The First Jewish Shekels. 333 



Alexander, in 323 B.C. Bnt no money appears to have been 

 issued after the fourth year of the new regime. This circum- 

 stance is by some considered to invalidate the attribution of these 

 coins to the epoch of Yaddous ; yet when it is considered that 

 an immense drain upon the resources of all the tributary 

 provinces took place during the last six or seven years of the life 

 of Alexander, to meet the vast expenses of the campaigns in the 

 far east , it is not astonishing that the Jewish treasury became 

 exhausted after the fourth year, and that no more coin was 

 issued. This view seems borne out by the fact that the coins 

 of the fourth year, though stamped as shekels and half-shekels, 

 are only copper — the substitution of the baser metal betoken- 

 ing a period when the country had already been drained of its 

 silver. 



We next come to the coinages which may fairly be attri- 

 buted to the Maccabeean dynasty. After the death of Alexander 

 Judaea fell under the dominion of one or other of the dynasties 

 established by the generals of Alexander, who erected for 

 themselves independent kingdoms out of the vast Mace- 

 donian empire which he had founded. At one time Judaea 

 was possessed by the Greek kings of Egypt, Ptolemy Lagus, 

 and his descendants ; while at another it fell beneath the sway 

 of the Seleucidae, the descendants of Seleucus Mcanor, who first 

 established the Grecianised kingdom of Syria ; and this state 

 of things deprived the Jews of almost every vestige of national 

 life. Greek manners and the Greek language prevailed, and the 

 Judaic identity seemed likely to be crushed out ; but it was not 

 so destined. The last attempt of the Greek sovereigns of Syria 

 to thrust the religion and language of Greece upon the sub- 

 jugated Jews, produced a re-action and revolt, which resulted in 

 the temporary re-establishment of Jewish independence. The 

 statue of the Greek Zeus, or Jupiter, had been placed in the 

 temple by Antiochus IV., and the high priesthood had been 

 sold to renegade Judaeans; first to a certain Joshua, who 

 assumed on the occasion the Greek name of Jason, and then to 

 Gnias, who changed his name to Menelaus, and, to raise the 

 necessary money for purchasing his appointment, sold the 

 sacred vessels of the temple. The Samarians had, in the 

 meantime, accepted the Greek faith without scruple, and set 

 up a statue of the Hellenic Jupiter in their temple. Antiochus 

 IV. next proceeded to publish an edict directing uniformity of 

 religious worship throughout his dominions, and a revolt in 

 Judaea immediately followed this last and most oppressive edict, 

 which threatened the Jewish faith with utter extinction. At 

 Mo din, a small town near Lydda, Mattathias, a Jew, a man of 

 priestly race, refused, in 170 B.C., to obey the injunction of the 

 king's agents appointed for the establishment of the religious 



