afterwards in great favour with Hyrcanus the high priest of Judea. He was subsequently sent by Hyrcanus on an embassy ta Pompey, and having restored the kingdom to him, which had been invaded by Aristobulus, the brother of the latter, Antipater himself had the good fortune to be nominated the procurator of Palestine. Antipater, however, having been treacherously slain, by those who envied his good fortune, was succeeded by his son Herod. He was afterwards, by a decree of the senate, appointed king of the Jews, under Antony and Augustus. His sons were Herod and the other tetrarchs. These accounts of the Jews also coincide with those of the Greeks. But, as the genealogies of the Hebrews had been regularly kept in the archives until then, and also of those who referred back as far as the ancient proselytes; as for instance, to Achior the Ammonite, and Ruth the Moabitess, and to those that were intermixed with the Israelites at their departure from Egypt; and as the lineage of the Israelites contributed nothing to Herod's advantage, he was goaded by the consciousness of his ignoble extraction, and committed all these records of their families to the flames. Thinking that himself might appear of noble origin, by the fact that no one else would be able to trace his pedigree by the public records, back to patriarchs or proselytes, and to those strangers that were called georae.[1] A few however of the careful, either remembering the names, or having it in their power in some other way, by means of copies, to have private records of their own, gloried in the idea of preserving the memory of their noble extraction. Of these were the abovementioned persons, called desposyni,[2] on account of their affinity to the family of our Saviour. These coming from Nazara and Cochaba, villages of Judea, to the other parts of the world, explain-
- ↑ The word γειςραις, used here byEusebius, is taken from the Septuagint, Exod. xii. 19. It is evidently a corruption of the Hebrew word nj, a stranger, and is interpreted by Theodoret, in loc. stranger.
- ↑ The word desposynos signifies, in general, one who belongs to a master; it is here applied according to the usage of the primitive church, to indicate the relatives of our Lord, as those who were the Lord's according to the flesh. Suidas explains the words παις του δεσποτου εχτι.
