Person
Joseph ben Tobiah יוסף בן טוביה
tax farmer who raised the house of Tobiah
When Onias II refused to pay the tribute to Ptolemy, the danger hung not over the high priest alone but over the whole country. Joseph, son of Tobiah and nephew of Onias, went to the court and settled the matter: by Josephus's account he won the king's favour and took over the collection of the taxes.
So a power of a new kind appeared in Judea. The house of Tobiah rested neither on service in the Temple nor on learning, but on money and nearness to a foreign court—and two generations later it is out of such houses that those who bought the high priesthood would come.
All we know of him comes from Josephus: no other account has survived.
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.