Jehovah and the words of his prophets, of whom well-nigh the last and noblest, proclaiming him the only true god, had spoken, were deeply studied; the one took into itself new and abiding elements1 from Chaldæa, and the other fed hope in deliverance and in a return of the ancient glory. On the fall of Babylon, the exiles received permission from its captor, Cyrus, king of Persia, to return to their fatherland, and a goodly number availed themselves of this kindly act, bestirring themselves on their arrival to repeople the waste cities and rebuild the temple. Progress, however, was slow, until a zealous scribe named Ezra stirred the laggards to active obedience to the law of Jehovah, which he recast and enlarged, and the explanation of which gave rise to a huge mass of oral rules and comments, the work of scribes and rabbis, which ceased not for a thousand years. The entire policy of Ezra and of the governor Nehemiah was the erection of a 1 66 Many voices were blended there; unknown voices, speaking out of the early dawn."-God and the Bible, p. 185. priestly state, in which the law of Jehovah was supreme, the simple but more sublime teaching of the prophets falling more and more into the background. Under the rule of Persia, and afterward of Greece, the Jews had peace, but the savage persecution of Antiochus Epiphanes, designed to stamp out their religion, led to a bloody war, in which the gallant resistance of the Maccabees was successful and the freedom of the nation secured. The influence of Greek thought on the Jewish religion was thus checked, and the distinctive features of the latter more strongly marked than ever; but the independence of the race was brief, for internal quarrels gave the Romans an excuse to interfere in its affairs, and they acquired a hated mastery over it by placing upon the throne the brave and able, but cruel Herod the Great. |