HISTORY 333 



After seventy years captivity, Cyrus, having conquered 

 Babylon, permitted many of the Jews to return (536 B.C.), 

 under Zerubbabel, and they began to rebuild the temple. 

 Under Darius (520 B.C.) the period of Haggai and 

 Zechariah and under Ezra and Nehemiah (456 B.C.), 

 of whom Malachi was a late contemporary, the return 

 from exile was completed. Then, it is now supposed, the 

 Books of Chronicles were written and the Levitical code 

 completely elaborated, and it is to this period that modern 

 critics attribute the Pentateuch, which incorporated 

 many very ancient fragments of divers origins and 

 authorships. 



Under the mild rule of the Persian kings, the Jews 

 were allowed to manage their internal affairs, and the 

 high priest was their chief magistrate. They strictly 

 avoided inter-marriage with foreigners, and their detesta- 

 tion of idolatry became extreme, as also did their spirit 

 of nationality and attachment to their peculiar observ- 

 ances. The nation thus lived peacefully, till, in the year 

 333 B.C., Alexander the Great appeared in Syria, when 

 Jerusalem made its submission and was spared. Upon the 

 death of the conqueror, Judsea fell under the dominion 

 of the Ptolemies, who favoured the Jews, and planted a 

 colony of them in Alexandria wh : ch had much influence 

 on the intellectual and religious future of the world, as we 

 shall see. But a general named Antiochus, who accom- 

 panied Alexander to the East, had a son Seleucus, who 

 ultimately obtained the sovereignty of Syria, raised the city 

 of Antioch and founded a dynasty that of the Seleucida?.* 

 Their kingdom extended at first over the eastern part of 

 Asia Minor, and thence to beyond the Indus. About 

 256 B.C., however, a people of Northern Persia the 



* See ante, p. 320. 



