PTOLEMY V – King of Egypt from 205 to 182 B.C. He was a child of five when he came to the throne. The protracted struggle for the possession of Cœle-Syria and Palestine was now finally decided in favor of the Syrians. Antiochus the Great...
PTOLEMY VII – Is Dethroned. King of Egypt from 182 to 146 B.C.; eldest son of Ptolemy V. With him the power over Egypt passes into unworthy hands. Philometor was still a child when he came to the throne, the Jewish philosopher Aristobulus of...
PTOLEMY IX – King of Egypt from 146 to 117 B.C. After the death of Ptolemy Philometor, his brother, Euergetes II., tried to overthrow his widow and successor, Cleopatra, whose army was commanded by the Jewish general Onias (Josephus, "Contra...
PTOLEMY MACRON – General of King Antiochus Epiphanes of Syria; sent by the prefect Lysins with two other generals, Nicanor and Gorgias, to fight against the Jews under the Maccabees. In I Macc. iii. 38, II Macc. iv. 45, and in Josephus, "Ant."...
PUAH – 1. One of the two midwives who were ordered by Pharaoh to kill all the Hebrew male children (Ex. i. 15). Philo ("Quis Rerum Divinarum," ed. 1613, p. 389; ed. Schwickert, 1828, iii. 30, § 26) possibly correctly identifies this...
PUBERTY, AGE OF – See Majority.
PUBLICAN – Local tax-farmer; the office existed among the Jews under the Roman dominion. The Romans were accustomed to farm out, generally for five years, the customs dues on exports. These taxes were mainly ad valorem, and therefore, as...
PUCHER, SOLOMON – Rabbi; born 1829 at Neustadt-Sherwint, Poland; died Nov. 23, 1899, at Riga. Educated at the yeshibah of Georgenburg and at the rabbinical school of Wilna, he was called in 1859 to the rabbinate of Mitau. As a rabbi Pucher...
PUCHOWITZER, JUDAH LÖB B. JOSEPH PARZOWER – Russian rabbi, cabalist, and author; lived in the last quarter of the seventeenth century. He was rabbi at Pinsk, and in his old age emigrated to Palestine and settled at Jerusalem, leaving behind him an injunction to his son...
PÜCKLER-MUSKAU, WALTER, COUNT – German anti-Semitic agitator; born Oct. 9, 1860, at Rogan, near Breslau. He graduated from the University of Breslau with the degree of doctor of law, and was appointed referendar, but soon left the public service. After 1899 he...
PUGILISM – See Athletes; Bandoff, Benjamin; Belasco, Abraham; Belasco, Israel; Benjamin, William; Bernstein, Joseph; Bittoon, Isaac; Choynski, Joseph; Elias, Samuel; Evans, Samuel; Mendoza, Daniel.
PUL – A usurper who ascended the throne of Babylonia in 745 B.C. and reigned until 737; identical with Tiglath-pileser III. He appears in the list of kings as "Pulu," but his identity with Tiglathpileser, first suggested by Rawlinson...
PULGAR, ISAAC BEN JOSEPH IBN – See Ibn Pulgar, Isaac ben Joseph.
PULITZER, JOSEPH – American editor and journalist; born April 10, 1847, at Budapest. Hungary; educated privately. In 1863 he left his native town for the United States, which he reached in time to enlist in the Federal army as a private in a...
PULPIT – Facing the People. In the earliest time a post ("'ammud" was used instead of a pulpit; from it the king spoke to the people, and from it Josiah renewed with the people the covenant of the Law before the Lord (II Kings xi. 14,...
PUMBEDITA – See Academies in Babylonia.
PUMPIANSKI, AARON ELIJAH B. ARYEH LÖB – Russian government rabbi and author; born at Wilna in 1835; died at Riga April 26, 1893. He graduated from the rabbinical school of Wilna in 1859 and edited, in conjunction with Asher Wohl, the Russian supplement to "Ha-Karmel"...
PUNCTUATION – When the Biblical text received its final form in the schools of Palestine during the first and second centuries, and the Masorah began its task of preserving this text, it consisted exclusively of letters to which were added no...
PUNISHMENT – It has been shown in the articles Capital Punishment, Crime, Homicide, and Stripes that a court may inflict for the violation of one of the prohibitive laws a sentence of: (1) death in one of four different forms; (2) exile to...
PUPILS AND TEACHERS – See Pedagogics.
PURCHASE AND SALE – See Sale.
PURCHASE UNDER MISTAKE – See Fraud and Mistake.
PURGATORY – An intermediate state through which souls are to pass in order to be purified from sin before they are admitted into the heavenly paradise. The belief in purgatory, fundamental with the Roman Catholic Church, is based by the...
PURIFICATION – See Ṭaharah.
PURIM – Jewish feast celebrated annually on the l4th, and in Shushan, Persia, also on the 15th, of Adar, in commemoration of the deliverance of the Persian Jews from the plot of Haman to exterminate them, as recorded in the Book of...