Person
Onias II חוניו השני
high priest who refused to pay the tribute to Ptolemy
Onias II was high priest in the decades when Judea paid tribute to the Ptolemies of Egypt. Josephus relates that he refused to hand over the twenty talents of silver every high priest was required to pay, and disaster hung over the country.
The matter was settled by his nephew Joseph ben Tobiah, who had connections at the Egyptian court. With this begins the rise of the house of Tobiah—the first house in Judea whose strength rested neither on service nor on learning but on nearness to a foreign king.
Onias died about 181 BCE, in the reign of Seleucus IV. Josephus speaks of him harshly; we give this as the testimony of the source, not as a verdict.
On the timeline
3515 · 246 BCEThe Septuagint: the Torah in Greek3593 · 168 BCEAntiochus IV and the Decrees against the Torah
Places
Related
Sources
Documents of the period
- Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, XII — the account of the high priests and the house of Tobiah; written two centuries after the events and for a Roman reader
Scholarship
- Reference literature: years of the high priesthood — the years of office by the agreed count of the reference literature; scholars differ, and the differences are named
Basis: documents and evidence.