Famous Women of the New Testament. LECTURE I. MARIAMNE, THE WIFE OF HEROD THE GREAT. ROM the close of the Old Testament history FRO to the beginning of the New, more than four hundred years elapsed. During all this time the Scriptures are silent as to the fortunes of the Jews. From ancient profane historians, chiefly from Josephus, we learn that they continued after their return from Babylon to be servants of the Persians (on whose throne their own Esther had sat) for one hundred years. After this Alexander the Great conquered Judea, and him they served for nine years. After the death of the man who “conquered the world” (but who died in a drunken debauch), the kings of Egypt, the land where their progenitors had suffered so greatly thousands of years before, became the rulers of the Jews, the time of their domination being one hundred years. Then the "Syrians came down like a wolf on the fold," and ruled them for a period of thirty years, during which time, especially under Antiochus Epiphanes, they suffered the most horrible |