[768] More than this we do not know of Zechariah. The Jewish and Christian traditions of him are as unfounded as those of other prophets. According to the Jews he was, of course, a member of the mythical Great Synagogue. See above on Haggai, pp. [232] f. As in the case of the prophets we have already treated, the Christian traditions of Zechariah are found in (Pseud-)Epiphanius, De Vitis Prophetarum, Dorotheus, and Hesychius, as quoted above, p. [80]. They amount to this, that Zechariah, after predicting in Babylon the birth of Zerubbabel, and to Cyrus his victory over Crœsus and his treatment of the Jews, came in his old age to Jerusalem, prophesied, died and was buried near Beit-Jibrin—another instance of the curious relegation by Christian tradition of the birth and burial places of so many of the prophets to that neighbourhood. Compare Beit-Zakharya, 12 miles from Beit-Jibrin. Hesychius says he was born in Gilead. Dorotheus confuses him, as the Jews did, with Zechariah of Isa. viii. 1. See above, p. 265, n. [761].
Zechariah was certainly not the Zechariah whom our Lord describes as slain between the Temple and the Altar (Matt. xxiii. 35; Luke xi. 51). In the former passage alone is this Zechariah called the son of Barachiah. In the Evang. Nazar. Jerome read the son of Yehoyada. Both readings may be insertions. According to 2 Chron. xxiv. 21, in the reign of Joash, Zechariah, the son of Yehoyada the priest, was stoned in the court of the Temple, and according to Josephus (IV. Wars, v. 4), in the year 68 A.D. Zechariah son of Baruch was assassinated in the Temple by two zealots. The latter murder may, as Marti remarks (pp. 58 f.), have led to the insertion of Barachiah into Matt. xxiii. 35.
[769] ii. 13, 15; iv. 9; vi. 15.
[770] LXX. Ἀδδω. See above, p. [264].
[771] Heb. angered with anger; Gr. with great anger.
[772] As in LXX.
[773] LXX. has misunderstood and expanded this verse.
[774] It is to be noticed that Zechariah appeals to the Torah of the prophets, and does not mention any Torah of the priests. Cf. Smend, A. T. Rel. Gesch., pp. 176 f.
[776] This picture is given in one of the Visions: the Third.