13 A comparison with the Apocalypse of the Ten Weeks in Enoch (93 + 91 12-17) is in point here. The sixth “week” (period of 490 years) ends with the destruction of the temple by Nebuchadnezzar; in the seventh a rebellious generation arises, all whose works are apostasy (the hellenizers of the Seleucid time); at its end the “chosen righteous men of the eternal plantation of righteousness” are chosen to receive the sevenfold instruction about God’s whole creation (apparently the cosmological revelations of Enoch); the historical retrospect closes before the robbery and desecration of the temple by Antiochus Epiphanes (170, 168 B.C.), of which the seer knows nothing. The chronological error here amounts to sixty or seventy years. In the Introduction, p. xii, by a typographical error which is repeated on p. xxii, Dr. Schechter says that the 390 years of the text would bring us “to within a generation of Simon the Just, who flourished about 290 B.C.,” and twenty years more would bring us into the midst of the hellenistic persecutions preceding the Maccabaean revolt (about 170 B.C.). Margoliouth, whose hypothesis 490 does not suit any better than 390, takes courage from Schechter’s doubts to disregard the numbers altogether. Gressmann (Internationale Wochenschrift, March 4, 1911) is led by metrical considerations to treat all the chronological notices as interpolations, and gives them no further consideration. But even if the figures were introduced by a later hand, they may still represent the tradition of the sect. 14 Perhaps we should emend _ma’mādō_, “station,” i.e. sect. 15 See below, p. 350, 354 f. 16 Cf. Isa. 30 20 f. 17 The Septuagint renders _yāḥīd_ most frequently by ἀγαπητός, less often by μονογενής. 18 The same prophecy which was applied by Akiba to Bar Cocheba and by the Dositheans to their founder (see below, p. 362). 19 The sect rejects the temple in Jerusalem and its worship. Cf. 20 21 f., in the last crisis, “they will lean upon God ... and will declare the sanctuary unclean and will return to God.” 20 Perhaps better, keep aloof, by vow and ban, from unrighteous, unclean gain. 21 See below, p. 353. 22 The name comes from Isa. 28 14, where the scorners are the rulers in Jerusalem, who boast of their covenant with death and their compact with hell, who have made lies their refuge and hidden themselves in falsehood. See also Isa. 29 20. 23 It might be surmised that the false prophet had headed an insurrection—perhaps a Messianic rising—which ended in disaster. 24 See above, p. 333. 25 Or, as Schechter elsewhere expresses it, “disappeared.” Among the synonyms for death, Aaron ben Eliahu names “gather in” (Isa. 58 8). 26 Introduction, p. xiii.