he himself settled, according to Josephus, many Jews, to whom the historian alleges (but in all probability erroneously) that he gave equal civil rights with the Macedonians and the Greeks. His successors continued to encourage such settlements, and some three hundred and fifty years after Alexander we are told that Alexandria contained a Jewish population of not less than a million souls! These Alexandrian Jews were destined to have a great influence upon the religous history of the world; but about all these things you will have to find out and read for yourselves in other books than mine.

§ 7. Alexander in the Bible.- Is there any reference to Alexander the Great in the Bible? It would not be chronologically unreasonable, for several portions of the Bible were written after his death, and certain obscure chapters, now included in the Book of Isaiah (xxiv-xxvii), may perhaps have been composed, at least in part, during the career of the great king. One famous book of the Bible, written about a century and a half after Alexander under special circumstances of great danger and distress, often alludes to him. He is the 'mighty king who rules with great dominion, and does according to his will.' He is the 'he-goat that comes from the west,' and does not touch the earth in his flying career of conquest. He is the 'fourth beast, dreadful and terrible and strong exceedingly,' with 'great iron teeth,' who 'devoured and brake in pieces and stamped the residue with its feet.' These quotations come from the Book of Daniel, of which we shall hear again in the last section of this volume.

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§ 8. The successors of Alexander.-At Alexander's death in 323 B. C. his empire was broken up. You can read in the works of Droysen, Mahaffy, and others how even a nominal unity soon vanished away, and how the great generals of Alexander carved out of his empire important kingdoms of their own, separate from and independent of each other. These successors of Alexander are known as the Diadochoi, from the Greek word Diadochos, which means a successor. Judæa and Palestine were fought over and fought for by three of these new kingdoms, of which the two most important and most permanent are known from the names of their founders as the kingdoms of the Ptolemies and of the Seleucids. Ptolemy or Ptolemaios, to give him his exact Greek name, had received after the death of Alexander the satrapy or province of Egypt as his share of the spoils. Syria and Palestine had been allotted to Laomedon. But in the year 320 Ptolemy overran Syria and annexed it to his own kingdom.' (He

was practically an independent monarch from the first, though he did not assume the title of king till 305 B.C.) In 315 Palestine was conquered by Antigonus, at one time the most powerful of the first generation of Diadochoi, and till the battle of Ipsus in the year 301, at which the aged general met with his death, it was mainly in his possession. For the next hundred years it passed again under the control of Egypt, while from about 200 it became a part of the kingdom of the Seleucidae, known also as the kingdom of Syria. Seleucus, the founder of the kingdom, had received shortly after Alexander's death the satrapy of Babylon. But under his successors the centre and capital of the kingdom was shifted to Antioch, while the area of it comprised 'an ill-defined and ever-changing complex of nations, reaching, according to the genius of its actual ruler, from the Aegean to the Indus, or from the Cilician passes to the bounds of Mesopotamia.'

§ 9. The Ptolemies and the Jews.-How was the small province of Judæa treated by these contending monarchs? It is easy to understand what Josephus tells us, that during these long and frequent wars,' the cities throughout the lands of contention were great 'sufferers, and lost many of their inhabitants in those times of distress.' And elsewhere he says that during the wars of Antiochus III against Egypt (from about 218 to 200 B.C.), which ended in the final annexation of Syria to the Seleucid kingdom, the Jews and their neighbours suffered equally whichever party lost or won, for they resembled a ship in a storm, buffeted by the waves on one side and on the other. When Ptolemy I occupied Palestine in 320, Josephus states, on the authority of a Greek historian called Agatharcides, that he seized Jerusalem through a deceitful stratagem. He entered the city upon the Sabbath as if he were going to make a sacrifice, and then easily got possession of it; for the Jews made no resistance, not expecting any hostile attack, and from lack of suspicion and because of the Sabbath day they were at ease and rest and unprepared.' A number of Jews were deported by Ptolemy to Egypt on this occasion.

But these acts of harshness appear to have been exceptional. On the whole, the Egyptian rule (at least till close before its end) was a period of tolerable comfort and prosperity to the Jews both in Judæa and in Egypt. The Jewish population of Alexandria rapidly increased: even under the first Ptolemy many Jews, Josephus tells us, emigrated of their own accord into Egypt, 'attracted by the advantages of the place and the liberality of Ptolemy. The second Ptolemy, known as Philadelphus (285247 B.C.), continued to show great favour to the Jews. It is said

by Josephus that he set free 120,000 natives of Jerusalem who were in slavery in Egypt. A doubtful authority describes him as having liberated at his own cost all the enslaved Jews throughout Egypt, paying for them 460 talents, at the rate of 120 drachmas a head. This would give us 18,400 Jews as the total number. Professor Mahaffy and Professor Cheyne both think that there may be 'some basis' for these stories, and it seems certain that Ptolemy Philadelphus was very popular among his Jewish subjects. Long afterwards the Jewish philosopher Philo speaks of him in terms of the highest admiration, and if legend connected itself with his name, there was probably good foundation upon which the legend grew.

Of the attitude of the Seleucid kings towards the Jews from 200 B. C. to the accession of King Antiochus Epiphanes in 175 B.C. we are not fully informed. Antiochus III granted them privileges and showed them favours on his conquest of Coele-Syria (i.e. the hollow or lower Syria, from the Greek word 'koilos,' meaning 'hollow'). There were many communities of Jews in the different towns of his kingdom, but none so famous or so large as that of Alexandria in Egypt.

§ 10. The Temple and the Psalter.-How many words in the Bible were written between the death of Alexander and the accession of Antiochus Epiphanes (323-175 B.C.)? We can never precisely tell, but it is tolerably certain that these 148 years contributed their share to the total products which we now possess. Instead of discussing this particular question further, I would rather say something of the kinds of religious literature which were being written during the entire period from Nehemiah to the Maccabean revolt, an interval of some 250 years-about as long as from the Great Rebellion in England to the present day.

The Jews had no king after the return from Babylon, and, so far as we know, no native governor of the type of Zerubbabel or Nehemiah was again appointed. For this and other reasons the chief official of the Jerusalem Temple, now called the High Priest, grew gradually in dignity and importance. He became as time went on not merely a pries, but also a ruler. He was the representative of the nation before its foreign masters or its neighbouring communities. And with h's more exalted position there went also an increased majesty of the Temple itself. For it was now in very deed the only place in all Judæa at which sacrifices and offerings were made. And as there was, as I have already said, a constant increase of Jewish settlements outside Judæa and outside Palestine, the inhabitants of these settlements by their gifts and pilgrimage

15

TEMPLE AND PSALTER

13

to the Temple of Jerusalem added yet more to its grandeur and reputation.

To the outer world the Temple was the visible sign and embodiment of the Jewish religion. And a very strange embodiment it seemed. Men could not understand why there was only one Temple, just as they could with difficulty understand why there was only one God. Why, too, in this one Temple should there be no representation of the worshipped deity, no image or idol, no statue or picture? The strangest, and sometimes the most absurd, rumours were spread about as to the nature of the Deity whom the Jews worshipped, and as to the nature of the worship which they paid to him. To the outsider the highest truths of Judaism often seemed foolishness. The need was urgent that the Servant should make known his faith.

For us to-day the main interest of the Temple lies in the fact that it was (so far as we can gather) a main cause of that wonderful collection of religious songs and poems known as the Psalms. Psalmos is a Greek word meaning, first of all, as Liddell and Scott inform us, a touching sharply, a pulling with the fingers or a twanging of musical strings, and then, the sound of a musical In the instrument thus played, the sound of the cithara or harp. Greek translation of the Bible it is used for a song sung to the harp, and is therefore closely parallel in meaning to our use of the word lyric. The collection of Psalms in the Bible is often called the Psalter. Psalter is the English form of the Greek word Psalterion, which (like Psalmos, connected with the root verb Psallo, to touch sharply, to play) means a stringed instrument, or specifically a harp.

The Psalms, then, are essentially hymns. Just as hymns are associated in everybody's mind with singing and churches, so the Psalms were closely associated with singing and the Temple. Many of them were directly composed for the Temple services, though many others (and these perhaps the oldest) were not primarily written for liturgical purposes. Some of our present Psalms are clearly not intended to be sung, for they are unlyrical in structure, but yet it is true to say that one main impulse to the composition of Psalms (and the chief reason for the preservation of all) was due to the Temple services, while many of their writers may well have been closely connected with the Temple,' singers' who wrote as well as sang. As so many of the Psalms were put to congregational use, they are also congregational or national in form. They are written from the national or congregational point of view, and even where the pronoun is not plural but The 'I' is singular (not we,' but 'I'), this can still be the case.

frequently a personification. The writer identifies himself with the pious nation of Israel as a whole, or with the pious worshippers in the Temple. He is at one with them in feeling, aspiration and belief, and this union of spirit with the community gives an added fervour and intensity to his speech.

It is impossible to date with accuracy all the 150 Psalms in our present collection. It is probable that most of them were written after the return from Babylon in 537 B.C. A very considerable number may be safely assigned to the century between Nehemiah and Alexander the Great. Many were doubtless written in the 157 years between Alexander's conquest of Syria and the accession of Antiochus Epiphanes. Lastly, there are a few which in all probability were written during and after the Maccabean revolt, so that we cannot safely fix the completion of the Psalter much before 130 B.C. Of the reasons why some 73 out of 150 Psalms were ascribed by the editors to David, I have already spoken in Part I.

§ 11. The Synagogue, the Wise Men and the Wisdom Literature.Alongside of the Temple there grew up in post-exilic times another institution of far deeper significance. It is the Synagogue. Synagogue, again, is a Greek word, and means a bringing together, hence an assembly or place of assembly. Just because no man might sacrifice except at Jerusalem, the need arose for a system of public worship in the numerous Jewish communities outside the capital, which should be satisfying and yet legal. Out of this need grew up the synagogue. I cannot attempt the shortest history of the synagogue in this place, but I must just point out that whereas at the Temple the servitor could only be a priest, the minister and teacher at a synagogue could be a layman. Thus with the synagogue there now first comes upon the stage the figure of the Rabbi. He is not called Rabbi at first, but Wise Man or Scribe or Teacher. He is the expounder and interpreter of the Law. In the age of Nehemiah, the Priest, the Teacher and the Scribe are usually one and the same. The under-priests, or Levites, are also frequently associated with teaching. Later on, however, the Wise Man and the Rabbi are often laymen, and sometimes opposed to the religious and political views of the official priesthood. And just as the Temple was overshadowed in religious significance by the synagogue, so the Priest was overshadowed by the Wise Man or Rabbi.

The Wise Man was the teacher of the people in their synagogues and schools. But he too became a writer, so that a whole division of the Bible, represented by three separate books