The dissolution of the Persian Empire at first brought about no substantial change in the political and religious condition of the Jews, and the influences bred of the diffusion of Greek civilisation in Anterior Asia were not felt by them till much later. But, generally speaking, the state of the Jewish commonwealth during this period and down to the wars of the Maccabees is wrapped in a certain amount of obscurity, since the lack of Biblical records throws us back almost entirely on the narrative of Josephus, who himself drew from somewhat turbid sources and did not sift his material with sufficient care. After the rapid decline of the Macedonian kingdom and during the conflict of Alexander’s generals among themselves, Palestine, together with Phœnicia and Cœle-Syria, became the apple of discord between the rulers of the Syrian and Egyptian kingdoms. Ptolemy I (Lagi or Soter reigned until 283) seized Jerusalem in the year 320 by a sudden attack on the Sabbath (on which day no resistance was offered) and carried away a large number of Jews to Egypt, where some of them were sold as slaves and some enrolled in the royal army. Ptolemy, however, did not gain permanent possession of the country until the battle of Gaza, in 312, after which he again marched into Jerusalem, but acted with great clemency, so much so that many Jews of consequence migrated with him to Egypt, one of them being a learned man of the name of Ezekias (Hizkiah). The high priests at the time were Onias I, in 330, and his son Simon I, in 310. UNDER THE SELEUCIDS [Sidenote: [312-204 B.C.]] With the battle of Gaza in 312 is associated, among the Jews as among other oriental nations, the “era of the Seleucids” (also called Minjan Shtarot--_æra contractuum_--and, probably, “[the years] of the rule of the Hellenes”) which remained in use during the Middle Ages and even later. When afterwards the era of the creation of the world also came into use among the Jews, most Jewish chronologists, in order to reduce the two to a common standard, assumed that the era of the Seleucids had begun in the year 3448 after the creation of the world, and one thousand after the coming forth out of Egypt. They accordingly reduced any given date of the Seleucid era to the corresponding date after the creation of the world by adding 3447 to it, and to the corresponding date of the Christian era (with precision only for the first nine months of the year, as the Seleucid year begins in autumn) by deducting the Seleucid date from 312 to find the year B.C., or deducting 312 from it to find the year A.D. Asarja de’ Rossi, in the twenty-third chapter of _Meor Enajim_, enlarges upon the error of Jewish chronologists, who identify the beginning of the Seleucid era with the beginning of Greek dominion in Asia.