3. Persecution of the Jews by the Seleucid kings. — It is universally admitted that the Exile introduced a new epoch in the history of the Jew. But it is easy to e.xaggerate the nature of the cleav- age. There are no absolute beginnings in the history of nations. The student has no difficulty in discovering ample evidence of continuity in social organization and religious praxis. Never- theless the post-Exilic period was a new age in the history of the nation. The religious leaders of the new age believed that the Exile was the judgment announced by their pre-Exilic predecessors. The nation had completed her period of servitude and made ample compensation for all her sins. Her iniquity was pardoned (Is 40"). According to the teachinj^ of the prophets the Israel of God would be a nation which organized its whole life — social and religious — in accordance with the Divine will. Such a people would constitute a kingdom of God. It was the belief of the post- Exilic community that its national life was organized on the lines laid down in the Book of the Law. Judah had become once more the people of Jahweh ; in possession of a Bible which embodied the will of God, and con- trolled her whole life, she stood over against the Gentile world, with its idols and superstitions. God was known and worshipped only in Judah. Pure religion was the sole possession of the Jew.
The rest of the world was without God and with- out religion, for the gods of the nations were idols, and their religions were superstitions. The post- Exilic Jew was conscious of his superiority among the nations of the Semitic world, and his tendenc3' was to stand aloof in contemptuous isolation. In post-Exilic literature we can trace the universalism of Deutero-Isaiah and the particularism of Ezekiel and Ezra. The Jew owed no less to the universal- ism of the former than to the particularism of the latter his sense of superiority to the rest of the world. In both Judah occupied a central and
PERSECUTION
PERSECUTiON
171
unique position. According to Deutero-Isaiali it was tlie mission of Israel to convert tlie nations of tlie work! and make the religion of Jiuiali tlie religion of the nations. According to Ezekicl the Jew would come to his inheritance througli the annihilation of the heathen. The one believed in tlie incoriioration, and the other in the destruction, of the nations. The Jew found a solid foundation for his religious exclusivism in Deutero-Lsaiah as well as in Ezekiel. To the former Jalnveh alone was God, and Israel was His servant and His missionary to the ends of the earth. No God but Jalnveh — no religion but the religion of Judali ; a people that held that view dwelt alone in the ancient world with its easy-going polytheism and its indolent syncretism.
The result was tliat every conqueror found in Judah an attitude which he discovered nowhere else throughout the Semitic world, and he could no more understand the significance of it than the Itoman Emperor at a later date could under- stand the attitude of the Christian believer. Other nations were prepared to fall in with the wishes of the conqueror. They were willing conformists, but Judah Avas an implacable nonconformist. 'You are the only people,' said Agrippa, in his effort to dissuade the Jews from rebelling against Rome, ' who think it a disgrace to be servants of those to whom all the world hath submitted.' Judah would not submit, and the reasons for lier recusancy were not so much political as religious. Judah's nationalism was rooted in her religion. The cause of Judah was the cause of Jahweh. The Kingdom of God was identified with the king- dom of Judah. It is interesting to note that the nation's religious teachers in the past arraigned Israel on the ground of her eagerness to imitate neighbouring nations by adopting their gods and religious customs. It was during the exile in Babylon that the Jew thoroughly mastered the prophetic doctrine of the uniqueness of Jahweh and of His religion. Conscious of the nature of the po.ssession which he had in his religion, he culti- vated national self-confidence and self-reliance, which ultimately degenerated into national pride and exclusiveness. In exile the Jew learnt how- to resist the pre.ssure of a hostile environment, and the lesson stood him in good stead throughout the post-Exilic period, for the position of Judah in the Semitic world was precisely the position of the exiles in Babylon. Tlie Book of Daniel, which purports to describe the situation of the Jew in exile, could not be otherwise than a powerful appeal to Judah in the 2nd cent. B.C. to imitate the heroes of the Exile and remain loyal to her ancestral faith and religion. But a nation lil'e this was a disturbing element and a standing menace to the unity of the Empire to which it belonged. Most nations are conquered when their army is defeated, their territory anne.xed, and their independence taken from them. Nation after nation in the Semitic world succumbed to the domination of the Macedonian conqueror. But neither Assyria nor Babylon, nor Persia, nor Macedon nor Rome conquered Judah, for a nation is conquered only when her soul is subju- gated. Judah retained her unconquerable soul. Antiochus Epiphanes, the most powerful repre- sentative of the Seleucid dynasty, made an etlbrt to complete the subjugation of Judah by con- quering her soul, but in his campaign he came across a stronghold in the nation's conscience — or her religious self-consciousness — which defied all his assaults. The invader possessed no arms to carry the campaign to a successful issue. Antiochus was an extremely able ruler. It was his programme to unity bis Empire by univer.sal- izing Hellenism. Greek civilization was to be the