In “Zech.” ix.—xiv. we see prophecy perhaps at its lowest ebb. The clash with the new foes produces a really terrible thirst for the blood of the heathen: there are schisms and intrigues within Israel which in our ignorance of her history during this time it is not possible for us to follow: the brighter gleams, which contrast so forcibly with the rest, may be more ancient oracles that the writer has incorporated with his own stern and dark Apocalypse.
In the Book of Jonah, on the other hand, we find a spirit and a style in which prophecy may not unjustly be said to have given its highest utterance. And this alone suffices, in our uncertainty as to the exact date of the book, to take it last of all our Twelve. For “in this book,” as Cornill has finely said, “the prophecy of Israel quits the scene of battle as victor, and as victor in its severest struggle—that against self.”
[1263] Gen. x. 2, 4. יון Javan, is Ιαϝων, or Ιαων, the older form of the name of the Ionians, the first of the Greek race with whom Eastern peoples came into contact. They are perhaps named on the Tell-el-Amarna tablets as “Yivana,” serving “in the country of Tyre” (_c._ 1400 B.C.); and on an inscription of Sargon (_c._ 709) Cyprus is called Yâvanu.
[1264] xxvii. 13.
[1265] _Isaiah xl.—lxvi._ (Expositor’s Bible), 108 f.
[1266] iii. 6 (Eng.; iv. 6 Heb.).
[1267] The sense of distance between the two peoples was mutual. Writing in the middle of the fifth century B.C., Herodotus has heard of the Jews only as a people that practise circumcision and were defeated by Pharaoh Necho at Megiddo (II. 104, 159; on the latter passage see _Hist. Geog._, p. 405 n.). He does not even know them by name. The fragment of Chœrilos of Samos, from the end of the fifth century, which Josephus cites (_Contra Apionem_, I. 22) as a reference to the Jews, is probably of a people in Asia Minor. Even in the last half of the fourth century and before Alexander’s campaigns, Aristotle knows of the Dead Sea only by a vague report (_Meteor._, II. iii. 39). His pupil Theophrastus (_d._ 287) names and describes the Jews (Porphyr. _de Abstinentia_, II. 26; Eusebius, _Prepar. Evang._, IX. 2: cf. Josephus, _C. Apion._, I. 22); and another pupil, Clearchus of Soli, records the mention by Aristotle of a travelled Jew of Cœle-Syria, but “Greek in soul as in tongue,” whom the great philosopher had met, and learned from him that the Jews were descended from the philosophers of India (quoted by Josephus, _C. Apion._, I. 22).
[1268] Jos., XI. _Antt._ iv. 5.
[1269] _Hist. Geog._, p. 347.
[1270] _Hist. Geog._, pp. 593 f.
[1271] See above, p. 440, n. 1267.
[1272] Hence the Seleucid era dates from 312.
[1273] _Hist. Geog._, 538.
[1274] Cf. Ewald, _Hist._ (Eng. Ed.), V. 226 f.
[1275] Asshur or Assyria fell in 607 (as we have seen), but her name was transferred to her successor Babylon (2 Kings xxiii. 29; Jer. ii. 18; Lam. v. 6), and even to Babylon’s successor Persia (Ezra vi. 22). When Seleucus secured what was virtually the old Assyrian Empire with large extensions to Phrygia on the west and the Punjaub on the east, the name would naturally be continued to his dominion, especially as his first capital was Babylon, from his capture of which in 312 the Seleucid era took its start. There is actual record of this. Brugsch (_Gesch. Aeg._, p. 218) states that in the hieroglyphic inscriptions of the Ptolemæan period the kingdom of the Seleucids is called Asharu (cf. Stade, _Z.A.T.W._, 1882, p. 292, and Cheyne, _Book of Psalms_, p. 253, and _Introd. to Book of Isaiah_, p. 107, n. 3). As the Seleucid kingdom shrank to this side of the Euphrates, it drew the name Assyria with it. But in Greek mouths this had long ago (cf. Herod.) been shortened to Syria: Herodotus also appears to have applied it only to the west of the Euphrates. Cf. _Hist. Geog._, pp. 3 f.