#aristobulus

Some time in 57 B.C. he took up his commission as the commanding officer of a troop of rough Gallic cavalry, and went with Gabinius to Judea, where affairs were in an uproar. On the death of Alexander Jannseus in 78 B.C., the Jewish royal authority had passed to his widow, Alexandra, who gave the office of High-Priest of Jehovah to their son, Hyrcanus; and this personage received also the Jewish sovereignty at his mother's death in 70 or 69 B.C. But in 68 B.C. his younger brother, Aristobulus, drove him from the throne, and forced him into exile. In 63 B.C., however, Pompey captured Jerusalem, as has already been mentioned, reinstated Hyrcanus, and carried Aristobulus and his son to Rome as his captives.

But shortly before Gabinius entered upon his governorship of Syria, the two prisoners escaped, and, returning to Judaea, headed a revolt against Hyrcanus, this civil war being at its height when the new governor arrived. Gabinius sent Antony ahead with his picturesque Gallic cavalry to attack Aristobulus, who shut himself up in the fortress of Alexandrium in Samaria, not far from the north efid of the Dead Sea.

The mission of Jesus Christ lasted three years.  One of the first things that Jesus did was call twelve disciples to live and travel with him.  The gospels of Matthew chapter 10 and Luke chapter 9 describe the sending out of the twelve disciples to towns in Judea.  In addition to this, later on, Jesus chose seventy (or seventy two) other disciples and sent them out in pairs to announce the coming…

The Apocryphal book named the ‘Wisdom of Solomon’ ‘was not written by Solomon, but by a learned Jew living in exile in Egypt in the 1st or 2nd century BC. There was one such person who was the correspondant of Judas Maccabeus, to whom he sent 2 Maccabees as a letter containing news from Jerusalem.  The correspondant’s name was Aristobulus and he was a priest and teacher of King Ptolemy.  This…

Conquered by Rome

“Simon” the last of the five sons of the Modine priest Mathias, was eventually succeeded by his own son “John Hyrenus” as the high priest. Drunk with his new found power and authority, he planned to start a very expensive and cruel wars against the neighboring states. He invaded Samaria in the North and Idumea in the South. He decided to forcibly convert the Samaritans and the Idumeans to his form of Judaism.