JUDAS MACCAÆBUS LIBERATES JUDEA B.C.

165 JOSEPHUS (The noble-minded Judas Maccabaeus was the hero of Jewish independence the deliverer of Judea and Judaism during the bloody persecutions of the Syrian king Antiochus Epiphanes, in the second century B.C.

He then came as far as Bethoron, a village of Judea, and there pitched his camp; upon which Judas met him, and when he intended to give him battle he saw that his soldiers were backward to fight because their number was small and because they wanted food, for they were fasting.

Upon this Lysias chose Ptolemy the son of Dorymenes, and Nicanor, and Gorgias, very potent men among the King's friends, and delivered to them forty thousand foot-soldiers and seven thousand horsemen, and sent them against Judea, who came as far as the city Emmaus and pitched their camp in the plain country.

And when he had subdued them he seized on the city of Jazer, and took their wives and their children captives and burned the city and then returned into Judea.

And he left Joseph, the son of Zacharias, and Azarias, to be over the rest of the forces, and charged them to keep Judea very carefully and to fight no battles with any persons whomsoever until his return.

When he had done this he gathered the Jews together with their children and wives and the substance that belonged to them, and was going to bring them back into Judea.

And going away hastily from thence, they came into Judea, singing psalms and hymns as they went, and indulging such tokens of mirth as are usual in triumphs upon victory.

They came also to Ashdod, and took it, and laid it waste, and took away a great deal of the spoils and prey that were in it and returned to Judea.

For although he had invested several private persons with great governments and kingdoms, and bereaved many kings of theirs, as Antigonus of Judea, whose head he caused to be struck offthe first example of that punishment being inflicted on a kingyet nothing stung the Romans like the shame of these honors paid to Cleopatra.

A legend of about the twelfth century tells us that the remains of St. James the Greater, son of Zebedee, after he was beheaded in Judea, were miraculously brought to Spain and interred in a spot whose whereabouts was not known until in the ninth century a brilliant star pointed out the place ('campus stellae').

It was a broad, shallow valley, swelling away towards the east into low, rolling hills, far back of which rose the blue line of the mountainsthe hill-country of Judea.

So ran the rich landscape, broken only by belts of olive trees, to the far hills of Judea.

Reason said: "You certainly will!"-but to Faith the Holy City was as far off as ever. Was it possible that I was in Judea?

Judea cursed of God!

I began to fancy we could see Jerusalem from the top of the pass, and tried to think of the ancient days of Judea.

"Blest land of Judea!

Herod's servants, then, were right in slaying every child in Bethlehem, from two years old and under, provided they thought Herod's Government, on the whole, more a blessing than a curse to Judea!

It follows out the story which you heard in the first lesson for last Sunday afternoon, of the invasion of Judea by the Assyrians.

Some Shepherds from Judea.

HERODIANS, a party in Judea who from motives of self-interest supported the dynasty of the Herods.

HYRCANUS, JOHN, the son of Simon Maccabeus, king of Judea, as well as High-Priest of the Jews from 135 to 105 B.C.; achieved the independence of his country from the Syrian yoke, extended the borders of it, and compelled the Edomites to accept the Jewish faith at the point of the sword; in the strife then rampant between the SADDUCEES (q. v.) and the PHARISEES (q. v.)

JANNÆUS, ALEXANDER, the second of the Asmonæan kings of Judea; reigned in the beginning of the century before Christ; insulted the Jews by profaning the rites of their religion, and roused a hostility against him which was appeased only by his death, the news of which was received with expressions of triumphant exultation.

SENNACHERIB, a king of Assyria, whose reign extended from 702 to 681 B.C., and was distinguished by the projection and execution of extensive public works; he endeavoured to extend his conquests westward, but was baffled in Judea by the miraculous destruction of his army.

SHISHAK, the name of several monarchs of Egypt of the twenty-second dynasty, the first of whom united nearly all Egypt under one government, invaded Judea and plundered the Temple of Jerusalem about 962 B.C. SHITTIM WOOD, a hard, close-grained acacia wood of an orange-brown colour found in the Arabian Desert, and employed in constructing the Jewish Tabernacle.