enduring the will of God as revealed in Scripture or in the events of history. This division bore bitter fruit in the reign of Pharisees and Sadducees. Alexander Jannaeus (104–78 B.C.), who by a standing army achieved a territorial expansion which was little to the mind of the Pharisees. At first his attack upon Ptolemais brought him into conflict with Egypt, in which he was worsted, but the Jewish general who commanded the Egyptian army persuaded the queen to evacuate Palestine. Then he turned to the country east of the Jordan, and then to Philistia. Later he was utterly defeated by a king of Arabians and fled to Jerusalem, only to find that the Pharisees had raised his people against him and would only be satisfied by his death. The rebels’ appeal to the Seleucid governor of part of Syria (88 B.C.) caused a revulsion in his favour, and finally he made peace by more than Roman methods. Aretas, the Arabian king, pressed him hard on the south and the east, but he was able to make some conquests still on the east of the Jordan. In spite of his quarrel with the Pharisees, he seems to have offered the cities he conquered the choice between Judaism and destruction (Jos. Ant. xiii. 15, 4). Under Alexandra, his widow (78–69 B.C.), the Pharisees ruled the Jews and no expansion of the kingdom was attempted. It was threatened by Tigranes, king of Armenia, who then held the Syrian Empire, but a bribe and the imminence of the Romans (Jos. Ant. xiii. 16, 4; War i. 5, 3) saved it. At her death a civil war began between her sons, which left the Pompey. way open for Rome. Pompey’s lieutenant Scaurus entered Syria in 65 B.C., after the final defeat of Mithradates, and Pompey soon followed to take command of the situation. Three parties pleaded before him, the representatives of the rival kings and a deputation from the people who wished to obey no king, but only the priests of their God (Jos. Ant. xiv. 3, 2.) Pompey finally decided in favour of Hyrcanus, and entered Jerusalem by the aid of his party. The adherents of Aristobulus seized and held the temple mount against the Romans, but on the Day of Atonement of the year 63 B.C. their position was stormed and the priests were cut down at the altars (Jos. Ant. xiv. 4, 2–4; War i. 7). Hyrcanus was left as high-priest—not king of the Jews—and his territory was curtailed. The coast towns and the Decapolis, together with Samaria and Scythopolis, were incorporated in the new Roman province of Syria.
In 61 B.C. Pompey celebrated the third of a series of triumphs over Africa, Europe and Asia, and in his train, among the prisoners of war, was Aristobulus, king of Judaea. Palestine meanwhile remained quiet until 57 B.C., when Alexander, the son of Aristobulus, escaped from his Roman captivity and attempted to make himself master of his father’s kingdom. Aulus Gabinius, the new proconsul of Syria, defeated his hastily gathered forces, besieged him in one of the fortresses he had managed to acquire, and induced him to abandon his attempt in return for his life. The impotence of Hyrcanus was so obvious that Gabinius proceeded to deprive him of all political power by dividing the country into five cantons, having Jerusalem, Gazara, Amathus, Jericho, and Sepphoris, as their capitals. Other raids, headed by Aristobulus, or his son, or his adherent Peitholaus, disturbed Palestine during the interval between 57 and 51 B.C. and served to create a prejudice against the Jews in the mind of their masters. But with the civil wars which began in 49 B.C. there came opportunities which Hyrcanus, at the instance of Antipater, used to ingratiate himself with Caesar. Once more, as in the days of Simon, the suzerain power was divided against itself, and, though Rome was as strong as the Seleucids had been weak, Caesar was grateful. For timely help in the Egyptian War of 47 B.C. Hyrcanus was rewarded by the title of Ethnarch, and Antipater with the Roman citizenship and the office of procurator of Judaea. The sons of Antipater became deputies for their father; and it appears that Galilee, which was entrusted to Herod, fell within his jurisdiction. The Herods. The power of this Idumaean family provoked popular risings and Antipater was poisoned. But Herod held his ground as governor of Coele-Syria and retained the favour of Cassius and Mark Antony in turn, despite the complaints of the Jewish nobility. In 42 B.C., however, the tyrant of Tyre encroached upon Galilean territory and in 40 B.C. Herod had to fly for his life before the Parthians. Even as a landless fugitive Herod could count upon Roman support. At the instance of Mark Antony, and with the assent of Octavian, the senate declared him king of Judaea, and after two years’ fighting he made his title good. Antigonus, whom the Parthians had set upon his throne, was beheaded by his Roman allies (37 B.C.). As king of the Jews (37–4 B.C.) Herod was completely subject and eagerly subservient to his Roman masters. In 34 B.C. (for example) or earlier, Mark Antony gave Cleopatra the whole of Phoenicia and the coast of the Philistines south of Eleuthesus, with the exception only of Tyre and Sidon, part of the Arabian territory and the district of Jericho. Herod acquiesced and leased Jericho, the most fertile part of his kingdom, from Cleopatra. In the war between Antony and Octavian Cleopatra prevented Herod from joining Antony and so left him free to pay court to Octavian after Actium (31 B.C.). A year later Octavian restored to the Jewish kingdom Jericho, Gadara, Hippos, Samaria, Gaza Anthedon, Joppa and Straton’s Tower (Caesarea). Secure of his position, Herod began to build temples and palaces and whole cities up and down Palestine as visible embodiments of the Greek civilization which was to distinguish the Roman Empire from barbarian lands. A sedulous courtier, he was rewarded with the confidence of Augustus, who ordered the procurators of Syria to do nothing without taking his advice. But with the establishment of (relatively) universal peace Palestine ceased to be a factor in general history. Herod the Great enlarged his borders and fostered the Greek civilization of the cities under his sway. After his death his kingdom was dismembered and gradually came under the direct rule of Rome. Herod Agrippa (A.D. 41–44) revived the glories of the reign of Alexandra and won the favour of the Pharisees; but his attempt to form a confederacy of client-princes was nipped in the bud. Even the war which ended with the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, and the rebellion under Hadrian, which led to the edict forbidding the Jews to enter Jerusalem, are matters proper to the history of the Jews.
References to authorities other than Josephus are given in the course of the article; his Antiquities and War are the chief source for the period. All modern authorities are given by Schürer. (J. H. A. H.)
III.—From A.D. 70 to the Present Day.
Owing to the peculiar conditions of the land and the varied interests involved in it, the later history may best be treated in four sections. In the first the general political history will be set forth; in the second a sketch will be given of the cult of the “holy places”; the third will contain some particulars regarding the history of modern colonization by foreigners, which, while it has not affected the political status of the country, has produced very considerable modifications in its population and life; and the fourth will consist of a brief notice of the progress of exploration and scientific research whereby our knowledge of the past and the present of the land has been systematized.
1. Political History from A.D. 70.—The destruction of Jerusalem was followed by the dispersal of the Jews, of whom till then it had been the religious and political centre. The first seat of the sanhedrin was at Jamnia (Yebna), where the Rabbinic system began to be formulated. This extraordinary spiritual tyranny, for it seems little else, The Dispersion. acquired a wonderful hold and exercised a singularly uniting power over the scattered nation. The sharp contrasts between its compulsory religious observances and those of the rest of the world prevented such an absorption of the Jewish people into the Roman Empire as had caused the disappearance of the ten tribes of Israel by their merging with the Assyrians.
It would appear that at first, after the destruction of the city, no specially repressive measures were contemplated by the conquering Romans, who rather attempted to reconcile the Jews to their subject state by a leniency which had proved successful in the case of other tribes brought by conquest within the empire.
