Post-Biblical History of the Jews; From the Close of the Old Testament, about the Year 420 B.C.E., Till the Destruction of the Second Temple in the Year 70 C.E. Volume 1 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1856 edition. Excerpt: ...for three years. The means he had used to supplant his worthier predecessors were, with similar effect, employed against himself. Having sent his younger brother Onias, who assumed the Greek name Menelaus,36 to Antioch with tribute, this ambitious profligate took advantage of the opportunity to ingratiate himself with the king; and, by offering to pay annually three hundred talents (about $300,000) more than Jason did, he succeeded in removing Jason from the high-priesthood, and getting himself appointed in his stead. But in his attempt to assume that high office he was repulsed and compelled to return to Antioch. There he professed for himself and his associates an entire conformity to the religion of the Greeks, and by that means succeeded in persuading Antiochus to establish him by force. He returned to Jerusalem at the head of a detachment of the Syrian army, then marching against Egypt. Jason, disgracefully expelled, was forced to seek refuge in the land of the Ammonites. And Menelaus, who was not only less scrupulous even than Jason, but who, moreover, proved himself capable of the most atrocious crimes, triumphantly assumed the honours and powers of high-priest. Thus there were at one and the same time what had never been before, three high-priests, 36 It became the fashion among persons of consequence, to adopt, in their intercourse with the Greeks, a Grecian name, in sound or meaning as like as possible to the Hebrew one by which they were known among the Jews. of whom, however, only one, Onias, then living at Antioch, was legitimate; the other two were usurpers. The Syrian monarchy had at length acquitted itself of the heavy annual tribute it had to pay to Rome, and to raise which every means of extortion, and even of plunder, had been...