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period; it was simply the common fate of all favourite popular books. Many later writers thought it worth while merely to elaborate single passages of the narrative; others preferred investing it with a wholly new and still more brilliant grace.3 The chief reason why many readers seem to have desired the book to be recast at a time when grave disasters had again habituated men to think more of God, was that they objected to the entire absence of his name from one end to the other.* This feeling gave rise to repeated additions and changes; and it was probably about the year 48 B.C. (judging by an old Greek subscription)," certainly not later at all events, that a copy of a Greek redaction was taken from Jerusalem to Egypt, and there extensively circulated; a similar redaction was followed by Josephus. All these alterations, however, destroyed its original design and simple beauty, and thus betrayed their relatively much later age. In the meantime it was easy to transfer the idea of the festival whose celebration it glorified to any other foreign nation which subsequently ruled over the Judeans; and in one of these later recastings Haman was transformed out of a Persian into a Macedonian, because after the Maccabean wars the Macedonians were identified with 'enemies of the Judeans.'

But the way was being gradually prepared for a change of a very different kind from any which the book of Esther leads us to anticipate. Powerfully favoured by circumstances, the intrusion of Greek culture and art could not be averted, and now demands our attention.

This may be gathered particularly from the MSS. of the LXX and the Itala. O. E. Fritzsche has endeavoured to restore two different Greek redactions in the book of EZOHP, Tur. 1848. The MS. of Josephus also had many details of its own. The larger additions separated by Jerome and Luther do not exhaust these later changes, which sometimes extend still further and can still be recognised. To these must be added finally the many kinds of paraphrasing and enlargement which the book underwent at a still later period, as may be seen from the Targums and other later Jewish books. The only peculiarity of the Chaldean fragments of the book of Esther published by De Rossi (in a second edition at Tübingen, 1783) is a later addition of the prayers of Mordecai and Esther.

2 The royal decrees in particular were thus elaborated.

The chief instrument for this purpose was found in the vision of Mordecai, with which everything was to begin and conclude.

As the above-named Chaldean fragments show.

This Greek translation and redaction proceeded according to this from a certain Lysimachus in Jerusalem, and was carried down to Egypt in the fourth year of Ptolemy and Cleopatra (that is, if the last Cleopatra is meant, about 48 B.C., when this Ptolemy seems to have died) by a Levite Dositheus and his son Ptolemy. The tenor of this subscription is remarkably circumspect, and there seems reason to doubt its historical character. If it could be proved that Ptolemy Philomêtor was intended, as Hody and Valckenär, de Aristobulo, p. 61, suppose, the subscription would fall in the year 178 B.C.; but this can hardly be established,

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II. THE INFLUX OF GREEK CULTURE AND ART.

This was promoted by the Greek dominion itself, whether its centre was in Egypt or in Northern Syria, and its force was increased by the proximity in which Alexandria and Antioch now lay to Jerusalem and Samaria. But a host of other important causes contributed to the same result.

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Among these must first be enumerated the Macedonian thirst for glory and power, combined with the Greek industry and propensity for building, which covered Palestine, like other conquered countries, with new cities erected in the most attractive localities, restored many which had fallen into ruin during the previous destructive wars, supplied them more or less with Greek manners and institutions, and, through every fresh opening for its extensive commerce, spread the Greek spirit too. A survey of the Greek dominion, which lasted for nearly three centuries from the conquest of Alexander, shows us at length the whole of Palestine sown with Greek names of cities, places, and streams, due in no small degree to the Greek craving to perpetuate its memory in public names. Many of the original names have been merely Grecised with easy changes arising out of various kinds of word-play, which, in the case of names in the district of Judah, clearly exhibit the desire to convey the idea of their peculiar sanctity. The special circumstances under which various Greek settlements were established are in many cases extremely obscure; moreover, this branch of the subject finds a more appropriate place in general history. It is clear, however, that many of these erections belong to the early days in which the MacedonianGreek passion for building was at the height of its energy. Many things seem, it is true, to have been ascribed to Alexander merely by the inconsiderateness of a later time. The

This name, evidently originating in Egypt, becomes from this time the general designation. In spelling it, the Greeks probably had in their minds the word Taλaí, old, but the full name was originally the Syrian Palestine, i.e. the Philistine land belonging to Syria, as the Egyptians in the Persian age naturally described the whole of southern Syria by the name of the country of the Philistines immediately adjacent to themselves. Herodotus certainly heard the name used in this sense in Egypt, and applies it in the same way for the first time in i. 105; cf. ii. 106, iii. 5, vii. 89.

• Cf. the formations Ἱεροσόλυμα, Ιεριχώ, the river 'Iepoμág, and 'Apaípeμa, p. 228. The stages of this progress may be estimated from the fact that 'Iepoσóλvua does not occur in the LXX or Aristotle, but is found in the fragments of Hecatæus, Eupolemus, Lysimachus, and Agatharchides, as we now have them, and both names are interchangeable in the Apocrypha and the New Testament (in which latter their use is frequently determined intentionally by delicate differences). And yet the LXX have 'Iepoßáaλ for Jerubbaal, vol. ii. p. 380 sq., and Philo always calls Jerusalem simply Hieropolis.

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important city of Gerasa, for example, on the east of the Jordan, which certainly has no historical existence till this period, was said to have been founded by the grey-headed men (Greek Gerontes) whom Alexander left behind there.1 We have already, however, adverted to the restoration of Samaria by Perdiccas. In the extreme north the ancient Dan3 gave way to a new heathen Paneas. In its neighbourhood a city named Seleuceia, at the northern end of the Lake of Jordan, was subsequently inhabited also by Judeans." Another, Philoteria, unknown to us at a later date, at any rate under this name, flourished in the third century on the lake of Galilee. Pella and Dion, on the east of the Jordan, betray their origin by their purely Macedonian names, the former, among others, being ascribed to Antigonus.7 In the same region the ancient Rabbath-Ammon was rebuilt as Philadelphia by Ptolemy II., and in the south Ar-Moab, as Areopolis. Hippus, Gadara, Scythopolis, all with Greek sounding names, lying together in the southern district of the Lake of Galilee, are subsequently reckoned entirely as Hellenic cities, and were, therefore, essentially transformed by Greek institutions. In Ptolemais, which subsequently occupied so important a place in Jewish history, one of the first Ptolemies revived the ancient Accho, the important harbour south of Phoenicia. Still further south some one erected Stratônos-Pyrgos, which was afterwards destined to become so celebrated as Cæsarea-upon-the-Sea; and between this and Joppa, also upon the coast, lay Apollonia, which boasted of having been founded by Seleucus. In the far south, after its conquest and destruction by Alexander, Gaza again arose in glory as a Hellenic city; 10 and at no great distance, Anthedon" on the coast, and Arethusa 12 in the interior, disclose by their names their entirely Greek character. It is

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fact all Palestine was proud of its wine; Pliny, Hist. Nat. v. 16; Solinus, Polykist. cap. 45; cf. Tacit. Hist. v. 5.

The situation of the city is more accurately stated in Pliny, v. 14 and Jos. Ant. xiii. 15, 4 than in the Bell. Jud. i. 8, 4; according to Appian, Syr. cap. 57, Seleucus I. might have founded it, unless some other town of this name is intended, for Appian expressly omits Phoenicia from among the countries occupied by Seleucus.

19 According to Jos. Ant. xvii. 11, 4; cf. xiii. 13, 3; Arrian, Hist. Alexandria, ii. 27, ad fin.

Jos. Ant. xiii. 3, 3, 15, 4, xiv. 5, 3; Plin. Hist. Nat. v. 14.

12 Jos. Bell. Jud. i. 7, 7, Ant. xiv. 4, 4.

only within the narrower limits of the Judeans proper that we fail to find in these centuries any such Greek settlements, in any case a notable sign of the time; but the purely Judean districts are surrounded by others which had experienced the Greek transformation, and their own inability, also, soon afterwards to resist the same influences will appear further on.

Whilst Macedonian-Greek civilisation was thus shutting up the ancient Canaan more and more closely in its venerable centre, and pressing upon it more and more severely, the violent convulsions which accompanied the storm of Alexander and even continued to vibrate long after it, drove the remnants of the ancient people of Israel more vehemently than any other outside the bounds of Greece into the disturbances which flung the nations far and wide amongst each other. By this time Israel had learned,' like the Greeks, to put up with an unsettled and wandering existence on the earth, and to travel in any direction whither gain or necessity summoned them; and it is remarkable to observe how the wide diffusion of the Greeks was now followed by a similar dispersion of the Judeans and Samaritans; nay, it may even be said that the earlier shocks were now suddenly succeeded by one of far greater violence, which tended to scatter Israel continually over a wider area. Fresh masses of the posterity of Israel were constantly being driven out into the wide world, which was then becoming wholly Greek; and the inhabitants of the mountains of Israel, and even the Judeans settled in the east, still maintained enough strictness of character, as well as aptitude for war, to render them useful in many ways to the Greek kings. Alexander seems to have transported eight thousand Samaritans as a guard to the Thebais, and to have employed Judean soldiers also in his armies. Ptolemy I., who carried so many prisoners to Egypt, placed thirty thousand of them armed as garrisons in the fortified places, and conceded to them the Macedonian Isopolity (equality of rights). About the same time, and under almost the same conditions, Seleucus I. Nicator removed a number of Judeans who had served their time under him into several of the many new cities founded by him, particularly into his new capital of Antioch, where the subsequent history always points to a large community of Judeans. On most of

these points our information is extremely scanty. We derive it almost entirely from later writers, and we might, therefore, be tempted to question its trustworthiness, since at a later period (as we shall see by-and-by) the Judeans made strenuous efforts to obtain exemption from all military service under heathen rulers, and had already, under the Persians,' shown little inclination for it. It is, however, to be considered that weariness of the Persian dominion and the new Greek liberty might make them at first strongly disposed in favour of it, and it will appear further on that under Greek sovereigns also, whenever they discerned any advantages in military service, they eagerly sought for it. Antiochus the Great transferred two thousand Judeans from Mesopotamia and Babylon, because he could count upon their loyalty, into the seditious countries of Lydia and Phrygia. Numbers, however, as the passion for trade grew far stronger than it had ever been before, speedily emigrated voluntarily into Greek cities; and the new Alexandria, in particular, by the extremely favourable combination of circumstances which it presented, attracted at an early period, under Ptolemy I.,3 nay, according to one statement, under Alexander, immediately after its foundation, a constantly increasing multitude of Judean immigrants.-The Samaritans seem to have spread still more rapidly, as is shown by the tradition about the eight thousand Samaritans in Alexander's army. Large bodies of them settled in a very short time in Alexandria and other parts of Egypt, and there they maintained themselves in exclusive communities with considerable numbers till late in the Middle Ages. But both Samaritans and Judeans carried with them their mutual enmities and perpetual disputes even there."

It is somewhat difficult to survey all the foreign cities and countries to which the Judeans, with the Samaritans often close at their side, spread during these centuries, and where they made themselves settled homes. Even before Alexander, many were already living dispersed among the heathen in all