in the great network of universal chronology, the extremely arbitrary and contradictory manner in which the records had to be dealt with, shows how little dependence could be placed on the sources of information available for the purpose.'

But the rapidity with which, as we have seen, the descendants of David sank into almost complete obscurity, and the want of success which attended the efforts of the high-priests

The statement of G. Syncellus here given is taken from his Canon; in his chief work he gives many of the names and numbers after No. 13 very differently (see below). But if we compare the data of the two Chronicles we still find, in the midst of palpable contractions, transpositions, and other arbitrary and erroneous treatment, so much agreement even in the Persian and ante-Maccabean periods as to convince us that they are partly founded on very ancient records; for when the annals of the high-priests took the place of those of the kings (1 Macc. xvi. 24) they would certainly put in the most accurate list possible of all the pre-Asmonean high-priests. The dates supplied by the Chronicon Paschale are in many respects superior; for instance, in not assigning his place to the first

Jonathan
Aristobulus
Jannæus

high-priest until the reign of Cyrus at Babylon. But it is also the Chronicon Paschale which shows most clearly how little this fabric as a whole may be trusted; for it distinctly asserts that the 21 high priests filled the space of 483 years, i.e. the 69 weeks of years of Daniel,' so that its chronology as given here rests on the ingenuity of an interpreter of Daniel. Moreover from the first to the sixteenth high-priest (selected because he was the first Maccabean high-priest) it reckons just 400 years; and whereas this period of 400 years and the above of 483 years are really much too great, the period of the first six high-priests, when estimated at 190 years, is made too small, for all the older accounts make Jaddua still alive in Alexander's time.

to restore a real and permanent government, allowed the selfsacrificing activity of individuals who rose up from among the people to exercise a more powerful and beneficent influence than would otherwise have been possible. Soon enough the right men were found to render to the young community, in its continued weakness and disorganisation, the twofold services with which it could no longer permanently dispense. Another subject, however, claims our first consideration.

V. LATER VIEWS OF ZERUBBABEL AND HIS TIME.

In all times and places, the character of a man who is prominent in his own day strikes deepest into the national consciousness of posterity under that aspect in which it last appeared as he passed from earth. If, then, Zerubbabel, round whose head Messianic hopes had played in the early days of Jerusalem's rise, met with the gloomy end we have conjectured above, we need not wonder that his memory soon paled and in later times grew more and more obscure. However certain it may be that he ought to be regarded as the most prominent man of the first five-and-twenty years of the new Jerusalem, yet beyond the few broad features of his life and work described above we know nothing of him from trustworthy historical sources. When the Temple was consecrated on its completion, an event which took place almost at the end of the first quarter of a century of this new epoch, he was certainly still living. If, as is probable on many grounds, he was the author of the wonderfully profound Ps. cxxxviii., in which we hear the language of a man of princely family, thoroughly penetrated by the most exalted feelings excited at the fairest moment of this time, marked as it was by new aspiration and fresh and noble hope, we may then affirm that this descendant of David, as poet, also, must have been worthy of his great ancestor; and we shall understand still more fully how it was that he became the firmest support of the feeble steps of the new Judah, even though fate forbade him to mount the throne of David itself, and finally cast him deeper and deeper down.

But when in the Greek times the recollection of the Persian period in general, and of its opening years in particular, retreated further into the distance, and at the same time the freedom of historical representation degenerated into greater

1 P. 105.

and greater license, the memory of this hero, as well as others, was distorted and defaced in all kinds of ways. We still possess a tolerably large fragment of a strange historical work of this description,' and we must now devote to it at least a passing notice. In this book the whole history of the first Persian kings was brought, in the most extravagant style, into the closest connection with the liberation and restoration of Israel, just as if these kings had been in the habit of thinking of the God of Israel and the fate of his people at every critical moment of their lives, and the history of the whole world had strictly hinged, in consequence, upon the changes of its lot. And since nothing remained so firmly planted in the general mind as the recollection of the fact that Cyrus had granted permission for the building of the Temple, but that it had not been actually accomplished before the reign of Darius, this loose style of narrative concocted on this basis the following story. Cyrus, before his attack on Babylon, vowed to God that if he were victorious he would release Israel and restore the sacred vessels of the Temple; but for some reason or other the latter promise was not redeemed. When Darius, therefore, had (as we know) to attack and conquer Babylon a second time, he, too, vowed to God his willingness to rebuild Jerusalem and its Temple and to send back the sacred vessels; but he also subsequently failed to perform his vow.2 So once on a time there happened to be three young nobles at the court of Darius, who had agreed, in the exuberance of youthful spirits, to contend for a wager before the king and his assembled council, in a discussion on the philosophical question 'what is the strongest power among men?' and the victor was to receive the highest honours. They sealed up their proposals, together with the outline of the argument which each intended to support, and laid them under the pillow of the sleeping king. Darius, on waking, received the papers, and allowed the contest to be held with all solemnity. The first had undertaken to prove that wine was the strongest power among men; the second that it was the king (a trait in full accordance with the very corrupt conceptions of royal prerogative current in the last two centuries before Christ); but the third, who was no other than Zerubbabel, had advanced the twofold proposition that woman was incomparably the strongest power among men, but that stronger still, the strongest absolutely was the truth, i.e. ac

1 1 Esdras iii. sq. The work out of which this passage has been preserved, seems to have been still read by the oldest

Sibylline poet. See my essay, über die
Sibyllenbücher, p. 36.

21 Esdras iv, 43-45, 57.

cording to its proper meaning in Israel, divine truth. The king and the three Persian nobles declared the last to be the victor, decreed him the highest honours, and promised to grant him any boon he might ask. Zerubbabel, however, requested nothing more than that Darius would perform his own vows and those of Cyrus with regard to Jerusalem and the Temple. Then, at last, full concessions were obtained from Darius, the new constitution and the immunities of Jerusalem and the Temple, with its priestly and other servants, were established,1 and Zerubbabel, at the head of a great band of exiles, arrived in the holy land. The author of this work was tolerably well acquainted with the traditions of Persian history; but he certainly wrote no earlier than in the last century before Christ, and his object probably was to secure to Judea the favour of a Ptolemaic or other heathen power.3

4

2

Now, however great the interval between the pictures and stories of this production (which was, no doubt, of considerable dimensions) and the traditions and records of the earlier works, yet the Greek author of the book commonly known as the Apocryphal or third book of Ezra undertook to put together a new work from both these sources. This Hellenist was either himself a translator of the books of Chronicles, or else (being only a Greek editor) he found them translated already, but assumed the liberty of working up together two such very different productions as the narrative of the Chronicler and the story-book just mentioned. From the latter he took the long piece descriptive of Zerubbabel as a page at the court of Darius, and then rearranged the passages of the Chronicler, caring little whether the result was an adequate and consistent account or not.5 Since a book which related the rise of the new

The detailed enumeration of these same grants and immunities, 1 Esdras iv. 49-56, would be of great historical importance if it were known from what source the narrator had taken it; but it is evident that its terms are too general to allow of its passing for historical evidence as it stands.

The description of the ridiculous attitude of Darius by the side of his beautiful concubine 'Apamê, daughter of the admirable Bartacus, in 1 Esdras iv. 29-31, must be derived from some book of Persian court-stories. Josephus had a different reading for the name of her father, Ant. xi. 3, 6.

The opening of the passage, 1 Esdras iii. 1 sq., is in imitation of the book of Esther; but the book of Aristeas also

must already have been known to the author. That he had in his mind a Greek kingdom in which there was but one royal capital, is proved by the colouring of the words in iv. 49.

But in the LXX [and the English A. V.], since it begins at an earlier point than the Canonical book, it is put first by preference and called 1 Esdras.

It is only when we grasp the fact that the author of 1 Esdras desired to work up both these books into one that the arrangement of his sections becomes clear. He retains Ezr. i. at the beginning, as describing the time of Cyrus, but then he passes over at once to iv. 7-24, as though Artashashta were identical with Cambyses, whom he puts in his place throughout (dropping out the short notice

2

Jerusalem might suitably commence with the last glorious days of the former city, our author begins his quotations from the work of the Chronicler with the description of the last great feast in Josiah's time; but the work breaks off abruptly in the middle of Ezra's life, perhaps because the author himself never finished it. Josephus then followed this incongruous cento; but since he also took as a foundation another later work, according to which Zerubbabel came to Jerusalem under Cyrus, he has contrived to tell a great deal twice over, and has only introduced still greater confusion into the whole history of these five-andtwenty years.3

Apart, however, from this fictitious narrative, the memory of Zerubbabel, as well as of his priestly colleague Joshua, remained in later times without fruit. Yet, as it was seen that he was glorified in the prophetic book of Zechariah as a distinguished descendant of David, a rabbinical writer of the early Middle Ages thought his name available as a mask for the publication of a short apocalypse on the certainty of the ultimate appearance of the Messiah son of David, on his precursor the Messiah son of Joseph, and on their friends and foes.*

in iv. 6 altogether, because he could make no use of it); immediately after this ho goes on to Darius, and inserts the passage about Zerubbabel from the other work, and then (with the trifling omissions of v. 1, 6) lets the sections, Ezr. ii. 1-iv. 5 (as though this happened in the time of Darius), and v. sq. follow each other in order. Yet he allows the glaring contradictions, 1 Esdras ii. 30, iii. 1, v. 73 sq., to stand. He found the work of the Chronicler (including under this name our books of Ezra and Nehemiah) tolerably freely translated from the original. This translation was different from that of the LXX, and no doubt much older. On the other hand the work from which he took the story about Zerubbabel was originally composed in Greek.

1 1 Esdras i. is from 2 Chron. xxxv. sq., after the same translation; but the author connects in a new way the striking conclusion of 2 Chron. (cf. vol. i. p. 196) and the beginning of Ezra by a slight turn in the language.

Jos. Ant. xi. 55, like 1 Esdras, passes on at once from Ezr. x. to Neh. vii. 73. This can only be explained by supposing that he had 1 Esdras before him; but from this very point he curtails the narrative about Ezra and then about Nehemiah so much that it is difficult to

understand whether his copy of 1 Esdras was complete; most likely it was not.

3 Ant. xi. 1-4. He gives the number of those who returned under Cyrus (see above, p. 82) at 42,462, and of those who returned under Darius at 462,800, but the latter number is evidently formed from the former by multiplying it by ten, although the register of Ezr. ii. certainly lay before him, and would have been quoted by him in extenso except for its length; and in both cases he makes Zerubbabel the leader! According to him Sisines and Sarabazanes (a corrupt form of Sathrabazanes, according to p. 110, note 2) were already Persian officers in Syria under Cyrus as well as under Darius; but the Samaritans, Tanganas, Sambabar, Sadraces, and Bobelon, mentioned xi. 4, 9, against whom Zerubbabel had at last to complain to Darius, were probably the same in the original. As to the other Greek work which he used we can only draw inferences; but these seem to me to be trustworthy, and the work was the one indicated on p. 48 sq., note 1. The confusion of times and persons in all these narratives is carried still further in the work of the so-called Josippon ben Gorion, i. 5-22, which has been already mentioned on p. 71 sq.

Now reprinted in Jellinek's Bet ha