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10
THE SYRIAN CHURCHES.

eleven. But either from the then-harassed state of the Christian cause, or from the circumstance that the bishops were chosen from the most aged of the presbyters, we find that six now followed each other in succession within the term of thirteen years. Their names were Zachæus, Tobias, Benjamin, Juchanan, Matthias, and Benjamin II., otherwise called Philip. The relative duration of their pastorship is, however, unknown. After Philip, we have Seneca, a.d. 125; then, in series, Justus II., Levi, Ephrem, Jose, or Joseph, and Judah, the fifteenth and last of the circumcised. These last filled a period but of twelve years. All these bishops were of Hebrew birth, orthodox and steadfast in the faith; and such also was the character, in the main, of the church which they governed.

Judah, the last of the purely Hebrew succession, died with a multitude of Christians in the massacres attendant upon the revolt of the Jews under Bar-Chochab. The emperor Adrian had now colonized Jerusalem, under the name of Elia,[1] with Gentiles, and had built a temple to Jupiter on the site of that which had been reared for the worship of the true God. These events, together with the prohibition of the distinctive peculiarities of their religion, (as circumcision,) hurried the Jews to a rebellion, which issued in their more entire ruin. Judea now became almost literally a solitude. For some time it was forbidden to a Jew to enter Jerusalem, or even to look at it from a distance. It was inhabited wholly by Gentiles. Upon the gate that led towards Bethlehem stood the marble image of a sow; and, as the Christians were not less hated than the Jews, Adrian ordered an idol of Jupiter to be set up on the site of the Resur-

  1. The Jews call the name of the city Yeruschalaim; the Greeks and Romans, Hierosolyma and Elia; the Arabs, El Kods; and the Turks, Koudsi-Sherif.