CHAPTER XXXI ISRAEL AND THE GREEKS PART from the author of the tenth chapter of A Genesis, who defines Javan or Greece as the father of Elishah and Tarshish, of Kittim or Cyprus and Rodanim or Rhodes, the first Hebrew writer who mentions the Greeks is Ezekiel,2 c. 580 B.C. He describes them as engaged in commerce with the Phoenicians, who bought slaves from them. Even while Ezekiel wrote in Babylonia, the Babylonians were in touch with the Ionian Greeks through the Lydians. 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 1 Gen. x. 2, 4. 11, Javan, is Iafwv, or Iawv, 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 Tellel-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 Yavanu. 2 xxvii. 13. Isaiah xl.-lxvi. (Expositor's Bible), 108 f. Levant and Greek soldiers, though in the pay of Persia, had trodden the soil of Syria. Still Joel, writing towards 400 B.C., mentions Greece1 only as a market to which the Phoenicians 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.2 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 Alex iii. 6 (Eng.; iv. 6 Heb.). 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 Charilos 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 Cole-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). andria. 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,' is probably false. But he must have encamped repeatedly within forty miles of it, and he visited Samaria. 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. 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.1 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 1 Jos., XI. Antt. iv. 5. 2 Hist. Geog., p. 347. 3 Hist. Geog., pp. 593 f. 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.1 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 Phoenician 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 Cole-Syria, that is all Syria to the south of Lebanon except the Phoenician coast." 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 Hence the Seleucid era dates from 312. 2 Hist. Geog., 538. |