A SSIDYEANS chasidinz, I Macc.
42; vh. 13; 2 Macc. xiv. 6,' ActSedot, the pious, or righteous) ; a name derived from the root -cm, a word used to denote a very good or a very had action, but more frequently the former. As a de scription of a particular body of men it does not occur in the canonical Scriptures, nor in Josephs's ; but in the First and Second Book of Maccabees, as above, it is applied to the body of zealous and devoted men who rose at the signal for armed resistance given by Mattathias, the father of the Maccabees, and who, under him and his successors, upheld with the sword the great doctrine of the unity of God, and stemmed the advancing tide of Grecian manners and idolatries.
The Jews at a later period gave the name of Chasidim to those pious persons who devoted them selves to a life of austerities and religious exercises, in the hope of hastening the coming of the Messiah, and of making an atonement for their own sins and for the sins of others. The name of Chasidim has also been assumed by a Jewish sect which originated in Poland about a hundred years since, and which still subsists (Penny art. Assidians'). The ideas connected with this later appropriation of the term have, by an obvious association, been carried back to and connected with the Chasidim or Assitheans who joined Mattathias, and who have generally been regarded as a sect subsisting at that time. No such sect, however, is mentioned by josephus in treating of the affairs of that period ; and the texts which refer to them (1 Macc. ii. 42 ;
vii. 13 ; z Macc. xiv. 6) afford no sufficient evidence that the Assidaeans formed a sect distinct from other pious and faithful Jews. The analogous Hebrew term Chasidim occurs in various passages of Scrip ture appellatively for good and pious men (Ps. cxlv. so ; cxlix. I ; Is. Mic. vii. 2), but is body applied to any sect or ody of men. Upon the whole, in the entire absence of collateral infor mation, it seems the safest course to conclude that the Assidzans were a body of eminently zealous men, devoted to the Law, who joined Mattathias very early, and remained the constant adherents of him and his son _Judas—not, like the mass of their supporters, rising occasionally and then relapsing into the ordinary pursuits of life. It is possible that, as Jennings conjectures (Antiq. p. 29S), the name or 'saints,' came to be applied to them by their enemies as a term of reproach, like Puritans' formerly in this country, and `saints' very often in the present day.—J. K.
A SSOS ("Aco•os), a town of Lesser Mysia, on the northern shore of the Gulf of Adramyttium, opposite the island of Lesbos, or Mitylene. Paul came hither by land from Troas, to meet with his friends who came by sea, in order to take shipping for Mitylene (Acts xx. 13, 14). It is now a miserable village, called Beiram, built high upon the rocks on the side towards the land (Richter, p. 465, sq.)