Antiquities of the Jews, fit the twenty-eighth, concluding Book XIII

[lethargic_man]

Aristobulus was succeeded by his brother Alexander Yannai, about whom Josephus tells an amusing episode (XIII.13.372):

As to Alexander, his own people were seditious against him; for at a festival which was then celebrated, when he stood upon the altar, and was going to sacrifice, the nation rose upon him, and pelted him with citrons [which they then had in their hands, because] the law of the Jews required that at the feast of tabernacles every one should have branches of the palm tree and citron tree; which thing we have elsewhere related.

A similar story is told in the Mishna (Succah 4:9), in which the person carrying out the water libation poured the water of his feet instead of into the correct bowl (according to Rashi, he was a Sadducee and rejected the Pharisaic procedure), and got pelted with esrogs.

Shamelessly including a picture (from here), as last time it got some people to read my post

Nowadays observant Jews in the diaspora spend lots of money to buy an esrog, and take good care of it, keeping it in a padded box so it can't get damaged; it's all a long way from pelting a speaker with them. But of course in Israel obtaining an esrog wasn't such a big deal; you could just go and pick another one off a tree. Unfortunately, the story with Alexander Yannai does not have a happy ending:

They also reviled him, as derived from a captive, and so unworthy of his dignity and of sacrificing. At this he was in a rage, and slew of them about six thousand.

Alexander Yannai was a bit of a bad egg; Josephus goes on to describe (376) how the Jews invited Demetrius III Eucaerus of the Seleucid Empire in to fight against him, and how Jews fought on both sides of the struggle. After Alexander had won a victory, Josephus related (XIII.14.380):

when he had taken the city, and gotten the men into his power, he brought them to Jerusalem, and did one of the most barbarous actions in the world to them; for as he was feasting with his concubines, in the sight of all the city, he ordered about eight hundred of them to be crucified; and while they were living, he ordered the throats of their children and wives to be cut before their eyes.

One can see why Jesus fled from him, in the Talmudic story in which Jesus is misattributed to his time (possibly a confusion of Jesuses?). <checks Wikipedia> Ah, in BT Sotah 47a and Sanhedrin 107 it says:

What was the case of Rabbi Joshua ben Perahiah? When King Yannai put the Rabbis to death. [Shim'on ben Shetah was hidden by his sister and] Rabbi Joshua ben Perahiah and Yeshu fled to Alexandria in Egypt.

So, most definitely a bad egg, then. (If you're interested in the full story about Jesus, which is pretty much the only one in the Talmud in which Jesus is portrayed sympathetically, you can read it here.

[Please comment at my collected Book XIII notes post, on Dreamwidth for preference, or on LiveJournal.]

Josephus notes