Post-Biblical History of the Jews, from the Close of the Old Testament Till the Year 70 C.E. (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II. Wars between Alexander's Generals?Perdiccas?Ptolemy?Antigonus? Siege and Storm of Jerusalem by Ptolemy?Jews carried to Egypt?Demetrius?Battle of Gaza?Mosollamus?Credibility of Greek historians in reference to Jewish affairs: Jerom of Cardia; Hecatseus?The Nabathseans?Seleucus Nicator?His success in Upper Asia?Era of the Seleucidse: Minyan Staroth?Extinction of the family of Alexander the Great?Battle of Ipsos. (From 326 to 301, B. c. E.) Historians differ as to the causes of Alexander's death. According to some, he had been poisoned by the emissaries of Antipater, one of his lieutenants, whom he had shortly before displaced from the government of Greece and Mace- don. Others, and with more truth, consider debauchery, and the excessive use of wine, as the only poison that destroyed him. With him died the project of restoring the prosperity of Babylon and the temple of Belus, the present condition of which strikingly attests the truth of prophecy. He had permitted the passively-refractory Jews to return to their homes, where, as their historian relates, " they pulled down the temples and altars which had been erected by the colonists in their land, and paid a fine for some to the governors, and received a pardon for others." (Hecatseus in Joseph.: contra Apion, i. 22.) Aristobulus, a contemporary biographer, relates (apud Arrian, cap. 26) that Alexander being asked, immediately before his dissolution, " to whom he bequeathed the empire?" replied "to the strongest, for my obsequies, I know, will be celebrated by strenuous funeral games among my generals." This report was greedily embraced by the Greeks, whom Homer (Iliad, lib. xvi. 850) had taught to believe that the soul, at taking its flight from the body,often clearly predicted the secrets of futurity, and all...