Where Did Jesus Die? — Page 145
Chapter Eleven—Jesus Goes to India 145 In general it is of the greatest importance to remember in regard to the Eastern dispersion, that only a minority of the Jews, consisting in all of about 50,000, originally returned from Babylon, first under Zerubbabel and after- wards under Ezra (537 B. C. and 459/8 B. C. ) Nor was their inferiority confined to members. The wealthiest and the most influential Jews remained behind. According to Josephus (Ant. 11, 5), with whom Philo substantially agrees, vast numbers estimated at millions, inhabited the Trans-Euphratic Provinces. A later tradition has it, that so dense was the Jewish population in the Persian Empire, that Cyrus forbade the further return of the exiles, lest the country should be depopulated. So large and compact a body soon became a political power. ‘The Babylonian “dis- persion” had already stretched out its hands in every direc- tion eastward it had passed as far as India’. Still the great mass of the ten tribes was in the days of Christ, as in our own, lost to the Hebrew nation. 1 In the fourth book of Ezra (13:39–45) it is declared that the ten tribes were carried by Hosia, King in the time of Shalmaneser to the Euphrates, to the narrow passages of the river, whence they went on for a journey of a year and a half, to a place called Arzareth. 2 ‘Nebuchadnezzar stormed Jerusalem (586 B. C. ), plun- dered and burnt the Temple, … and carried off the most illustrious 1. Alfred Edersheim, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, p. 8, 13, 16, London, 1906. 2. Jewish Ency. ‘Tribes. ’