6. Of this more in the sequel. He is called ηλωδγη τσνκ ψρψ#µ which however does not
seem necessary to imply that he was actually a member of it.
Jewish legend has much that is miraculous to tell of Simon the Just, and connects him
alike with events both long anterior and long posterior to his Pont ificate. Many of these
traditions read like the outcome of loving, longing remembrance of a happy past which
was never to return. Such a venerable form would never again be seen in the Sanctuary
(Ecclus. 1. 1-4), nor would such miraculous attestation be given to any other
ministrations7 (Yoma 39 a and b; Jer. Yoma v. 2; vi. 3). All this seems to point to the
close of a period when the High-Priesthood was purely Jewish in spirit, just as the hints
about dissensions among his sons (Jer. Yoma 43 d, at top) sound like faint reminiscences
of the family - and public troubles which followed. In point of fact he was succeeded not
by his Onias8 who was under age, but by his brother Eleazar, and he, after a Ponficate of
twenty years, by his brother Manasseh. It was only twenty-seven years later, after the
death of Manasseh, that Onias II. became High-Priest. If Eleazar, and especially
Manasseh, owned their position, or at least strengthened it, by courting the favour of the
ruler of Egypt, it was almost natural that Onias should have taken the opposite or Syrian
part. His refusal to pay the High-Priestly tribute to Egypt could scarcely have been
wholly due to avarice, as Josephus suggests. The anger and threats of the king were
appeased by the High-Priest's nephew Josep h, who claimed descent from the line of
David. He knew how to ingratiate himself at the court of Alexandria, and obtained the
lease of the taxes of Coele -Syria (which included Judæa), by offering for it double sum
previously paid. The removal of the foreign tax-gatherer was very grateful to the Jews,
but the authority obtained by Joseph became a new source of danger, especially in the
hands of his ambitious son, Hyrcanus. Thus we already mark the existence of three
parties: the Egyptian, the Syrian, and that of the 'sons of Tobias' (Ant. xii. 5. 1), as the
adherents of Joseph were called, after his father. If the Egyptian party ceased when
Palestine passed under Syrian rule in the reign of Antiochus III. the Great (223-187 b.c.),
and ultimately became wholly subject to it under Seleucus IV. (187-173), the Syrian, and
especially the Tobias-party, had already become Grecianised. In truth, the contest now
became one for power and wealth in which each sought to outbid the other by bribery and
subserviency to the foreigner. As the submission of the people could only be secured by
the virtual extinction of Judaism, this aim was steadily kept in view by the degenerate
priesthood.
7. It deserves notice that in these same Talmudic passages reference is also made to the
later entire cessation of the same miracles, as indicating the coming destruction of the
Temple.
8. Or as he is designated in the Talmud; Chonyi, Nechunyah, and even Nechunyon. Onias
is a Grecianised form - itself a significant fact.
The storm did not, indeed, break under the Pontificate of Simon II., the son and successor
of Onias II., but the times were becoming more and more troublous. Although the Syrian
rulers occasionally showed favour to the Jews, Palestine was now covered with a network
of Syrian o fficials, into whose hands the temporal power mainly passed. The taxation
also sensibly increased, and, besides crown- money, consisted of a poll- tax, the third of
the field-crops, the half of the produce of trees, a royal monopoly of salt and of the