Murder in the Temple

When Eliashib the high priest died, his son Judas succeeded to the high priesthood; and when he died, his son John took that office. It was on John’s account that Bagoses, the general of another Artaxerxes’ army, defiled the temple and imposed tribute on the Jews: before they offered the daily sacrifices, they were to pay out of the public funds fifty drachmas for every lamb. Now Jesus was the brother of John, and a friend of Bagoses, who had promised to obtain the high priesthood for him. Relying on his support, Jesus quarreled with John in the temple, and so provoked his brother that in his anger his brother killed him. It was a horrible thing for John, when he was high priest, to commit so great a crime, and all the more horrible because no deed so cruel and impious had ever been done, either by Greeks or by barbarians. But God did not neglect to punish it: on that very account the people were enslaved, and the temple was defiled by the Persians. [a]

When Bagoses, the general of Artaxerxes’ army, learned that John, the high priest of the Jews, had killed his own brother Jesus in the temple, he came down on the Jews at once and began angrily to say to them, “Have you had the effrontery to commit a murder in your temple?” And when he set out to go into the temple, they forbade him to do so; but he said to them, “Am I not purer than the man who was killed in the temple?” When he had said this, he went into the temple. So Bagoses made use of this pretext, and punished the Jews for seven years for the murder of Jesus.

When John died, his son Jaddua succeeded to the high priesthood. He had a brother named Manasseh. Now there was a man named Sanballat, who had been sent into Samaria as satrap by Darius, the last king. He was a Cuthean by birth, the stock from which the Samaritans also came. This man knew that Jerusalem was a famous city, and that its kings had given a great deal of trouble to the Assyrians and the people of Coele-Syria. So he willingly gave his daughter, whose name was Nicaso, in marriage to Manasseh, thinking that this marriage alliance would be a pledge and security that the nation of the Jews would keep their goodwill toward him. [e]