fall down slain. Ami hath tlasi l.ini/s' In a its shall be
to do mischief, and they shall spi ak lies at on* table [An- tiochus shall profess falsely to maintain the cause of Philometor against his brother, and Philometor to trust in his -ood faith | : but it shall not prosper | the resist- ance of Alexandria shall preserve the independence of Egypt] ; for the end shall bt at tin livu appointed. Then shall he [Antiochus] return into his land, and his heart shall h against the holy covenant ; ami In shall do • <7»' its, and return to his own land. At th, tinu ap- pointed hi shall return andcomt towards thi south; but it shall not In as the former, so also the latter time. \ His career shall be checked al once. I For tin ships of Chittim \ comp. Numb. xxiv. ~l\ : the Roman fleet] shall com* against him: therefon h shall In dismayed and return and havt indignation against tin holy covenant?
After the discomfiture of Antiochus, Philometor was for some time occupied in resisting the ambitious de- signs of his brother, who made two attempt- to add Cy- prus to the kingdom of Cyrene, which was allotted to him. Having effectually put down these attempts, he turned his attention again to Syria. During the brief reign of Antiochus Kupator he seems to have support- ed Philip against the regent Lysias (comp. 2 Mace, ix, 29). After the murder of Eupator by Demetrius I, Philometor espoused the cause of Alexander Balas, the rival claimant to the throne, because Demetrius had made an attempt on Cyprus; and when Alexander had defeated and slain his rival, he accepted the overtures which he made, and gave him bis daughter Cleopatra in marriage (B.C. 150: l Mace. x, 51 58). 3fet, accord- ing to 1 Mace. xi. I. 10, etc, the alliance was not made in good faith, but only as a means towards securing possession of Syria. According to others, Alexander himself made a treacherous attempt on the life of Ptol- emy (comp. 1 MaCC. \i. I11 I, w liich caused him to trans- fer his support to Demetrius II. to whom also he gave his daughter, whom he had taken from Alexander. The whole of Syria was quickly Bubdued, and be was crowned al Antioch king of Egypt and Asia i l .Mace. si, 18). Alexander made an effort to recover hi- crown,
PTOLEM^EUS
to:
but was defeated by the forces of Ptolemy and Deme- trius, and shortly afterwards put to death in Arabia. But Ptolemy did not long enjoy his success. He fell from his horse in the battle, and died within a few days (1 Mace, xi, 18), B.C. 145.
Ptolemy Philometor is the last king of Egypt who is noticed" in sacred history, and his reign was marked also by the erection of the temple at Leontopolis. The coincidence is worth}' of notice, for the consecration of a new centre of worship placed a religious as well as a political barrier between the Alexandrian and Palestin- ian Jews. Henceforth the nation was again divided. The history of the temple itself is extremely obscure, but even in its origin it was a monument of civil strife. Onias, the son of Onias III (Josephus, in one place {War, vii, 10, 2], calls him " the son of Simon," and he appears under the same name in Jewish legends; but it seems certain that this was a mere error, occasioned by the patronymic of the most famous Onias [com]). Herz- feld, Ge. sch. d. Judenlh. ii, 557]), who was murdered at An- tioch B.C. 171, when he saw that he was excluded from the succession to the high-priesthood by mercenary in- trigues, fled to Egypt, either shortly after his father's death or upon the transfer of the office to Alcimus, B.C. 162 (Josephus, Ant. xii, 9, 7). It is probable that his retirement must be placed at the later date, for he was a child, Trali; (Josephus, Ant. xii, 5), at the time of his father's death, and he is elsewhere mentioned as one of those who actively opposed the Syrian party in Jerusa- lem (Josephus, War, i, 1). In Egypt, he entered the ser- vice of the king, and rose, with another Jew. Dositheus, to the supreme command. In this office he rendered important services during the war which Ptolemy Phys- con waged against his brother ; and he pleaded these to induce the king to grant him a ruined temple of Diana (rqc aypiac Bovf5aar£u>e) at Leontopolis as the site of a temple which he proposed to build " after the pat- tern of that at Jerusalem, and of the same dimensions." His alleged object was to unite the Jews in one body who were at the time " divided into hostile factions, even as the Egyptians were, from their differences in religious services" (Josephus, A nt. xiii, 3, 1). In defence of the locality which he chose, he quoted the words of Isaiah (Isa. xix, 18, 19), who spoke of " an altar to the Lord in the midst of the land of Egypt," and, according to one interpretation, mentioned "the city of the Sun" (0"inri "in") by name. The site was granted and the temple built, but the original plan was not exactly car- ried out. The Naos rose " like a tower to the height of sixty cubits" (Josephus, War, vii, 10, 3, Trvpyoj irapa- 7tX/;<tiov . . . eig i$i)Koi>Ta Tvi]\tiQ dvtffTijKoTa). The altar and the offerings were similar to those at Jerusa- lem, but in place of the seven-branched candlestick was "a single lamp of gold suspended by a golden chain." The service was performed by priests and Levites of pure descent; and the temple possessed considerable revenues, which were devoted to their support and to the adequate celebration of the divine ritual (Josephus, War, vii, 10, 3 ; A nt. xiii, 3, 3). The object of Ptolemy Philometor in furthering the design of Onias was doubt- less the same as that which led to the erection of the "golden calves" in Israel. The Jewish residents in Egypt were numerous and powerful : and when Jerusa- lem was in the hands of the Syrians, it became of the utmost importance to weaken their connection* with their mother city. In this respect the position of the temple on the eastern border of the kingdom was pe- culiarly important (Jost, Gesch. des Judenthums, i, 117). On the other hand, it is probable that Onias saw no hope in the hellenized Judaism of a Syrian province ; and the triumph of the Maccabees was still unachieved when the temple at Leontopolis was founded. The date of this event cannot, indeed, be exactly determined. Josephus says (117/?-, vii, 10, 4) that the temple had existed "343 years" at the time of its destruction, A.D. cir. 71 ; but the text is manifestly corrupt. Eusebius