of a Jewish court IS after the beginning of the Roman dominion.' There is little doubt, however, that this IS but another designation for the Senate (y.povcrU), of which we read occasionally in the works that sprang up during the Maccaba^an period, or shortly subsequent to it." In the New Testament this body is often mentioned, and it continued to exist until the destruc-
1 So Graete, hi. 463-66 ;Jo8t,i. 214, n. 2; Kuenen, iii. 218; Nicolas, /!e^■«erf. Theol.. S\kn,e ,irie Ti 25^2 10 see 1 Mace, xli, 6 ; Judith iv. 8, ./p^t,.™ ,- cf. Gra.,z, ill. 88. tt "^ ^'^'" °^ *'- "' ''
GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 31
tion of Jerusalem, a. d. 70. It was composed, as we have said, of seventy-one members, of whom one third formed a quorum sufficient for the transaction of business. An interestinir feature of the assemblies was the regular attendance as listeners of a considerable number of young men, Jewish students, who thus familiarized themselves with the details of its rules and methods. Its meetings, unlike those of the smaller bodies of which we have just spoken, were, or might be held daily, with the exception of the Sabbath and usual holidays. It was made up of priests, elders, and scribes, and the high priest presided at the sittings. Among the priests were included any who had served as high priest, as well as, in general, members of such leading families as had furnished the incumbents of this office. The elders were o-ener- ally distinguished laymen, but might, also, include priests. The scribes were depended on for the interpretation of all abstruse points of law. Both Pharisees and Sadducees had seats in the body, although, in the later times, the former seem to have been in the majority or, at least, to have wielded the greater influence. Before the Great Sanhedrin were brought such questions for decision as the settlement of disputed texts of Scripture, the appointment of the time for the various festivals, all weightier points relating to marriage and inheritance, the proper theocratic form of contracts,- and the like. As distinguished from the lower courts it was the administrative and* judicial body for all matters that were distinctively theological, although, as the Jewish Commonwealth was constituted, the distinction between civil and theological questions was not very marked. Our Lord was cited before the Sanhedrin for assuming to be the Messiah; Peter and John, on the ground of teaching false doctrine; Stephen, for blasphemy ; and Paul, for transgressing the rules of the temple. And, as we notice in the earlier history of Paul, the decisions of the Sanhedrin, at Jerusalem, were bind- in" on the Jews outside of Palestine. ^ The ordinarj' place of meeting was in one of the buildings connected with the temple. It has been generally supposed that a change to another locality was made a short time before the beginning of the Christian era; but Scliiirer '' has shown that this was not the case. Irregular, and especially night sessions, at which time the gate of the temple-mountain was closed and under watch, might have been held elsewhere, as in the case of our Saviour's trial, which was held in the palace of the high priest.' It has, indeed, been denied by recent writers (Jost, Graetz, Hilgenfeld, Leyrer), that a regularly organized Sanhedrim existed at the time of our Lord's trial, but the affirmative has been successfully defended, among others by such scholars as Schenkel,* Wieseler,^ Keim,^ Haus- rath,' and Schiirer.'
It has been already indicated, in general, in speaking of the functions of the Great Assem- bly, what the duties of the scribe, in the original conception of the office, were. . But with the growth of the so-called oyal law, and of the Pharisaic principle that the entire life of the individual Jew in its smallest particular must be included within an un- broken network of precepts and prohibitions, the profession of scribe took on quite another character. From being a simple copyist of the original Scriptures, as the title scribe would naturally suggest, he rose to the dignity of teacher, law-giver, and judge, and, with the ex- ception of the high priest, no one enjoyed a greater influence among the people. The orig- inal aim of the Pharisees, to bring every individual Jew under the rule of the Mosaic institu- tions, was obviously a good one. The means, however, which they adopted to bring it about cannot but be regarded as childishly inadequate and unwise. Cognizance was taken of every act, even to the brushing of the teeth and the washing of the hands; every act was looked upon as lawful or unlawful, as a merit or as a sin. The fourth commandment, for instance, as we have already said, was enlarged in the schools of the rabbis to embrace thirty-nme different prohibitions. But this was not all. Each one of these separate prohibitions was itself subdivided, and defined, and atomized to an extent that is almost incredible. Ihe thirty-second one, for example, was directed against writing. It was further defined as tol- lows: "He who writes two letters [of the alphabet] whether they are of one kind or ot dit- ferent kinds, with the same, or with diiferent sorts of ink, in one language, or in different lan<Tuacres, is guilty. He who forgets himself and writes two letters is guilty, whether he write with ink or with coloring matter, with red chalk, with gum, with vitriol or with what- soever makes a mark that remains. Further, he who writes on two walls which run together, or on tWo pao-es of an account-book so that one can read it continuously, is guilty. He is , . . . o ° 2 See Stud. u. Eril., 1878, iv. 608, ff. . „ „'"• fi Q R- i Dm Characterbild Jesu, p. 307.
8 Matt. XXVl. d, 01. . -„. _^^ _ ,.. nnfl f
6 Biitrage zur richtigm WUrdigung dor Emngdien, p. 215. » >■ io*i ^'- ' '"• o^' '•
ZeUg7schichte,l.W{. 8 Page 408.
32 THE APOCRYPHA.
guilty who writes on his body. If one write in a dark fluid, in the juice of fruit, in the dust of the road, in scattered sand; or, in general, in anything where the writing does not remain, he is not guilty. If one write with the hand turned about, with the foot, with the_ mouth, with the elbow; if further, one adds a letter to what is already written, or draw a line over such writincr; if one intending to make a n makes simply two "; or when one writes one letter on th°e earth and another on the walls of the house, or on the leaves of a book, so that they cannot be read together, he is not guilty. When he twice forgets and writes two letters, one in the morning and the other in the evening, according to rabbi Gamaliel, he is guilty; the learned [however] declare him not guilty." ^
This is no exaggerated specimen, but one of thousands, of what it was that occupied the thoughts and absorbed the activities of the scribes of the later times. It suffices Rabbinism jq ^how the spirit that animated them, and so, too, the great ruling party of the (contmued). p,^j^j.jgggg Indeed, it was the Pharisees who were the originators and directors of the movement, and the scribes, while forming a distinct profession, a learned body by themselves and not belonging exclusively to the party of the Pharisees, were yet their willing agents. It is a significant circumstance that in the New Testament times the relations of the two had become so intimate that their names are sometimes use'd interchangeably.^ What the natural results of such ii state of things would be it is easy to conceive. First, upon the scribes themselves. In the schools they were the originators and teachers of this vast, com- plex, painfully, and at the same time, ludicrously minute system of external rules and checks, by means of which it was expected that the Jews would attain their destiny as the chosen people of God. In the synagogues they were the acknowledged expounders of the same, and at every opportunity, by admonition and appeal, brought it home to the hearts and con- sciences of their fellow Israelites. And finally, in the courts, they were virtually the judges to decide upon all cases of transgression, and to determine the character and extent of the punishment to be inflicted on the offender. The scribe, in short, had made himself indispen- sable at every point and turn of life. It would not be surprising, if with some exceptions, such a commanding influence should work with most damaging effect upon him. And we find this to be the case. Though nominally giving their services and supporting themselves by other means, it could be said of them, in their greed of gain and hypocrisy, as a class, that they devoured widows' houses and for a pretense made long prayers. They arrogated to themselves the most honorary titles ; demanded from their pupils a submission and reverence greater than that which was accorded to parents; loved to be saluted in public places; dressed in a most ostentatious manner ; demanded for themselves the first places in the synagogues and at private feasts, and thereby, in all, brought down upon themselves the greater condem- nation.8 And the effect upon the people was no less disastrous. The whole matter of religion became simply a matter of externalities. The really fundamental and important precepts of the Mosaic law were almost hopelessly covered up and lost sight of under this enormous mass of mere rabbinical rubbish. The worthless and absurd chiefly occupied the attention. Twelve tracts of the Mishna treat solely of the subject of what things are to be regarded as clean and what unclean, and in what the process of purification consists. The sole question, in the end, came to be, not what is right, but what is forbidden. Moral freedom and spontaneity gave place to a weary, mechanical following of a prescribed course. For the really earnest soul life could not have been otherwise than a pitiable round of uninteresting and burdensome duties; for the rest — a keen effort by hook or by crook to evade the same.^ And we see how well deserved were the denunci.itions, which One, to whom, also, the name of rabbi was given, but who taught not as the scribes, so often uttered against this terrible perversion of the teachings of Moses and the prophets.
It is well known that for more than a century before the Christian era the Hebrew had Language eeased to be a living language. The changes which took place in it after the e 'tin '" '"'''" ^■'^^^'^ were, however, very gradual. The prophets who wrote at its close, show in their works no special traces of an Aramaic influence. The old theory that the Israelites forgot their mother tongue in Babylon is now generally abandoned. The sources from which it was most affected were rather the lands that bordered on Palestine, with which its people had continual intercourse. The Aramaic became the lantruan-e of Gom-
1 See the Tract of the Mishna on the Sabbath, cited by Schiirer, p. 484. 2 Matt. xii. 12 : Mark ili 6.
8 Matt, xxiii. 6, 7 ; Mark xii. 20, 38, 39 ; Luke xi. 43 ; xx. 47.
« See, for Borne ludicrous examples of the latter sort, Schiirer, p. 507.
GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 33
mon life for a considerable period before it was used in writing. The books of Ecclesiasticus, Judith, and 1 Maccabees were undoubtedly composed in Hebrew. Especially, at the time of the Seleucidffi, when the Jews were brought under the rule of a people speaking Aramaic, this language must have made the greatest progress in Palestine toward becoming the vernacular. It is matter of doubt how far, in connection with the Syro-Chaldaic or Aramaic, the Greek tongue became a medium of communication among the people generally. 1 There were, cer- tainly, many influences at work during the last two centuries before Christ to effect for it an entrance into Palestine. It was the court language of the Ptolemies and the SeleucidiB. As we have already seen, Judasa was fairly surrounded with enterprising Greek cities. The Greek and not Latin must have been employed by the Jews in their intercourse with their Roman conquerors. According to the Talmud there were four hundred and eighty syna- gogues in Jerusalem alone, where Jews from abroad assembled at the great feasts to the number of hundreds of thousands for worship, and where, naturally, the Greek tongue was used.^ It is said of Paul, on one occasion, that he received permission to speak to the people in Jerusalem, and when they perceived that he would address them in Aramaic they gave the more marked attention.^ From which it may be inferred that they had expected he would speak to them in Greek, and further, that they would have Understood the same. It has been suggested, moreover, that the LXX. must have found some readers in Palestine outside of the Hellenistic synagogues or the circle of the learned scribes. The translation of the Scriptures into Aramaic — the Targums — did not appear until after the beginning of our era. And it may be supposed that not a few even of those who did not belong strictly to the learned classes would desire to possess the Bible in Greek, which, to say the least, they could understand far better than the original Hebrew. It is also a weighty fact that the writers of the New Testament employ the LXX. as though it were their own, and as though it were in common use in Palestine.
Since in Part II. of this Introduction the subject of the literature of this period, including the question of the Palestinian and Alexandrian canons, is to be fully treated, it tj^,, j^^j „( may be now omitted. But the objects of the present review would seem to de- the Disper- mand, at this point, some further notice of the Jews of the Dispersion, especially of the spiritual atmosphere that was breathed by those of Alexandria and the philosophy of religion, which, accordingly, was there developed. By far the larger part of the Jewish people were at this time outside of Palestine. It is well known that but comparatively few of those who, at different periods since the ninth century before Christ, and especially at the time of the Babylonian captivity, were removed from the country, ever returned again. Ten of the original twelve tribes became, as such, wholly lost to view. Under the reign of the Ptolemies and the Seleucidse, as before noticed, the work of depopulation went on. Antio- ehus III. introduced into Asia Minor at one time, under favorable conditions, no less than ten thousand Jewish families, — they were taken, however, in this case from the regions of Mes- opotamia and Babylon, — that they might serve as a support for his throne. In a letter of Agrippa to Caligula, preserved by Philo, the following graphic description of Judaism out- Side of Palestine is given: " Jerusalem is the capital not alone of Judsea, but, by means of colonies, of most other lands also. These colonies have been sent out, at fitting opportuni- ties, into the neighboring countries of Egypt, Phoenicia, Syria, Coele-Syria, and the further removed Pamphylia, Cilicia, the greater part of Asia as far as Bithynia and the most remote corners of Pontus. In the same manner, also, into Europe: Thessaly, Boeotia, Macedon, .2Etolia, Attica, Argos, Corinth, and the most and the finest parts of the Peloponnesus. And not only is the mainland full of Israehtish communities, but also the most important islands: Euboea, Cyprus, Crete. And I say nothing of the countries beyond the Euphrates, for all of them, with unimportant exceptions, Babylon and the satrapies that include the fertile dis- tricts lying around it, have Jewish inhabitants." ^ From other sources we know that this statement of Agrippa is not exaggerated. So numerous were the Jews in the East that they were able, at the beginning of our era, to found at Nahardea an independent kingdom, which .though afterwards subdued by the Babylonians, continued to be occupied chiefly by them.
1 Bee Roberts, Discussions on the Gospels, and on the general subject of this section : the Introds. of Bleek and Keil ; Noldeke in Sohenkefs Biti. Lex., art. "HebrMsche Sprache; ■' Bohl, pp. 71-110; and Holtzmann, idem, pp. 63, 54.
2 Cf. Acts Ti. 9. 8 Acts xxii. 2. oo oi j 4 See, in addition to the Histories of Graetz, Herzfeld, and Jost, Scbiirer, pp. 619-647 ; Holtzmann, idtm, pp. b.i-ai, ana
Prankel, Monatssckrift, 18S3, Hefte 11 and 12, and 1854, pp. 401-413, 439-460. « Cf. SohUrer, p. 620.
3
34 THE APOCRYPHA.
Even the Romans in the year B. c. 40, represented by the legate P. Petronius, regarded it as a dangerous experiment to excite the hostility of this powerful people settled along the banks of the Euphrates.' At Adiabene, the present Kurdistan, they enjoyed so great influence that the royal family itself adopted the Jewish religion. At Antioch they formed a respecta- ble portion of the population, and had, as at Alexandria, their own ethnarch or alabarch. Accordincf to Josephns there were, on a single occasion, during the wars with the Romans, ten thousand Jews put to death at Damascus; and the same writer affirms that eight thousand of this nation, living in Rome, gave their support to a deputation which had been sent to Augustus by their brethren of Palestine.^ We have already seen how early the Jewish emioration to Egypt began, and what immense proportions it afterwards assumed. Their council of seventy elders enjoyed an influence only second to that of the Sanhedrim at Jeru- salem. Their magnificent synagogue was the resort of such multitudes that no single voice could reach them, and a flag was therefore used to give the appropriate signal when, after a prayer or benediction, the responsive " Amen " was expected from the people.
The Jews of the Dispersion, wherever they might be found, and under whatever unfavor- able circumstance, with but rare individual exceptions, remained true to their the Disper- national faith and customs. Other nationalities, and many of them, were simply eion (contin- swallowed up in the great Grecian and Roman empires, leaving scarcely a trace behind. The Jews, on the other hand, in whatever lands, east or west, north or south, they had colonized, remained as distinct in their peculiarities, offered as bold a con- trast in social usages and religious belief, with their neighbors around them, as did the peo- ple of Judaea with those of Egypt and of Babylon. With their monotheistic creed, supported by an unconquerable national pride, a past signalized by glorious, divine interpositions, and a future full of the brightest promise, it is not so much a matter of wonder. Moreover, the Mosaic law, which they carried with them in written form into the uttermost parts of the earth, under the manipulations of the wily scribes, had already become a hedge so impenetra- ble that no deviation from it, short of absolute apostasy, was easily possible. So, too, in- numerable synagogues and proseuchsE, which sprang up according to need on every hand, being as well attractive centres of social and religious life as civil courts where Israelitish justice was dispensed, were no less a potent means to unite in indissoluble bonds the scattered people to one another, to their traditional usages and their native land. At the same time, the great central attraction, the beloved temple at Jerusalem, was not for a moment fom-otten. The regularly recurring national festivals were always heralded with astronomical exactness from this point. Hundreds ot thousands, from every part of the world, made each year their pilgrimage to its sacred precincts. The high priest at Jerusalem still remained, for all, the sovereign representative of Jewish national dignity and religion. The Sanhedria there was the last court of appeal from supposed unjust decisions in the synagogues whether on the Nile, the Euphrates, or the Tiber. Contributions of fabulous sums flowed in one continuous stream from the faithful children of the covenant into the temple treasury. Regular places of collection, as at Nisibis, Nahardea, for vast regions of country were appointed, and at cer- tain fixed seasons delegations, often consisting, for safety's sake, of thousands of persons, and headed by members ot the noblest faniilies, conveyed these free-will offerings to the sacred city. And so Jerusalem was, in fact, as Agrippa had declared, the capital of a mighty com- monwealth whose bounds were more extensive than those of the realm of Alexander. And amidst crumbling empires, then and now, this people furnishes a most instructive example of the importance of recognizing moral, as well as political and social forces in the life of states. We have shown that the Jews were but comparatively little affected in their dispersion by Proselytes 3 ^^"^ heathen life with which they were surrounded. Heathenism, however, felt in no slight degree the influence of Judaism. The term proselyte (irpoo-^Auros) was applied to such strangers as embraced the Jewish faith. At and before the beginning of the Christian era they might have been reckoned by hundreds of thousands, if not' millions. The frequent allusions to them by classical writers of the period is a significant fact, even though such allusions generally take the form of ridicule or contempt.'' At Rome, an im- perial concubine was numbered among them, and, at Damascus, nearly all the better class of
1 Cf, Schiirer, 621. 2 War, of the Jews, ii. 20, § 2,i.nd 6, § 1 ; cf. Anlig., xvii. 11, § 1.
a See arts, by Lejrer in Herzog's Real-Encyk. ; Steiner in Sclieokel's Bih. Lex.; Plumptre ia Smith's Bib Diet ■ Winer, Bib. RealwiiTterbuch, ad voc. ; and Hausrath, ZeitgesckkMc, ii. 101-126. ' ''
4 Cf. Homce, Sa^, i. 4. 142, 143 ; Ju-yenal, Sal., yi, 643-547 ) Taxiitus, Hist., T. 9 ; Seneca cited by Augustine, De avi ■ 'ate Dei, yi. 11 ; Dio Cassius, xxxTii. 17. ' ■> b "c, x^c «.-»»»
GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 35
women. The New Testament, it will be remembered, gives us an account of a Roman cen- turion at Capernaum who loved the Jewish nation and had built a synagogue; 1 and of another who imitated the subject people in fasting, prayer, and the giving of alms. 2 Previous to the Exile, proselytism had been mostly a matter of forcing the Jewish religion upon subju- gated peoples or individual slaves. Even under the Asmonsean dynasty such examples of en- forced conversion, as in the case of the Idumaeans and Ituraeans, were not unknown.^ But, as a rule, in the later times, and as a matter of course after the Jews had lost their political power, the step was voluntarily taken. There were abundant grounds for it. The Jews en- joyed a freedom from military service and other civil privileges that were not gr.i,nted to others.* Their successful industry and commercial, prosperity were proverbial and must have made a profound impression on their heathen neighbors. Sometimes, too, there may have been social reasons, as particularly the desire for intermarriage, that prompted to the step. But most of all the positive religious faith of the Jewish people having its basis in a written canon as over against a prevailing skepticism, or the empty forms of a materialistic worship, found a natural response in the deeper longings of many a human soul. That such a case as that of Cornelius of ' ' the Italian band ' ' was not a solitary one is evident.
There were two classes of proselytes: the so-called proselytes of the gate, whose name seems to have been derived from the frequent formula of Scripture, " the stranger that is with- in thy gates," and the proselytes of righteousness. It was only the latter, who having been baptized and, it men, circumcised, and having brought an appointed offering, were admitted to the full rights of the theocracy. Their number, as compared with the former class, was small. Proselytes of the gate, on the other hand, bound themselves to avoid the following things: blasphemy, idolatry, murder, uncleanness, theft, disobedience towards the authori- ties, and the eating of flesh with its blood. The social position of proselytes, especially in the later times, was a peculiarly hard one. Despised and hated by their own people, they were distrusted also by the Jews, and conditions of the most stringent character came to be enacted for the purpose of excluding supposed unworthy candidates.
The Jews of the Dispersion may properly be divided into two great classes : those that made use of the Greek language and the Septuagint version of the Bible, and those who spoke Aramaic. Of the former, next to Jerusalem, and in some re- arilnpUios- spects above Jerusalem, Alexandria in Egypt was the great spiritual, as well as "Pi^yo* ^ commercial centre. Of the peculiar religious philosophy which during the last two centuries before Christ there developed itself, and left so deep an impression on the re- ho-ious thought of many succeeding centuries, we will now, in closing the present section, briefly speak. A philosophy of religion among the Jews appears, at first thought, an un- warranted expression. How could they who, on the intellectual and religious side, secluded themselves so sedulously from all intercourse with neighboring peoples and were fully deter- mined to o-ive no admission to their sacrilegious notions concerning God and religious matters, come to feel any need of a religious philosophy, or to have any inclination for it. The reason was that the attempted seclusion, especially in Alexandria, was far from complete, the spir- itual blockade inadequate to accomplish its purpose. It was inevitable that Greek ideas would follow the Greek language, and as soon as the doors were opened widely enough to admit the Septuagint version, some other means of defense than simple attempts to exclude and ignore the supposed hostile force were imperative. Hence began the period of com- promise. Hellenism and the Hellenistic philosophy were an effort to harmonize the revela- tion of the Old Testament with the current and dominant teachings of Plato, Aristotle, and Pythagoras. Jewish scholars, like the author of the Book of Wisdom, like Aristobulus and Philo, did not intend by any means to surrender anything essential to their faith, but, on the contrary, to win for their own prophets and wise men, even among the Greeks, a position higher than that held by their most admired philosophers. They hoped to beat the enemy on°his own ground. Philo, in one place, even bravely expresses the thought that the Scrip- tures which "in the original tongue had been accessible to so few comparatively might now, that they were translated into Greek, become the means of salvation to the greater part, if not indeed, the whole of mankind. ^ We may, therefore, admire and commend, in general, the apparent aim of these philosophic defenders of the Jewish faith without at all approving
1 Luke Tii. 6. 2 Acts X. 2, 30. S Jos., Antig., xiii. 9, § 1- ^ •"»■' '^'"'fi^,''- ^^'l^' .
6 See Lipsius in Schenkel's Bih. Lex., art. « Alex. Philosophie ; " MUUer in Heraog's Real-Encyh., art. ' Ph.lo ; ^anne , Sfrorer; Kuenen, iii. 168-206) Treudenthal, HeUenUliscJie Sludien; and other authorities given m Schurer, p. 648. 6 Di Vita Mosis, U. 110.
36 THE APOCEYPHA.
the means that they adopted. That would be impossible. They acted indeed, as though they were asliamed to have the Scriptures, in the simple and natural form of their teachings, brought into comparison with the refined subtilties of the Greek philosophers. Something corresponding to these subtilties, something spun out of their own brains, must therefore be first introduced into the sacred national literature to render it fit to be put in circulation among intelligent trreeks. From our point of view, however, the impression is iiTesistible that such a state of things implies, on the part of these Jewish thinkers themselves, a kind of intellectual and spiritual apostasy. It would seem that in their own judgment the Scriptures were not on a level with the philosophical and religious development of the age in which they lived, and needed no little tinkering in order to bring them to the required standard. Or, on the other hand, if we suppose, as perhaps we ought, that Philo and others were really sincere in thinking that what they deduce from the Scriptures was actually contained in them, then we can give them credit for but a small amount of common sense and an exceed- ingly low estimate of what is required by any reasonable theory of Biblical inspiration and hermeneutics.
The first evidences of a philosophizing spirit on the part of the Jews of Alexandria ap- Eise of the peared at a, comparatively early period. We have ali-eady alluded to a certain allegorical Ezekiel who dramatized in Greek the history of the departure of the Israelites interpreta- from Egypt, an elder Philo, who wrote an epic poem on Jerusalem, and a Theodo- ''™- tus, who, likewise, in the form of Epic verse described the history of ancient
Sychem. At about the same time, contemporaneously perhaps, with the origin of the LXX., we meet with efforts to introduce Biblical ideas into Greek works. The text of Homer, for instance, in the Odyssey (v. 262), was changed so as to convey the meaning that God fin- ished the work of creation in seven days. The LXX. itself, moreover, is not without clear traces of a like tendency to curry favor with the popular, philosophical conceptions of the time. Especially is there a perceptible effort to soften down as much as possible the anthro- pomorphic representations of the being and activity of God, and the idea that he comes per- sonally in contact with the visible creation.i So the name Jehovah (Jahveh) instead of be- ing transferred bodily into the Greek, like any other proper name, and written with Greek letters, is translated by the expression, the Lord. It is true that Alexandrian Judaism does not, in this respect, go much beyond the ideas and usages that prevailed also in Palestine at the same tiiiie. Still, these examples show a spirit already ripe whose fullest development was the religio-pbilosophical system of an Aristobulus and a Philo. The definite and unmis- takable form which it takes in certain of the Old Testament Apocrypha we have elsewhere sufficiently illustrated. It appears, also, in various pseudepigraphal works of the period, particularly in the so-called Epistle of Aristeas ' and in the Jewish Sibyls.' But the spirit and method of the entire school, if so it may be called, is best studied in its chief repre- sentatives.
Aristobulus, if we may trust the accounts which we have of him and a later writer did not Aristobulus.i ^^^^'^'^ t^i"^ "'i"i<^ of an earlier, lived at Alexandria in the time of Ptolemy Philo- meter (cir. b. o. 160), and was the first among the Jews who devoted himself espe- cially, to the study of philosophy. He wrote a commentary on the Pentateuch, fragments of which have been preserved by Eusebius of Csesarea (" Prseparatio Evangelica," vii. 14; viii. 10; xiii. 12), and Clement of Alexandria (Strom., i. 15, 22; v. 14; vi. 13). His philosophical tendency may be learned from the fact that he was known as a Peripatetic. The special object of his commentary was to prove that the true source of wisdom was the Old Testa- ment, and that whatever was true and beautiful not only in the writings of the Greek phi- losophers like Plato and Pythagoras, but also in the poets like Orpheus, Hesiod, and Homer, was derived from it. He says, for example, that "Plato has imitated our leo-islation and made himself thoroughly acquainted with all it contains. Before the conquests of Alexander and the Persians, parts of the law had already been translated, so that it is obvious that the said iihilosophcr berrowed a great deal from it." 6 Somewhat further on he makes the same assertion with respect to Pythagoras and Socrates. The following is a specimen of his alle- gorical interpretation of the Scriptures in a passage where he is trying to show what is meant when they speak ot the feet of God and of his standing : " The organization of the world
1 Cf. Oen. vi. 6 7; xr. 3;. x\x. 3 ; Ex. xxiv. 9-11; Numb. xil. 8. 2 See Merx Archiv i 240 ii19
8 Schurer, pp. 513-520; Lucke, pp. 66-89; ReuBS ia Hemg's Rml-Encyk., xlT. 315-^"' ' '^^•
i Qlrorer, .1. , 1-121 , Dahne, u. 73-112. 5 Easeb., iV^p. E.., xiii. 12, cited by Kueneo. iii. 192.
GENERAL INTRODtJCTION. 37
may, in accordance with its greatness, be fitly called God's standing. For God is over all and all is subject to him, and has received from him its stability, so that man can discover that it is immovable. I mean this, that the sky has never been earth, nor the earth sky, the sun has never been the bright moon, nor conversely the moon the sun, the rivers never seas,
nor the seas rivers It is all unchangeable, and alternates and passes away always in
the same manner. With this in view we can speak o£ God's standino-, for all is subject to him." 1
But Aristobulus was not content with such weak, and therefore, comparatively harmless philosophizing. He, or somebody in his name, deliberately falsified his authorities in order to bring them into harmony with what he thought ought to be true, thus illustrating in him- self the fearfully demoralizing effects of the false methods he had adopted. He alleged, for instance, that Orpheus had once met Moses — in Greek Musieus — in Egypt, and on that basis went on to interpolate facts from the Mosaic cosmogony into the Orphic poems (icfht \iyos). Inasmuch as the poems in their original form are still extant ^ it is easy to de- tect the changes which Aristobulus dishonestly introduced into them. A recent writer has remarked : " Aristobulus was the spiritual ancestor of Philo, and Philo was the immediate parent of that fantastic theology which to most of the fathers and the schoolmen took the place of the reasonable and critical interpretation of all the Scriptures of the Old Testament and of much of the New." ^
Little is known of the personal history of the renowned Jewish allegorist Philo. The date of his birth is o-enerallv given at cir. B. c. 20. He was a person of great influence
Philo ^
amono- his countrymen in Alexandria, brother of the alabarch,' and was himself sent at the head of a delegation to the emperor Caligula on the occasion of the outbreak of persecution against the Jews, A. D. 37-41. His works consist of a series of essays or treatises on various topics suggested by the Old Testament writings, particularly the Pentateuch. One series has such subjects as the Creation, the Cherubim, the Sacrifices of Cain and Abel, the Snares laid for the Good by the Wicked, the Descendants of Cain, etc., etc., which follow, as it will be seen, the chronological order of the sacred history. Another series was on the life of Moses in three books, to which was appended essays on Circumcision, the Decalogue, Sacrifices, etc. He also, wrote an account of the embassy to Rome and a work against Flaccus, who was governor of Egypt at that time. With respect to the Scriptures, Philo's attitude was much the same as that of Aristobulus. He held that they were divinely in- spired and significant to the last word. In them, moreover, he found, simply because he was determined to, all that he considered good in the Greek philosophy. His system represents a singular admixture of Biblical elements with the speculations of Plato and Aristotle, of Stoic's and Pythagoreans, and the obvious want of agreement in its several parts seems not to have disturbed his equanimity or detracted from the zeal and learning which he devoted to its support. In one place, for instance, he defines God as pure being without attributes, and later, proceeds to ascribe to him the various attributes of a supposed perfect being. In- asmuch as in his conception of God, He could not without contamination come into immedi- ate contact with a,nything outside of himself, for the construction of the world and its gov- ernment it was necessary to suppose a vast and complicated system of mediation. And this mediatory system of Philo is one of the most striking features of his philosophy. In it he has combined Plato's doctrine of ideas, that concerning operative forces, or causes, as held by the Stoics, that of angels as taught in the Bible, and of demons as found in the Greek philosophy. At one time he represents these mediating forces as something immanent in God, at another time as quite independent of him, without pausing to reconcile the incon- sistency or even seeming to be aware that such inconsistency exists. In the word Logos (\6yos) especially, Philo found something eminently suited to his purpose. This he repre- sented as the chief of, and as including within itself all those forces which.are at once imma- nent in God and yet are self-existent entities. The double meaning of thg'word, as referring both to that which is spoken and also to the thought of which the word is the outward ex- pression, adapted it particularly to his use."
1 Easeb., fVffp. jBu., viii. 10. ..,,,• i , ^ qq
2 Pseado-Justin, De Monarch., cap. ii. ; Mortal, ad Oen., cap. xy., cited by Lipslus, 1. c, p. W.
I taaldiJio'tf tbe worK, referred to under Ari.tobulu,, cf. StaM "Versuch «-» ^^.-^"7,^" ^tr^^t f^ Lehrbegria Philo-s ™„ Alex.," I. Mobf^ovn's AUsemeinem. d.B.b. ^''-V--- ,^4°-™ .^^i'^^^'^olo tta WHtsMipfimi; : articles by Creuzer and Dahne respeotiyely, in Stud. u. Krit.., 1832, 3-43 , IS&i, DM 1U4U , uei ,
"^tir-S? ""• s!^'" ''"'°" """"" '""^ %%r«L'.^'"^^.!r,?186rPP 3"oi314; 18T1, PP. 503-50.
38 THE APOCRYPHA.
With respect to the material world he teaches that as matter it has an independent exis- tence. The universe was not created but formed through the Logos and other Phiio (con- mediating forces. Matter is in itself corrupt and corrupting, and from the begin- ning on no person can be free from sin while connected with a material body. The highest goal of man therefore is, as spirit derived from God, through the aid of the Logos to tread the material and sensual under foot and rise above it. When this is accom- plished or to the degree that it is accomplished, one has his reward in a nearness to God and in a beatific vision of his person and glory. There is no denying that with much that is purely speculative and without basis in reason or revelation there are also, here and there, thoughts uttered that are both reasonable and practicable. The importance that he ascribes to faith and love as ethical principles, the fact that he insists on the pursuit of virtue for its own sake, cannot be overlooked.^ At the same time, regarded as a means for reconciling the Old Testament with the Greek philosophy, Philo's system must be regarded as a signal failure. Its methods, like those of Aristobulus, are dishonest and false. Its conclusions are often based on premises that have no existence save in the imagination. And while its influence on re- acting minds among the Greeks was inconsiderable, on the thinking Jew it could scarcely have been otherwise than evil. It one might interpret the Mosaic law thus allegoricallj', why could he not also keep it allegorically ? What further need for the burdensome system of praying, fasting, almsgiving, and ceremonial purifications? Philo himself, indeed, seems to have remained to a good degree loyal to the Jewish faitli. But it is a fact not without its significance that a nephew of his who became governor of Judtea A, D. 46-48 abandoned it. The principal value of Philo's labors, as of those of his predecessors, consists in the material which was thereby furnished for the use of Christian writers and thinkers of the followino- centuries. As well single words as formulas of speech, unknown to the world before, were made ready for the new thought and new life that were about to dawn upon it. From a providential point of view this seems to have been the mission of the religious philosophy of Alexandria.
It is no reflection on the originality or sublimity of the opening chapter of the fourth Gos- pel to say that the fitting language in which its profound and glorious thoughts are clothed was forged in the workshop of the Alexandrian Philo. But the legacy of this thinker was far enough from being an unmixed good to his successors. As its effects upon Judaism could not have been otherwise than weakening, so, as a system of philosophy it hurt more than it helped Christianity. The deluge of dogmas which, humanly speaking, came so near overwhelming and destroying the church of the first Christian centuries and from whose dam- aging efi^ects it has not even yet recovered, has a direct connection with the speculations of Philo and his school. And still, it is not to be denied that a noble idea underlay his striving, however little he himself may have been consciously controlled by it. The Bible does con- fain moral and spiritual elements which may, and often must be, separated from the outward form in which they have come down to us. Its truths are universal in their scope, and har- 11 oiiize with what is true always and everywhere. And there is a philosophy of religion rec- I ncilable with the Scriptures and largely dependent on them for its fundamental principles, i Ithough it may still await one greater than a Philo or an Origen to give it adequate and practicable form.
1 Cf. Kueneu, Ui. 199.
GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 39
PART SECOND.
THE APOCRYPHAL BOOKS OF THE OLP TESTAMENT, - THEIR ORIGIN, CHAR- ACTER AND SCOPE, AND HISTORY.
1. Origin of the Old Testament Apocrypha.
The books in the English Bible included in the so-called Apocrypha are as follows: 1 and 2 Esdras, Tobit, Judith, Additions to Esther, Wisdom, Ecclesiastic us, Baruch with the Epistle of Jeremiah, the Song of the Three Children, the Story of Su- ^hlre*' Sanaa, the Idol Bel and the Dragon, the Prayer of Manasses, and 1 and" 2 Mac- <='"««"• cabees. These books were introduced info the English version by Miles Coverdale in his translation made in the year 1535. Succeeding versions, also, as Matthews, the Great Bible, Crumwell's, and those that followed published them, and hence they found their way, though not without opposition, into the " authorized " translation of I6II.1 This accounts, moreover, for the fact that the list of books in the English Bible does not agree, in all respects, with that of the LXX. The number of books is the same, but instead of 3 Maccabees we have 2 Esdras. The latter work does not exist in any Greek version, but was admitted into the Vulgate from a Latin translation and from thence into the Swiss-German Bible (152i-29, 1539), on which Coverdale's was based. The omission of 3 Maccabees in the English ver- sion thougli it .was contained in the earlier editions of the German Bible, is due to the fact that it was not to be found in the Vulgate — having first been translated into Latin in the sixteenth century — nor in the complete edition of the German Bible, edited by Luther him- self (1534).=
In the present work 2 Esdras has been omitted and 3 Maccabees introduced, not only as being in harmony with the LXX., but with the fitness of things, the latter book being histori- cally connected with the two others of the same name, while the former in its language, age, and general characteristics is to be reckoned with such works as the Book of Enoch, the Sib- \lline Oracles, and like representatives of the Jewish Apocalyptic literature. The position which, in the Greek Bible, has been given to the apocryphal additions, is as follows: 1 Esdras is found before the canonical books of Ezra and Nehemiah ; Tobit and Judith immediately after the latter; the additions to Esther in connection with that book; the Prayer of Man- asses immediately after the Psalms; the Wisdom of Solomon and Ecclesiasticus follow the Song of Solomon ; Baruch and the Epistle of Jeremiah have a place after the prophecy of Jeremiah but before Lamentations ; the additions to Daniel are naturally found in connection with that book, while the three books of Maccabees follow it, at the end of the Greek Bible. A fourth book of Maccabees, falsely ascribed to Josephus, is contained in the Sinaitic and Alexandrine manuscripts and in some editions of the LXX., but excepting its name it has nothing in common with the other three.
The word apocrypha (a.Tr6Kpvipa) first came into use among early ecclesiastical writers in the sense of matters secret or mysterious. It was so used particularly by the Gnostics _ as referring to certain books possessed by them, which either themselves were not yu^.s to be made public, or contained doctrines that were to be concealed from the un- initiated. These books bore the names of sacred personages belonging either to the old or new covenant and, as it was asserted, had been obtained by means of a secret tradition. They were so numerous and so often quoted that it came to be understood among Christians that when apocryphal books were spoken of, these private, heretical writings of the Gnostics were meant. They were also, on the part of their defenders, accorded the dignity of canon- ization as over against the canonical books of the Bible. And this fact served still further to modify the meaning of the word, so that in addition to the idea of being something hereti- cal it also came to be applied to a, work which made impi-oper claim to acceptance among canonical books. Up to this time, however, the term had not been used to designate any of
1 See Anderson, p. 470 ; Westcott's Bib. in Church, p. 286, f.
2 Cf. Herzog's Real-Bncyk., Tii. 266, and Schenkel's Bib. Lex., it. 98.
8 See Gieseler in Stud. u. Kriu, 1829, pp. 141-146 ; Bleek, in the same, 1853, p. 267, also, the latter s Introa. to UM Test., U. 302, 304.
40 THE APOCRYPHA.
the now so-called apocryphal books, but only such as are known among us as pseudepigraph- al works like the Ascension of Moses, Jamnes and Jambres, and the Book of Enoch. Our apocryphal books, on the other hand, were generally known under the title 0iP\la avayiva- cK6/j.eva, i. e., ecclesiastical books, inasmuch as they were read in the churches and recom- mended for study to the catechumens. But as they had been joined to the Greek version of the Old Testament and hence seemed, like the books of the Gnostic canon, to make unde- served claim to canonical rank, the same term, apocrypha, was finally, also applied to them. And Jerome seems to have been among the first to introduce the change. In his preface to the Book of Kings, after enumerating the works of the Hebrew canon, he adds: Quidquid extra hos est, inter apocrypha esse ponendum. At the same time, however, — as must not be over- looked, — the meaning of the word apocrypha underwent still further change, being used no longer to indicate what was heretical, or spurious, but what had no sufficient claim to be ad- mitted into the Biblical canon. Still later, the word passed through yet another phase, and was made to refer to such works as were not ecclesiastically received, could not be used as sources of proof in religious discussions, and was understood to include not only the books now known as apocryphal, but also the writings of some of the Fathers, as those of Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, and the church history of Eusebius.
The literature which sprang up among the Jews of Palestine and Egypt in connection with the Old Testament, during the last two or three centuries of IsraelitiSh history, is stenceTun- remarkable both in its character and in its extent. It was not the result, to any der which considerable degree, of partisan rivalry or the strife of sects. It can still less be phai boo^a ascribed to any supposed passion for imitating the secret books of the priests of originated.! heathen temples. It was rather the spontaneous growth of Jewish institutions themselves. It was, indeed, the direct result of the extraordinary attention that, in the nature of the case, after the cessation of prophecy, was directed to the study of the Scrip- tures. The entire national life, as wSll political and social as religious, centered in them. Such attention, moreover, was not a little enhanced by the efforts of the wise to fix upon a canon of the sacred books and the subsequent baptism with martyr blood which, during the persecutions of Antiochus Epiphanes, these treasured rolls received. But aside from other and more general influences, the two great causes that contributed most toward the produc- tion of the Old Testament Apocrypha and similar works were the translation in Egypt of the Scriptures into Greek and the almost unlimited development in Palestine of the so-called Ilaggadah. We have already remarked upon the literary activity which, under the Ptole- mies and their successors, displayed itself in the brilliant Egyptian capital, and have seen that the Jews, who formed so large and influential a part of the population, were not without dis- tinguished representatives in it. And we have seen, too, that this singular people, wherever they went and in whatever occupation they engaged, remained Jews, retained to the last their national peculiarities, their devotion to law and temple, tradition and usage. Whether they wrote history, as Eupolemus and Demetrius, or poetry like Theodotus, or philosophy as Aristobulus and Philo, its groundwork, its inspiration, and its goal were in the Hebrew Scrip- tures and the Hebrew people. Hence, it is no surprise to find among the luxuriant literary growths of Alexandrian Judaism such works as the Book of Wisdom, 3 Maccabees, the Story of Susanna, and of Bel and the Dragon, or that they attach themselves externally as closely to the sacred histories as though they were their natural outgrowth. And if, at first, in the case of some of them, their false titles and claims, their spiritual shallowness, their literary weaknesses and extravagances, tend to repel and disgust, a more careful examination will serve to convince an impartial student that they are a legitimate, and by no means unim- portant product of their time, illustrating and characterizing its spirit and aims, supplying missing links in its fragineutary records, and that their loss would have been for the Chris- tian philosophy and history of subsequent periods a real calamity.
But all these works, not excluding in a certain sense the Septuagint itself as a simple ver- sion, may be said to have had their ultimate origin in that great national institu-
The Uagga- jjo^ ^f ^^g jj^^^j. juij^ism, the SO called Ilaggadah. It is a term that cannot be
defined, it must be described. It is derived from a Hebrew word (man), which
means " what is spoken," aud is used in distinction from Halachah (riDbn), " what is gi\en
1 See ZuM, Vorlrdg-c, pp. 35-118 ; Frankel, Vorjlutficit, pp. 38-61 ; Deulsch in Smith's Bib. iKf(., art. " Ancient Ter- «ionB," under "Targum; " DiUmann in Herzog's Real-Encyk., xli. 800-303; Schurer, pp. 36 f., 446 f.
GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 41
as a rnle," the authoritative law by which the conduct was to be regulated. And this dis- tinction is a great deal more radical and important than would appear from the etymology of the words. It is, in fact, as radical and decisive as that between an inspired prophecy and an acknowledged work of the imagination, between the Mosaic law and an invented story or legend. The Halachah was the sum of those oral, traditional precepts which, in the course of time, had gathered about the written law and under the manipulations and authority of Scribe and Pharisee had come to take at least an equal rank with it. The Haggadah, on the other hand, was not law or precept at all but simply independent and relatively irre- sponsible illustration and interpretation of the Scriptures in whatever regular or irregular form it might choose to take. The elaboration and fixing of the Halachah was the sacred and closely guarded duty of a particular class in Israel, whose life was devoted solely to it and who rose in connection with it, as we have already seen, to a position of the most com- manding influence. The Haggadah might be cultivated by any Israelite, whatever his pro- fession or rank ; be pursued as a business, or used to while away a leisure moment ; be de- veloped into volumes or confined to simple sagas, tales, and parables. The Halachah and Haggadah together formed the principal part of what was known as the Midrash or Com- mentary. They had their origin in the same period, grew up side by side, employed them- selves with the same historic and prophetic themes in the Scriptures, passed down from gen- eration to generation through the same avenue of tradition, and, while totally distinct in underlying idea, in method, and in authority, were yet mutually complementary and ser- viceable, and unitedly give its peculiar stamp to the Judaism of the later times.
" To the Haggadah belonged everything that could not be included under the examina- tion of the written, or the accommodation of the traditional law. It was the product of in- dividual investigation as over against the strict authority of the spiritual rulers, the schools, and the synagogues. What the Halachah developed was something permanent, making itself felt in the practical life of the Jews, while the Haggadah sought rather to recognize some passing thought, not overlooking the form in which it was clothed, and had often for its object simply the momentary effect. The Halachah went forth from the highest tri- bunal, clothed with the highest sanctions, was something that must be obeyed as well by the ruler as private citizen ; for the Haggadah it sufficed, in order to be acknowledged Haggadah, simply to be spoken." "It is not meant by this tha,t it made no difference what kind of actions respecting the contents and meaning of the Scriptures were uttered by a Jew, that they were forthwUh reckoned to the Haggadah. On the contrary, while the Halachah was the law itself, the Haggadah was something that must be regulated by the law, must not go beyond certain well-defined limits of reason and morality. In the one case, it was the code and the dictum of the hierarchy that were the regulative norm ; in the other, it was public opinion, piety, love of country, and the like which served to restrain, and guide, and prune, so that the Haggadah in its moral and spiritual aspects is also not without significance, has indeed, a real, historical value." ^
The beginning of the Haggadah has been referred to the custom instituted or remstituted by Ezra after the Exile, in which, in connection with the reading of the law, a lUeHagga, needed translation and interpretation were added: " So they read in the book of a^^h (con- the law distinctly and gave the sense and expounded as they read." » The grad- ual decay of the Hebrew as vernacular made such translations and expositions in the Aramaic that took its place, a necessity. They received the name targums, i. =., interpretations. At the same time there sprang up an order of persons called interpreters who performed this service, and who are not to be confounded with the Scribes. They held, both politically and socially, quite a different position, and absurdly minute and arbitrary rules were supposed to be needful to confine their explanations within prescribed limits.' In process of time and under different circumstances, these oral versions and explanations of the Scriptures, like the so-called oral law, having become a too heavy, and as was thought, too precious load to be carried simply in the memory, were committed to writing. These targums then, or para- phrases of Scripture, form no unimportant, although the least embellished portion of the extant Jewish Haggadah, other elements of it being found in the younger parts of the Mid- rash, in various places in both the Jerusalem and Babylonian Talmud, and in a striking and characteristic form in the apocryphal books of the Old Testament. The latter combine in
1 Znnz, VortrOge, for substance, pp. 57, 53.
8 See Deutsoh in Smith's Bib. Did., 1. o., and Soliiiier, pp. i48, 449.
42 THE APOCRYPHA.
themselves, in fact, the three principal developments of the Hajrgadah : the historical, the ethical, and what may be called the cxegetical. Of the £ir?t, the books of the Maccabees, 1 Esdras, Judith, Tobit, and the additions to Esther and Daniel, are conspicuous examples-; of the second, Ecclesiasticus and Wisdom ; while nearly all the books offer numerous instances of the third, if but individual and sporadic. These works belong in general, moreover, to that class of Haggadistic literature in which an independent form is assumed. There is something more than a simple effort to explain and apply the sacred text. There is the same reverent attitude towards the Scriptures, but mere exposition and a minute dependence have given place to what is general and universally acknowledged, the letter to the spirit. The political and moral currents of the time show themselves, but, in a still more marked degree, the pure Jewish instinct, loyalty to the national idea. There was occasion enough for such a literature, and one cannot be surprised at its extent as shown in extant fragments. In 2 Esdras (xiv. 46), no less than seventy apocryphal works are distinguished from the twenty-four canonical of the Hebrew Scriptures.
It was a natural reaction from the preciseness and littleness of the rabbinic traditions, the spirit of piny reasserting itself as over against the dominant spirit of work and worry. In this field the heart and intellect were no longer cramped ; there was room and liberty. In the narrow ways of the Halachah no opportunity offered for talent, fancy, or flowers of rhetoric, to display themselves, there was no space even for nnimpeded movement but only for dreary plodding, wearying trials of memory and fine drawn casuistry. We can easily conceive how noble spirits would chafe in such trammels, especially when oppression and injustice exercised by foreign powers excited to the utmost pitch of endurance the sup- pressed emotions, and what relief they would find in writing or perusing such works as the story of the lieroic Judith, the struggle of the Maccabees, or the Song of the Three Children. At such times only deep coloring could satisfy. The plain fact, the simple homely truth were insufficient to still the inward craving. And if the exaggeration we meet with in these writings is almost grotesque in its proportions, it is to be remembered that it results from cir- cumstances that are extraordinary; that, in fact, it is the natural, if inexcusable rebound from a literalness that was infinitesimal, and a prosiness that was no longer to be endured. We do not wonder at the fact that the Haggadah represented the popular side of the Mid- rash, or that it gained continually on its competitor, in the estimation of the common people. The later targiims became ever less and less translations and more sermons and appeals. The following incident will illustrate the tendency : Two rabbis, the one a Halachist, the other a Haggadist, " once came together into a city and preached. The people flocked to the latter while the former's discourses remained without a hearer. Thereupon the Haggadist comforted the Halachist with a parable. ' Two merchants came into a city and spread their wares, — the one rare pearls and precious stones; the other a ribbon, a ring, glittering trin- kets; around whom will the multitude throng? .... Formerly, when life was not yet bitter labor, the people had leisure for the deep word of the law ; now it stands in need of comfortings and blessings.' " ^
2. Character and Scope of the Apocrypha.
In the special introductions to the several books we have spoken of their contents as it re- spects composition, date, literary worth, theological bearings, etc., and it remains Testement ^o"" "^ ^*^^^ simply to characterize them as a whole with particular reference to tTc^lti^i '^'^ canonical works with which they are connected. The apocryphal books of with those the Old Testament have doubtless suffered not a little from being associated by Te6te°menr "^™'^ "'* '1^°*^ "^ *e New Testament. It is not necessary to say that they are of a wholly different character. The Apocrypha of the New Testament have never, by any branch of the Christian Church, been regarded as a constituent part of the Bible and circulated with it; have never been thought worthy of a translation into the ver- nacular tongues, or even of much critical investigation by scholars; and their very titles have remained almost unknown to the majority of theological students. They even rank, with re- spect to literary, historical, and dogmatic interest, considerably below many a, 'so-called pseudepigraphal work of the Old Testament, as, for instance, the book of Enoch, the Ascen- sion of Isaiah, or the second book of Esdras. The history of the Old Testament Apocrypha,
1 Deutsch in Smith's Bib. Diet., \. c.
GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 43
on the other hand, from their origin to the present day, runs parallel with that of the Bible itself. In a large part of the Christian Church they have always been accorded a respect scarcely inferior to that paid to the acknowledged Scriptures ; have been bound up and cir- culated with them ; have become incorporated by citation, reference, or general coloring with treasured liturgical forms and the entire body of religious literature. It is not an uncommon thing in Europe even at the present day, and in Protestant churches, to hear sermons preached from texts taken from these books, particularly from Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus. One of the most familiar hymns in the German Church is founded on Ecclus. 1. 23 (" Nun danket alle Gott "), and the words of pseudo- Solomon, " The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God," etc. (Wisd. iii. 1), furnish a favorite theme for funeral orations over the graves of the departed. ^ On the authority of. Ebrard, who wrote in 1851, the use 'of the Bible without the Apocrypha in the Protestant schools of Bavaria, was forbidden by the ec- clesiastical authority.^ In England and America, however, the Old Testament Apocrypha have been strangely neglected. But it is to be expected that the great attention devoted to them in Germany, especially since the beginning of the present century, will also ultimately bear fruit among us.
With respect to outward form the Old Testament Apocrypha may be divided into his- torical works, as the books of the Maccabees and the larger portion of 1 Esdras; moral fictions, as Tobit, Judith, the Additions to Esther and Daniel ; poetic and ward'form. quasi-prophetic works, as Baruch, the Epistle of Jeremiah, and the Prayer of Manasses ; and finally, philosophical and didactic compositions, as Ecclesiasticus and Wis- dom. Of these a part were doubtless written in the Hebrew language, although the originals have long since perished, and the proofs of such origin are necessarily circumstantial. These are Ecclesiasticus, 1 Maccabees, Judith, and a part of Baruch (i.-iii. 8). The remaining works, with the possible exception of Tobit, were composed in Greek. Only one of them, Ecclesiasticus, has furnished us with the name of its actual author, the most of the others having adopted pseudonyms, for the evident purpose of gaining thereby the greater currency and repute. They differ greatly from one another in literary and moral worth, a part of them, in the estimation of some modern critics, taking rank with the best specimens of Hebrew liter- ature, while others merit attention only on account of their age and their association with the Bible.
The question of the canonicity of the Old Testament Apocryphal books may indeed he readily settled. But as ancient literary productions, originating with one of the j^^ ^^^^ ^_ most remarkable peoples of antiquity, although in many respects, no doubt, fall- speotBTaiuar ino- below similar works of the Greeks and Romans which are so sedulously studied in our schools, they still deserve particular interest and examination. As histories they sup- ply important links in the scanty annals of a most interesting period. So, too, from a philo- sophical point of view they can, by no means, be set aside as worthless. Some of them witness in a marked degree to the influence of the leaders of the Greek philosophy in the countries where they were written, and exhibit the peculiar product resulting from the con- tact of such philosophy with the sacred learning of the Jews. But their chief value is un- questionably theological. They show how the Old Testament was interpreted and applied by the Jews themselves during the period stretching nearly from the close of the canon to the coming of Christ ; what progress was made in the apprehension and development of im- portant truths, especially those relating to the unseen world and the future state, and serve a.3 well hy their exaggerations and mistakes as by their statement, or reflection of facts, to prepare the way for Him who spoke with authority and not as the scribes. Hence, it will not be out of place to give, at this point, a brief review of the theological and moral teaching of the Old Testament Apocrypha in its relation both to the canonical books that preceded and thoseLthat followed them.'
As the oldest extant remains of the extensive Hebrew literature that sprang up subsequent to the close of the canon, the apocryphal hooks are of no little importance as wit- ^^y^.^^^ nesses for it and as showing the estimation in which the Holy Scriptures were with respect held at that period. In the prologue to Ecclesiasticus, for example, we find the ^o^^J_ <^f first allusion to the canonical Scriptures as a whole, under the general title, "the law, the prophets, and the other books." This general designation, in one form or another,
1 Cf. Nitooh in the SmUch. Zdt,chn/t, 1860, No. 47, p. 369. ^ Zeugnisse gegm die Apok., p. 20.
» Of. Bretschneider, Sysumat. DarsteU. j and Cramer, Die Moral der Apokryphen.
44 THE APOCRYPHA.
the translator applies to the canonical books several times, showing that it was in common use as such at that period. There is in the passage, moreover, every evidence that the Son of Sirach did not regard his own work as on a level witli those which are thus alluded to, but rather the contrary. The same author, also, in another place (xlix. 10), after mentioning Jeremiah and Ezekiel, speaks of the twelve minor prophets, concerning whom he expresses the wish that their "bones may revive again from the grave." In the First Book of Maccabees, too, there is clear testimony to the high estimation in which the Scripttires were held. As a sort of apology to the Lacedsemonians for seeking an alliance with them, as though their own sources of strength had become exhausted, the remark is made, " albeit, we need none of these things, seeing that we have the holy books in our hands to comfort us." Again in 2 Maccabees (ii. 13), it is said of Nehemiah, on the authority of some unknown, extra-canon- ical work, that he made a collection of books, "the histories of the kings and the prophets, and of David, and the Epistles of the kings," i. e. the proclamations of the Persian kings, as found in the books of Nehemiah and Ezra. This passage, notwithstanding the obscurity that rests upon the sources from which the information given is said to be derived, and the generally untrustworthy character of the book in which it is found, is not without considera- ble value as a witness to the canon and its origin. What is really due to Ezra and others, including Nehemiah, is, indeed, by the author, ascribed exclusively to the latter, but it is not the only instance in his work where important names are thus exchanged (cf. i. 18). The different parts of the canon are clearly distinguished, the Pentateuch being omitted, simply because there was no occasion for mentioning it in this place. The writer refers only to such works as, in addition to the law which had been previously cared for (ver. 2), were in danger of being lost, and must therefore be collected together. The word iTna-vy^yaje (ver. 13), in- deed, would seem to indicate that the works gathered were to be added to a collection already begun. Besides these general allusions, there are, also, in the Apocrypha a great number of more or less direct citations from the canonical Scriptures, in which the three divisions of the canon are plainly, if not equally recognized, and an acquaintance with most of the books of which they are composed made evident.
A peculiar authority, moreover, is imputed in the Apocrypha to the canonical writings. , ^. They are held to be distinct from all other books, and given of God for human o£ the Scrip- guidance, through prophets inspired for the purpose. They are called "holy turoa. books " (1 Mace. xii. 9), and their writers are represented to have been under the
influence of the Holy Spirit (1 Esd. i. 28; vi. 1; Ecclus. xlviii. 24). It is distinctly said of Jeremiah in one place (Ecclus. xlix. 7), that he was a prophet " sanctified from the mother's womb." So in Baruch (ii. 21) a passage is cited from this prophet with the formula : "Thus saith the Lord." The common division of the Scriptures into law and prophets, too, shows that the authors of the several canonical books were looked upon as prophets, that is, as in- spired men.i And what was true of the canonical books, in general, had special force as applied to the five books of Moses. No epithets were thought extravagant, no praise too high to be bestowed on him, the greatest of the prophets, and his divinely prompted, divinely acknowledged work. He was like the glorious angels and beloved of God and men (Ecclus. xlix. 2). The Mosaic Code was the law of the Highest (Ecclus. xlix. 4), holy, and God- given (2 Mace. vi. 23). It was the sum total of all wisdom. " All these things," said the son of Sirach, " are [true of] the book of the covenant of the most high God, the law which Moses commanded for an heritage to the congregations of Jacob. It gives fullness of wisdom as Pison, and as Tigris in the time of the new fruits. It maketh the understanding to abound like Euphrates, and as Jordan in the time of harvest. It maketh the doctrine of knowledge appear as the light and as Gihon [i. e. the Nile] in the time of vintao-e " (Ecclus. xxiv. 23- 27).
The fundamental idea of the divine Being, which we find in the canonical books (jf the Old Kepresenta- Testament, that he is the one self-existing Creator and Preserver of all things, the tlons con- Omnipotent Ruler, to whom all creatures and all events are completely subject, is ceraing God. ^-^^^ retained in the Apocrypha, while, at the same time, this idea is philosophi- cally not a little developed in certain directions in some of these writings, and a particular emphasis laid on attributes which in the canonical books are less strongly marked. Nature itself proves the existence of God (Ecclus. xliii. 2; cf. xlii. 15), and they are fools who can- not out of the "good things that are seen know him that is," and " who while considering the
1 Cf. Jos., Contm Ap., i. 7.
GENERAL INTEODTJCTION. 45
■work do not recognize the Master" (Wisd. xiii. 1; cf. Song of Three Child., vev. 39, fF.). There is only one God (Eoclus. xxxiii. 5; Bar. iii. 35; Wisd. xii. 13; Song of Three Child., ver. 23), and his power over his creatures is unlimited (Jud. xvi. 13, 14; 2 Mace. viii. 18; x\i. 35; Prayer of Man., ver. 3-5). He is all-wise (Ecclus. xxiii. 19, 20; Jud. ix. 5, 6), holy, hating and punishing sin (Ecclus. xii. 6; Wisd. xiv. 9), righteous (Tob. iii. 2; Ecclus. xvi. 12-14; 3 Mace. ii. 3), kind and pitiful (2 Mace. i. 24 ; Song of Three Child., ver. 66; Wisd. XV. 1 ; Jud. ix. 11), and ready to forgive (Ecclus. ii. 11 ; v. 4-8; Tob. xiii. 6). Anthropo- pathic and anthropomorphic representations, especially the latter, as might have been ex- pected, ?.re less frequent in the Apocrypha than in the older books, and in some of them, as for instance in Ecclesiasticus and Wisdom, the idea of the divine Being as pure spirit, is at least approached. The Son of Siracli declares that no man has seen God (xliii. 31), and pseudo-Solomon speaks of his holy spirit (rh S.yiov (rovTffv/ia, ix. 17); and elsewhere says that his incorruptible spirit is in all things and " filleth the world" (i. 7; xiii. 1). On the other hand, in some of the apocryphal books the notion of God is exceedingly limited, and He is set forth as scarcely more than a national deity as over against the idols of the heathen. This is especially true of the books of Judith and Baruch (Jud. viii. 18-20; xiii. 4, 5, 7; Bar. iii. 1 ff.; iv. 6); while in Tobit the propitiation of Him through prayers and almsgiving takes, as in idolatrous sacrifices, the form of an opus operatum (cf. xii. 8-13).
The teaching of the Old Testament, for the most part, respecting creation as the work of God, remains unchanged in the Apocrypha, but pseudo- Solomon (xi. 17; cf. 2 Mace. vii. 28), in harmony with the philosophy of his time, seems to have held proyi^™™. that it was on the basis of an original formless material (^| a,ii6p(j>ov 8A.r)?), and not, as is represented in Genesis, a creation from nothing. The same Being who made, also up- holds and governs (Wisd. vi. 9; viii. 1; xi. 25; Ecclus. i. 2; xiii. 23; Bar. iii. 32). His government, moreover, is a providence (■ivp6i'oia ; Wisd. xiv. 3), itself being guided by wisdom and love (Wisd. xvi. 13; Tob. iv. 19; Jud. viii. 14; Ecclus. x. 4); the evils with which the world is afflicted, war, famine, pestilence, according to the books of Ecclesiasticus and Wis- dom, are for the punishment of human wickedness, while serving, in the case of the godly, as means of di-scipline and spiritual culture (Ecclus. xl. 9, 10; Wisd. vi. 8). Death entered the world through the envy of the devil. God created man for immortality (Wisd. ii. 24). In both of the latter compositions, also, the wisdom (<ro(f)(o) of God personified is represented as having the principal part in the works of creation and providence; and in that of pseudo- Solomon the representation is carried so far as to leave the impression on some minds that he actually hypostasized it and recognized a second divine Person under that name (vii. 22, et passim). This seems, however, to be due to the natural tendency to exaggeration which we find in all these works, there being no particular in which they are more clearly distin- guished from the canonical books than in their want of simplicity ami accuracy, the rhetori- cal figures, moreover, forming one of the best illustrations of this defect.^
The existence of both good and evil angels is recognized in the apocryphal books. They are spiritual beings and capable of assuming human forms. The good angels A„ggi„i„gy. surround the throne of God in heaven, and serve not only as his messengers in general, but as mediators in the providential government of the world. Satan (Sii0o\os), as the first great deceiver, is alluded to in the Book of Wisdom (ii. 24), and also, as it would seem, in Ecclesiasticus (xxi. 27). In the books of the Maccabees (2 Mace. iii. 26; x. 29; 3 Mace, vi, 18), angels are represented as appearing for the defense of the harassed Jews and the punishraen't of their oppressors. In Tobit, as we show in the introduction to that book, the matter of angelic interposition in human affairs is given abnormal prominence, m fact, assumes a form that is both incredible and absurd. It is represented, for instance, t,hat among the good angels there are seven presence-angels who present the prayers of the saints before God! One of them, Raphael, serves as guide to Tobias on a long journey, and pre- scribes, like a physician, for physical ailments. Among the evil angels, a certain Asmodaius acts an extraordinary part : has power to take human life, is also capable of sexual lust, but may be exorcised by means of certain medicaments which, being burned, make a stench that to 'him is unendurable (iii. 17; vi. 7, 16). It is not necessary to say that such views could not have been derived from any legitimate interpretation of the teachings of the canonical books of the Old Testament on this subject.
Of. Bruot, Wirishemeire <kr Hihrdm , Oohler, (irundzU^e der A. T. W^sheil ; Langen, Judenllmm,eU:., P- 25 fl^! K)g's Meal-Etuyk. and Soheukers Bib. Ltx., art. « Weisheit ; » also, Dillmaim, Das Buch. Hmoch, EinUsit., x. a., v
162, f.
46 THE APOCRYPHA.
With respect to man the representations of the Apocrypha deserve particular attention as
illustrating the influence of the then philosophy in the development of doctrines
poio^°" concerning human nature and destiny. Man was created by God^ and is com^
Man's o ' * nal end'
men
endJw-" posed of body and soul, the latter being sometimes designated by irfeOua and some- tsanT times by tfux^, the distinction between them being nowhere closely marked (cf. '""■ Wisd. ix. 15). He was made in the image of his Creator, endowed with reason,
the power of distinguishing between right and wrong, and a free will, and was placed on earth to be its ruler" (Ecclus. xv. 14 ff., xvii. 1-8 ; Wisd. ix. 2, 3). The image of God in which man was created consists, according to the Son of Sirach, in the superiority, in gen- eral, in which he stands with respect to the creation (xvii. 3), according to pseudo-Solomon (ii. 23) in his immortality. The latter work, moreover, clearly teaches the preexistence of the soul, and more than intimates that it was its connection with a body which was the occa- sion of its fall and is the ground of its continued sunken moral condition (viii. 19, 20; ix. 15). That the author is in this respect inconsistent, inasmuch as