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Updated: June 14, 2025
There was a time which came to an end, alas! with the great Aristotle when there were men among the Greeks, who fed the ocean of which you speak with new tributaries; for the gods had bestowed on them the power of opening new sources, like the magician Moses, of whom Onias, the Jew, was lately telling us, and whose history I have read in the sacred books of the Hebrews.
"I am called so in honor of my sainted grandfather, Rabbi Onias, who disappeared mysteriously one hundred years ago, after the destruction of the First Temple." "A hundred years," murmured Onias. "Can I have slept so long?" "By thy appearance, it would seem so," replied the other Onias. "The Temple has been rebuilt since then." "Then it was not a dream," said the old man.
This yearly tribute from the Temple the high priest of Jerusalem had been usually allowed to collect and farm; but in the latter end of this reign, the high priest Onias, a weak and covetous old man, refused to send to Alexandria the twenty talents, or fifteen thousand dollars, at which it was then valued.
He greatly provoked the king by neglecting to pay his taxes, so that Ptolemy threatened to settle his soldiers in Jerusalem to live on the citizens. But Joseph, the nephew of Onias, by his wisdom brought all things right again, and entered into friendship with the king, who lent him soldiers and sent him to force the people in various cities to pay their taxes. Many who refused were slain.
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Though the synagogue was the main seat of religious life in the Diaspora, there was still a desire for the sacrificial worship, and for a long time the rabbis looked with favor upon the establishment of Onias. But when the tendency to found a new ritual there showed itself, they denied its holiness.
When this Onias saw that Judea was oppressed by the Macedonians and their kings, out of a desire to purchase to himself a memorial and eternal fame he resolved to send to king Ptolemy and queen Cleopatra, to ask leave of them that he might build a temple in Egypt like to that at Jerusalem, and might ordain Levites and priests out of their own stock.
But then the son of Onias the high priest, who was of the same name with his father, and who fled to king Ptolemy, who was called Philometor, lived now at Alexandria, as we have said already.
"Zion, my beautiful Zion, is no more. Can it ever rise again? Not in a hundred years can its glory be renewed." The sun sank lower as he continued to gaze upon the ruined city, and darkness gathered over the scene. Utterly exhausted, Onias, laying his head upon his camel on the ground, fell into a deep sleep.
During the wars in Syria between Philometor and Antiochus Epiphanes, at the beginning of this reign, the Jews were divided into two parties, one favouring the Egyptians and one the Syrians. At last the Syrian party drove their enemies out of Jerusalem; and Onias, the high priest, with a large body of Jews, fled to Egypt.
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