History of Judaism

During the
Intertestamental
Period
The Second Temple Period

Sections:

 Background to Hellenism
 Macedonian Empire
 Judea Under the Ptolemies
 The Jewish Revolt
 Hasmonean Dynasty
 Bibliography

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Introduction

The title I use for this class, “Intertestamental Period,” has a

Christian basis because it acknowledges the existence of two
“testaments” while the Jews only recognize one scripture. In Jewish
terms the period we’ll be studying could be referred to as the
“Second Temple Period,” but in Jewish scholarship that term has
more to do with events in Judea than elsewhere in the Jewish
diaspora. Since we’ll be looking at the history of the entire region,
I’ve chosen the more encompassing term for this class.

Most of us have a vague idea of the history of Judea during the last
half of the first millennium BCE that goes along these lines: after
the exile, the Persians controlled Palestine until the Greeks under
Alexander conquered Asia Minor; then the Syrians took over
northwestern Asia Minor. Judea was liberated from the Syrians by
the Hasmoneans who ruled until the advent of Rome. And Judaism
developed from a cult to a religion as the power of the priests
gradually gave way to the power of the people as Judaism developed
under the Pharisees, whose leaders became the rabbis. The
Pharisees grew in power at the expense of the other sects and the
priesthood, which was rapidly marginalized. End of story? Correct?
Not quite, and not really correct, especially the part about the
Pharisees. The history is in the details, and it’s the details that make
the history so much more interesting.

Figure 1. Timeline (dates BCE)

(click figures to enlarge; to really enlarge some images, right-click, select
"View Image," and then, if you see a magnifying-glass cursor on the
resulting image, left-click it )

It was toward the end of the fifth century BCE, during the rise of
Greek philosophy and the age of Socrates, that the Intertestamental
period began. According to the Book of Ezra (Ezr. 6:15), the Temple
had been completed and dedicated in 516 BCE. Nehemiah had
returned to Jerusalem for the final time somewhere between 430
and 420 and by 418, tradition says that the final prophecies of
Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi had been uttered (Figure 1).
Although the history of the Jews of the period between the end of
the fifth century and the date of the Hasmonean uprising is the least
documented of any period of Jewish history, these centuries have
been shown to be an important transition period in the history of
Judaism. During the fourth and third centuries, the Jewish diaspora
grew significantly; Jewish religious writings began to become
canonized; this period witnessed the writing of significant non-
biblical works; prophecy gradually became transformed into
apocalyptic visions of the future; and a class of lay people learned in
the sacred traditions, the scribes, arose.

In addition to the composition of the Deuteronomistic History and

much of the Priestly writings during the exile, the redaction of the
books of the Torah and the books of Ezra-
Nehemiah, Chronicles, Ecclesiastes, Jonah, Esther,
and Daniel were written during the Persian and Hellenistic periods
and the books of Song of Songs and Job were likely put into their
current form just before or during this time. Some memories of this
period are preserved in the writings of Philo and Josephus and
other events are suggested in several apocryphal and
pseudepigraphical writings (notably Sirach, Jubilees, and 1 Esdras),
in letters found at Yeb (Elephantine), Egypt, the location of a Jewish
military colony, and, of course, in the books of Maccabees.
Additional historical material has been found in the writings of
Greek and Roman historians and in archaeological discoveries from
the region. We shall cover the period shown in the timeline (Figure
1), from the exile to the beginning of Herod’s rule. This is a
challenging period to fully understand and even to summarize, but
we shall attempt to do both. But before we can explore the poorly
understood history of this period, we first need to go back several
centuries prior to the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians
under Nebuchadnezzar and review the fall of the northern kingdom.

Background to Hellenism

Figure 2. Divided kingdom

 Figure 3. Dispersions in 722 BCE

Until 722 BCE, two monarchies—Israel and Judah, the northern

and southern kingdoms—controlled the area of ancient Canaan
(Figure 2). In that year, Assyria under Shalmaneser V invaded the
northern kingdom and the deportation of the population of the
Kingdom of Israel was completed during the following year under
Sargon II. (Figure 3) But most casual students of history don’t
realize that only a small portion of the population of the northern
kingdom was actually deported. Those primarily affected were the
people of the upper classes, mainly the residents of the cities:
Samaria, the capital, plus Shechem, Beth-Shean, Megiddo, Shiloh,
Dan, Ramoth, Hazor, and Bethel; these were some of the major
towns affected. Essentially only the largest towns were affected
because that’s where the higher classes lived.

In reality the so-called “Ten Lost Tribes” did not number ten and
were never lost; Simeon and Benjamin had earlier been absorbed
into Judah while the territories of Reuben and Gad were in Ammon
where there were few large towns. The people in the countryside,
the farmers and village-dwellers, were mostly undisturbed. The
evidence for countryside communities remaining intact is the
Assyrian records of the tributes imposed on the agricultural lands
and villages by Sargon immediately following his deportations.

Many of Samaria’s intelligentsia avoided deportation because they

were able to flee to Judah. We know this because we can detect the
arrival of refugees in Judah from the appearance of certain cultural
changes that occurred in Jerusalem at that time. Also of interest, in
Ezra’s list of the first returnees to Jerusalem under Zerubbabel,
there are recorded among the returnees many whose names
correspond to those of families from the eighth century who lived in
localities within the northern kingdom. A late eighth-century
Aramaic ostracon discovered at Nimrud on the Tigris lists a number
of common Samarian personal names, such as Elisha, Haggai,
Hananel, and Menahem. While some of those returnees could have
been descendants of those who were exiled to Mesopotamia in the
Assyrian deportation, there’s another possibility too, as I will
mention below.

Another hint of an important ancient Jewish population of early

exiles who later returned to Judea is related to a possible source of
the story of Noah, especially the site of the ark’s landing. Babylonian
mythology placed that location in the ancient kingdom of Urartu in
eastern Turkey and western Iran, within the Ararat mountain range
in the Lake Van vicinity. In the Babylonian flood myth from
the Gilgamesh Epic, the ark rested on Mt. Nisir in modern Iraqi
Kurdistan, and it is precisely to this region that many of the exiles of
the northern kingdom were sent by Sargon II. There they may have
learned details of the flood story and shared it with later exiles who
later returned to Judea with that knowledge.

About the Assyrian deportation, according to Abraham Malamat,

“...it is evident that as a rule [the exiles] did not possess the status of
slaves or of an oppressed population. The exiles were first settled in
Mesopotamia as land tenants of the king ... while the craftsmen
among them were employed in state enterprises. Eventually, some
of the exiles achieved economic and social status and even occupied
high-ranking positions in the Assyrian administration. They were
given the right to agricultural holdings and to observe the customs
of their forefathers, and enjoyed a certain measure of internal
autonomy.” He concludes, “The return to Zion apparently included
remnants of the ten tribes, as alluded to in the Bible...” and cites
references from the books of Zechariah and Ezekiel in support of
this claim.

Following the conquest of Israel, colonists from other parts of

Assyria were sent to Samaria; these people came from distant
regions and mostly consisted of captured populations from the
Assyrians’ military campaigns in the east. Resettlement of
populations was a technique the Assyrians used to destroy any
sense of natural cohesion in conquered territories and make the
prospect of a revolt much more unlikely. To further cement their
hold over Samaria, the Assyrians also established military garrisons
throughout the country since several strategic roads traversed the
region. The new settlers were polytheists and, upon their arrival,
they quickly began to adopt and worship the local deities of
Samaria, where the most important local gods were the Canaanite
god Ba’al and the Hebrew God Yahweh.

Thus, by the time that Babylonia invaded the southern kingdom in

597, a strong Yahweh-worship cult had grown among the
newcomers in Samaria, but, in true syncretic fashion, the
population had incorporated elements of worship of the Canaanite
gods as well. Since Shiloh had been the site of the first Israelite
shrine to Yahweh (as mentioned in Joshua and 1 Samuel),
importance of this town to the northern Yahwist cult had always
been strong and the cultic ties to Shiloh were very strong. Also,
Jeroboam I had golden bulls set up at shrines to Yahweh in Bethel
and Dan and these towns continued to have some cultic
significance. But Jerusalem’s temple was important to the northern
Yahwists, too. After it was destroyed by the Babylonians in 586, and
during the entire period of the exile, people from the region,
especially residents of Shiloh and Samaria (whom I will call
Samarians and reserve the term “Samaritan” for the religious sect),
came to the site of the destroyed temple to worship.

Also, during the period of the exile, Jerusalem and environs were
not depopulated. Had the Babylonians done this, the region, very
desirable land, would have been become absorbed by the
Samarians, Edomites, and Ammonites from the neighboring
countries. Recent textual and archeological scholarship has shown
that a Jewish presence in Jerusalem existed during the entire exilic
period; Jews did remain in the city, even members of the wealthy
classes. In fact, it’s been persuasively demonstrated that biblical
texts may contain liturgical passages of mourning said by the
remaining Jerusalem residents over the temple’s ruins. Hugh
Williamson has shown that if Nehemiah 9:5–37 is read without
including several clearly interpolated passages, the resulting text is
a prayer for the restoration of the land from conquering kings.
Otherwise, looking at it in context, if this prayer had belonged to the
period of Nehemiah, it would be completely incompatible with the
favorable conditions of the returnees, who, in fact, were actually
living in their restored land. A second example is noticed in Isaiah
63–64, where a prayer very similar to that in Nehemiah may be
found. Psalm 106 also contains similar wording. These texts
preserve the memory of an observant Jewish population in
Jerusalem during the exile and taken together with archeological
discoveries from exilic-period Jerusalem, we can see that the exile
didn’t come close to emptying Jerusalem of its Jews.
Exilic and Post-Exilic Texts

During the Jews’ exile in Babylon the prophet Ezekiel was active
and his prophecies and visions are familiar to many of us. But less
apparent to most casual Bible readers was the appearance of the
extremely important, brilliant, but anonymous author whose
writings became combined with the much earlier (eighth century)
prophecies of Isaiah as chapters 40–55 of that biblical book. The
writings of this prophet, known as the second (deutero-) Isaiah,
who lived through the period of the transition from Babylonian to
Persian rule, were arguably the most radical and far-reaching of any
of his predecessors’. He wrote, in the first absolutely clear statement
of monotheism by a prophet, that God was both the ruler of the
world and a unitary deity; no other gods existed other than Israel’s
God. “That they may know from the rising of the sun and from the
west that there is none beside me; I am the Lord and there is none
else” (Isa. 45:6). The phrase “rising of the sun and from the west” is
known as a “merism,” a rhetorical term that describes the totality of
the subject, in this case, existence, and is a class of synecdoche.

Deutero-Isaiah affirmed that the Jews were the chosen people of

God and provided a powerful vision of the future glory of a restored
Zion. He claimed that the Persian king Cyrus had been sent by God
as His messiah—God’s anointed messenger—to restore the Jews to
their homeland and provided a description of a new exodus
where Yahweh would lead His people in a return to Zion. “Thus said
the Lord to his anointed Cyrus, whose right hand I have taken to
subdue nations before him ...” (Isa. 45:1). The message of deutero-
Isaiah helped to internalize the messages of the other prophets
among the deportees and gave them a clear vision to strive for in the
restoration of Jerusalem.

A second vitally important effect of the exile was the Jews’ exposure
to a vibrant, cosmopolitan world. Babylon was not only at the
crossroads of the East, it was also a mixing pot of the world’s
western cultures. There the Jews came into close contact with
Parthians, Medes, Bactrians, and Indians from the east, but also
Lydians, Thracians, Greeks, and Ionians from the west. There the
Jews came into contact with Zoroastrianism, a faith that maintained
that the deity is universal and transcendent. Zoroastrianism, which
was the most widely observed religion in Mesopotamia, affirmed the
beliefs in free will and in living through the performance of good
deeds, which became essential components of Judaism. Its
influence on the development of Jewish theology is underestimated
by many casual students of the history of religions.

Most scholars believe that this religion exerted a strong influence on

how Judaism developed. Some aspects of the religion, such as a
dualistic view of the deity, were strongly rejected. We see hints of
this rejection in late biblical writings; for example, deutero-Isaiah
wrote, “I form the light and make darkness; I make peace and create
evil; I am the Lord who does all of these things” (Isa. 45:7), a
statement obviously made in contravention of Zoroastrian dualism.
Some dualistic elements were maintained, even the good-evil
dichotomy; we will see later how the idea of goodness and evilness
in creation became a major component of a significant early Jewish
theology. While the question of whether the priority of certain ideas
or practices should be attributed to Judaism or Zoroastrianism is
the subject of ongoing debate, Zoroastrianism, as best as scholars
can tell, developed the ideas about demonology, eschatology, the
doctrine of reward and punishment, and the laws of purity
including ritual immersion which became embedded in the Judaism
that developed following the exile.

Another important text written at the end of the sixth century or

during the early fifth century was an account of the history of the
kings of Judah and Israel that was put into writing by an author
who had strong biases toward both the Davidic dynasty and the
Zadokite priesthood. This history became included in the Tanakh as
the two books of Chronicles, among the last books
in Ketuvim, Writings, the Tanakh’s third division. The
historiography of Chronicles was very strongly influenced by Greek
histories written by authors like Herodotus and Hecataeus (of
Miletus); in the early Greek histories the relating of past events and
practices was “corrected” to be in conformity with the authors’ own
historical standards. Thus, in reading Chronicles one frequently
finds discrepancies in the same events as described in the books
of Samuel and Kings; one notable example is in 1 Kings 9:12, where
Solomon was said to have given several cities to Hiram of Tyre. This
strained the credulity of the Chronicler—Solomon certainly never
could have done such a thing—so he made his version of history
read so that Hiram gave the cities to Solomon (2 Chr. 8:2).

Figure 4. Judea Under Persian Rule

When the Jews began to return to Jerusalem in 538, as described in

Ezra 1–6, the Samarians actually claimed a share in the rebuilding
of the temple, which began in 537, but since the returning Jews saw
that the Samarians’ worship practices were different from their own
(this is obvious, but perhaps they were reminded of the unfamiliar
worship practices that they had seen in Babylon), they refused the
offer and this eventually culminated in a schism—once again,
between north and south (Figure 4). The returnees were also aware
of the existence of Samaria’s shrines to Yahweh and probably felt
threatened by any challenge to the importance of the new temple to
be built. The animosity between the returnees and the Samarians
grew; soon the Samarians sent a letter to the Persian capital
accusing the Jerusalemites of planning to revolt as soon as their
temple was built. The Persians responded by forcing the work on
the temple to be stopped; nothing further was done for some fifteen
years and then the new Persian emperor, Darius I, was persuaded to
let the work proceed.

By the time Nehemiah came to Jerusalem, the Samarians under

their Persian-appointed governor Sanballat, a member of the
Ephriamites, having lost their battle to prevent the temple from
being rebuilt, now turned their attention to attempts to prevent
Jerusalem’s walls from being repaired. When Nehemiah began to
fortify the city his work crews were attacked. The Samarians
strongly opposed repairing the walls of Jerusalem because they
feared, rightly as it turned out, that having a strong Jerusalem
resurrected as the capital of Judea would compete against Samaria’s
own fortress city. Furthermore, having the temple situated inside a
walled city controlled by the powerful priesthood that was being
developed under Ezra and Nehemiah, meant that Samaria would
forever be shut out of any possible compromise over their
participating in the temple priesthood. Even though the political
and economic power of the region was largely held by Samaria,
Jerusalem had the support of the Persian government; a political
struggle had now turned into a religious schism that was never
healed.

The Book of Nehemiah attempts to explain that the break between

the Jews and Samarians was completely political, not religious, by
ascribing it to the marriage between a scion of the high priest’s
family and a Samarian noblewoman, possibly a daughter of
Sanballat himself (Neh. 13:28), an act bordering on treason. But the
expulsion of Sanballat’s new son-in-law from the Jerusalemite
community had institutionalized the rivalry between Jerusalem and
Samaria. According to Josephus but widely considered to be a
legend, Sanballat promised that his son-in-law would assume the
high priesthood of his own temple to Yahweh, to be constructed on
the summit of Mount Gerezim, overlooking Shechem. This location
was chosen based on Deuteronomy 11:29, the site where Moses
commanded the people to “set the blessings,” and since
Deuteronomy requires a single sanctuary but does not specify its
location, the later Samaritans, a third-century offshoot of Judaism,
felt justified in locating it at Mount Gerezim in place of Mount Zion
in Jerusalem. While Samaritan histories assert that its actual
construction began soon after Alexander’s conquests and with
Alexander’s permission, archeological dating of the temple remains
suggest that its construction began some time around 200 BCE.

Another challenge to Nehemiah’s restoration of Jerusalem and the

temple organization was from the wealthy and powerful Tobiad
family of Ammon, a close ally of the Samarians. This clan,
consisting of Ammonites who identified as being of Israelite origin
and who had lived apart from Judah in the territory east of the
Jordan River across from Jericho, had escaped being exiled to
Babylonia. During the exilic period they had built up their wealth
and held wide influence in the region, moving into the political
vacuum caused by Jerusalem’s fall. By Nehemiah’s time, Tobias, the
clan’s leader, had been appointed as a local governor by the
Persians. He tried to seize control of temple operations during
Nehemiah’s absence from Jerusalem and was partially successful in
undoing some of Nehemiah’s political and social reforms. When
Nehemiah returned the final time he had to reassert political
control to remove the Tobiad influence but the struggle appears to
have continued for a decade or longer. Eventually the Zadokite
priesthood that had been installed by Nehemiah, as described
in Chronicles, prevailed but the Tobiads remained as powerful
players in the politics of Judea well into the Hellenistic period.

And this brings us to the end of the period of Jewish history as

related in the books of the Tanakh and to the beginning of the
period that historians of Palestine refer to as the “Intertestamental
Period.”
Theological and Political Conditions: Exile and Return
 Figure 5. Egypt (sixth century)

Figure 6. Hebrew Temple at Elephantine

With virtually no exceptions, whenever a culture was uprooted from

its homeland and its people dispersed, that culture ceased to exist
after a generation or two. When the people of Judah were exiled to
Babylon, however, their culture maintained enough coherence that
when the descendants of the deportees returned, some four
generations later, they were able to re-establish their culture so that
it closely resembled that of their ancestors. How this could occur is
a product of many different factors, both internal and external to
the Judahite society.

Jewish Coherence Dependent on Internal Factors

Loss of cultic center. An internal factor in the ability of the exiles to

maintain their ancient practices was that certain elements could be
observed away from the cultic center. For example, observance of
the Feast of Unleavened Bread, a holiday that seemingly hadn’t yet
been linked to Passover, was already known in communities outside
Judah. A striking example of this comes from the Elephantine
Papyri (ca. 400 BCE), which consists of documents and letters
found on the island of Yeb, called Elephantine in Greek, located
north of the first cataract of the Nile opposite Aswan (Figure 5).
This was the site of colony of Jewish mercenaries established
around 650 during Manasseh’s reign to assist Pharaoh
Psammetichus I in his Nubian campaign. (Some historians claim
the colony was founded by refugees fleeing from the destruction of
Jerusalem in 586, but there is little justification for such a claim.)
Judah had been paying tribute to Egypt for some years during the
seventh century and part of the payment must have been in troop
levies.

The Elephantine papyrus texts illuminate the affairs of this colony

in Upper Egypt, especially for the period 425–400, and some of the
questions raised in these texts concern the rules of celebrating the
Feast of Unleavened Bread (Figure 6). Furthermore, the Jews at
Elephantine, a syncretic group that worshiped both Yahweh and the
Egyptian ram-god Khnub, maintained their own temple and
performed sacrifices, modeling the rites after the Jerusalem temple.
It doesn’t appear that the exiles in Babylon performed sacrifices, but
they certainly did maintain other observances, such as marking the
new moon, Shabbat, the Passover holidays, and other occasions
noted by Ezekiel.

In mentioning Ezekiel, we also need to realize that there may have

been a Jewish temple in Babylon too. Ezra mentions, at Ezra 8:17,
that the new Jerusalem temple didn’t have sufficient Levites to
officiate and he calls for them to be sent from “b’khasif’ya ha-
maqom”; “in the Casiphia place.” Maqom is a term reserved in the
Bible to designate a holy place or shrine. Casiphia (Ctesiphon) is
located near Baghdad, and thus it appears that the Levites were
officiating at some kind of shrine there throughout the Exile.
Furthermore, the Book of Ezekiel describes temple rites that differ
significantly in places from those described in the Torah. Most
scholars wonder about Ezekiel’s cultic descriptions, which match
neither first nor second Temple rites, but this problem disappears if
we assume that Ezekiel was describing the temple rites at Casiphia.
This is an intriguing thought that no one seems to have advanced, to
my knowledge.

Additional hints of a Babylonian temple appear in Zechariah

3:4 where the kohen gadol Joshua was described as officiating while
wearing filthy garments. Commentators have sought reasons for
this strange way of describing his loss of ritual purity;
condemnation of the priests for losing their ritual purity while
officiating is always harsh and unforgiving while in Zechariah it’s
gentle and chiding. I believe the reason can be accounted for if he
was being criticized for officiating at a temple in Babylon, which
would have been a transgression against Deuteronomic law since it
took place away from the prescribed one in Jerusalem.

Attachment to prophetic and priestly traditions. Another internal

element was the strong attachment to the Levitical priests and to
the prophetic tradition as strongly espoused by Ezekiel and deutero-
Isaiah. Other pseudepigraphical manuscripts exist that imply that
Baruch, Jeremiah’s scribe, was in exile in Babylon even though
Jeremiah wound up in Egypt. These personalities were certainly
instrumental in keeping the memory of Jerusalem and temple
worship alive among the exiles.

Acceptance of proselytes. A third element was the openness of

Judaism to accepting proselytes. No other cultural group anywhere
in the entire region was as accepting of “the stranger in your midst”
(cf. Lev. 19:33–34 among others), instructing the stranger that he
was expected to participate in the rites, ceremonies, and culture of
his adopted community. Other cultures, particularly those of the
Greek states and Mesopotamia, limited participation to those born
into the culture and pointedly excluded all others.

Providing translations of theological texts. Related to the

acceptance of proselytes is the degree to which Jewish theological
texts were translated into local languages, thus making the learning
of the laws completely accessible to anyone desiring to learn about
the religion. While the Jews only made a Greek translation of the
Torah (the primary language of Egypt of the late first millennium
BCE), other texts were translated freely into other languages. Later
in this period, the Tanakh or parts of it were translated into
Aramaic and its Syriac dialect by proselytes. Such translation
activity was in contrast to other religions of the period, where
knowledge of the religious rites, procedures, and practices was kept
limited to the priests. It was by translating its works into the
vernacular that the Jews preserved their vitality as a people.

Jews as a chosen people. And a final internal element seems to be

the Jews’ idea that God had set them apart from the other nations
(expressed in Lev. 20:24), and even though they were no longer in
the land where, according to cultural belief, their God was held to be
supreme, they steadfastly kept the idea that they would be
redeemed. So even though Persian records show that the exiles
engaged in active commercial activities with Persians, Greeks,
Asiatics, and Indians, it appears that they didn’t much intermarry
and held closely to their faith.

Jewish Coherence Dependent on External Factors

No less important to Judaism’s survival were a number of elements

that were not under the control of the people but were imposed by
external forces.

Community was not completely dispersed. One major factor was

that the Jewish community remained mostly intact during the exile
and was assigned to live “in the most convenient districts of
Babylonia,” according to Berossos, a third-century BCE Babylonian
priest-historian whose original writings were lost. This area was
Nippur, “by the river Chebar” (Eze. 1:1), a city that was one of the
most important commercial districts of the empire and situated in
the vicinity of Babylon, the capital. There are hints that the
Assyrians settled some groups of northern-kingdom exiles in this
vicinity, allowing the mingling of groups having a common culture,
which could account for the astonishing economic successes the
Judahite exiles achieved during the first generation of their exile.
Jeremiah had actually sent his advice to the exiles in Babylon
concerning their adapting to a life in exile. In Chapter 29, he told
them, “Work to see that the city where I sent you as exiles enjoys
peace and prosperity. Pray to the Lord for it. For as it prospers you
will prosper.” The Jewish people have always taken that advice to
heart and prospered in many countries of their diaspora. The fact
that only a small number of the exiles’ descendants chose to return
to Jerusalem attests to their favorable living conditions; the
Babylonian diaspora set the model for Jews living outside
Jerusalem for more than 1500 years.

How many actually returned? The most common estimates

maintain that 42,000 returnees came under Zerubbabel and 5,000
returned under Ezra out of a total diaspora population that must
have numbered hundreds of thousands by that time. However,
Charles Carter, in a 1999 study, estimated that the population
ranged from a low of 11,000 in the decade around 500 BCE to a
high of 17,000 around 400 BCE, numbers, he claims, that are more
in keeping with the portrait of the period given by the texts in
Nehemiah and Haggai.

Protection by the empire. A second external element was the fact

that the tiny Jewish province of Judea existed within and under the
protection of the pagan empires under which it was governed. The
Persian Empire, and later, the Macedonian Empire, by maintaining
their military garrisons within Judea, served to shield the little
country from being overrun by the Moabites, Edomites, and Arabic
nomads, who certainly would have eliminated the Jews from this
highly vulnerable little pocket of desirable real estate in an
otherwise arid region.

Exile of short duration. Of course, the fact that the period of the
exile was relatively short had some effect on the Jews’ ability to
keep their faith intact, although it’s unclear exactly how important
this factor was since most Jews didn’t return to Judea when they
had the opportunity to do so. The first group of Jews was deported
to Babylon in 597–596 and the first returnees arrived back in
Jerusalem in 538. This exile, lasting about three to four generations,
was not so long that the collective memory of life in Jerusalem
would have been completely extinguished. Allowing the exiled Jews
to return was a humanitarian policy of the Persian conqueror Cyrus,
who unlike other rulers of the period, had a very liberal view of
empire as a colonial power. In contrast, when the Assyrians
deported the population of the northern kingdom in 722–721, they
established military colonies throughout Samaria because of its
strategic location astride the main roads between Egypt and
Babylonia. This effectively precluded the organized return of any of
those exiled peoples, and of course there was no Assyrian
government policy to facilitate the return of any exiled groups as
there was in the case of Persia.

Documentation of the laws. Then there is the extremely significant

directive from Cyrus I that charged Ezra, when he returned to
Jerusalem as a Persian commissioner, to establish Persian law in
the province. This directive mandated that “the Law of your God”
would stand at the same legal level as the law of the empire;
offenders of Moses’ laws would suffer punishments such as
imprisonment, banishment, death, and deprivation of their material
property as surely as offenders of the empire’s laws. This charge
required that Ezra undertake the codification of Moses’ laws into a
written document, and thus the Torah became the basis for Judea’s
secular as well as religious law. Whether Ezra actually assembled
the Pentateuch into its final form is unknown, but Ezra’s laws and
what we know of the ancient document show close similarity.

Ending of the role of the prophet. Another external factor that is

linked to the demise of the Judahite monarchy is the ending of the
role of the prophet. With the last prophecies of Haggai, Zechariah,
and Malachi (and the fifth-century Isaiah school) in about 418, no
prophet was formally recognized as such, even though there are
apocryphal and pseudepigraphal works that have prophetic
sections, like Baruch and the Apocalypse of Enoch. Nor was Daniel
viewed as a prophet when that work was written. I consider this an
“external” factor because accepting an individual as a prophet is not
a cultic decision; prophets were universally regarded as such by the
entire population. Furthermore, the prophets typically existed in
counterpoint to the monarchies—a kind of check-and-balance
relationship. In post-exilic Judea, there was no divinely ordained
king for a prophet to challenge. And prophesying solely to the
people, as did the last five prophets (Ezekiel, Haggai, Zechariah,
Malachi, and the late Isaiah writers), was no longer urgent. The
people had returned to their land, the temple had been rebuilt, and
no “evil” that the people could do would affect a remote empire. The
government was in the hands of outside powers. Also, culturally, the
prophetic muse had begun to yield to a more mystical viewpoint of
the future: the apocalyptic vision.

Development of venues for public worship. A factor which is

neither exclusively internal nor external is the development of local
gathering places for public worship. While these probably existed in
pre-exilic Judah, by necessity they grew strongly in Babylonia and
we now know this institution by its Greek name: synagogue. In
these houses of worship, priests did not preside, but other,
knowledgeable individuals might lead the prayers. These
individuals usually were the most literate in the community and
could also have served as scribes. Scribes would also serve as a
resource for judges, priests, and rulers and they served in respected
positions in society. As we will see later when we discuss the scribes
in detail, they gradually supplanted the priests in the interpretation
of the religious laws. Thus the creation of places of public worship
and people to help lead that worship began the first movement of
Judaism away from a cultic religion.
Events in Judea Following the Return

Figure 7. Persian Empire

 Figure 8. "Across the River"

Figure 9. Elephantine Papyrus requesting authorization for temple

reconstruction.

Figure 10. Local Texts Theory

The tiny province of Judea was only an insignificant fraction of the

vast Persian empire (Figure 7), which stretched from Cyrene (Libya)
and Thrace to India. During the period 538–332 BCE, Judea
(Yehud to the Persians) was a province (part of a satrapy) of the
Persian Empire which was ruled by governors who, like Nehemiah,
were appointed by the Persian emperor. Judea was part of a very
large satrapy called “Across the River,” i.e., west of the Euphrates
(Figure 8), outlined in green in the center of this map. The years
after the end of the Book of Nehemiah in about 420 BCE to
Alexander’s arrival in Asia Minor in 336 are marked by virtually no
contemporaneous historical records concerning Judea. From the
years 432 to 332, the last century of Persian rule, Judea apparently
existed in relative peace until the end of this period. There are some
records that show that Persia was involved in the activities of the
Jews in its widely diverse empire; a letter dated to the period 423–
404 indicates that Darius II authorized—actually commanded—
celebrating the Feast of Unleavened Bread in the Elephantine
Temple.

I mentioned earlier that the Jews of Elephantine were active in

emulating the temple rites of Jerusalem in their own temple; in fact,
in 411 a local incident led to the extensive damage of their temple
and in 410 the Jews of Elephantine wrote a letter regarding plans
for its reconstruction to Johanan, high priest at Jerusalem (cf. Neh.
12:22) and the grandson of Eliashib (cf. Neh. 3:1, 20) (Figure 9).
This Eliashib was known to be a contemporary of Nehemiah.
Presumably not receiving a reply, since the priests at Jerusalem
were firmly opposed to the existence of a competing temple
anywhere else in the world, the Elephantine Jews sent a long appeal
in 407 on the same subject to Bagoas, then governor of Judea, in
which they mentioned a similar letter to “Delaiah and Shelemiah,
the sons of Sanballat, governor of Samaria.” Again we have a
scriptural confirmation if we make the reasonable assumption that
this is the same Sanballat who was the inveterate enemy of
Nehemiah (cf. Neh. 2:19; 4:1 [MT 3:33]). But by the end of the fifth
century Egypt rebelled against Persia, and although the Jewish
military settlement remained and was ultimately taken over by the
Macedonians, their temple was never rebuilt.

As we mentioned earlier, one of the texts that most scholars believe

was completed soon after the Jews’ return to Jerusalem was the
Pentateuch or Torah. It is believed that the text of the Pentateuch
from the mid-sixth century BCE forms the basis for its three textual
traditions, the Samaritan Pentateuch, the Septuagint, and the
Masoretic Text. Figure 10 shows the theorized development of the
book of Exodus; you can see that the version of the Torah that we
use is based on the textual family that remained in Babylon rather
than the version that was carried back to Jerusalem with the
returnees. We know this by comparing the Qumran texts with the
Masoretic version and we also find hints of the primacy that the
rabbis gave the Babylonian version of the Torah’s text in the
Talmud. This provides us with some insights of how the Torah
developed during the Persian and Hellenistic periods. This kind of
textual development not only affected the Torah; separate textual
families can also be detected in the historical books, particularly
that of Samuel, while for books like Isaiah, only a single textual
strain is known.

The Qumran texts have answered many questions about the

evolution of our biblical texts while they pose additional ones.
About 60 percent of the Qumran texts follow the Masoretic text,
while 5 percent follow the Septuagint. The readings found in the
Samaritan Pentateuch are supported by another 5 percent, and the
remaining 30 percent of the texts contains readings that are unique
or otherwise non-aligned. This shows that during the Persian period
and well into the Hellenistic period the text of the Bible was still in
flux. We won’t discuss the biblical textual differences any further
but we will discuss the development of the late canonical texts as
well as some important non-canonical texts later in this
presentation.

I mentioned that Judea was small (see Figure 4). The total extent of
Judea was about thirty-five miles north-to-south and between
twenty to thirty-five miles east-to-west. Of this period in Judea, no
records exist, except that there is a Persian record of—what else?—a
Jewish rebellion! Well, not exactly solely a Jewish rebellion; Sidon
and other cities in Phoenicia rebelled against Persia and apparently
leaders of Judea sympathized with or supported the revolt.
Figure 11. Dispersions from Judea, 722–343 BCE

Figure 12.Judea before Alexander

Figure 13. Alexander's Conquests.

 Figure 14. Alexander's Cities

To understand this rebellion, we need to return to the end of the

fifth century. That’s when Egypt had revolted against Persia under
Artaxerxes II. Some fifty years later, in 351 his son and successor
Artaxerxes III embarked on a campaign to recover Egypt. (See
the Chronologies of the Intertestamental Rulers.) He was defeated
and with this failure, Cyprus and Sidon declared their independence
and apparently Judea was somehow involved too. Artaxerxes then
gathered an immense army and in 343 took Cyprus and captured
Sidon, burning it to the ground. Then he continued on with a
second invasion of Egypt and this time he was completely
victorious. Persian records reveal that during and after this
campaign, Artaxerxes deported a significant number of people,
Jews included, from Egypt, Phoenicia, and Judea to the “Siberian
gulag” of the time, Hyrcania, on the southern coast of the Caspian
Sea, and to other remote towns in Persia (Figure 11).

The map in Figure 12 clearly shows just how tiny an area Judea
occupied at the end of the period of Persian rule. But toward the
midpoint of the fourth century, the political landscape in Judea had
begun to change. While Nehemiah was alive, and for many decades
after that, Jewish public affairs were under the control of secular
leaders, the functionaries appointed by Persia. Yet some hundred
years later, Hecataeus (of Abdera) informed his readers that the
priests were in charge of administering the country. This is certainly
the impression we get from Persian records from this period.

Macedonian Empire
Then in 332, Alexander and his Macedonian army arrived in
Phoenicia and Palestine and the people in most of the cities of the
region opened their gates to him (Figure 13). Samaria did not, and
for their resistance many Samarians were deported to Egypt and
Macedonian settlers were brought in. Alexander pursued his
military campaign into Egypt and then into the east until he died of
illness in Babylon in 323; thus he did not have much of a chance to
implement his personal ideas of governance in an empire now
mostly at peace. But he did introduce an unprecedented policy that
proved to have immense consequences for the history of the region.
Until Alexander, the conqueror would typically exile the upper
classes and intelligentsia of the conquered region in order to
eliminate one major potential source of any future uprising, thus
securing a stable rule. However, throughout his conquests,
Alexander instead founded cities in which he settled principally
Greek or Macedonian colonists drawn from his veterans and from
immigrants attracted by grants of property.

The cities that Alexander founded were entirely Greek. They had
Greek charters, Greek laws, and were occupied by Greek citizens.
City governance and customs were modeled after Greek cities like
Athens and, like the Greek city-states, the cities were fully
autonomous within the region (but still subject to the empire). The
agricultural areas surrounding the cities were apportioned among
the residents who had received grants of land and the members of
the indigenous population, many of whom formerly owned the land,
were displaced or reduced to tenant farming; these peasants were
subject to the city’s citizens and enjoyed few rights. All along the
eastern Mediterranean coast, and inland as well, Greek cities began
to spring up (Figure 14). Bucolonpolis, Ptolemais, Apollonia,
Philoteria—especially Alexandria—and others all came into being
following Alexander’s conquests. The influx of the Greeks into the
area—Athenians, Spartans, Macedonians, Lydians, and Ionians—
had an enormous effect on the culture of the Jews.

During this period the entire region—all of the Levant and Egypt—
had developed essentially the same culture, a Hellene-Asiatic-
Egyptian mixture of elements that were common throughout the
entire former Persian Empire. Pottery, jewelry, artwork, and
weapons, all of similar basic designs, have been found as a result of
archaeological exploration throughout the region. This similarity
was a result of widespread commerce as well as the relocation of
populations, usually not through enforced resettlement but through
voluntary colonization and establishing Greek cities as mentioned
above. The cultural orientation of the population was becoming
international in scope. So by the fifth century, the possession of
Greek products by the inhabitants of Phoenicia and coastal Syria
had become a matter of great prestige and by the fourth century,
this flood of Greek products began reaching the Judean interior.

Yet another indication of the penetration of hellenistic practices into

inland Judea and Samaria is the coinage of these provinces. In Asia
Minor, coinage that was based on stamped pieces of pre-weighed
silver was first developed in Lydia in western Anatolia in the
seventh century. However, the practice of producing coins in this
manner didn’t reach Judea until the fifth century and when it did
arrive, its introduction seems to have been influenced by local
adoption of Greek customs as evidenced by the Greek inscriptions
that these Judean coins bear. Since most of these coins consisted of
very small denominations, they were produced for local use and not
for international trade; thus their appearance reflects local cultural
preferences and not those of any outside trading partners.

Another cultural matter concerns governance and its connection to

traditional Jewish mythology. You probably have heard of the term,
“The Great Assembly” or Anshei Knesset HaGadolah, “Men of the
Great Assembly.” This institution, also known as the “Great
Synagogue,” according to Jewish tradition was an assembly of 120
scribes, sages, and prophets that existed from the time of the last
prophets into the Hellenistic period. They are mentioned in
the Mishnah (Pirkei Avot 1.1) as those who transmitted the oral law
from the prophets to the earliest Jewish scholars identified by
name. Where did their number, 120, come from? We don’t
know. Nehemiah(Neh. 10:2–29) lists 85 names, people identified as
elders, Levites, and priests, who signed a “covenant” to keep God’s
law. To this number traditionalists have added a count of prophets
who supposedly were preaching in Judea during this time to make a
total of 120. However, there is no evidence, in contemporaneous
Jewish texts or any other source, that even hints at the existence of
such a body.
 Figure 15. Kingdoms of the Diadochi, 301 BCE

Figure 16. Alexander's Successors

If historians have little information about Judea during the Persian

period, there is even less available from the following period, 333–
200 BCE, when Judea fell under the rule of the Ptolemies (Figure
15). However, we do have extensive information about the
circumstances of Alexander’s succession (see the Chronologies of
the Intertestamental Rulers). After Alexander died, his generals
divided his conquests among themselves to rule. Naturally this
division wasn’t accomplished peacefully and the rule of Greece and
Macedonia was heavily contested in a series of wars lasting some
forty years. The diadochi (Alexander’s successors, Figure 16) were
Antigonus, Cassander, Lysimachus, Seleucus, and Ptolemy.
Antigonus, Alexander’s most talented general, through political
intrigue and military force, by 306 won the rule of Macedonia and
Greece, but was subsequently killed in 301 in a battle to retain his
throne. Cassander, son of Antipater who was Alexander’s regent in
Macedonia, then became king of Macedonia and Greece (founding
the Antipatrid dynasty), while Lysimachus took the rule of Thrace, a
country located in the region of modern eastern Greece and
southern Bulgaria, plus western Turkey.
Alexander’s final two diadochi were Seleucus Nicator and Ptolemy
Soter; both were Macedonians and served as commanders in
Alexander’s armies. When Alexander died, the diadochi had initially
agreed that Syria and Mesopotamia would be governed by Seleucus
and Egypt by Ptolemy. Almost immediately, however, the wars for
control of Macedonia broke out, and Seleucus and Ptolemy both
became heavily involved in them, variously supporting or opposing
Antigonus and each another, at times in cooperation with or
working against the other diadochi. After Cassander finally became
ruler of Macedonia and Greece, Seleucus retired to Syria, while
Ptolemy solidified his rule in Egypt, the province that he had
originally been allotted. It is the dynasties established by these
two diadochi that controlled Judea until the Hasmonean revolt.

The fragmentary knowledge of the history of Judea that we have of

the period from 323 to 282, a period when Palestine was the
location of many battles for Alexander’s succession, does not tell us
whether or to what extent Jerusalem and Judea were affected.
Being up in the hills and distant from the coastal highway, it’s
assumed that the province was spared much of the violence.
Although Ptolemy controlled Egypt beginning in 323, he didn’t
proclaim himself as king (taking the title pharaoh) until 305; we
don’t even know when he asserted his rule over Judea since the
territory was disputed with Seleucus. The few existing records from
Judea of this period only give us the names of several high priests
and some very limited information about taxation, economics, and
commerce. But such information is of interest only to specialists.
What I find fascinating is how the Greek philosophers and
historians of the late Persian period and the period following
Alexander’s conquests of southwest Asia reacted to the opening of
the Orient and Judea to hellenistic culture.
Hellenist Philosophy

While the Greeks were quite familiar with Egypt and held Egyptian
wisdom in great esteem, they were less familiar with the Orient, and
strangely, with Judea—despite their being familiar with nearby
Phoenicia and the rest of the Mediterranean coastline. We know of
only one Greek author prior to Alexander who mentions the Jews
and does this only by inference. Herodotus, who lived in the fifth
century, mentions the circumcision practiced by the “Phoenicians
and Syrians of Palestine,” a custom actually not practiced by Syrians
and many Phoenicians but by Jews. After the Greeks occupied Asia
Minor, Greek writers began to pay more attention to the Jews but
rather than learning about them by visiting Asia Minor, they got
their information from immigrants or Jewish soldiers in the
returning Macedonian army. But why would the Greek writers want
to learn about the Jews? If they had been so impressed with
Egyptian wisdom, why wouldn’t they have admired Jewish wisdom
as well?

Actually, they did admire the Jews but one has to search Greek
writings to see how this admiration was manifested. First, Elias
Bickerman has suggested that since Aramaic was the common
language of the entire Near East from Ethiopia to India, that
language became the vehicle that facilitated the exchange of
information between the Greeks and the easterners. One early sign
of this cultural cross-fertilization may be found in Plato’s Republic;
in this work the episode known as the “Myth of Er” may have come
from an Aramaic source. It appears that the knowledge of Jewish
wisdom grew out of a desire to learn about the development of
societies and the cultures of the Orient provided ideal subjects.

Next, we know that Aristotle, and later the school of his followers,
had formulated a number of social theories and these philosophers
were interested in seeking evidence supporting their theories in the
cultures of the Orient. One popular theory held that modern
religion had been so altered by the influence of modern civilization
that it had lost its original purity. The philosophers thought that the
closer that humankind was to its original, natural state, the closer
its social organization approached perfection. “Perfection,” as we all
know, was one of the ultimate goals of Greek society and Greek
philosophy sought it in all areas of human activity, including
knowledge. They had learned that in the East, knowledge was the
sole possession, a monopoly even, of the priestly groups of the
different societies. They began to compare what they could learn
about the Persian magi and Indian Brahmans, because they found
that these groups claimed that their laws came directly from the
divinity. Of course they quickly learned that Jewish law was divinely
given too, which proved to them that the Jews must be closely
related to those other cultures and saw in the Jews representatives
of a higher philosophy and morality.
The Greek approach to historiography was utterly unhistorical. It
appears that the Greeks were enamored with superficial similarities
between cultures and tended to disregard their deeper differences.
They assumed that each culture’s gods were the same entities; they
simply had been given different names. Apart from the outward
signs of a culture’s beliefs, like the names of their deities, some
Greek philosophers did try to obtain a deeper understanding of the
cultures’ philosophies. In his well-known report of a meeting with
an anonymous Jew in the mid-fourth-century, an impressed
Aristotle asserted that the Jews were descended from the Indian
philosophers.

Other writers elaborated on this theme, so in several Greek

historical-philosophical texts we variously read that the Jews were
considered to be a “philosophical race,” that actually the Jews
themselves were the origin of philosophy, that it was a well-known
fact that the Jews believed in the immortality of the soul, and that
during his meeting with Aristotle, the Jewish sage had provided him
with proof of the Platonic doctrine of the immortality of the soul as
recounted in the “Myth of Er.” Many other unlikely attributes were
also ascribed to the Jews. Greek writers also examined Jewish
culture from a politically oriented viewpoint and here it was noted
that the priestly caste formed the basis of the Jews’ leadership. So
Greek writers traced priestly leadership back to Moses, known to
them as the lawgiver of the Jews’ constitution, and who, according
to Hecataeus in writing his history of Egypt at the end of the fourth
century, had conquered the promised land and founded
Jerusalem—and in doing so, demonstrated a political system that
was based on endurance, bravery, and obedience—the very
attributes so valued in Greek culture. He obviously had Sparta in
mind here, and Sparta continued to have a strong affinity for Judea
for several hundred years, as we’ll see.

The Greek philosophers wrote about how the social organization of

the Jews was based on the common welfare, as demonstrated by
land ownership laws, where the concentration of land and wealth
into a small number of hands was prevented by the jubilee laws, and
protective laws regarding the orphan and widow. Another Greek
ideal was the importance of the individual, and the Jewish laws
certainly codified the individual’s importance.
Josephus provided an amusing analysis in his comment on the
theological background of Greek philosophy when he wrote, “Our
earliest imitators were the Greek philosophers, who, ostensibly
observing the laws of their own countries, yet in their conduct and
philosophy were Moses’ disciples, holding similar views about God.”
Cultural Changes Under Hellenist Rule

Figure 17. Ptolemaic Kingdom

Soon after Alexander’s conquests, change came to the immediate

area of Judea and Samaria which continued well into the Ptolemaic
period (Figure 17 shows the Ptolemaic Kingdom). Colonists were
needed to populate distant areas, particularly areas that had
strategic importance. Colonists who could bring their occupations
to these areas were valued for both economic reasons and also
because the influx of skilled immigrants would dilute the power and
influence of the indigenous populations. Soon after he arrived in
Asia Minor in the mid-fourth century, Alexander relocated some of
Samaria’s population (of whom most were of ethnic Assyrian origin)
to Egypt as punishment for their resistance to his army’s taking
control of the region, and populated Phoenicia and Samaria with
Greek and Macedonian colonists. Later, during the wars for
Alexander’s succession at the end of the fourth century and in the
following decade, Jews were affected too when many were taken as
slaves from Palestine and sold in the slave markets of Syria and
Egypt and other Jews were relocated as well. At the start of the third
century, Ptolemy I transferred significant numbers of Judeans and
Samarians from Palestine to Egypt.

Such movement of populations periodically occurred, even later

too; toward the end of the third century, the Seleucid government
relocated about two thousand Jewish families from Babylon to
Lydia and Phrygia (in Anatolia) as military colonists. But not all
colonists were compelled to relocate; some Jews were attracted by
the reputed humanitarianism of the Ptolemaic government and
migrated to Egypt voluntarily. Many colonists were obtained by
recruiting volunteers with the promise of grants of land; Josephus
implies that Jews who went as colonists to Hellenist cities were
given the same privileges as any other colonist and an equal status
to the cities’ Macedonian and Greek citizens.

Life under Greek culture was cosmopolitan in many ways. The

Greeks had a simple criterion for determining whether a person was
civilized or a barbarian: if one did not speak Greek and did not
follow Greek customs, he was a barbarian by definition. In order to
be considered worthy of interacting with the Greeks, it was
important that one be regarded as being civilized. So the social and
cultural pressure to adopt hellenistic customs and to learn the
Greek language became extremely powerful. In addition, being a
citizen of a hellenized city involved to some extent following the
Greeks’ religious practices. Every Greek city had its own protecting
patron god. All festivities and public celebrations, even sporting
games, included sacrifices to the patron god as an integral part of
the celebration. People who held public office and even prominent
members of the city, such as merchants, were expected to
participate and obviously Jews could not do so, thus their right to
be considered to be full citizens limited their social standing. But
neither could they be relegated to “foreigner” status, the only other
possibility, because the Jews typically contributed as much to the
city’s economy as did any full citizen. The rulers, both the Ptolemies
and the Seleucids, all understood this and thus permitted the Jews
to organize separate communities within their cities and allowed
Jewish law in addition to Greek law to be used in most cases
involving Jews and Gentiles. Thus the only major limitation that
Jews experienced as a citizen was in holding public office, but even
this limitation was waived in certain cases where allowances were
made for talented individuals.
 Figure 18. Hellenist Athletics in Art

Examples of even-handed treatment can be found in how the Jews’

exclusiveness was dealt with by the authorities. Alexander himself
pardoned the Jewish soldiers of his army who had refused to
participate in the construction of a pagan temple in Babylon. Greek
cultural practices had become such a norm of everyday life that
many if not most Jews participated in them too. One of the
foundations of Greek life was the public physical training exercises
that were conducted in the “gymnasia,” the centers of Greek
intellectual and physical activity (Figure 18). Gymnasiacomes from
the term gymnós meaning “naked”; as you know, the Greek
exercises and games were performed in the nude and before
exercising or engaging in the games, the participants would anoint
their skin with oil provided by the “gymnasiarch.” It appears that in
Hellenist cities the Jewish youth fully participated with everyone
else because a document from Antiochia (Tarsus) tells us that
Jewish gymnasia participants refused to use pagan oil. As a result,
Seleucus I ordered that money be given so that Jews could obtain
their own oil. In these matters and similar ones, the Jews became
recognized members of their communities.

Under hellenistic culture, the gymnasia were the places where

business deals were arranged, politics was discussed, and one’s
social standing was established; participation in athletics was
normally the chief way to enhance one’s reputation. However, there
was a major impediment for Jews engaging in gymnasia activities;
the problem was that Jewish men were circumcised. To the Greeks,
the bare glans of a circumcised man was considered obscene and
thus circumcised Jews not only caused great offense when they
appeared nude, a circumcised man exposed himself to public
ridicule. But social expectations and societal norms for anyone of
means or having ambitious intentions made gymnasia participation
almost mandatory. This problem could be managed, though; there
was an solution available for males who were circumcised—for the
Jews and for the Egyptians, who also practiced circumcision, and
also for those who had a congenital condition called aposthia
(missing foreskin) or a partial foreskin—foreskin restoration or
circumcision reversal procedures could be performed.

Figure 19. Egyptian Circumcision. Relief from “The Physician’s Tomb,”

Ankh-ma-Hor, at Saqqara, ca. 2400 BCE
The inscription above the younger boy says “Hold him so that he doesn't faint.” The older boy on the right is capable
of enduring the ritual without support, but he is bracing himself firmly for the ordeal.

The original form of Jewish circumcision appears to have been

adopted from the Egyptians. The coronal sulcus (skin just behind
the coronal rim of the glans) was not exposed when the prepuce was
removed; a little preputial skin overlapping the glans was preserved.
The presence of this small amount of remaining prepuce allowed
the development of different foreskin restoration techniques. In
fact, it was precisely the development of circumcision reversals that
led the rabbis of the Talmud to ordain the techniques still used in
modern Jewish circumcisions—removal of the entire prepuce from
the coronal sulcus back to where it joins the shaft skin.

There were several reversal techniques; a few of them involved the

gradual stretching of loose penile skin over the glans, but the most
effective technique was an operation called “epispasm.” This was a
surgical repositioning of the penile skin down the shaft and over the
glans, an operation about which one first-century CE practitioner,
Celsus, assured his perhaps incredulous readers that it was “not so
very painful.” Enough men underwent epispasm to result in copious
contemporaneous descriptions of and instructions for the
performance of this surgical procedure.
Judea Under the Ptolemies
Even though Jews now lived all over the hellenistic world, from
Egypt to Greece to Persia, and mostly enjoyed full citizenship rights
by law in all of these regions, we need to consider how Judea itself
fared under Hellenist rule. Dominion over Judea was at first under
Ptolemy beginning somewhere around 320. The designation “Jew”
was actually a political term and was reserved solely for, as the
Greek historian Polybius (ca. 200–118 BCE) wrote, those “who lived
around the temple of Jerusalem.” As a political entity, Judea was
self-governing. Although there was no administrative representative
of the king in Jerusalem, Egyptian royal troops maintained a
garrison in the city. Jerusalem, like every other city, was expected to
provide troop levies for the king’s armies; we mentioned earlier that
Jewish troops served under Alexander. Also, a cavalry regiment of
Jerusalem Jews was known to have served in Ptolemy’s army.

Figure 20. Judea under Hellenistic Rule

Under the Ptolemies, Judea was regarded as the “land of the Jews”
and was given considerable autonomy (Figure 20) (see
the Chronologies of the Intertestamental Rulers). The Ptolemaic
administration of Judea was extremely orderly and very much
hellenistic in character, having a highly complicated system of
economic planning at the heart of the government. Fixed and
movable property was taxed and taxes were collected using a system
of tax farming. To ensure that tax collection was diligently pursued,
members of the upper classes, particularly the priests, were
designated to collect taxes and the pharaoh granted personal tax
exemptions to both the tax farmers and to the upper classes. The
high priest served as the pharaoh’s spokesperson and generally held
this office for life. The position was usually hereditary but the
pharaoh reserved the right to appoint to the position, a right that
seems was never exercised. The result was that the high priest
effectively was Judea’s political head and he was referred to that
way in contemporaneous texts. Under the Ptolemies, Judea’s
influence expanded and it was no longer thought of as solely
consisting of Jerusalem and several dozen outlying smaller villages.
Soon, other Hellenist cities of the region became closely associated
with Judea. In the north, Samaria/Shechem, Gadara, and Beth-
Shean; on the coast, Azotus, Joppa, and Ascalon; and in the east,
Rabbath-Ammon, Gerasa, and Pella. As a result, hellenistic culture
was gradually becoming the norm of Judea and Jerusalem.

According to Martin Hegel and numerous other scholars, during the

mid-third century Judea itself began to experience extensive
“hellenization.” Jews living in the regions of the diaspora had lived
in societies strongly influenced by Greek cultural practices for a
hundred years and had begun to embrace some of its attributes, but
now Greek influence was beginning to appear in the towns and
cities of Judea itself. Hellenistic influences began to spread into
Judea from the Mediterranean coast, where the population was
mixed, and its spread was facilitated by social and commercial
interactions. The amount of penetration of hellenistic influence into
the Judean interior at this time is unclear from extant records, but
because of the lack of significant commercial thoroughfares in the
region, it probably was not significant. The high priests of the time
were probably more likely to want to embrace some of the features
of hellenistic society because, as rulers, they saw that there could be
strong economic incentives to doing so.

All throughout Palestine, in regions formerly known as Syria,

Ammon, Philista, Samaria, Edom, and Phoenicia, the old cities
began to assume new Greek names: Acre became Ptolomais, Hippus
became Antiochia, and Rabbath-Ammon called itself Philadelphia.
People assumed hellenized versions of their names or even new
Greek names; Alexander was one very popular name. Even the local
gods were renamed, mostly by identifying them with the analogous
Greek gods. These cities engaged in active trading among
themselves, thereby spreading their culture along with their trade
goods. But Judea remained as a land of peasants with only one city,
Jerusalem, that was worthy of the term. Judea produced
agricultural products and exported much of its produce in trade.
While residents of Jerusalem were somewhat influenced by the
inroads of Hellenism, the people in the outlying countryside were
mostly insulated from the cultural changes occurring in the cities
and remained traditional in their basic beliefs. Culturally, those
Jews who “hellenized” would be rewarded by enhanced social
standing in view of the Ptolemaic government but those who
hellenized appeared not to antagonize those among them who
remained more orthodox.

The issue of land ownership during this time is unclear, but the
little information available seems to imply that the rural population
was mostly poor and probably farmed land owned by wealthy town-
dwellers including the Levites/priests. It’s true that the Torah
denied the right to own land to the Levites, but since they were
empowered by the Torah itself to be the interpreters of the law, they
evidently must have engaged in some highly creative interpretations
in order to justify legal land ownership. The heavy taxation of the
province under the Persians had tapped much of the rural
populations’ wealth; then taxes to support Judea, its temple, and
the local aristocrats were added. Much of the populace likely went
into debt paying taxes and had to become tenant-farmers on the
land they once owned. Scholars know much about the taxing
methods that were used under the Ptolemies from Egyptian records,
as described earlier.

The question of the social organization of the period is another open

question. Some theories have been proposed that include the
organization of families into clan-like groups, some of which may
have owned property collectively. In rural areas, towns would have
been the center of all local economic activity, but how the towns
interacted with the central government in Jerusalem is unknown.
The fact that social stratification existed is obvious and the division
of the classes was along city-rural lines. Under the Persians, the
division between the classes seems to be more acute than it later
became under the rule of the Ptolemies as economic conditions
improved and the market for Judea’s products expanded. During
the third century there is no record of any significant confrontation
between the Jews and the Ptolemaic rulers. As best as we can tell,
the Ptolemies never interfered with any of the essential matters of
the social, cultural, or religious organization of Judea.

You may recall that earlier I mentioned the Tobiad family. When we
left them last, their influence in Jerusalem had been all but nullified
by Nehemiah, under whose watchful eye the Zadokites were
established as the official temple priesthood. Josephus,
in Antiquities, informs us that during the third century not only did
the Tobiads prosper, their influence in Judean affairs increased
greatly. They achieved this power in large part as tax farmers,
winning the right from the Ptolemaic government to collect the
regional taxes in Judea; this power led to members of their family
becoming the defacto civil rulers for the region. Not only did the
Tobiads consolidate their political power; they also actually
achieved significant influence in the temple hierarchy when the
family’s leader, Tobiah, married a sister of the high priest Onias II.
A son from this marriage, Joseph, played an important role in
Judea’s history as a prostasia, political representative to the king,
during the latter part of the third century. With this appointment,
any political power Onias II had was lost. The linking of the Tobiad
and Zadokite dynasties was met with virtually no opposition from
other influential Jerusalem aristocrats and their descendants were
active in business and political affairs in addition to serving in the
temple.
Jews of the Diaspora

Throughout the entire Hellenist world, it appears that among the

gentiles there was a general acceptance of the Jews’ tendency to
isolate themselves in cultural and religious affairs; however, the
pressures on the Jews to embrace hellenistic culture remained
great. It even appeared to many that Jewish and hellenistic
practices could be blended to harmonize their respective ethnic,
cultural, and religious practices. The evidence for this occurring is
extensive; we can see this harmonizing in both historical and
religious works. In religious writings, authors like Demetrius the
chronographer (Alexandria, late third century BCE) provided
synchrony between Israelite history as reported in the biblical texts
and the histories of other peoples of the region. Such attempts at
synchrony enabled the claim, found in both 1 Maccabees and
Josephus, that Sparta’s King Areus (309–265), had written to the
high priest Onias that Sparta, like the Jews, preserved strong
traditions of law and community spirit. He was said to have stated
that “the Spartans and Jews ... are brethren and they are of the
stock of Abraham.”

An author who demonstrated another form of synchrony, historical

syncretism, was Artapanus of Alexandria (third to second century
BCE). A historian of Jewish origin, his work, Concerning the Jews,
has not survived, but quotes from it and citations of it (by Alexander
Polyhistor, Eusebius) tell us it was written in Greek between 250
and 100 BCE. Artapanus used the books of Genesis and Exodus as
the source for his narrative, liberally manipulating its stories to
create his own unique account. His description of the Egyptian
careers of Abraham, Joseph, and Moses depicts them as being
responsible for many of the cultural innovations of the ancient Near
East. The following description of how Moses is portrayed shows
just how effectively hellenistic syncretism was used to promote
Judaism as a form of inclusive culture.
As a grown man [Moses] was called Mousaeus by the Greeks. This Mousaeus
was the teacher of Orpheus.... [Moses] bestowed many useful benefits on
mankind, for he invented boats and devices for stone construction and the
Egyptian arms and the implements for drawing water and for warfare, and
philosophy. Further, he divided the [Egyptian] state into 36 nomes and
appointed for each of the nomes the god to be worshiped, and for the priests
the sacred letters, and that they should be cats and dogs and ibises
[hieroglyphs].... He did all these things for the sake of maintaining the
monarchy firm.... On account of these things then Moses was loved by the
masses, and was deemed worthy of godlike honor by the priests and called
Hermes, on account of the interpretation of the sacred letters.

Notice the reference to Hermes, a god in the Greek pantheon (in the
Egyptian pantheon, Hermes was Thoth). Equating Moses with
Hermes was not a statement of religious syncretism; it’s clear from
the context of this work and from related writings that the idea was
to demythologize and humanize the Greek gods, making them into
human historical heroic figures, just as Jewish tradition regarded
Joseph, Moses, Abraham, and the other patriarchs. In this way the
door could be opened to Jewish participation in hellenistic festivals
and rituals without the fear that this could be regarded as acts of
idolatry; these events were simply celebrations in honor of the
ancient heroes. In this way, under hellenistic influence Judaism was
moving toward a kind of inclusive monotheism, a movement that
gained very wide popularity that even took root in Jerusalem itself,
and, as we will see, gained supporters even among the temple
priesthood.

Artapanus also attempted to justify circumcision to the Hellenists.

He argued that since Moses founded the Egyptian religion and had
also given the custom of circumcision to the Ethiopians, that these
peoples, in following their ancestral practices, continued to follow
Moses’ teachings. Therefore, should the Jews not be permitted to
follow their own ancestral practices as well?

One major step in a syncretic acculturization of the Jews into

hellenistic practices occurred in the middle of the third century—the
translation of the Torah into Greek. According to various
contemporary accounts, the project was not only supported by the
pharaoh, Ptolemy II Philadelphus (285–246), he was reported to
have initiated it. However the idea for making the translation
originated, its completion made the Jewish laws accessible not only
to the Jews of Alexandria for whom Hebrew was almost certainly no
longer spoken colloquially, but also to all speakers of Greek.

This Greek Torah translation, which was performed in Alexandria,

is called the Septuagint, which means “seventy” in Latin. This name
actually only became attached to the translation six hundred years
later, during the time of Augustine of Hippo (354–430 CE), when
the work was described in Latin as the versio septuaginta
interpretum, “version of the seventy interpreters,” or
theSeptuaginta. The early church fathers considered that the
convocation of seventy elders that Moses assembled, as mentioned
in Numbers 11:16–17, or alternatively, the seventy whom Jesus
commissioned (Luke 10:1–20, Alexandrian text tradition),
represented the spiritual roots of the translators, according to
Moses Hadas. The original Alexandrian translation is actually
known as the “Old Greek” version of which only fragments exist;
the Septuagint as we know it is a revised Greek version from about
250 years later.
Many legends have grown up around the making of this translation
and a first-century BCE pseudepigraphical text, the Letter of
Aristeas, provides a romanticized account of its composition, which
includes attributing the work to seventy-two scholars, six from each
tribe of Israel, who were sent to Egypt by Judea’s high priest. One
may gain some interesting political insights when reading
the Septuagint and comparing it to its Hebrew source. Beginning
with the First Syrian War in 274, the Hellenist realms of the
Seleucids and the Ptolemies had fought no less than five wars
during the following seventy-five years over the control of Palestine
and Judea. In the Hebrew book of Deuteronomy we read the
passage, “A wandering Aramean was my father and he went down
into Egypt” (Dt. 26:5). This same passage in the Septuagint reads,
“My father forsook Syria and went down into Egypt,” clearly giving
the passage a pro-Ptolemaic bias.

In addition to the Septuagint translation, during the third and early

second century BCE a number of other important Hebrew texts
were translated into Greek, particularly the books of
the Prophets and Psalms, and during this period other books were
written and translated that are now part of the Apocrypha. No other
culture approached the level of translating activity of the Jews in
making their works available to a wider audience. In speaking of the
amount of translating activity of the third century, Bar Kappara in
the Jerusalem Talmud interpreted the passage, “May God enlarge
Japheth and let him dwell in the tents of Shem” (Gen. 9:27) as “Let
them speak the language of Japheth [= Greek] in the tents of Shem
[= the Jews]” (jt. Meg. 1:11 [71b]).
Texts and Sects

Figure 21. Evolution of Jewish Sects

During the Ptolemaic period several significant Jewish works were
composed (Figure 21). One, an important biblical work and
arguably the Bible’s most enigmatic, Kohelet or Ecclesiastes, was
composed in Jerusalem during the early to mid-third century, as
most scholars believe. The Hebrew name “Kohelet” is said to mean
“Preacher,” but actually is best translated as “Convener” after the
root qof-heh-lamed, “assemble.” This sense of the word could also
allow it to mean “shepherd,” which was an ancient epithet for
middle-eastern royalty. This is a work which is in its majority
influenced by Greek philosophy while its genre is very much in the
Oriental wisdom-literature mode: a collection of aphorisms and
proverbs. Its philosophy is one of skepticism about traditional
beliefs, in God’s justice, and the efficacy of wisdom and hard work.
In the end, beliefs in these matters are futile and ultimately the
nature of the universe is incomprehensible. In this work, the author
takes for granted God’s total withdrawal from the world and
advocates righteous behavior simply for pragmatic reasons:
conformity would be less painful than nonconformity. The author
advances the ideas that all of humankind’s actions are preordained,
that nothing one does can alter one’s destiny, and that death brings
finality. Similar ideas can be found throughout wisdom literature of
the East. This work stands as evidence of a major turning point in
the development of Jewish theology, as we’ll discuss soon.

A second work, written in the early second century but no later than
the 160s, was the Book of Jubilees, which on its face is an account of
the biblical history of the world from creation to Moses at Sinai. Its
name is derived from how the work divides the history it describes
into periods (“jubilees”) of 49 years each. This work was extremely
popular in Qumran; fragments of about fifteen copies of the scroll
have been discovered. For the most part the text’s narrative follows
the traditional account in Genesis and early Exodus but provides
many additional details nowhere else mentioned. In its telling, its
anonymous author seems to be reflecting on the morality of the
Jews of Judea after their 150-year exposure to hellenistic culture.
He was concerned with Jews who did not observe the Sabbath and
ignored the commandments. He fulminated against those who
associated with pagans. He had Abraham adjure his sons not to take
wives from the Canaanites and to have nothing to do with idols. He
warned about the need to observe the biblical prohibition against
public nudity in a clear polemic against Jews participating in
the gymnasia. Further, he interpreted Greek culture as a product of
the demons and claimed that through circumcision the Jew is raised
out of an evil existence into the realm of God’s rule. He even
ascribed to the Patriarchs a knowledge of the commandments and
had them observing them and teaching them to their sons.
In Jubilees we also find criticism of a number of Greek
philosophical tenants together with many other political overtones.
For example, the reason that the pharaoh enslaved the Jews was
“because their hearts and faces are toward the land of Canaan”
which was then ruled by the Seleucids of Syria.

The community at Qumran preserved another work whose writing

is dated to the second century that shows that some groups followed
a different “Torah” than the version that was held to be canonical to
the mainstream Jewish world. This document is called the “Temple
Scroll,” and it presents itself as the Torah, rewriting the laws of
Leviticus and Deuteronomy by expanding on them, rearranging
their order of presentation, and introducing additional laws not
found in the Torah. The Temple Scroll reads not as a narrative that
describes how God spoke to Moses who then relays God’s words to
the people, but in a far more direct manner. Where the Torah refers
to God in the third person, the Temple Scroll refers to God in the
first person, making it clear that the book’s intent is to show that its
author is God rather than Moses. The rewriting of the Torah laws in
the Temple Scroll is reminiscent of the way Jubilees rewrote the
history in Genesis and Exodus; thus it is probably not a coincidence
that Jubilees ends precisely at the point that the Temple
Scroll begins.

There were other Jewish works that were composed in the third
century; a number of them were collected into a book known as 1
Enoch. This is an anthology of pseudepigraphical works preserved
in complete form only in Ge’ez (Ethiopic) but fragments written in
Aramaic have been found among the Qumran scrolls. In common
with Job and Ecclesiastes, the book is very much concerned with
the presence of evil in the world, but while Ecclesiastes has God
withdrawing from the world and Job portrays God as remote and
uncaring, Enoch implies that some humans can actually access
God’s mysteries through divine beings that God left to manage the
world after he withdrew from it. In this decidedly dualistic view of
theology, the author sought to explain how evil can exist in a world
created by God by ascribing its existence to a subclass of divine
beings.

The book of 1 Enoch is a member of a group of texts from the third

and second century that provides us with understanding the basis of
a political and theological division between the Zadokite priests of
the temple and a group now known as the Enochic Jews. We don’t
know what the members of this sect called themselves, but as the
philosophy of the members of this anti-Zadokite sect coalesced
around the ancient myths concerning the antediluvian Enoch
mentioned in Genesis, modern scholars have used the name
“Enochic” as a convenient label. The pseudepigraphical texts known
as the Aramaic Levi, the Book of the Watchers, and
the Astronomical Book provide us with some understanding of early
Jewish mysticism and apocalypticism that appears to have
underlain some of the sect’s beliefs. The myths of Enoch are told
in 1 Enoch, which describes how Enoch was transported to heaven
while still alive. The sect’s belief in how evil and impurity had
spread in the world and how this was proof of God’s withdrawal,
leaving only disorder and chaos as a result, was in direct opposition
to the Zadokites’ view of the underlying stability and order in the
world.

The heritage of the Enochic viewpoint is evident in the belief in the

“end of days,” a messianic time where the end of the current
“creation” is heralded and a new and different “creation” will begin
a new existence, ideas that are present in both Judaism and
Christianity. The Enochics brought the ideas of apocalypticism into
the Jewish mainstream of thought. We see strong elements of this
line of theological thought in three biblical books: the part of
Zechariah known as deutero-Zechariah (Chapters 9–14) of
which Chapters 12–14 are demonstrably eschatological; much of
Malachi (which might actually be a continuation of Zechariah 12–
14); and the latter part of the book of Daniel. The first and third of
these works are assigned to the middle of the second century BCE
and Malachi probably belongs to that period too. The study of the
anti-Zadokite movements, which include Enochic Judaism and a lay
opposition movement interestingly termed “Sapiental Judaism” by
scholars is fascinating in itself, as it involves the analysis of many
pseudepigraphical texts written from the seventh to the third
century BCE, but doing so is outside of the scope of this
presentation; however, it will be useful to examine how crucial the
ideas of the Enochics and Sapientals were to the development of
modern Judaism.

The direction of the development of Judaism into its modern form

was set by the competition of these three movements, the Zadokites,
the Enochics, and the Sapientals, for primacy in attracting
adherents to their theologies. The Zadokites based their religious
observance on temple sacrificial rites and by following the priestly
laws set down in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, serving God through
observing all of the cultic rituals that had developed during the first
temple period. As I mentioned above, the Enochics had a dualistic
view of not of the deity as in Zoroastrianism, but of the world,
separating good and evil into two opposing forces apart from the
deity, who had completely withdrawn from human affairs, by a kind
of sub-creator class of divine beings who were in control of the
affairs of the world. Enochic philosophy is embodied in several
independent books collected into the pseudepigraphical works
shown in Figure 21.

The contributions to Jewish theology of Sapiental Judaism are best

illustrated by three biblical books, Job, Jonah, and Ecclesiastes,
which scholars generally agree were composed during and following
the post-exilic period. While Job is based on an ancient Semitic
story known throughout the Middle East since the mid-second
millennium BCE, the Jewish version was likely compiled and its
prologue and epilogue were written and appended to the underlying
ancient poem during the late Persian period. These three books all
belong to the same class of skeptical wisdom, a genre of writing that
appeared during the Hellenistic period. As Thomas Bolin wrote of
these books, “All three emphasize the pain of an existence under a
rule of an omnipotent but inscrutable deity. All three emphasize the
futility of the foundational religious and theological issues of prayer,
sacrifice, repentance, and right living.” The earlier
books, Job and Jonah, are indirect in criticizing the Zadokite
theological view of the deity and simply point out the fallacy of
believing that God’s methods are knowable and consistent.
However, these books both end on a positive, even optimistic note,
rewarding repentance and true faith. With such a conclusion, these
works did not dramatically contradict Zadokite thought.
On the other hand, Ecclesiastes is both brutally direct and forceful
in approach, exposing Zadokite theology to the scrutiny of the
reader’s personal experience. Its author vividly reminds his readers
how the righteous suffer while the wicked seem to be rewarded too
frequently for one to believe that reward comes from obeying the
Torah laws. The lives of the wicked and righteous are too often so
similar that they are indistinguishable. And living a righteous life is
so rarely rewarded by the comfort of thinking that one’s memory
will be everlasting; Kohelet holds that neither the “wise or ... fool”
may expect to be remembered.

While mauling Zadokite thought with critical abandon, Kohelet

doesn’t spare Enochic writings from his fierce gaze either. Kohelet
challenges the Enochic search for heavenly knowledge through
dreams and visions, chiding the believer that anyone can see the
conditions that exist “under heaven” or “under the sun” with no
need to dream. In other words, Kohelet implies, don’t pay attention
to thoughts of what might be; think about what is. To the Enochic
claim that a person, like Enoch, should have the “desire to know
everything” (1 Eno. 25:2), Kohelet responds that the work of God is
a total mystery to humans and the future is unknown and
unknowable. While the Enochic view of the world is one of disorder,
Kohelet likens the divine order of heaven to the efficient Hellenist
government of Ptolemaic Egypt: “If you see in a province the
oppression of the poor and the violation of justice and
righteousness, do not be amazed at the matter, for the high official
is watched by a higher, and there are yet higher ones over them. But
this is gain for a land in every way: a king committed to cultivated
fields” (Eccl. 5:8–9).

And finally, Kohelet calls into question the apocalyptic view of

afterlife judgment as expressed in Enochic theology. There’s so
much more to Ecclesiastes, material that places it more into the
genre of political philosophy than theology, but we’ve got to move
on.

We know which theological viewpoint was the one that eventually

became generally accepted in Judaism. Most people, even those
who have read about the hellenistic period of Judea, have never
heard of the Aramaic Levi, the Book of the Watchers,
the Astronomical Book, Dream Visions, or the book of 1 Enoch, but
virtually everyone has heard of Job, Jonah, and Ecclesiastes.

One of the more interesting and unusual results of Judaism’s

encounter with Hellenism was how the contact between these
cultures affected the Jews’ use of God’s divine name, Yahweh, and
the other Hebrew terms referring to God. Before the sixth century
BCE, apparently speaking the divine name wasn’t avoided, as long
as it wasn’t used frivolously (conforming to the third
commandment). During the course of the fifth century, however, its
use came to be limited to temple rites and the taking of oaths, a
usage attested to by Philo. While the Samaritans continued to
pronounce the divine name until at least the fifth century CE, it
seems that the Jews ceased to do so because the belief grew strong
that using God’s proper name must be avoided since it held magical
powers, an idea that was held by many Semitic cultures. By the end
of the fifth century the Jews began to substitute the
word Elohim (“God”) and Adonai (“my Lord, my master”) for the
divine name instead, and then the Jews encountered the Greeks,
whose philosophical concept of a supreme being fit the use of an
abstract term for a deity so perfectly.

The Greeks used the terms theos, “god,” and theion, “divine,” in
place of a deity’s proper name, and in a kind of reverse copying, this
Greek usage took hold among the Jews. They were now
using Adonai regularly in place of God’s proper name, and when
they were writing (and perhaps speaking) Greek, did not use the
Greek theos and theion terms but used instead the Greek literal
translation of Adonai: kyrios, which is a legal term meaning “one
who is a master.” Although “Yahweh” was transliterated into Greek
in the early versions of the Septuagint, the name was
pronounced kyrios, and the Greek text did not use corresponding
translations of the other Hebrew terms for God such
as Adonai or Shaddai. (As you may know, the Greek kyrios later got
picked up in the Latin mass as Kyrie Eleison, “Lord have mercy.”)
Then the Jewish usage referring to God mutated yet again, since
using the term kyrios in a theological context made little sense to
non-Jewish Greek speakers, so third-century Jewish authors
writing Greek in Palestine began using Hypsistos, “the Most High,”
whereupon this usage promptly crept back into Hebrew as Elyon,
the “Most High God,” a usage frequently found
in Sirach and Jubilees and which was eventually officially adopted
by the Hasmoneans to refer to God.

While discussing the Jews’ exposure to and use of the Greek

language, I should point out that scholarly review of surviving Greek
manuscripts written by Jews during the Hellenistic period show
that the Jews did not write in pure Greek and later comments by
Josephus imply that their spoken Greek wasn’t very pure either.
Josephus admitted that even though he spent years in the Roman
courts, he never learned to pronounce Greek properly; also, for his
writings he employed native Greek speakers to correct his texts. In
the Septuagint, parts of which were composed between the third
century BCE and first century CE, and in the Christian scriptures,
composed in the first century CE, so many semeticisms exist that it
had appeared to some nineteenth-century scholars that in writing
these, the Jews used a hybrid Aramaic-Greek dialect analogous to
the use of Yiddish and Ladino many centuries later.

This theory was abandoned after later scholars learned more about
the dialect of the Greek language that was used in Egypt and
Palestine; this vernacular tongue is now known as koiné Greek. And
the semeticisms that were used by Jews are also found in
contemporaneous texts written by non-Jewish orientals for whom
Aramaic was their native tongue. One thing is very clear about the
use of language by the Jews in this entire region: the use of Hebrew
as a spoken language had completely disappeared and had been
supplanted by Aramaic in Judea and Babylonia and by Greek in
Egypt and Palestine, especially when it was ruled by the Ptolemies.
As it turned out, translations from Hebrew to Greek, especially
the Septuagint, were done in such a mechanical a fashion that many
hebraisms were not properly rendered into Greek and unfamiliar
Hebrew words were simply transliterated into Greek characters.

The linking of the Tobiad and Zadokite dynasties began the

rapprochement between Zadokite and Sapiental Judaism, but the
final merger of these groups was still to come. It is around this time
that the book of Tobit, another pseudepigraphical work, appeared.
It was produced in the late mid-third century and its writing seems
certain to have been intended to enhance the reputation of the
Tobiad family. The book is a fictional account—actually a romance—
that describes the activities of a very pious Israelite living in the
time of the Assyrian king Shalmaneser just after the fall of the
northern kingdom. The book is at once pro-Zadokite, and anti-
Enochic (and even anti-Samaritan) and describes how Tobit
scrupulously follows Mosaic laws but his observance runs afoul of
the king and he has to flee. He had entrusted funds to a relative in a
distant province so he has his son Tobias travel there to retrieve the
funds. During his travels Tobias meets and marries a woman
relative—a cousin, actually. Among the instances of anti-Enochic
polemic, the book’s author, while keeping his tongue firmly in his
cheek, describes Tobias’ encounters with an angel and demon that
are reminiscent of descriptions in the Book of Watchers. It’s clear
from how the protagonists are treated in the work that Tobit is very
much an anti-Job figure while Tobias is the anti-Jonah—even down
to an encounter with a big fish, this one being aggressive and
carnivorous, which he kills. Even Kohelet’s author doesn’t get off
lightly, being mocked on occasion by the very optimistic, romantic,
and upbeat tone of Tobit, where it’s made apparent to the reader
that the protagonists are being carefully guided by supernatural
forces.

Earlier I mentioned the scribe as being an important element in the

development of post-exilic Jewish culture and promised to discuss
this at greater length. Although scribes certainly had existed from
time immemorial, for the Jews under the influence of Hellenism,
their role dramatically shifted away from the role of simple copyists
and stenographers. Under Greek influence, a class of intelligentsia
began to grow, people who were not priests nor were connected to
the temple in any way. Modern research has shown that a
surprisingly large fraction of the ordinary Jewish population was
mechanically literate; that is, they could read and write, at least
enough to be able to transact ordinary business. For the drafting of
contracts and important letters, however, people typically visited a
scribe. So the scribes, in pursuing their craft, became familiar with a
wide variety of subjects and it is this group which began to form the
core of this new intelligentsia.

In the Egypt of the Ptolemies and in Babylonia, legal courts were

formed that were headed by priests or secular judges and staffed by
scribes. Schools for scribes were established. In Judea, the same
function was handled at the temple where the priests would
interpret the laws of Moses and decide cases based on those laws.
But members of the new scribal class were learning the laws too,
and in the administrative chambers of the secular rulers, scribes
were now advising the rulers and the judges. The role of the priest
as a sole interpreter of the law was slowly being usurped by the
scribe. In fact, by the third century in Judea, the administration of
justice was no longer solely limited to the priests.

We can see this progression of legal interpretation in the texts

written during this period. Chronicles includes the scribe among the
ranks of the Levites. Ecclesiastes makes the comment, “Wisdom
makes one sage more powerful than ten rulers in a city” (Eccl. 7:19);
the “sage” referred to is a chakhem, “wise one,” this was not a priest
or prophet or ruler, leaving the scribe, the only remaining
profession reputed to be “wise.” Ben Sirach, writing in the early
second century and upholding the authority of the priest, advises
his readers to honor the priest and acknowledge his superior
knowledge in interpreting the laws. He states that the scribe’s role is
to advise the ruler rather than judge legal matters. The fact
that Sirach, a work that we’ll discuss soon, devotes much space to
describing the scribe’s authority, activity, and responsibilities is a
telling indication of how important the scribes had become by the
second century. In addition to their other activities, many scribes
taught, and they frequently taught interpretation of the Torah. The
term “rabbi” means “my master/my teacher”; it was the learned
people, including the scribes, who were the proto-rabbis. This is
clearly illustrated in the Christian Bible; the title “rabbi” occurs in
the books of Matthew, Mark, and John where it is used to speak of
“scribes and Pharisees.”
Jews and Hellenist Culture

Let’s return to a discussion of the Jews’ cultural life between the end
of the Persian period and the Maccabean revolt. As I mentioned
earlier, there is very little information available about this period
except that there exists some limited data concerning Jewish life in
Egypt. Many Egyptian cities had significant Jewish populations and
all of its cities were thoroughly hellenized. The Jews were regarded
as “Hellenes” in contrast to the native population, who were
obviously referred to as “Egyptians.” Jews transacted business with
other city residents, had their legal cases heard before courts that
enforced Greek laws, and wrote their contracts and correspondence
in Greek. They also proselytized among the Greeks; it was during
this period that proselytism became widespread. Jubilees speaks of
the “strangers who joined themselves to the Lord” (Jub. 55:10).
Later, the Talmud speaks of the “God-fearers” and the “proselytes
before the gates,” but it isn’t certain how widespread this class of
converts became during the Hellenistic period.

The number of people who became fully Jewish through

circumcision and a purifying bath in the mikvah was certainly not
large, but these people subsequently would circumcise their sons
and raise their children as fully Jewish. It is clear from records of
the period that more women than men became Jewish for the
obvious reason that they weren’t confronted with the major obstacle
to conversion. However, the presence in the community of large
numbers of “not-quite-Jews” certainly had an effect on the overall
cultural evolution of the entire Jewish community. And we can
surmise that the kinds of cultural changes that occurred among the
Egyptian Jews were mirrored to some degree among the Jews in
Judea. The seeds were being planted for a new form of Judaism, one
where the customs and traditions one observed could be relaxed
just a bit from the numberless ritualistic practices demanded by
traditional Jewish observance.

Figure 22. Jewish Diasporas

The Jews who lived in Judea during the fourth to first centuries
BCE were but a small fraction of the world’s Jewish population. The
documented Jewish diaspora extended from Cyrene and Rome in
the west to the south coast of the Black Sea, and south to Yemen
and Ethiopia and east to India (Figure 22). There is evidence that
suggests that Jews were also in Morocco, Carthage (Tunis), and
Spain. By the first century BCE, the largest populations were in
Syria, Babylon, Persia, and Egypt, each of which probably held a
population of one million or more. By the first century CE, Jews
comprised about 10% of the total population of the Roman Empire
and about 25% of the population of the eastern Mediterranean
region.

In Alexandria alone, the city was about 40% Jewish with a total
regional population variously estimated to be between 500,000 and
1,000,000. So it would be fairly safe to say that even before the
destruction of the second temple, the population of the Jews of the
diaspora greatly outnumbered that of Judea, even after the
conquests of the Hasmoneans. Some of this growth was a result of
natural population increase, but as mentioned above, much was a
result of proselytization. Thus the ideals of ethnic purity so
vigorously championed by Ezra and Nehemiah in the fifth century
had, by the second century, become extensively diluted by the sheer
numbers of gentiles adopting the faith of the Jews. The numbers of
new adherents to Judaism actually began to foster the belief among
the Jews of Judea that the promise of a messianic age, as foretold by
Micah and Isaiah, would soon be fulfilled: “It shall come to pass in
the latter days that the mountain of the house of the Lord shall be
established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be lifted up
above the hills; and all the nations shall flow to it” (Isa. 2:2).

Acceptance of proselytes as full Jews actually varied by community

and century. In some places, one became regarded as a Jew
immediately, while in others, a convert was not immediately
regarded as a Jew and neither were his descendants, before the
second or even third generation (which was the ancient law of
Judah). In most communities, however, parentage was required of a
fully Jewish father or mother, or of converted parents, before a
person was treated socially as a full-fledged Jew. In Judea, however,
Jewish “pedigree” was still mostly by direct descent although
through increased intermarriage, mostly among the wealthy, high-
class families, where dynasties were joined and family holdings
were preserved by linking powerful families, many gentiles became
linked to Jewish families.
Judea Under the Seleucids

Although social and religious conditions in Judea were favorable

during the period of the rule of the Ptolemies, culturally the Jews
were much closer to their co-religionists living in inland Syria and
Babylon. These areas, especially Babylon, had not been quite as
heavily “hellenized” as Egypt and the most common spoken
language of the East was Aramaic, not Greek as in Egypt. Among
the priests and more traditional Jews there was a stronger affinity
with the eastern Jews than the Egyptians even though religious life
under the Ptolemies was not burdensome. Even so, there were still
powerful forces in Jerusalem that supported the Ptolemies in
opposition to the strong pro-Seleucid party that had appeared. The
emergence of these Jewish parties even split the Tobiad-Zadokite
family and both Josephus and Jerome (in his commentary on
Daniel) mention the division of Jerusalem into pro-Ptolemaic and
pro-Seleucid factions.

Figure 23. Antiochus III the Great

The Ptolemies and Seleucids had contested Palestine ever since

Alexander’s empire had been divided; I’ve mentioned that during
the third century alone these kingdoms had fought five wars over
the possession of Palestine. In 204 BCE, Ptolemy IV died and
during the transition of rulers in Egypt the balance of power shifted
to Syria. Antiochus III the Great (Figure 23) immediately reopened
hostilities, commencing the Fifth Syrian War, where the Seleucid
army defeated the Ptolemaic forces at the Battle of Panion in 200
and wrested Palestine and Phoenicia from Egypt. During this
struggle between Egypt and Syria, when control of Jerusalem
changed hands several times, a majority of the population actively
assisted the Seleucids in fighting the Ptolemaic forces and the pro-
Seleucid party eventually prevailed. The high priest Simeon II was a
member of the pro-Seleucid faction and his support was greatly
valued by the Seleucid king.
After his victory over Egypt, Antiochus III didn’t assert his rule over
Judea until 198, and few cultural changes came to Judea as a result
of its new ruler (see the Chronologies of the Intertestamental
Rulers). Actually, certain conditions improved significantly for
Jerusalem’s aristocracy. Since Simeon and the pro-Seleucid party
had actively supported Antiochus in the war, the king reciprocated
by granting Judea the right to govern itself according to its own
laws, making a large contribution to the temple, and giving tax
exemptions to temple personnel and many of the aristocracy. He
affirmed the sanctity of the temple to the Jews, the authority of the
Zadokites within Jewish society, and the right of the Jews to permit
only kosher animals within the city’s precincts. For all essential
purposes, Antiochus regarded Simeon as the ruler of Judea, giving
him the power to collect the empire’s taxes and retain part of them;
Simeon was made a kind of secular prince and he assumed all the
trappings of nobility.

Now, within the merged clans of Tobiads and Zadokites, the

political and economic power had shifted in favor of the Zadokites,
who now held all the reigns of power: political, economic, and
religious. In fact, the economic importance of Judea had become so
significant that even the king could not ignore it. The beginning of
the period of Seleucid control over Palestine began a kind of “golden
age” of the Zadokite priesthood; the high priest was not only the
head of the temple cult, he was the political head of the secular state
as well.

An extremely significant work in the evolution of Judaism was

composed in Jerusalem by Yeshua ben Sirach in the early second
century. Mentioned earlier, this is the Book of Sirach, also known
as Ecclesiasticus; it is a philosophical work that contains an
extensive collection of ethical teachings. Like Jubilees, Sirach is also
concerned with the drifting of the Jews away from following the
commandments and speaks disapprovingly of Jews who are
ashamed of the Torah. Ben Sirach was a strong supporter of the
temple priesthood and an admirer of the high priest Simeon, but he
was a realist and his book ignores Hellenist influence on Jewish
culture, as opposed to Jubilees, which is decidedly anti-Hellenist.
The Zadokites were now among the most wealthy and powerful
members of Jerusalem’s society and the ideas of Sapiential
Judaism, such as those found in Ecclesiastes, were no longer
politically tenable.

Sirach comprises, in effect, a complete rejection of the ideas

presented in Job and Ecclesiastes. The genre of the text’s maxims,
advice, and moral viewpoint closely follows Oriental wisdom
literature and maintains that observance and not materialism is the
path to a rewarding life. This work is important to us because, even
though it was not canonized, its messages were sufficiently
important that the rabbis of the Talmud frequently quoted from the
work and parts have become the basis of Jewish liturgy—in part of
the Yom Kippur service and in Judaism’s arguably most important
prayer—the Amidah. Sirach provides the vocabulary and
framework for many of the Amidah’s blessings.

Finally, there is another biblical book I mentioned earlier that

seems to refer to the period 200–165; this is the second part of
Zechariah, or deutero-Zechariah. In this book the Greeks are
described in 9:13 as enemies of Judea and the Assyrians and
Egyptians are similarly mentioned in Chapter 10, these names were
certainly intended to represent the Seleucids and the Ptolemies. In
verses9:1–2, Damascus, Hamath, and Hadrach are seats of the
Seleucid kings, a situation which is known to have existed during
200–165 BCE. The internal conditions of the Jewish community
immediately before the Maccabean uprising appear in the second
subdivision, where the “shepherds” referred to are the tax-farmers.
In verse 11:13 there seems to be an allusion to Hyrcanus, son of
Tobias, who was an exception among the rapacious shepherds.
These historical sections, together with Zechariah’s apocalyptic
visions beginning in Chapter 12, appear to have been added to the
prophetic work by a later author either for convenience or to give
these additions the theological authority afforded by being part of
an accepted prophetic work.
 Figure 24. Seleucid Empire

Judea was now part of the enormous Seleucid Empire, but unlike
the virtually monolithic Egyptian empire of the Ptolemies, the
Seleucid Empire consisted of a large number of highly disparate
cultures spread over a much larger region (Figure 24). While much
of the western areas of the empire had become extensively
hellenized, these cultural changes had been mostly restricted to the
larger cities and towns; the villages and the general countryside
held the indigenous populations whose ancestors had lived there for
many generations and were mostly isolated from hellenistic
influences.

Between the fifth and second centuries, Jews of the diaspora had
faithfully sent their annual “shekel” tax to the temple in Jerusalem;
this was an important source of revenue for Judea. The secular
rulers mostly allowed these contributions to continue although
there were occasional restrictions on the practice. But by the second
century, Jerusalem was attracting ever-increasing numbers of
pilgrims who traveled from Egypt and the greater distance from
Babylonia to offer sacrifices and to worship at the temple. These
visits increased during the periods of the pilgrimage festivals of
Sukkot, Pesach, and Shavuot, but the traffic was likely highest for
Pesach, when weather and road conditions were generally the most
favorable for long-distance travel. Also, at Pesach, pilgrims would
be able to participate in the paschal sacrifice and in the festival meal
that commemorated the sacrifice; this biblically ordained ritual
could only be fully observed in Jerusalem. The Passover seder meal
was not a feature of Jewish observance until after the temple’s
destruction in 70 CE.

To accommodate the masses of tourists who brought with them the

coinage of their various home cities, entrepreneurs operated
money-changing facilities to allow the visitors to obtain the local
coinage necessary for making purchases in Jerusalem. The
Christian Gospels mention this practice which by the first century
CE was hundreds of years old. The contributions to the Judean
economy from the tourist trade were quite significant, and by the
early first century Judea had become a important political, if not
economic, power in the region. A example of this power in the first
century BCE is revealed by Josephus, who mentioned in
his Antiquities of the Jews that when Judea’s independence was
threatened by Ptolemy IX Lathyros in about 85, Ananias, an
influential Jewish general in the Egyptian army, warned Ptolemy’s
mother and co-regent, Cleopatra III, that, “An injustice to this man
[Alexander Yannai, the Judean ruler] will make all of us Jews your
enemy.”

During the Seleucid period there was much political interaction

between the Jews of Judea and the Jews of the diaspora who
became involved in both the internal and external politics of the
country. Diaspora Jews repeatedly meddled in internal Judean
affairs; in one later case, when an internal Jewish faction in
Jerusalem approached the Roman government for support in
replacing the existing Judean government, many Roman Jews
appeared at the Senate in support of this faction. But Jews of the
diaspora received political as well as moral support from the Judean
government through its negotiations with the Seleucid government
to receive guarantees, in the form of “charters,” to safeguard the
Jews’ religious and cultural autonomy throughout the kingdom.

While both the economic and religious conditions in Zadokite

Jerusalem were the most favorable than perhaps any time in the
past, world conditions were starting to affect the Seleucid kingdom.
Antiochus III the Great, seeing himself in the mold of Alexander the
Great, had designs on increasing his empire to the west. During this
period, waging war was an essential component of a king’s success
and was the chief way of raising funds. A Seleucid force crossed
from Lydia in Anatolia into Thrace and in 192 began to besiege
Larissa. Winter ensued, and Antiochus learned of the imminent
arrival of a Roman force that had been summoned by the
Macedonians, lifted the siege, and in 191 took up defensive positions
in the valley at Thermopylae. In this replay of the Battle of
Thermopylae (as opposed to the one involving the Greeks vs. the
Persians in 480), Antiochus was defeated and driven out of Greece
by Rome and her allies. Rome’s army, led by their famed general
Scipio, counterattacked into Lydia and in 190 at Magnesia,
Antiochus suffered a major defeat.

The resulting peace treaty concluded at Apamea in 188 was ruinous

for the Seleucid kingdom, requiring a huge war indemnity and the
loss of Anatolia north and west of the Taurus Mountains. Antiochus
was also required to limit the size of his army and navy. Further, he
was compelled to send his third son Mithridates (the future
Antiochus IV), who was not in the direct line for the Seleucid
throne, to Rome as a hostage against any further military action in
the west. When Antiochus was defeated by Rome, several provinces
of Persia in the eastern empire took this as a sign of weakness and
Elymais (at the head of the Persian Gulf) revolted. In response, in
187 Antiochus III marched off on a military campaign to Elymais
during which he was killed in a raid. Thus began a period of severe
upheaval for the Seleucid dynasty.

Antiochus III’s oldest son had previously died so his second son
Seleucus IV succeeded to the throne and took the throne name
Philopater. Seleucus immediately faced some major problems, ones
that continued to plague him during his reign. First, as we saw
above, his father’s defeat by Rome resulted in the revolt of several
provinces in the east. Second, he needed to come up with the funds
to pay Rome’s tribute and the loss of the eastern provinces didn’t
help the tax revenues. Third, and most important, he was a weak
and ineffectual ruler. It is at this point in history that two literary
works pick up the story: the books of 1 and 2 Maccabees.
Prelude to the Jewish Revolt

Most of the sources of historical information for this period come

from 1 and 2 Maccabees, Philo, and Josephus. While they may be
factually suspect in many areas, these works have enough
corroboration from historians like Polybius (c. 200–118 BCE),
Strabo (c. 64 BCE–24 CE), and Livy (59 BCE–17 CE) to suggest that
many portions of Maccabees (and Josephus) can be assumed to be
factual. Of course, we have to assume that those writers themselves
did not rely solely on those same sources. There is reason to believe
in their general accuracy, however; recent work on the Qumran
fragments has identified texts that support some details found in
the traditional histories. On the whole, there is no reason to
seriously doubt the accuracy of the traditional descriptions of events
that are not overtly theological or polemical in nature.

The book of 1 Maccabees was written in Hebrew (but only survives

in its Greek translation) some seventy years after the revolt (ca.
100–80) from the author's nationalistic perspective. It concentrates
on the details of the temple cult and the activities of the
Hasmoneans while taking the position that all non-Jewish rulers
are bad and additionally assuming that the other nations are anti-
Jewish. The work also extensively describes internal Judean
political and religious factional disputes. On the other hand, 2
Maccabees came before 1 Maccabees; it was written in Greek in
Alexandria shortly after 120 BCE, about forty-five years after the
events described; its author takes a cosmopolitan hellenistic
approach to the events of the period. Its primary concern is the fate
of Jerusalem, seeing the sects of the Judean Jewish community as
acting in harmony while viewing the rulers of the surrounding
nations as benevolent and having good relations with Judea. This
book is an adaptation of part of one volume of a lost five-volume
history of the Jews written about 120 in Greek by Jason of Cyrene;
only fragments from the other books exist in the form of quotations
found in other works.
 Figure 25. Seleucid Palestine

Figure 26. The Expulsion of Heliodorus from the Temple, Bernardo

Cavallino, ca. 1650
 Figure 27. Stele authorizing Seleucid control of sanctuary treasuries

Figure 28. Antiochus IV Epiphanes

During the early and mid-second century, Judea was an

insignificant part of the Seleucid empire geographically (Figure 25),
but it was fairly important economically. In Jerusalem, mostly
unaffected by the woes of the Seleucid kingdom, the economic
machine was creating prosperity for the Zadokites, indeed, for much
of the aristocracy. But since all of the political and economic power
had become concentrated in the Zadokites, naturally other
ambitious factions had become envious of their wealth and power.
Also, no significant economic enterprise could be launched without
their cooperation; for example, the money-changing operations in
the temple precincts were controlled by the Zadokites (and these
entrepreneurs were required to collect the temple taxes from
pilgrims); the obvious result was that a strong competition began to
grow for the control of the high-priesthood. Reported in 2
Maccabees is an incident involving an Aaronite (but non-Zadokite)
temple official named Simon who, after a clash with the high priest
Onias III (185–175) over the administration of the city market,
reported to an agent of the king that the temple had a large cash
excess that “could fall under the control of the king.” The stability of
Zadokite control of the temple was beginning to slip.

According to 2 Maccabees 3, Seleucus IV immediately sent his

minister Heliodorus to investigate and obtain this “excess” cash but
the text reports a magical encounter (illustrated in Figure 26) where
Heliodorus was flogged by celestial beings. The account
in Maccabees may preserve an element of historical accuracy. A
stele dated to August 178 has recently surfaced in the antiquities
market containing a proclamation from Seleucus IV that bears
directly on his policies (Figure 27). The text of the stele’s inscription
clearly documents the intention of the Seleucid government to
establish tight fiscal control over the treasuries of its provincial
temples by appointing local governors to closely manage their
affairs, thus forcing the sanctuaries, including Judea’s, to submit to
governmental financial oversight. The stele was recently published
by Cotton and Wörrle who point out that this proclamation could
have been one of the first signs of Jewish resistance, since 2
Maccabees implies that the Syrians were thwarted by Onias in their
attempt to loot the temple

Somewhat later, Simon accused Onias of being a “plotter against the

government.” In 175 Onias was compelled to go to Antioch to
defend himself. While he was enroute, Heliodorus, apparently
believing that the weak king was a liability to the empire,
assassinated him. Earlier, Seleucus had negotiated the release of his
younger brother Mithridates from Rome in exchange for his son
and heir, Demitrius, so when Seleucus was killed, Mithridates
seized the throne and took the throne name Antiochus IV
Epiphanes (Figure 28). Antiochus was far more competent and
ambitious than his older brother. He saw the need to be relentless
in his governing to ensure that taxes would be efficiently collected
throughout the kingdom and that meant having more complaisant
regional officials in power. And Onias? He was never permitted to
return to Jerusalem.
Under Hellenist law the king appointed the tax collectors who bid
for the right to be appointed. In Judea, the Zadokites had controlled
the tax-collecting franchise and the high priest, as the head of the
Zadokites, was the king’s de facto tax official. Also, the high
priesthood was traditionally a hereditary office held for life and the
Ptolemaic and Seleucid kings had respected this tradition. But since
tax collection was a secular activity, Antiochus held that the high
priesthood was not an internal religious position, it was a secular
position as the local government head, and thus he asserted his
legal right to pick his favored candidate to serve as his tax collector.
With Onias now out of the picture, there was suddenly no lack of
claimants for the office. The successful candidate was Jason
(Joshua), a brother of Onias, who offered the king a huge bribe to
secure the office.

The fact that a new high priest had been designated while the
former high priest was still living, and that the designation was
done by the king and not in accordance with Zadokite law, seems to
have been accepted in Jerusalem. This was certainly because of
Jason’s membership in the Zadokite family and his political
connections; he was, after all, also a relative of the Tobiads. Under
Jason, the Hellenist aristocrats who had been shut out of
Jerusalem’s economic picture were now able to assert their own
influence in both the secular and religious affairs of the province.
This meant that now the city could be open to more hellenizing
practices than were previously allowed, including the building of
a gymnasium. According to 1 Maccabees, when this occurred a
number of Jews “made themselves uncircumcised,” that is,
underwent epispasm. This didn’t mean that the city became Greek
overnight. The Hellenist changes were not mandatory; in fact, they
were quite in order with Jewish law, which recognized that the law
of the king had equal standing with the law of Moses (cf. Ezra 7:26).

The acceptance of the hellenizing influences under Jason is bourne

out by all of the ancient Jewish sources, none of which accuse Jason
of transgressing Zadokite law or mismanagement of the temple’s
cultic rites. Jason didn’t last long as high priest, however. Within
three or four years he found himself outbid for the post by
Menelaus, an Aaronite priest not of the Zadokite family—he was in
fact a brother of the Simon whose agitation had resulted in Onias’
ouster. Antiochus accepted Menelaus’ bid, ignorant of its
consequences for the religious balance in Judea. Jason fled to
Ammon where he could receive protection from the Tobiads. The
transition of power to Menelaus was nowhere as easy as when Jason
became high priest. Onais was still alive in Antioch and Jason was
in Ammon. Both had a legitimate claim to the high priesthood and
thus were threats to Menelaus’ position. Despite this, and sensing a
positive shift in their political influence, the hellenizing faction in
Jerusalem supported Menelaus, but as Josephus reported, the
Tobiad and Zadokite partisans strongly challenged the Menelaus
faction. They even appealed to the king but he reaffirmed his
support for Menelaus.

But Menelaus had a problem. He had to pay for his appointment. To

raise funds, 2 Maccabees accuses him of selling temple vessels. It’s
likely he used temple resources to pay at least part of his bribe
because Onias, being held as an enforced “guest” of the Seleucid
king in a town near Antioch and who still had contacts in the
temple, learned of the questionable disposition of some temple
property, perhaps by a subordinate priest, whereupon he exposed
the theft of which he accused Menelaus. This immediately resulted
in considerable public outrage and the situation became a political
threat that Menelaus could not ignore; 2 Macc. 4:34 reports that he
arranged Onias’ murder, which probably occurred in 170. Antiochus
was enraged because having Onias alive was politically useful; he
had the assassin executed but he couldn’t take immediate action
against Menelaus because he had become involved in a developing
problem with Egypt. Allowing Menelaus to bribe his way out of
trouble, Antiochus permitted him to remain as high priest in order
to maintain Seleucid control and stability in Jerusalem until the
Egyptian problem could be resolved.

The threat presented by Egypt was in the form of their aggressive

demands that Syria return Palestine (which had been captured in
200 by Antiochus III), threatening an attack unless the Seleucids
relinquished the territory. Antiochus quickly responded with a
peremptory strike on Egypt in 170–169 that drove deep into Egypt,
captured Ptolemy VI, and conquered most of the Nile delta area but
stopping before reaching Alexandria. Antiochus made Ptolemy a
puppet king and forced him to execute a non-aggression treaty.
Meanwhile, during this campaign the report of Antiochus’ death
reached Jerusalem. Acting on this false rumor and believing himself
to be the legitimate high priest, Jason attempted to take Jerusalem
by force, but Antiochus, returning from his successful campaign in
Egypt, intervened and Jason had to flee the region, eventually
seeking sanctuary in Sparta, a country that had warm relations with
Judea, as mentioned earlier.

According to the histories in Maccabees, Antiochus saw this

incident as a revolt against his kingdom and marched into
Jerusalem, taking the opportunity to loot the temple of all of its
valuables, kill numerous residents, restore Menelaus, and appoint
military governors in the province to enforce his rule. The
traditional histories further tell us that Antiochus installed the
Jewish Hellenist party as Jerusalem’s government and changed the
temple into a Greek facility. Any Jews who continued to follow the
Zadokite laws were persecuted; the Hellenists enforced Greek law in
all areas including religious activities. This is how the histories read.
But did all of this actually happen, and if so, how could such a
radical shift in the Seleucid king’s moving from a policy of non-
interference with the internal religious practices of Judea to the
imposition of Greek worship practices have happened?

Some of what is described did actually occur, but not quite in the
way the books of Maccabees relate the events. Traditional Jewish
mythology based on Maccabees places the blame for Jewish
persecutions squarely on the shoulders of Antiochus, claiming that
it was his campaign to hellenize every province of his realm and
replace local customs and culture with those of the Greeks. It’s true
that Antiochus wanted to get his hands on the temple’s riches and
Jason’s revolt gave him the opportunity to do so as a punitive
measure. But a close reading of Josephus, Polybius, Livy, and some
Dead Sea Scroll fragments, gives a different impression of the
events that occurred in Judea in the years between 169 and 167.
After Jason failed in his attempt to regain the high priesthood,
Antiochus intervened in Jerusalem to restore order, as described
above, but probably only to the extent of looting the temple. Then in
168, Egypt came under a co-regency where Ptolemy VIII joined
Ptolemy VI and the emboldened rulers broke Egypt’s treaty with
Antiochus that had just been concluded in 169. When Antiochus
reacted and sent troops against Egypt, this time he was stopped by
the Roman ambassador and was forced to withdraw his forces, thus
making control of Judea once again of ultimate strategic
importance.

A historic and cultural note: It is the encounter between Antiochus

and the Roman ambassador, Gaius Popillus Laenas, who forced the
Seleucids’ withdrawal that gave rise to the famous metaphor of
“crossing the line drawn in the sand.”

It is at this point that we must consider a cryptic report from

Josephus: “The sons of Tobias were cast out of the city and fled to
Antiochus and besought him ... to make an expedition to Judea”
(Jewish War 1:31–32). Clearly a second event had occurred in
Jerusalem, one that the Seleucid king considered a grave threat. It
appears this threat was in the person of Onias IV, the son of the
murdered Onias III, who upon reaching his majority, had now
emerged to challenge Menelaus as the legitimate heir to the high
priesthood under Jewish law. Menelaus had to flee the city.
Apparently the Zadokite faction, supported by the traditionalists,
rallied around Onias IV and posed so great a threat to the Hellenists
that they called for Syrian aid.

Enraged by his humiliation at the hands of Rome and faced with a

potential fifth column in the now strategically important Judea,
Antiochus had no choice but to react swiftly and decisively. He
entered Jerusalem, slaughtered many Jews, and established a
military citadel, the Acra, in the city. He realized that in order to
maintain control of Judea, he would need to eliminate all of the
opposition to Menelaus’ party. Apparently the advice for how this
could be accomplished was provided by the Jews themselves—a
program of forced hellenization would be begun. Forced
hellenization would expose the political leanings of the
traditionalists, who, in opposing the adoption of Greek law, would
show that they were against the Seleucid government and under the
martial law now imposed, they could be executed as traitors. Onias
IV escaped capture and fled to Egypt where he and his followers
were able to build a temple at Leontopolis that was modeled after
the one in Jerusalem. This temple existed for 243 years; Roman
emperor Vespasian, fearing that this temple might become another
center for Jewish rebellion, ordered its demolition in 73 CE.
Scholars are fairly certain that the Hellenist Jews were behind much
of the Greek practices now introduced in Judea. It is highly unlikely
that Antiochus and his advisors would have been sufficiently
familiar with Jewish law to have come up with some of the
“abominations” attributed to him by the books of Maccabees, such
as banning circumcision and the observance of Shabbat, defiling the
sanctuary, sacrificing swine, destroying law books, erecting rural
altars, and offering incense in the streets. The latter two practices
were more a violation of Zadokite law than traditional law, and the
forced consumption of swine didn’t even reflect a forced
conformance to Greek customs; eating swine was not typical of
Gentiles of the region or even of the Greeks in general. Lucian of
Samosata (ca. 125–180 CE), an ethnic Assyrian, wrote that eating
pork was prohibited in Syria; other Greek authors writing about this
period also affirm that eating pork was avoided throughout
Anatolia.

These conclusions are generally accepted by modern scholars.

According to Paolo Sacchi, “The very fact that Antiochus was able to
individuate precisely which Jewish practices to abolish
demonstrates that the person advising him on the matter knew the
Judaism of the period very well and wanted to destroy that
particular Judaism, not all Judaism.” The implication is that
Antiochus’ advisor was Menelaus or a close priestly associate.

Furthermore, the religious oppression begun in Antiochus’ name

was never a clash between Judaism and Hellenism. Martin Jaffee
commented on the confrontation of Judaism and Hellenism as
portrayed in contemporary writings, “From the perspective of
hindsight ... it is clear that the debate was not between Judaism and
Hellenism as opposed forces, but really over the degree to which an
already hellenized Judaism would self-consciously conform even
further to international cultural norms.” We can only conclude that
Antiochus’ response to the civil unrest in Judea was not religious
oppression, it was to quell a developing civil war at a time when the
seizing of this region of the Seleucid empire was threatened by
Egypt. And the role of Menelaus and his hellenizing party was not to
abolish Judaism; it was to end the Zadokites’ religious and
economic control of Judea.

The Jewish Revolt

We’ve set the stage for the political, economic, and religious
conditions in Judea just prior to the Maccabean revolt. Based on
this analysis, just how strong was the religious motivation for
rebellion? The temple was the center of the province’s secular
leadership as well as its cultic center. Many, if most of Jerusalem’s
residents had long accepted, if not supported, the hellenistic
customs that had been introduced beginning many decades earlier.
There was no love for the priesthood either; recall that the priests
were the secular tax collectors in addition to their priestly duties,
and were likely the owners of land that was being worked by tenant
farmers. But external secular rulers were always careful not to
trigger the nationalistic sentiments of their subject peoples because
this would certainly lead to political unrest and potential revolts.

We know that politically, the rulers of this period were quite

sensitive to the religious beliefs of subject peoples; clear evidence
for this comes from mid-first-century CE, when, in the midst of a
punitive expedition against a Jewish village, a Roman soldier was
executed for burning a Torah scroll he had confiscated. Under
Greek rule the religious beliefs of subject peoples were also
respected as long as they did not oppose or challenge the
government. So it is against this background that Antiochus IV’s
anti-Jewish edicts appear so unique and so strange. This is why it’s
assumed that the idea for the edict came from the Jewish
hellenizers and not from the king. Again we have to assume that the
basic purpose of Antiochus’ hellenizing edicts were to identify the
political opponents of the Menelaus faction, but the edicts also
affected traditional Jews who probably had no particular political
leanings.

Also recall that economically, the countryside dwellers were

extremely disadvantaged. Mentioned earlier, land ownership was
likely controlled by the priests and aristocracy, those of the
Hellenist group, while the land was worked by tenant farmers, most
of whom were traditionalists. Up until 167, most of the edicts of the
Seleucid government had little effect outside of Jerusalem, but this
changed in 167 when active hellenizing began to be conducted in the
countryside and now widely affected the common folk. Such was the
case in Modi’in when the hellenizers came to call, provoking
Mattathias to resist. Mattathias was a Levite of the clan of Joarib,
and according to 1 Maccabees, a direct descendent of Pinchas,
Aaron’s grandson. His great-grandfather was a priest named
Asmonaeus; thus the family was known as the Hasmoneans.

Just how many of the hellenizing changes introduced to the

countryside were polemicized in Maccabees and in Josephus is
unclear, but the effect of the policies that were introduced was
sufficient to spark a violent response by traditional Jews. At first,
the Hasmoneans’ violence was directed against the Jews who
voluntarily offered pagan sacrifices; it was only later, when the
Syrians mounted an offensive to stop the Hasmoneans, that they
directly engaged in battle against Syrian forces.

During the early years of the revolt, the Hasmoneans actually

conducted diplomatic negotiations with Antiochus, trying to reach a
peaceful resolution of their grievances, but negotiations repeatedly
broke down. It was only after the Maccabees had achieved some
significant successes that Antiochus (or his representative in
Antioch) took a conciliatory step; a letter dated October 15, 164 that
was composed in the royal court and sent to Jerusalem, offered
amnesty to anyone who wanted to return to their homes, freedom to
observe their dietary restrictions and other laws, and forgiveness for
any of their previous anti-government activity. This letter was
secured by Menelaus and brought back to Jerusalem. Some fighters
took advantage of the amnesty but most of the Hasmonean soldiers
did not.

Figure 29. Hasmonean Dynasty

The military campaigns of the Hasmoneans (Figure 29) are well
known to most people who know the Chanukah story. Judah
Maccabeus, Mattathias’ third son, appears to have been something
of a military genius and initially led the Hasmonean forces. The
Maccabean campaign was based on guerilla tactics, highly effective
propaganda, excellent intelligence, and most important, the fact
that Antiochus was occupied with another major military problem
in his realm, the revolt of Parthia, and he couldn’t bring anything
close to his full military attention to deal with the Judean uprising.
For the Maccabees, propaganda was essential in rallying the
support of the Judeans. The most significant example of
propaganda from this period is the book of Daniel; it was written at
this time partly as a polemic against the rule of the Greeks and
forecast the coming of a glorious kingdom of saints which would
succeed the four kingdoms of the “beasts.” The Greeks were cast as
one of the “beasts” which God would overthrow. By taking
advantage of politics, conditions in the empire, and propaganda, the
Hasmoneans succeeded in turning a civil war into a national war for
religious freedom. (See theChronologies of the Intertestamental
Rulers.)

In late 164, the Hasmoneans captured Jerusalem and rededicated

the temple; Antiochus IV died in the same year after becoming ill
during a major military campaign against Parthia. This was the first
significant turning point for Jewish fortunes in their revolt, since
Antiochus was survived by a single heir, his nine-year-old son,
Antiochus V Eupator. Technically Antiochus IV was a usurper; the
rightful heir was Demetrius, son of Seleucus IV, who was still being
held as a hostage in Rome, but the Roman Senate had refused to
release him. They preferred to have Syria ruled by a boy and a
regent than a potentially ambitious and vigorous young man. The
effect was that the Seleucid Empire was severely crippled in dealing
with both the major revolt in Parthia and the minor one in Judea.

Throughout the period of the struggle for Jerusalem and even

following the rededication of the temple, Menelaus remained as
high priest and Syrian forces continued to hold the Acra. The fact
that the Maccabees allowed Menelaus to continue to officiate as
high priest suggests that the situation involving Menelaus, the
hellenizers, and Antiochus was far more complex than we can even
imagine. The capture of Jerusalem by the Maccabees in 164
prompted a Syrian response, and in 163–162, a Syrian force led by
Antiochus V’s regent, the general Lysias, arrived at Jerusalem and
besieged the city. After capturing the city, Lysias had Menelaus
executed, presumably holding him responsible for the advice
Antiochus IV had been given that caused the king to become
involved in the persecutions of the Jews (or possibly for Onias’
assassination). He appointed Alcimus, an Aaronite who was a
moderate hellenizer, in his place. Then, before he could fully pacify
the city, Lysias learned that Antiochus V’s throne was being
threatened by Philip, the commander of the majority of the Seleucid
army, who was returning to Antioch from the east. Since he had to
return to Antioch immediately to defend the throne, Lysias felt
compelled to offer peace to Judea under the favorable terms of
Antiochus III.

The Maccabees accepted the Syrian peace offer, but the spirit of the
treaty was immediately broken by the Syrians who, on leaving
Jerusalem, had the city walls torn down. Lysias’ army immediately
marched to Antioch to defend against this new rival. Judah
Maccabeus then began to take steps to establish full Maccabean
control of Jerusalem; some were political. The book of 1
Maccabeesreports that in 161 he sent Jason ben Eleazar and
Eupolemus ben Johanan as envoys to Rome where supposedly they
signed a treaty with the Roman Senate. While the historical
accuracy of this event has been challenged by some scholars, there
is secure evidence that an embassy was sent to Rome in 139 by
Simon Maccabeus to strengthen the alliance with the Romans
against the Seleucid kingdom.

The departure of Lysias from Jerusalem was the pivotal moment in

the revolt. The Maccabees now had a treaty that restored the
religious freedoms they had previously enjoyed. But this wasn’t
enough; perhaps the Maccabees wanted to remove all hellenizing
influences from Jerusalem because as soon as the Syrians left, the
Hasmonean party attempted to bar Alcimus from taking office. The
Syrians responded by again sending troops to intervene and a series
of military operations in support of Alcimus’ high priesthood
ensued. In the last of these, in 160, Judah Maccabeus was killed in
battle against Bacchides at Elasa, and in a skirmish with the
Nabateans shortly afterward, John was killed. Hasmonean
leadershipwas assumed by the youngest brother Jonathan, who had
demonstrated strong military skills.

But the regency rule of Antiochus V had been cut short when in 162,
Demetrius, having escaped from Rome, had returned to Syria where
he was received as the true king. Antiochus V and his regent Lysias
were soon put to death. The Syrians were able to support Alcimus as
high priest only until 159, when he died. Then, wary of imposing
another appointee of their choice for the office and probably just as
happy to see the high priesthood vacant, the Syrians did nothing;
the Jews, still embroiled in internal factional disputes, selected no
one for the office either. Despite Josephus’ claim in Jewish
Wars (but later reversed in Antiquities), there is no historical record
of anyone serving as the high priest following Alcimus until 152,
although the high priest’s cultic religious functions must have been
performed by someone.

Two questions arise about the rebellion: once it began with a family
group from a little town, how did it grow large enough to challenge
the Syrians? And how could the rebellion sustain itself despite
repeated setbacks and continue even after attaining its objective? To
answer the first question we have to assume that whatever the
hellenizers did to prohibit Jewish practices, it was so outrageous
that it threatened the basic beliefs of a significant number of even
politically neutral Jews. We know from 1 Maccabees of the
existence of a group known as the “hasidim,” “righteous ones,” who
were devout traditionalists. The hasidim joined the revolt early and
it is a number of members of this group who were mentioned as
being slaughtered when they refused to fight on the Sabbath. The
Maccabees themselves, even though they were an Aaronite priestly
family, had no such reservations. We also must assume that the
Joarib clan of Mattathias must have been large and provided
members who immediately joined his five sons in their revolt.
Apparently these Judeans were sufficient to serve as the nucleus of
a disciplined fighting force.

The initial Maccabee resistance was not against the Syrians; it was
directed against the hellenizing Jews who had adopted pagan
practices and only secondarily against Syrian troops who arrived to
stop what essentially had become a religious civil war. After
reorienting their campaign to oppose the Syrians instead of
punishing hellenizing Jews, the Maccabees were able to sustain
their resistence by spreading throughout Judea their message that
their resistance was on behalf of all of the people. They now
asserted that their purpose was to remove Antiochus’ anti-Jewish
laws that prevented the people from following the laws of Moses.
There was no question of political independence from the Seleucids,
however. Judea had been a subject country of an outside power for
over 400 years and even the prophets of the Tanakh spoke of the
need to follow the laws of their kings, whoever they may be. Cyrus of
Persia was even said by deutero-Isaiah to be God’s anointed king.
The assumed goal of the Maccabees was simply to restore the
religious freedoms they had enjoyed ever since Persian rule; this is
the impression one gets from reading 1 Maccabees. So, returning to
our second question, once the goal of religious freedom was
reached, the rededication of the Temple and the restoration of
religious freedom, how was the Hasmonean resistence sustained?

We can understand how small groups can react violently against a

challenge to their beliefs, but it’s well known that rebellions can be
widely sustained more likely for economic reasons than religious or
idealistic ones. It’s possible that the Maccabees were able to attract
fighters to their cause after they had secured religious freedom
more by appealing to economic motives—for example, the control of
the hellenizers over land ownership—than for any idealistic reason,
or the two reasons could have co-existed with equal support.
Another factor was undoubtably the increasing instability of the
Seleucid kingdom. During the period of the Maccabean uprising,
there were several revolts among other subject provinces elsewhere
in the empire. This distracted the Seleucid government, keeping the
bulk of their military power occupied elsewhere, and allowed the
Hasmoneans to build a political and economic base and to become a
dynastic power, just as the Zadokites and Tobiads had done
generations earlier, and just as similar dynasties were forming in
other subject regions in the empire. Further, the geographical
position of Judea as a buffer between Syria and Egypt served the
Hasmoneans as a bargaining point; if the Seleucids allowed the
country to follow its own laws, then Judea could provide a certain
amount of protection in a sensitive border area. By pursuing a
careful and astute mix of military and diplomatic operations, the
Hasmoneans were able to turn their resistence into a legitimate
government that the Seleucid kings could tolerate and even support.
Aftermath of the Revolt

Now began a fascinating period during which the Hasmoneans

under Jonathan, the youngest son of Mattathias, and the Syrians
under Bacchides, the general who had defeated Judah Maccabeus,
tiptoed carefully around each other, not wanting to upset a fragile
de facto armistice. Jewish factions still battled each other in
Jerusalem and some even tried to draw the Syrians into their
conflict, but Bacchides, having the memory of the Hasmonean
defeat of three prior Syrian generals to ponder, wasn’t about to take
the bait. Instead and incredibly, he offered a generous treaty to
Jonathan guaranteeing peace, which Jonathan accepted, apparently
in exchange agreeing not to occupy Jerusalem or to contest the
continued Syrian rule of the area.

This was a watershed moment for the Hasmoneans since this treaty
afforded Jonathan the status of a recognized leader and the
guarantor of peace and stability for the Syrians in the region. The
treaty affirmed Jonathan as the de facto political leader of Judea
and appointed Simon, Jonathan’s surviving brother, as governor of
the coastal region of Palestine. This recognition also enabled
Jonathan, who set up his headquarters in Michmash and not in
Jerusalem, to consolidate Hasmonean power without any
opposition from the Syrian government. By not entering Jerusalem,
Jonathan was symbolically acknowledging that the Hasmoneans
were not challenging Syrian rule over Judea. The Syrians accepted
that the Maccabean rebellion had been directed against the anti-
Jewish policies of Antiochus IV and not against the rule of the
Seleucid government and were happy to support the presence of a
friendly stabilizing force in Judea. The region was at peace for a few
years and then the Seleucid crown was again challenged.
 Figure 30. Seleucid Judea under the Maccabees

A rival to Demetrius I’s throne, Alexander Balas, a pretender who

claimed to be the son of Antiochus IV, appeared, and having the
backing of the rulers of Egypt and Pergamon in Anatolia, challenged
Demetrius for the crown. Both Demetrius and Balas contacted
Jonathan with offers to secure his loyalty and Hasmonean support.
According to 1 Maccabees, Demetrius had either acknowledged or
appointed Jonathan as high priest in 153; the existing details about
this are uncertain, but Jonathan eventually threw his support to
Balas. Alexander Balas succeeded in overthrowing Demetrius in 150
and accorded Jonathan royal honors. Under Jonathan and with
Judea remaining as a province under Seleucid control, the
Hasmoneans began to expand their territory (Figure 30). Then in
yet another Seleucid war with Egypt, in 145 Balas was defeated by
Ptolemy VI and the Seleucid throne was taken by Demetrius’ son
Demetrius II Nicator.

A period of unstable relations, treachery, and internal challenges for

Seleucid rulership then ensued and Judea was a victim of the
turmoil. Diodorus Trypho, a general under Demetrius II, rebelled,
seeking to rule the empire as regent of the young son of Alexander
Balas. Trypho had promised Jonathan to make his brother Simon
the governor of all the coastlands from Egypt to Tyre in exchange
for Jonathan's support, but instead Trypho betrayed him,
entrapping and capturing Jonathan in 143 and eventually
murdering him in 142. Simon, the last surviving brother, assumed
leadership in 143. Simon, however, did not contest the overall
Seleucid authority over Judea, he simply ignored Trypho and
recognized Demetrius II. In return, a grateful Demetrius granted
Judea full immunity from any taxes, thus basically conceding its
independence from Syria. Simon immediately besieged the Seleucid
garrison at the Acra, which soon fell; he also occupied the hellenized
cities of Beth-zur and Joppa.

Hasmonean Dynasty
In 140, Simon proclaimed the creation of a new dynasty under the
Hasmoneans; according to 1 Maccabees this was ratified by “the
priests and the people and ... the elders of the land.” With Simon,
the legitimacy of a Hasmonean high priest was finally settled; the
Hasidic party finally could justify a non-Zadokite in the office,
recognizing that since Onias IV had fled to Egypt about twenty years
earlier, the Zadokite family had forfeited any claim to the high
priesthood. I mentioned above that in 139 Simon sent an embassy
to Rome to strengthen the alliance with the Romans against the
Seleucid kingdom. Then in 138, Antiochus VII Sidetes ascended to
the Seleucid throne and immediately demanded that Judea give up
the Hellenist cities it had annexed. Simon refused, provoking a
military clash near Gezer in which the Judeans prevailed. Simon’s
life was cut short in 134 when his son-in-law, in a conspiracy
instigated by the Seleucids, assassinated him. His two oldest sons
were murdered at the same time but his third son, John Hyrcanus,
was warned and was able to escape. He succeeded his father in
Judea’s leadership.

Hyrcanus had to face immediate demands from Antiochus VII. At

the beginning of his rule, he was compelled to furnish troops to
Antiochus for the Seleucid campaign against Parthia. When the
Judean troops arrived, however, Antiochus was dissatisfied—
perhaps with their numbers—and dismissed them. Then in 131,
Antiochus attacked Jerusalem with a large force, and in a siege that
lasted more than two years, threatened its destruction. Hyrcanus
had to endure humiliating terms, including paying a large ransom,
providing hostages, and permitting the destruction of the city’s
walls, but was able to negotiate not acceding to Antiochus’ initial
demand to have a Syrian garrison restored to the Acra. While
Antiochus recognized Hyrcanus’ rule over Judea, Hyrcanus had to
accept Judea’s status of a subject domain of the Seleucids. Once this
status of Judea was settled, relationships between the states
returned to civility. For the next twenty years, Judea continued to
remain in the Seleucid sphere of influence and further challenges to
the Seleucid crown resulted in drawing Hasmonean troops to the
aid of one or another contender.

Figure 31. Political Palestine, 130 BCE

But events in the ever-shrinking Seleucid kingdom were anything

but stable (Figure 31). Antiochus was killed in 129 in a battle with
the Parthians; the resulting disorder in Seleucia gave Hyrcanus the
opportunity to expand Judea’s boundaries. During the following
years, the Seleucids were plagued with constant challenges for the
crown and external setbacks such as provinces like Judea breaking
away and wars with Egypt, Parthia, and Armenia. In addition, the
threat of Rome was always present for Syria. The list of Seleucid
rulers in the last half of the second century shows the extent of the
internal strife for control of the throne. During the last decade of
John Hyrcanus’ rule and high priesthood, Seleucid interference,
although present, was diminishing. During this period, the
occasional interferences that arose in the Hasmonean rule of Judea
by the Seleucids were cut short by internal struggles for control of
Seleucia’s throne. Also at this time, the empire was rapidly breaking
apart as one province after another seceded. In Judea’s immediate
vicinity, the Ituraeans of Lebanon, the Ammonites of the
Transjordan, and the Arabian Nabateans were other provinces that
broke away from Seleucid control to become independent. By the
end of the century, the only territory that remained of the once-
sprawling Seleucid Empire consisted of Antioch and a few nearby
cities.

Figure 32. Hasmonean Expansion

While the Seleucid Empire was crumbling, the Hasmoneans were

expanding their sphere of influence and under Hyrcanus I, the area
under Judean control grew to over four times the size that it had
been at the time of the Maccabean revolt. Hyrcanus, using a new
mercenary army he had assembled, added the areas shaded in
medium green in the Figure 32 map during his comparatively long
reign of thirty years. Since the Seleucid kingdom was roiled with
internal turmoil during most of his reign, Hyrcanus was able to
exploit their lack of interference with Judea to increase Judea’s
boundaries. In 128, Hyrcanus invaded the Transjordan, ancient
Moab, and invested the city of Medeba, capturing it after a six-
month siege, and then took a number of other cities in the region. In
about 126, Hyrcanus embarked on an extensive campaign against
Samaria, which appealed to Seleucia for help. After a siege of the
city of Samaria that lasted for more than a year, the troops provided
by Antiochus IX for its defense were defeated, Samaria was
destroyed and its inhabitants were sent into slavery. During this
period the Judean army overran Samaria, occupied Scythopolis,
reduced Shechem, and destroyed the Samaritan temple on Mount
Gerezim. Hyrcanus’ campaign against Idumaea in about 125 is
particularly noteworthy. Josephus reports that he converted the
Idumaeans to Judaism by force, having those who refused
conversion murdered; such forced conversions were an
unprecedented action in Jewish history. By 115 to 110 Judea had
become totally independent of any Seleucid influence.

The conquered territories became politically part of the Jewish

state, but culturally they probably changed not at all. Jewish law
was imposed and Jewish holidays were instituted; likely the only
significant result was that markets were closed on the Sabbath. The
custom of these Semitic provinces was for males to be circumcised,
so forced conversions had little effect on conforming to this practice
although it was obviously a sore point (!?) for men living in the
captured Hellenist cities. Some groups did not accept the rule of the
Judeans; a community of Idumaeans fled to Egypt so they could
continue to practice their religion. Undoubtably the inhabitants of
these captured regions engaged in some form of religious
syncretism. It is interesting to consider that Christianity, a sect that
was quite ambivalent about traditional Jewish practices, had its
roots in the Galilee region, a part of Palestine that was annexed late
in the Hasmonean period.

During the period of Hyrcanus’ rule, a number of new political

parties made their first appearance, including the Pharisees and
Sadducees (cf. Figure 21). Until this time any political power not
held by the Hasmoneans was associated with the Hasidic party and
the Hellenist party. The hasidim consisted of the most traditional
Jews; this party had been somewhat aligned with the Maccabeans
during the war for religious freedom but most broke with the
Hasmoneans over their occupying the office of high priest. The
Hasidic position insisted on religious autonomy, strict adherence to
the Torah’s laws, and total rejection of hellenistic culture. The
Hellenists consisted of those who supported assimilation with
Greek culture and this group shared strong affinities with the
Hasmoneans. By the time of Hyrcanus’ reign, as Josephus reports,
the hasidim group had generally evolved into the Pharisees, a name
that some scholars believe came from the Hebrew perushim,
meaning “those who separate themselves,” and some scholars
believe the Essene sect (discussed below) was another Hasidic
offshoot.
In my introduction I mentioned that the idea of the evolution of the
rabbis from the Pharisees, as is commonly believed, is a simplistic
viewpoint and not quite correct. It appears that the early Pharisees
were mainly a political group and only later, by the first century
BCE, had evolved into a religious sect. If you read the Talmud (e.g.,
BT Sotah 22b) or the Dead Sea Scroll Nahum Pesher(4QNahP)—
and especially the book of Matthew (Mt 23:1–36)—you’ll
immediately notice the venom that these writings pour on the
Pharisees. Many Pharisees were reviled for their ostentatious piety;
for example, some were ridiculed for wearing in public not one, but
two sets of tefillin! The later Pharisaic sect did not directly evolve
into the rabbinic movement; it was more likely that earlier offshoot
sects of the Pharisees did. Matthew’s anonymous author of the first
Gospel collected some Jewish writings about the Pharisees from the
mid-first century CE; these writings, in a common form of Jewish
admonitions, captured much of the disgust many Jews felt about
their pietistic pretensions.

The more traditional-leaning Hellenists, meanwhile, had evolved

into the Sadducees, ts’dukim in Hebrew, a term some think may be
linked to “Zadok,” the high priestly dynasty that ended during the
Maccabean war, although the root means “right, just, or proper.”
The Sadducees never fully assimilated into Hellenism; they felt that
the Torah laws did not have to be strictly followed but their
observance could be modified to conform with the current times.
The doctrinal split between the Pharisees and Sadducees, and
between the Pharisees and Hasmoneans, can be traced to this
period; by this time the Pharisees had come to view the Hasmonean
high priesthood as illegitimate and the Sadducees as being too
hellenistically secular.

Essene Subgroups

Anshe Ma’aseh (men of miraculous deeds)

Banna’im (the builders)
Hashsha’im (the observers of secrecy)
Kehala Kaddisha (holy congregation)
Kesherim (the blameless ones)
Naḥ um (most holy ones)
Nekiyye ha-Da’at (pure-minded)
Watikim (the men of firm principles)
̣ et (fearers of sin)
Yire’e H
Zanu’a or Kadosh (saints)
Zenu’im (the chaste ones)
The third group that we know existed as part of Judea’s political
landscape of this period was the Essenes. Scholars regard this group
as more of a religious sect than a political party. The etymology of
the Essene name is unknown but the sect is mentioned using that
name by a number of ancient writers. The first to mention them was
the Roman Pliny the Elder (died ca. 79 CE) in his Natural
History where he related that the Essenes do not marry, possess no
money, and “had existed for thousands of generations.” He referred
to a settlement near the Dead Sea. The group was also mentioned by
Philo and in detail by Josephus, who gave an extensive description
of them in Jewish Wars, where he claimed first-hand knowledge of
their practices. The Essenes were never a homogeneous group (see
the sidebar); they called themselves by a number of different names
and their communities were to be found all throughout Palestine
and possibly in Egypt. A majority of scholars believe that the
community at Qumran was an Essene subgroup because of their
extreme isolation and Pliny’s reference. The Essenes grew out of the
roots of Enochic Judaism and many of the hasidim became Essenes.
The Pharisees and some Zadokites who joined the Essene sect were
those who strongly objected to the Hasmonean high priesthood; in
fact, some scholars believe that the sect began to form in response
to Simon’s ascension as high priest.

In secular politics, Hyrcanus I was active in soliciting relations with

outside powers. Rome, which had been friendly to Judea under
Simon, continued to maintain a good relationship and required that
their allies in the region, such as Athens, Pergamum, and Ptolemaic
Egypt were to do so as well. It appears that the Roman Senate
adopted two resolutions establishing a treaty of friendship with
Judea at this time. Internally, an inscription found on coins minted
under Hyrcanus I, “Johanan the High Priest and the Assembly of
the Jews,” shows that some kind of political advisory group existed.
It’s possible that Hyrcanus considered himself primarily as high
priest and shared the rule of Judea with a governing body of some
kind, or the body could have served a legitimizing function for
Hyrcanus’ decrees. As Hyrcanus was not a member of the Zadokite
line, his acting as high priest was an irritant to the Pharisees, but
when he attempted to assume the title of king late in his rule,
traditionalist objections became intense, since they believed that
only a descendent of David could be Judea’s king. Thwarted by the
Pharisees, Hyrcanus severed relations with them and abolished
many of the laws that they had championed.

John Hyrcanus had designated his wife, whose name is not known,
to succeed him as Judea’s ruler, but when he died in 104, his oldest
son, Judah Aristobulus, imprisoned her and seized control and the
high priesthood with some assistance from his brother Antigonus,
who died in the same year of unclear reasons. According to
Josephus, Aristobulus’ wife Alexandra Salome played a major role
in his death, which was accomplished by some form of psychological
torment. While Hyrcanus had a Hasidic background and was
sensitive to the religious sensibilities of the traditionalists, it
appears that his son lacked a traditional background in his
education because he was completely Hellenist in his policies.
Aristobulus was the first Hasmonean high priest to formally
proclaim himself king; apparently Pharisaic opposition could not
prevent him from doing so. His short rule of one year was
characterized both by brutality and cruelty; he imprisoned three of
his four brothers in addition to his mother and everyone but one
brother died of starvation. During Aristobulus’ reign, the Jewish
assembly known as the knesset became known by its Greek
name synedrion, “sanhedrin” in Hebrew. Aristobulus expanded
Judea’s territory into the north, annexing the Galilee region of the
Itureans and like his father, judaizing its inhabitants. His death in
103 was probably a result of illness.
 Figure 33. Hasmonean Conquests

Upon Aristobulus’ death, his sole surviving brother, Alexander

Yannai (or Jannaeus), was released from prison by his brother’s
wife Alexandra and proclaimed high priest and king. She then
married him in a levirate marriage but as he was also high priest,
this was a violation of Torah law and greatly upset the
traditionalists. Yannai was a vigorous but ruthless ruler. He
apparently had been disliked by his father and had been banned
from Jerusalem; consequently he spent his youth in the Galilee
where he became strongly indoctrinated by hellenistic thought. His
reign was characterized by constant and almost indiscriminate
warfare to acquire new territories (Figure 33). On becoming king,
he immediately began a military campaign to capture the Hellenist
cities on the coast and subsequently annexed Iturea, east of the
upper Jordan valley. Later in his rule he added the area of Gaza and
its surroundings, but his forays against the Nabateans were not as
successful; much of the territory initially gained was lost within
several years.

Politically, Yannai was merciless in his persecution of the Pharisees;

he used his Greek mercenary soldiers against any groups who
opposed him. One incident related by Josephus that occurred late in
Yannai’s career concerned Yannai’s mockery of the Sukkot “Water
Libation Ceremony,” a highlight of the festival observance. As high
priest, he was to perform the ceremony by pouring the water on the
altar; instead he poured it on his feet. The outraged crowd of
pilgrims pelted him with their etrogim (citrons). According to
Josephus, Yannai turned his troops on the worshipers and some six
thousand were killed. This incident undoubtably was a significant
contributing factor to the civil war that began within a year.

The civil war was triggered in the aftermath of a battle between

Yannai and the Nabateans in which Yannai’s forces were defeated.
Yannai’s earlier capture of Gaza had seriously interfered with the
Nabatean trade routes to the Mediterranean; the Nabateans went to
war to force Yannai to relinquish the territory he had earlier
annexed including Gaza. When Yannai returned to Jerusalem after
his defeat, he faced a rebellion in progress; a sizeable number of
Pharisees and other Judeans had begun a campaign to force
Yannai’s overthrow. The resulting civil war lasted over six years and
cost some 50,000 Judean lives; toward the end of the war the
Seleucids became involved—at the rebels’ request—and initially
defeated Yannai at Shechem. But then the rebellious Judeans,
realizing that a victorious Syria could again put Judea under Selucid
rule, turned against the Seleucid army, which was routed and
withdrew. According to Josephus, a vengeful Yannai then had 800
of the rebels arrested, brought to Jerusalem, and crucified. Before
executing them, however, he had the throats of their wives and
children cut while they watched. This account is corroborated by
the Nahum Pesher (4QNahP) where the Judean civil war and
Yannai’s brutal retribution are specifically mentioned. By the end of
Yannai’s reign, the acrimony between the Pharisees and Sadducees,
who supported Yannai, was at an all-time high.

First-Century CE Jewish Sects

Pharisees
Saducees
Zadokites
Boethusians
Herodians
Hellenists
Baptists
Ebionites
Essenes
Zealots
Nazoreans
Nazarenes
Gnostics

Cerinthians
Scribes
(proto) Karaites
Hemerobaptists
Galileans
Rechabites
̣ asidim
H
Kenites
Christians
Masbothei
Sicarii
mystics
apocalypticists

By mentioning only the Pharisee and Sadducee parties and the

Essene sect, I don’t want to give the impression that these groups
were the only political and religious groups in Palestine at the time.
These three were the major ones. By the mid-first century CE some
thirty different parties can be identified; a partial list is shown in the
sidebar. While we know the names of many of the groups that
existed, we know little of their members’ religious beliefs. Some
may have been apolitical, support or opposition of the high
priesthood was a religious and not political stance. Some groups
probably were in general alignment with either the Sadducees or
Pharisees. Some were probably quite small but their names came to
be preserved in contemporary writings because they were so radical,
particularly the Zealots and Sicarii (literally “dagger-men”). Despite
the fact that so many sects existed and flourished during the late
Hellenistic period, a vast majority of Jews belonged to no sect,
either religious or political.

Although he had two sons, Alexander Yannai named his wife,

Alexandra Salome, as his heir. This was a common practice among
Hellenist rulers but this was the first time this had been done in
Jewish history—although John Hyrcanus had attempted to do it.
Yannai died in 76, and Alexandra designated her older son,
Hyrcanus II, to serve as high priest because that role was forbidden
to women. She appointed her younger son Aristobulus II as the
military commander. Under Alexandra and in a complete reversal
from Yannai’s policies, the Pharisees were treated very well; the
reasons for this are completely unknown. The legend grew that
when Yannai lay dying, he had instructed Alexandra to make peace
with them. Whether or not this was true, the Pharisees did so well
under her rule that they began to persecute many of Yannai’s
Sadducee partisans. The period of her rule was peaceful for the
most part. She was able to keep the kingdom secure by maintaining
good relations with the surrounding countries and bribing their
rulers when necessary. The rabbis of the Talmud were most
complimentary in discussing her reign.

Although Alexandra had named Hyrcanus II as her successor, three

months after her death in 67, her younger son Aristobulus II seized
the throne. Hyrcanus was not a very aggressive or ambitious person
and did not initially resist his younger brother, who left him to hold
the high priesthood in peace. But Hyrcanus had powerful friends
who preferred that he remain king; one of these friends was
Antipater, the son of the governor of Idumaea under Yannai and a
friend of Yannai’s. Through Antipater, Hyrcanus also had the
support of the Nabataean king and Antipater attracted the backing
of some Iturean nobles as well. This powerful group of nobles
persuaded Hyrcanus to resist his overthrow and the result was a
civil war that ebbed and flowed over the next thirty years. From
Josephus’ account of this period it appears that the Pharisee and
Sadducee factions played virtually no role in the war between the
brothers, which culminated with the ending of the Hasmonean
dynasty and the loss of Judea’s independence.

In 66, the Roman general Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, known as

Pompey and who had been given the task of subduing any
opposition to Rome in Asia Minor, defeated the Armenian king in
Anatolia, Mithridates of Pontus, and in 65 Roman troops arrived in
Syria. Almost immediately various delegations from Judea
approached the Romans in Damascus; separate contingents from
each of the warring brothers and a third group, possibly
representing the Pharisees, wanting to abolish Hasmonean rule
altogether. When word of these delegations and of the state of
affairs in Judea reached Pompey, after some initial indecision he
decided to back Hyrcanus II. Aristobulus refused to yield to his
brother; however, so in 63 Pompey entered Jerusalem, massacred a
large number of people, and forcibly removed Aristobulus. Then to
ensure Aristobulus’ future behavior, Pompey took as a hostage
Alexander, his oldest son. Hyrcanus was restored to Judea’s
leadership but now served only as a vassal of Rome. He was no
longer king; now he was ethnarch, “leader of the people,” but
remained as high priest. He was able to keep his position mainly
through the skillful offices of Antipater, who was adept at
cultivating the friendship of whichever Roman official held power at
that moment. But this change in Judean leadership and Pompey’s
backing of Hyrcanus had little effect on Judean politics; it actually
only served to intensify the Judean civil war.

But now Rome could not take an active part in suppressing the
partisan dispute since it had become embroiled in its own factional
warfare between Pompey and Julius Caesar and later between
Octavian and Mark Antony. Roman troops only responded with
force when overt rebellions twice broke out. The first, an organized
military challenge to Hyrcanus, occurred in 57–55, when Alexander
(Aristobulus’ son), who had earlier escaped from Pompey’s custody,
led a rebellion that was put down by the Roman general Aulus
Gabinius. A second rebellion was triggered in 53 after the Parthians,
who were still smarting from the defeat of Mithridates, defeated
Crassus at Carrhae. This revolt began in Galilee in 53 and was led by
another partisan of Aristobulus, one Pitholaus, and lasted more
than two years. Under Gaius Cassius Longinus, then a senior official
in Syria (and one of the future assassins of Julius Caesar), the
Roman forces finally quashed the uprising and captured and
executed Pitholaus. But Cassius soon had other problems to keep
him busy; in 51 a light force of Parthians invaded Syria and besieged
Cassius in Antioch. After about a month of fighting, not having
sufficient forces to capture the city, they withdrew after plundering
towns in the region.
 Figure 34. Pompey's Settlements

After Pompey had occupied Jerusalem, the independence of Judea

had basically come to an end. Pompey divided the country into a
number of regions and only Idumaea, Peraea, and Galilee remained
as part of the state (Figure 34). The other regions reverted to the
control of their ancestral inhabitants and Rome appointed military
governors to manage their affairs. Later, as a province of the Roman
Empire under Herod, Judea was divided somewhat differently, but
its overall size remained about the same.

Pompey died in 47 leaving Caesar in undisputed control of the

Roman Republic. Earlier Caesar had been inclined to appoint
Aristobulus as ethnarch but Aristobulus had unexpectedly died in
49, so Caesar reconfirmed Hyrcanus in both his positions. However,
he made Antipater a Roman citizen and nominated him
as procurator (Rome’s representative) for Judea, a position
superior to Hyrcanus. Then the chaos in Rome came to a peak in 44
when Julius Caesar was assassinated and the Romans again became
preoccupied with their internal affairs. Meanwhile, unrest
continued in Judea when in 42, Antipater was assassinated,
possibly by a Hyrcanus factionalist. Following this, Mark Antony,
who had been a confidant of Caesar’s, appointed Antipater’s sons,
Herod and Phasael, as tetrarchs (governors) of Galilee and
Jerusalem respectively. With Phasael’s presence in Jerusalem,
Hyrcanus continued to be virtually powerless, while Herod’s
activities in the Galilee roiled that already troubled region.

The events in Rome in the years following Caesar’s assassination

had thrown the Roman government into total disarray and in 40 the
Parthians took this internal turmoil as an opportunity to attack
Syria again, this time with a considerably larger force, with
detachments attacking into Palestine. The Parthian invasion gave
Aristobulus’ second son, Mattathias Antigonus, the opening he had
been seeking. He had been involved in several abortive attempts to
overthrow Hyrcanus, but the Parthian invasion presented a new
way for him to gain the throne. He sent a large bribe to the Parthian
king and the promise of slave women, if the Parthians would assist
him. An agreement was reached and a detachment was detailed to
assist Antigonus in capturing Jerusalem; these forces met
Antigonus at Mt. Carmel where the combined army began to move
on Jerusalem, defeating all opposition on the way. The Parthians
seized Jerusalem, arrested Phasael, and deposed Hyrcanus.
Antigonus cut off one of his uncle’s ears to make him unfit to serve
as high priest and the Parthians exiled him to Mesopotamia where
the Jewish population received him with great esteem. Antigonus
was installed as king and high priest under Parthian protection.
Now under Parthian arrest, Phasael committed suicide. Earlier
Herod had escaped being captured and fled, first to Masada, and
then was able to make his way to Rome.

Antigonus only ruled for three years. Herod was able to put his trip
to Rome to good use; he succeeded in having the Roman Senate
appoint him as king—but they specified no territory for him to rule;
instead they assigned him the task of retaking Palestine from the
Parthians. So, in 39 with a detachment of Roman troops and other
forces he was able to recruit from among the Jews, mainly
Idumaeans and Galileeans, Herod gradually managed to capture the
districts of northern Judea, Samaria, Galilee, and Idumaea. In 38
the Parthian king was killed during a skirmish in northern Syria
against the Romans leaving the Parthians with no leader of
comparable skill to replace him. Almost immediately, the Parthians
withdrew most of their troops from Judea. Then in 37, now having
eleven Roman legions at his disposal under the command of Sosius,
Mark Antony’s general, plus his army of troops from the provinces,
he was able to take Jerusalem. The capture of Jerusalem was
marred by the Jewish soldiers in Herod’s army slaughtering a
considerable number of the inhabitants of the besieged city and
Herod, only with great difficulty, finally managed to curb the
massacre.

With the capture of Jerusalem in 37, Antigonus was seized and sent
to Antioch where he was executed on the orders of Mark Antony.
The rule of the Hasmonean dynasty ended. Herod was now the
client-king of Judea under Rome. Within eight years after Herod’s
rule began, the paranoiac king had executed the last surviving
Hasmoneans, his wife Mariamne and their two sons, Aristobulus
and Alexander. The period of the Herodian dynasty and Roman
control of Palestine are topics that are familiar to most of you, so at
this point we will end the class.

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