Читать книгу A Thousand Years of Jewish History - Maurice H. Harris - Страница 12

After the chronicle of Nehemiah's service in placing the Jewish settlement on a working basis, we are told hardly anything more of the doings of Israel in this epoch. Either there was no further historic incident of the Jews under Persian sway, or it has never been told. There is a silence of about a hundred years after the last chapter of Nehemiah, which is, roughly speaking, the last chapter of Jewish history in the Bible. One reason for this silence of course, is that the Jews had no separate political life. They were a subject people; their State was gone. What there is to tell can be disposed of in a few sentences.

We perhaps infer from the sixty-third chapter of Isaiah that they suffered during the campaigns of the two Artaxerxes against Egypt. We know that some were banished to the Caspian Sea because they were implicated in a wide-spread insurrection against the fast declining Persia, instigated by the different peoples settled around the Mediterranean shore. We are told further that an upstart named Bagoas heavily taxed the Jews and made a quarrel over the priesthood an excuse to desecrate their Temple.

That is really all. When this intriguer attempted to place his own candidate on the Persian throne the knell had been rung. Persia's days were numbered. Like its Babylonian predecessor, it had been "weighed in the balance and found wanting." The Greek forces of Alexander were advancing and about the year 332 the Persian dynasty, founded by Cyrus—let us say "The Great"—passed away.