ON A NEGLECTED PERIOD OF JEWISH HISTORY.

PROBABLY we are doing no injustice to our readers in supposing that many of them are very imperfectly acquainted with the history of the Jews, during the four hundred years which elapsed between the dates of the writings of the Old and New Testaments. For, whilst nearly every subject of strictly biblical character has received abundant elucidation and criticism, it is a remarkable fact-explained, probably, by the singular isolation of this long period of history from both the former and later portions of the Holy Scriptures that no popular work, perhaps no work whatever, distinctly upon the subject, within a reasonable compass, and having any claim whatever to careful collation and research, exists in our language. Prideaux's "Connexion," &c., is the only one of sufficient scope with which we are acquainted; but it is an exceedingly discursive work of two large volumes, rarely looked into at the present day, unless for special reference. In such books as "Milman's History of the Jews," the subject forms but a small connecting link, necessarily treated with a brevity proportionate to the extent of the writer's main plan. Whilst Josephus on the one hand, and the various Greek and Roman authors on the other, describe events, each with his own natural bias and colouring, none of them are to be trusted implicitly. Many brief summaries undoubtedly exist; but most of these, besides being insufficient in their scope, the writer found to have been very carelessly compiled, and to contain many inaccuracies.

Surprising as it may appear, that, in this age of literary and educational activity, so interesting a portion of history (which is involved in no obscurity

for abundant materials exist, in a scattered form,) should be so difficult of access; yet that we believe such to be the fact, will, we trust, be deemed sufficient apology for the following essay :

The Book of the Prophet Malachi, who lived about 400 years before the Christian era, is the last of the canonical writings of the Jews.

A few paragraphs will sufficiently ante-date this period, and introduce us to its proper history.

Jerusalem was taken by the Babylonians in the year B.C. 587. During the fifty years ensuing, the city was a heap of ruins, and the whole country was unpeopled and desolate. In 536, Cyrus the Persian, having overthrown the Babylonian empire, permitted the Jews, to the number of about 50,000, to return to Jerusalem: the city was, in measure, rebuilt, and the second temple (called Zerubbabel's) rose slowly, amid repeated interruptions, so that it was not until the year 458 that the Mosaic ritual was fully restored by Ezra. He governed Judea (under Cyrus), and was of eminent service, not only to his own nation, but to all posterity, in arranging and preserving the Sacred Writings.

Ten years later, and about forty years before the time of Malachi, came Nehemiah from Babylon, to supersede and to help Ezra, and Ezra (how truly great a man he was!) submitted to be superseded and helped. Some writers have conjectured that Queen Esther aided these good men in obtaining their Royal commissions; but this supposition, if carefully looked into, breaks down.

Then appeared Malachi, and he concluded his prophetic writings by intimating to the Jews that in his successor they must look for Elijah the Restorer.

How little could his less gifted contemporaries-how little, possibly, did the prophet himself-foresee that this "Elias which was for to come," was here anticipated by the space of four long, eventful, troublous centuries!

At this period, Palestine had been a Persian province for about 140 years, and so it continued for some sixty years longer. The Persians were indulgent masters, and the fidelity of the Jews was proved when Alexander the Great solicited their cooperation against Darius. Their refusal enraged the conqueror, and Josephus relates that, when he led an army against Jerusalem, he was met by Jaddus the High Priest with a large company of men dressed in their sacerdotal robes, led into the city, and shown the prophecies in the Book of Daniel, which foretold his conquest of Persia. Whereupon he was naturally greatly pleased, and granted many favours to the Jews. If this be true, we must conclude that the Jews considered the oath which they had probably taken to the Persian king, though apparently subversive of the fulfilment of prophecy, to be more binding upon them than the helping forward of what they must have recognised throughout as the inevitable course of events.

The Persians, from the first, had permitted their vassals of Palestine to be ruled, under easy supervision, by their own high priests. Very soon, and for centuries after, this union of temporal and ecclesiastical power brought forth its inevitable resultsbitter and disgraceful contests for the office. It will be proper here to notice the very striking and exact fulfilment of the prophecy of Daniel, before alluded to, which was written more than 200 years prior to its accomplishment. He says (chap. viii. ver. 21): "And the rough goat is the King of Grecia, and the great horn that is between his eyes is the first king.

Now, that being broken, whereas four stood up for it, four kingdoms shall stand up out of the nation, but not in his power." Accordingly, after the death of Alexander, his kingdom was divided between four of his generals.

Alexander died in the year B.C. 330. Then Egypt, and, after some contention, Palestine also, fell under the rule of the Ptolemies, by whom the Jews were, for the most part, treated with lenity.

But the first Ptolemy, surnamed Soter, had to enact over again the policy of Alexander. He laid siege to Jerusalem, and appears to have entered the city without opposition on a Sabbath-day, when the Jews deemed it unlawful for them to fight. He carried 100,000 Jews to Alexandria; thus consummating what Alexander had begun, engrafting the Greek language, and many of their habits of thought, upon the Hebrew stock, and at the same disseminating some knowledge of the true God amongst the Greeks. In after ages the Alexandrian, and, generally speaking, the Greek-speaking Jews, were called "Hellenists."

The Greek translation of the Old Testament Scriptures, called the Septuagint (the version quoted by our Saviour and the apostles), was made at Alexandria. But there is good reason to believe that the book called the Aristeas, from which the story of its translation, by the order of Ptolemy Philadelphus, is learned, is an entire romance; a "religious fraud" (such as were not uncommon in the early ages of Christianity) intended to give authority to the version, and that the account of other historians, who speak of five translators instead of seventy-two, is much more likely to be correct.

Another matter of interest occurring during this period of the Greek-Egyptian rule, is the administration of the High Priest, Simon, surnamed The Just.

He appears to have been a man of the old prophetic type as far as we know, the last of that class. (He is the last whom the Jews reckon amongst the "Men of the Great Synagogue.") He probably completed the Old Testament Canon, by the addition of the Books of Ezra, Haggai, Zachariah, Nehemiah, Esther, and Malachi.

Judea, lying as it did between the kingdoms of Egypt and Syria, was, during this period, the frequent battle-field of their contending armies. But in these quarrels the Jews do not appear to have taken much active part. They quietly submitted to be transferred from one power to another, and back again, as the fortunes of war decided their fate.

We may conclude from their acquiescence in these changes that their religion and ecclesiastical polity were respected by the conquerors. So long as this was the case, they paid their 20 talents annually into the exchequers respectively of Antioch and Alexandria, and were tolerably content. But when Ptolemy Philometer, a profligate and wicked prince, having completely routed Antiochus, King of Syria, came to Jerusalem, and attempted to enter the holy place of the temple, he was forbidden by the High Priest and people, with a great show of indignation and zeal. This, of course, was expressed at the risk of the monarch's severe displeasure, which, accordingly, they suffered. Upon his return to Alexandria, he commenced against the Jews the first religious persecution which I can find they endured. Required to renounce their religion, and to sacrifice to the national idols, and, with comparatively few exceptions, preferring death to the denial of their faith, 40,000 are said to have been massacred at one time. So violent became the rage of the king, that he appears to have contemplated the destruction of the