_ISRAEL AND THE GREEKS_
Apart from the author of the tenth chapter of Genesis, who defines
Javan or Greece as the father of Elishah and Tarshish, of Kittim or
Cyprus and Rodanim or Rhodes,[1263] the first Hebrew writer who
mentions the Greeks is Ezekiel,[1264] _c._ 580 B.C. He describes them
as engaged in commerce with the Phœnicians, who bought slaves from
them. Even while Ezekiel wrote in Babylonia, the Babylonians were in
touch with the Ionian Greeks through the Lydians.[1265] The latter were
overthrown by Cyrus about 545, and by the beginning of the next century
the Persian lords of Israel were in close struggle with the Greeks for
the supremacy of the world, and had virtually been defeated so far as
concerned Europe, the west of Asia Minor, and the sovereignty of the
Mediterranean and Black Seas. In 460 Athens sent an expedition to Egypt
to assist a revolt against Persia, and even before that Greek fleets
had scoured the Levant and Greek soldiers, though in the pay of Persia,
had trodden the soil of Syria. Still Joel, writing towards 400 B.C.,
mentions Greece[1266] only as a market to which the Phœnicians carried
Jewish slaves; and in a prophecy which some take to be contemporary
with Joel, Isaiah lxvi., the coasts of Greece are among the most
distant of Gentile lands.[1267] In 401 the younger Cyrus brought to the
Euphrates to fight against Artaxerxes Mnemon the ten thousand Greeks
whom, after the battle of Cunaxa, Xenophon led north to the Black Sea.
For nearly seventy years thereafter Athenian trade slowly spread
eastward, but nothing was yet done by Greece to advertise her to the
peoples of Asia as a claimant for the world’s throne. Then suddenly in
334 Alexander of Macedon crossed the Hellespont, spent a year in the
conquest of Asia Minor, defeated Darius at Issus in 332, took Damascus,
Tyre and Gaza, overran the Delta and founded Alexandria. In 331 he
marched back over Syria, crossed the Euphrates, overthrew the Persian
Empire on the field of Arbela, and for the next seven years till his
death in 324 extended his conquests to the Oxus and the Indus. The
story, that on his second passage of Syria Alexander visited
Jerusalem,[1268] is probably false. But he must have encamped
repeatedly within forty miles of it, and he visited Samaria.[1269] It
is impossible that he received no embassy from a people who had not
known political independence for centuries and must have been only too
ready to come to terms with the new lord of the world. Alexander left
behind him colonies of his veterans, both to the east and west of the
Jordan, and in his wake there poured into all the cities of the Syrian
seaboard a considerable volume of Greek immigration.[1270] It is from
this time onward that we find in Greek writers the earliest mention of
the Jews by name. Theophrastus and Clearchus of Soli, disciples of
Aristotle, both speak of them; but while the former gives evidence of
some knowledge of their habits, the latter reports that in the
perspective of his great master they had been so distant and vague as
to be confounded with the Brahmins of India, a confusion which long
survived among the Greeks.[1271]
Alexander’s death delivered his empire to the ambitions of his
generals, of whom four contested for the mastery of Asia and
Egypt—Antigonus, Ptolemy, Lysimachus and Seleucus. Of these Ptolemy and
Seleucus emerged victorious, the one in possession of Egypt, the other
of Northern Syria and the rest of Asia. Palestine lay between them, and
both in the wars which led to the establishment of the two kingdoms and
in those which for centuries followed, Palestine became the
battle-field of the Greeks.
Ptolemy gained Egypt within two years of Alexander’s death, and from
its definite and strongly entrenched territory he had by 320 conquered
Syria and Cyprus. In 315 or 314 Syria was taken from him by Antigonus,
who also expelled Seleucus from Babylon. Seleucus fled to Egypt and
stirred up Ptolemy to the reconquest of Syria. In 312 Ptolemy defeated
Demetrius, the general of Antigonus, at Gaza, but the next year was
driven back into Egypt by Antigonus himself. Meanwhile Seleucus
regained Babylon.[1272] In 311 the three made peace with each other,
but Antigonus retained Syria. In 306 they assumed the title of kings,
and in the same year renewed their quarrel. After a naval battle
Antigonus wrested Cyprus from Ptolemy, but in 301 he was defeated and
slain by Seleucus and Lysimachus at the battle of Ipsus in Phrygia. His
son Demetrius retained Cyprus and part of the Phœnician coast till 287,
when he was forced to yield them to Seleucus, who had moved the centre
of his power from Babylon to the new Antioch on the Orontes, with a
seaport at Seleucia. Meanwhile in 301 Ptolemy had regained what the
Greeks then knew as Cœle-Syria, that is all Syria to the south of
Lebanon except the Phœnician coast.[1273] Damascus belonged to
Seleucus. But Ptolemy was not allowed to retain Palestine in peace, for
in 297 Demetrius appears to have invaded it, and Seleucus, especially
after his marriage with Stratonike, the daughter of Demetrius, never
wholly resigned his claims to it.[1274] Ptolemy, however, established a
hold upon the land, which continued practically unbroken for a century,
and yet during all that time had to be maintained by frequent wars, in
the course of which the land itself must have severely suffered
(264—248).
Therefore, as in the days of their earliest prophets, the people of
Israel once more lay between two rival empires. And as Hosea and Isaiah
pictured them in the eighth century, the possible prey either of Egypt
or Assyria, so now in these last years of the fourth they were tossed
between Ptolemy and Antigonus, and in the opening years of the third
were equally wooed by Ptolemy and Seleucus. Upon this new alternative
of tyranny the Jews appear to have bestowed the actual names of their
old oppressors. Ptolemy was Egypt to them; Seleucus, with one of his
capitals at Babylon, was still Assyria, from which came in time the
abbreviated Greek form of Syria.[1275] But, unlike the ancient empires,
these new rival lords were of one race. Whether the tyranny came from
Asia or Africa, its quality was Greek; and in the sons of Javan the
Jews saw the successors of those world-powers of Egypt, Assyria and
Babylonia, in which had been concentrated against themselves the whole
force of the heathen world. Our records of the times are fragmentary,
but though Alexander spared the Jews it appears that they had not long
to wait before feeling the force of Greek arms. Josephus quotes[1276]
from Agatharchides of Cnidos (180—145 B.C.) to the effect that Ptolemy
I. surprised Jerusalem on a Sabbath day and easily took it; and he adds
that at the same time he took a great many captives from the
hill-country of Judæa, from Jerusalem and from Samaria, and led them
into Egypt. Whether this was in 320 or 312 or 301[1277] we cannot tell.
It is possible that the Jews suffered in each of these Egyptian
invasions of Syria, as well as during the southward marches of
Demetrius and Antigonus. The later policy, both of the Ptolemies, who
were their lords, and of the Seleucids, was for a long time exceedingly
friendly to Israel. Their sufferings from the Greeks were therefore
probably over by 280, although they cannot have remained unscathed by
the wars between 264 and 248.
The Greek invasion, however, was not like the Assyrian and Babylonian,
of arms alone; but of a force of intellect and culture far surpassing
even the influences which the Persians had impressed upon the religion
and mental attitude of Israel. The ancient empires had transplanted the
nations of Palestine to Assyria and Babylonia. The Greeks did not need
to remove them to Greece; for they brought Greece to Palestine. “The
Orient,” says Wellhausen, “became their America.” They poured into
Syria, infecting, exploiting, assimilating its peoples. With dismay the
Jews must have seen themselves surrounded by new Greek colonies, and
still more by the old Palestinian cities Hellenised in polity and
religion. The Greek translator of Isaiah ix. 12 renders Philistines by
Hellenes. Israel were compassed and penetrated by influences as subtle
as the atmosphere: not as of old uprooted from their fatherland, but
with their fatherland itself infected and altered beyond all powers of
resistance. The full alarm of this, however, was not felt for many
years to come. It was at first the policy both of the Seleucids and the
Ptolemies to flatter and foster the Jews. They encouraged them to feel
that their religion had its own place beside the forces of Greece, and
was worth interpreting to the world. Seleucus I. gave to Jews the
rights of citizenship in Asia Minor and Northern Syria; and Ptolemy I.
atoned for his previous violence by granting them the same in
Alexandria. In the matter of the consequent tribute Seleucus respected
their religious scruples; and it was under Ptolemy Philadelphus
(283—247), if not at his instigation, that the Law was first translated
into Greek.
* * * * *
To prophecy, before it finally expired, there was granted the
opportunity to assert itself, upon at least the threshold of this new
era of Israel’s history.
We have from the first half-century of the era perhaps three or four,
but certainly two, prophetic pieces. By many critics Isaiah
xxiv.—xxvii. are assigned to the years immediately following
Alexander’s campaigns. Others assign Isaiah xix. 16-25 to the last
years of Ptolemy I.[1278] And of our Book of the Twelve Prophets, the
chapters attached to the genuine prophecies of Zechariah, or chaps,
ix.—xiv. of his book, most probably fall to be dated from the contests
of Syria and Egypt for the possession of Palestine; while somewhere
about 300 is the most likely date for the Book of Jonah.
In “Zech.” ix.—xiv. we see prophecy perhaps at its lowest ebb. The
clash with the new foes produces a really terrible thirst for the blood
of the heathen: there are schisms and intrigues within Israel which in
our ignorance of her history during this time it is not possible for
us to follow: the brighter gleams, which contrast so forcibly with the
rest, may be more ancient oracles that the writer has incorporated with
his own stern and dark Apocalypse.
In the Book of Jonah, on the other hand, we find a spirit and a style
in which prophecy may not unjustly be said to have given its highest
utterance. And this alone suffices, in our uncertainty as to the exact
date of the book, to take it last of all our Twelve. For “in this
book,” as Cornill has finely said, “the prophecy of Israel quits the
scene of battle as victor, and as victor in its severest struggle—that
against self.”
FOOTNOTES:
[1263] Gen. x. 2, 4. יון Javan, is Ιαϝων, or Ιαων, the older form of
the name of the Ionians, the first of the Greek race with whom Eastern
peoples came into contact. They are perhaps named on the Tell-el-Amarna
tablets as “Yivana,” serving “in the country of Tyre” (_c._ 1400 B.C.);
and on an inscription of Sargon (_c._ 709) Cyprus is called Yâvanu.
[1264] xxvii. 13.
[1265] _Isaiah xl.—lxvi._ (Expositor’s Bible), 108 f.
[1266] iii. 6 (Eng.; iv. 6 Heb.).
[1267] The sense of distance between the two peoples was mutual.
Writing in the middle of the fifth century B.C., Herodotus has heard of
the Jews only as a people that practise circumcision and were defeated
by Pharaoh Necho at Megiddo (II. 104, 159; on the latter passage see
_Hist. Geog._, p. 405 n.). He does not even know them by name. The
fragment of Chœrilos of Samos, from the end of the fifth century, which
Josephus cites (_Contra Apionem_, I. 22) as a reference to the Jews,
is probably of a people in Asia Minor. Even in the last half of the
fourth century and before Alexander’s campaigns, Aristotle knows of the
Dead Sea only by a vague report (_Meteor._, II. iii. 39). His pupil
Theophrastus (_d._ 287) names and describes the Jews (Porphyr. _de
Abstinentia_, II. 26; Eusebius, _Prepar. Evang._, IX. 2: cf. Josephus,
_C. Apion._, I. 22); and another pupil, Clearchus of Soli, records the
mention by Aristotle of a travelled Jew of Cœle-Syria, but “Greek in
soul as in tongue,” whom the great philosopher had met, and learned
from him that the Jews were descended from the philosophers of India
(quoted by Josephus, _C. Apion._, I. 22).
[1268] Jos., XI. _Antt._ iv. 5.
[1269] _Hist. Geog._, p. 347.
[1270] _Hist. Geog._, pp. 593 f.
[1271] See above, p. 440, n. 1267.
[1272] Hence the Seleucid era dates from 312.
[1273] _Hist. Geog._, 538.
[1274] Cf. Ewald, _Hist._ (Eng. Ed.), V. 226 f.
[1275] Asshur or Assyria fell in 607 (as we have seen), but her name
was transferred to her successor Babylon (2 Kings xxiii. 29; Jer. ii.
18; Lam. v. 6), and even to Babylon’s successor Persia (Ezra vi. 22).
When Seleucus secured what was virtually the old Assyrian Empire with
large extensions to Phrygia on the west and the Punjaub on the east,
the name would naturally be continued to his dominion, especially as
his first capital was Babylon, from his capture of which in 312 the
Seleucid era took its start. There is actual record of this. Brugsch
(_Gesch. Aeg._, p. 218) states that in the hieroglyphic inscriptions of
the Ptolemæan period the kingdom of the Seleucids is called Asharu (cf.
Stade, _Z.A.T.W._, 1882, p. 292, and Cheyne, _Book of Psalms_, p. 253,
and _Introd. to Book of Isaiah_, p. 107, n. 3). As the Seleucid kingdom
shrank to this side of the Euphrates, it drew the name Assyria with it.
But in Greek mouths this had long ago (cf. Herod.) been shortened to
Syria: Herodotus also appears to have applied it only to the west of
the Euphrates. Cf. _Hist. Geog._, pp. 3 f.
[1276] XII. _Antt._ i.: cf. _Con. Apion._, I. 22.
[1277] See above, p. 442. Eusebius, _Chron. Arm._, II. 225, assigns it
to 320.
[1278] Cheyne, _Introd. to Book of Isaiah_, p. 105.
“_ZECHARIAH_”
(_IX.—XIV._)
_Lo, thy King cometh to thee, vindicated and victorious, meek and
riding on an ass, and on a colt, the foal of an ass._
_Up, Sword, against My Shepherd!... Smite the Shepherd, that the sheep
may be scattered!_
_And I will pour upon the house of David and upon all the inhabitants
of Jerusalem the spirit of grace and of supplication, and they shall
look to Him whom they have pierced; and they shall lament for Him, as
with lamentation for an only son, and bitterly grieve for Him, as with
grief for a first-born._