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Jaddui

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(Heb. Yaddu'a, יִדּוּע, known; Sept. Ι᾿εδδούα, Ι᾿αδού, Ι᾿δούα ), the name of two men after the time of the Captivity.

1. One of the chiefs of the people who subscribed the sacred covenant drawn up by Nehemiah (Nehemiah 10:21). B.C. cir. 410. 2. The son of Jonathan, and the last high-priest mentioned in the Old Testament (Nehemiah 12:11; Nehemiah 12:22). He is doubtless the person alluded to by Josephus (‘λαῳΣοᾷ, Ant. 11, 8, 3-6) as exercising the pontifical office at the time of the capture of Tyre by Alexander the Great (B.C. 332), and as coming forth from Jerusalem at the head of the priestly body to meet the advancing conqueror, and tender him the submission of the city. (See ALEXANDER). In that case his name must have been inserted by "the great Synagogue" after the Scripture canon (q.v.) had been made up by Ezra (B.C. cir. 406). (See CHRONICLES). "We gather pretty certainly that he was priest in the reign of the last Persian king Darius, and that he was still high-priest after the Persian dynasty was overthrown, i.e. in the reign of Alexander the Great. For the expression, ‘ Darius the Persian' (Nehemiah 12:22) must have been used after the accession of the Grecian dynasty; and, had another high-priest succeeded, his name would most likely have been mentioned. Thus far, then, the book of Nehemiah bears out the truth of Josephus's history, which makes Jaddua high-priest when Alexander invaded Judea. But Josephus's story of his interview with Alexander is not, on that account, necessarily true, nor his account of the building of the Temple on Mount Gerizim during Jaddua's pontificate, at the instigation of Sanballat, both of which, as well as the accompanying circumstances, may have been derived from some apocryphal book of Alexandrian growth, since lost, in which chronology and history gave way to romance and Jewish vanity. Josephus seems to place the death of Jaddua after that of Alexander (Ant. 11:8, 7). t Eusebius assigns twenty years to Jaddua's pontificate." See Hervey, Genealogy of our Lord, p. 323 sq.; Jarvis, Church of the Redeemed, p. 291. (See HIGH-PRIEST).