Onias’s Temple in Egypt

Now the son of Onias the high priest, who bore the same name as his father, had fled to King Ptolemy, called Philometor, and was living in Alexandria, as we said before. Seeing Judea ill-treated by the Macedonians and their kings, and wishing to win for himself glory and an everlasting memorial, he decided to send to King Ptolemy and Queen Cleopatra and ask their leave to build a temple in Egypt like the one in Jerusalem, and to appoint Levites and priests of his own race. He wished to do this chiefly because he trusted the prophet Isaiah, who had lived more than six hundred years before and had foretold that a temple to the supreme God must certainly be built in Egypt by a Jewish man. Encouraged by this, Onias wrote Ptolemy and Cleopatra a letter of this kind: “I have rendered you many great services in the business of war, with the help of God, both in Coele-Syria and in Phoenicia. I came with the Jews to Leontopolis in the district of Heliopolis and to other places of the nation, and I found that most of them have temples, contrary to what is proper, and are ill-disposed toward one another for that reason, as has happened to the Egyptians too because of the number of their temples and their differing opinions about worship. I have found a most suitable place in the fortress named after Bubastis of the Fields. It is thick with timber of every kind and full of sacred animals. I ask you to allow me to cleanse this temple, which has no owner and has fallen into ruin, and to build a temple to the supreme God after the pattern of the one in Jerusalem and of the same measurements, on behalf of you and your wife and children, so that the Jews who live in Egypt may come together there in harmony with one another and serve your interests. For the prophet Isaiah foretold this: ‘There will be an altar in Egypt to the Lord God.’ And he prophesied many other such things about the place.” [a]

That is what Onias wrote to King Ptolemy. One may observe the piety of the king, and of Cleopatra, his sister and wife, from the letter they wrote in reply; for they laid the sin and the breaking of the law on Onias’s head. This was their answer: “King Ptolemy and Queen Cleopatra to Onias, greeting. We have read your letter asking that you be allowed to cleanse the ruined temple at Leontopolis in the district of Heliopolis, which is named after Bubastis of the Fields. We therefore wonder whether a temple founded in a place so impure and so full of sacred animals will be pleasing to God. But since you say that Isaiah the prophet foretold this long ago, we grant it to you, if it is to be done according to the law, so that we may not seem to have sinned against God in any way.” [f]

So Onias took the place and built a temple and an altar to God like the one in Jerusalem, but smaller and poorer. I have not thought it right to set out its measurements and its vessels now, for they are recorded in the seventh book of my Jewish War. Onias also found some Jews like himself, priests and Levites, to perform the worship there. But we have said enough about this temple. [g]

In the time of Alexander it happened that the Jews in Alexandria and the Samaritans, who worshiped at the temple on Mount Gerizim, quarreled with one another and took their dispute about the temples before Ptolemy himself. The Jews said that the temple in Jerusalem had been built according to the laws of Moses, and the Samaritans said that the one on Gerizim had. They asked the king to sit with his friends and hear the arguments on these matters, and to punish with death those who lost. Sabbaeus and Theodosius made the case for the Samaritans, and Andronicus the son of Messalamus for the people of Jerusalem and the Jews. They swore by God and by the king to make their proofs from the law, and they asked Ptolemy to put to death anyone he found breaking these oaths. So the king took many of his friends into council and sat down to hear the speakers. The Jews who were in Alexandria were in great anxiety for the men whose part it was to stand up for the temple in Jerusalem, for they could not bear that anyone should overthrow a temple so ancient and the most renowned in the world. Sabbaeus and Theodosius allowed Andronicus to speak first. He began his proofs from the law and from the succession of the high priests, showing how each had received the office from his father and ruled over the temple, and how all the kings of Asia had honored the temple with offerings and the most splendid gifts. Of the temple on Gerizim he took no account and no notice at all, as if it did not even exist. By saying this and much more like it, Andronicus persuaded the king to rule that the temple in Jerusalem had been built according to the laws of Moses, and to put Sabbaeus and Theodosius to death. These were the things that happened to the Jews in Alexandria in the time of Ptolemy Philometor. [h]