History of the Jews (Vol. 1-6). Graetz Heinrich
on the ruins of a heathen temple, where animals had formerly been worshipped, Onias built the Judæan sanctuary (154–152). Outwardly, it did not exactly resemble the Temple of Jerusalem, for it was made of brick, and it rose in the shape of a tower. But all the necessary appliances in the interior were on the exact model of those in Jerusalem, except that the seven-armed candlestick was replaced by a golden lamp hanging from a golden chain. Priests and Levites who had fled from the persecutions in Judæa, officiated in this Temple of Onias. The king generously decreed that the revenues of the whole district of Heliopolis should be devoted to the needs of the Temple and the priests. This small province was formed into a little priestly state, and was called Onion.
Although the community looked upon the Temple of Onias as their religious centre, visiting it during the festivals, and sacrificing in its courts, still, unlike the Samaritans, they did not withdraw their allegiance from the sanctuary of Jerusalem, or in any way depreciate it; on the contrary, they venerated Jerusalem as their sacred metropolis, and the Temple as a divine residence. But the wonderful fulfilment of the prophetic words, that "in Egypt a temple of the Lord should arise," was a source of great pride to them. They called Heliopolis the "City of Justice" (Ir-hazedek), applying to it this verse from the prophets, "Five Egyptian cities will at that day recognise the God of Israel, and one of them will be called the City of Heres," but they read Ir-ha-Zedek.
Had Judæa been enjoying a state of peace and prosperity, she would have resented this innovation, and laid an interdict upon the Temple of Onias, as she had done upon that of Gerizim, and the Egyptian-Judæan congregation would have been excluded from the community, as had been the case with the Samaritans. But the desolation of the Temple in Jerusalem was so great, the dismemberment of the commonwealth so complete, that there could have been no valid reason for preventing the accomplishment of a design springing from the purest of intentions. The founder of the Temple was descended from a long line of high-priests, which had its origin in the days of David and Solomon. His forefathers had been instrumental in rebuilding the Temple after the Babylonian exile; he could claim Simon the Just as his ancestor, and his father was the pious Onias III. Later, when the Hasmonæan high-priest had restored the divine service in Jerusalem, in all its purity, the Judæans of the mother-country looked with regret upon the Temple that existed in a foreign land, and the uncompromisingly pious party never could forget that its existence was in violation of the Law. But by that time the Temple of Onias had become firmly established.
Philometor gave Onias permission to build a fortress for the protection of the Temple, in the province of Onion, and placed the stronghold and its garrison under his command. Onias was at the same time military commander of the district of Heliopolis, called the Arabian province; hence his title Arabarch. In Alexandria, Onias was the communal and judicial head of the Jewish population resident there, while in the province of Onion and Arabian Egypt he was commander of the Judaic soldiery settled there.
The complete confidence that this king reposed in Onias and his co-religionists induced him to raise the high-priest to another post of importance. The seaports and the mouths of the Nile were of the greatest moment for the collection of the royal revenues. The taxes here levied on all incoming and outgoing raw materials and manufactured goods made Egypt the richest country during the rule of the Ptolemies, and later, under that of the Romans. Onias was entrusted with the custody of the ports, and the Alexandrian Judæans living upon the sea-coast had, no doubt, the privilege of selecting the officials for the custom-houses.
At this period, Egypt was the scene of an event of the utmost importance in the history of the world, though giving rise at the time to views diametrically opposed to each other. The devotion of the Judæan fugitives to the Law, for whose sake they had fled from their homes in Palestine, may have awakened in the cultivated King Philometor the desire to become acquainted with the time-honored Torah of Moses; or perhaps those Judæans, who were allowed access to the person of the king, so stimulated his interest in their laws, so shamefully reviled by Antiochus Epiphanes, that Philometor was at last eager to read them for himself in a translation.
It is also possible that the insulting libel on the Judæans and their origin, written in the Greek tongue, apparently by an Egyptian priest, Manetho, (who describes the Israelites as being a noted shepherd race in Egypt (Hyksos), expelled as leprous under a leader called Moyses), may have made the king anxious to learn the history of that people from its own sources. Whatever was the nature of the inducement, it was a matter of great importance to the Alexandrian Jews that the sublime Pentateuch was translated into the polished Greek tongue.
We have no particulars of the way in which this work was brought about. Apparently, with a view to lightening the task, it was divided among five interpreters, so that each book of the Pentateuch had its own translator. The existing translation, though through various corruptions it has lost much of its original character, shows by its very lack of uniformity that it could not have issued from one pen.
The Greek translation of the Torah was, so to say, another sanctuary erected to the glory of God in a foreign land. The accomplishment of this task filled the Alexandrian and Egyptian Judæans with intense delight; and they thought, with no little pride, that now the vainglorious Greeks would at last be obliged to concede that the wisdom taught by Judaism was at once more elevating and of more ancient date than the philosophy of Greece. Their satisfaction was doubtless enhanced by the fact that the noble work owed in part its successful termination to the warm sympathy of the friendly king, and that a path was thus opened for a true appreciation of Judaism among the Greeks. It was natural, therefore, that great rejoicings should take place among the Egyptian Judæans on the day of presentation of the version to the king, and that its anniversary should be observed as a holiday. On that day it was customary for the Judæans to repair to the Island of Pharos, where they offered up prayers of joyful thanksgiving. After the religious ceremony they partook of a festive repast, either in tents or under the free vault of heaven, each according to his means. Later on this anniversary became a national holiday, in which even the heathen Alexandrians took part.
But far different was the effect produced by the translation of the Torah into Greek upon the pious inhabitants of Judæa. Not only was Greece the object of their hatred, on account of the sufferings they had endured at her hands, and the indignities she had offered to their religion; but they feared, not unnaturally, that the Law, translated into another language, might be exposed to disfigurement and misapprehension. The Hebrew language, in which God had revealed Himself upon Mount Sinai, alone appeared to them a worthy medium of the Divine thought. Presented in a new garb, Judaism itself appeared to the pious Judæans estranged and profaned. Consequently the day that was celebrated as a festival by the Judæans in Egypt was considered by their brethren in Judæa as a day of national calamity, similar to that upon which the golden calf had been worshipped in the desert, and it is even said that this day was numbered amongst their fasts.
Different as were the points of view from which the work was regarded, judged by the results produced by the Greek translation, there was reason both for the joy of the Alexandrian and the sorrow of the Palestinean Judæans. Thanks to its Grecian garb, Judaism became known to the Greeks, who were the civilisers of the world; and before five centuries had elapsed, the principal nations had become acquainted with its teachings. The Greek translation was the first apostle Judaism sent forth to the heathen world to heal it of its perversity and godlessness. Through its means the two opposing systems—the Judæan and the Greek—were drawn nearer together. Owing to their subsequent circulation through the world by means of the second apostle, Christianity, the tenets of Judaism were fused into the thought and language of the various nations, and at present there is no civilised language which has not, by means of this Greek translation, taken words and ideas from Judæan literature. Thus Judaism was introduced into the literature of the world, and its doctrines were popularised.
On the other hand, however, it innocently led to a mistaken view of the Judæan Law, becoming in a measure a false prophet, promulgating errors in the name of God. The difficulty of translating from Hebrew into Greek, a radically different language, at no time an easy task, was greatly increased at that period by the want of exact knowledge of Hebrew, and of the true nature of Judaism, which made it impossible for the translator always to render correctly the sense of the original. Moreover, the Greek text was not so carefully guarded but that, from time to time, arbitrary emendations might