Page:David Baron – The History of the Ten "Lost" Tribes.djvu/33

 the second Temple by Titus, we read of currents and counter-currents in the dispersion of the "Jewish" people. Thus Artaxerxes III., Ochus, on his way to re-conquer Egypt, "having taken Apodasmus in Judea, conveyed the Jewish population into Hyrcania near the Caspian Sea." When he made himself master of Egypt we read of his finding Jews there, and, being incensed against them on account of a stubborn defence against him of places entrusted to their keeping, "he sent part of them into Hyrcania, in the neighbourhood of the country which the tribes already inhabited, and left the rest at Babylon"; while soon after many thousands were taken to Egypt by Alexander; and Ptolemy Soter, one of his chief generals, who had become King of Egypt, and had invaded Syria and taken Jerusalem in B.C. 301, carried off one hundred thousand of them, and forced them to settle chiefly in Alexandria and Cyrene.

To summarise the state of things in connection with the Hebrew race at the time of Christ, it was briefly this:—

I. For some six centuries before, ever since the partial restoration in the days of Cyrus and his successors, the descendants of Abraham were no longer known as divided into tribes, but as one people, although up to the time of the destruction of the second Temple, tribal and family genealogies were for the most part preserved, especially among those who were settled in the land.