This text is part of:
Search the Perseus Catalog for:
View text chunked by:
[154]
AFTER this Antiochus made a friendship and league with Ptolemy, and
gave him his daughter Cleopatra to wife, and yielded up to him Celesyria,
and Samaria, and Judea, and Phoenicia, by way of dowry. And upon the division
of the taxes between the two kings, all the principal men framed the taxes
of their several countries, and collecting the sum that was settled for
them, paid the same to the [two] kings. Now at this time the Samaritans
were in a flourishing condition, and much distressed the Jews, cutting
off parts of their land, and carrying off slaves. This happened when Onias
was high priest; for after Eleazar's death, his uncle Manasseh took the
priesthood, and after he had ended his life, Onias received that dignity.
He was the son of Simon, who was called The Just: which Simon was
the brother of Eleazar, as I said before. This Onias was one of a little
soul, and a great lover of money; and for that reason, because he did not
pay that tax of twenty talents of silver, which his forefathers paid to
these things out of their own estates, he provoked king Ptolemy Euergetes
to anger, who was the father of Philopater. Euergetes sent an ambassador
to Jerusalem, and complained that Onias did not pay his taxes, and threatened,
that if he did not receive them, he would seize upon their land, and send
soldiers to live upon it. When the Jews heard this message of the king,
they were confounded; but so sordidly covetous was Onias, that nothing
of things nature made him ashamed.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.