The history of Judaism » Hellenistic Judaism (4th century bce–2nd
century ce) » The Greek period (332–63 bce) » Hellenism and Judaism
Contact between Greeks and Semites goes back to Minoan and Mycenaean
times and is reflected in certain terms used by Homer and other early
Greek authors. It is not until the end of the 4th century, however, that
Jews are first mentioned by Greek writers, who praise them as brave,
self-disciplined, and philosophical.
After being conquered by Alexander the Great (332 bce), Palestine
became part of the Hellenistic kingdom of Ptolemaic Egypt, the policy of
which was to permit the Jews considerable cultural and religious
freedom. When in 198 Palestine was conquered by King Antiochus III
(reigned 223–187 bce) of the Syrian Seleucid dynasty, the Jews were
treated even more liberally, being granted a charter to govern
themselves by their own constitution—namely, the Torah. Greek influence,
however, was already apparent. Some of the 29 Greek cities of Palestine
attained a high level of Hellenistic culture. The mid-3rd century-bce
Zenon papyri, which contain the correspondence of the business manager
of a high Ptolemaic official, present a picture of a wealthy Jew,
Tobiah, who through commercial contact with the Ptolemies acquired a
veneer of Hellenism, to judge at least from the pagan and religious
expressions in his Greek letters. His son and especially his grandsons
became ardent Hellenists. By the beginning of the 2nd century, the
influence of the Hellenistic Age in Judaea was quite strong; indeed, it
has been argued that, if the Seleucids had not forcibly intervened in
Jewish affairs, Judaean Judaism would have become even more syncretistic
than Alexandrian Judaism. The apocryphal writer Jesus ben Sirach so
bitterly denounced the Hellenizers in Jerusalem (c. 180 bce) that he was
forced by the authorities to temper his words.
In the early part of the 2nd century bce, Hellenizing Jews took
control of the high priesthood itself. As high priest from 175 to 172,
Jason established Jerusalem as a Greek city, with Greek educational
institutions. His ouster by an even more extreme Hellenizing faction,
which established Menelaus (died 162 bce) as high priest, occasioned a
civil war in which Menelaus was supported by the wealthy aristocrats and
Jason by the masses. The Syrian king Antiochus IV Epiphanes, who
initially granted exemptions and privileges to the Jews, intervened at
the request of Menelaus’s party. Antiochus’s promulgation of decrees
against the practice of Judaism led in 167 bce to the successful revolt
of the priest Mattathias (died 166 bce) and his five sons—the Maccabees
(Hasmoneans; see also Hasmonean dynasty). It has been conjectured that
one of the Dead Sea Scrolls, The War of the Sons of Light Against the
Sons of Darkness, mirrors the fierceness of this struggle.
The extreme tactics employed by the Hasmoneans in their struggle with
Hellenizing Jews, whose children they forcibly circumcised, indicate the
inroads that Hellenism had already made. On the whole, the chief
supporters of the Hellenizers were members of the wealthy urban
population, while the Maccabees were supported by the peasants and the
urban masses. Yet there is evidence that the ruthlessness exhibited by
the Hasmoneans toward the Greek cities of Palestine had political rather
than cultural origins and that in fact they were fighting for personal
power no less than for the Torah. Indeed, some of the Jews who fought on
the side of the Maccabees were idol worshippers. In any event, the
Maccabees soon reached a modus vivendi with Hellenism: thus, Jonathan
(died 143/142 bce), according to the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus
(c. 38–c. 100 ce), negotiated a treaty of friendship with Sparta;
Aristobulus I (died 103 bce) actually called himself Philhellene (a
lover of Hellenism); and Alexander Jannaeus (died 76 bce) hired Greek
mercenaries and inscribed his coins in Greek as well as in Hebrew. Greek
influence reached its peak under King Herod I of Judaea (reigned 37–4
bce), who built a Greek theatre, amphitheatre, and hippodrome in or near
Jerusalem.
The history of Judaism » Hellenistic Judaism (4th century bce–2nd
century ce) » The Greek period (332–63 bce) » Social, political, and
religious divisions
During the Hellenistic period the priests were both the wealthiest class
and the strongest political group among the Jews of Jerusalem. The
wealthiest of the priests were the members of the Oniad family, who held
the hereditary office of high priest until they were replaced by the
Hasmoneans; the Temple that they supervised also functioned as a bank,
where the wealth of the Temple was stored and where private individuals
also deposited their money. From a social and economic point of view,
therefore, Josephus is justified in calling the government of Judaea a
theocracy. Opposition to the priests’ oppressive rule arose among an
urban middle-class group known as scribes (soferim), who based their
interpretation of and instruction in the Torah on an oral tradition
probably going back to the time of the return from the Babylonian Exile
(538 bce and after). A special group of scribes known as Hasidim, or
“Pietists,” became the forerunners of the Pharisees, or
“Separatists”—middle-class Jewish scholars who reinterpreted the Torah
and the prophetic writings to meet the needs of their times. The Hasidim
joined the Hasmoneans in the struggle against the Hellenizers, though on
religious rather than political grounds.
Josephus held that the Pharisees and the other Jewish parties were
philosophical schools, and some modern scholars have argued that the
groupings were primarily along economic and social lines; but the chief
distinctions among them were religious and go back well before the
Maccabean revolt. Some modern scholars have sought to interpret the
Pharisees’ opposition to the Sadducees—wealthy, conservative Jews who
accepted the Torah alone as authoritative—as based on an urban-rural
dichotomy, but a very large share of Pharisaic concern was with
agricultural matters. To associate the rabbis with urbanization seems a
distortion. The chief support for the Pharisees came from the lower
classes, whether in the country or in the city.
The equation of Pharisaic with “normative” Judaism can no longer be
supported, at any rate not before the destruction of the Temple in 70
ce. According to the Palestinian Talmud (the annotations and
interpretations of the Oral Law compiled by Palestinian Jewish scholars
in the 3rd and 4th centuries ce), there were 24 types of “heretics” in
Palestine in 70 ce, thus indicating much divergence among Jews; this
picture is confirmed by Josephus, who notes numerous instances of
religious leaders who claimed to be prophets and who obtained
considerable followings.
The chief doctrine of the Pharisees was that the Oral Law had been
revealed to Moses at the same time as the Written Law. In their exegesis
and interpretation of this oral tradition, particularly under the rabbi
Hillel (1st century bce–1st century ce), the Pharisees were flexible,
and their regard for the public won them considerable support. That the
Maccabean ruler John Hyrcanus I (reigned 135–104 bce) broke with them
and that Josephus set their number at merely “more than 6,000” at the
time of King Herod indicates that they were less numerous and less
influential than Josephus would have his readers believe. The Pharisees
stressed the importance of performing all the commandments, including
those that appeared to be of only minor significance; those who were
particularly strict in their observance of the Levitical rules were
known as ḥaverim (“companions”). They believed in the providential
guidance of the universe, in angels, in reward and punishment in the
world to come, and in resurrection of the dead, all of which were
opposed by the Sadducees. However, in finding a modus vivendi with
Hellenism, at least in form and in terminology, the Pharisees did not
differ greatly from the Sadducees. Indeed, the supreme council of the
Great Synagogue (or Great Assembly) of the Pharisees was modeled on
Hellenistic religious and social associations. Because they did not take
an active role in fostering the rebellion against Rome in 66–70 ce,
their leader, Johanan ben Zakkai, obtained Roman permission to establish
an academy at Yavneh (Jamnia), where in effect the Pharisees replaced
the cult of the Temple with a regimen of study and prayer.
The Sadducees and their subsidiary group, the Boethusians
(Boethosaeans), who were identified with the great landowners and
priestly families, were more deeply influenced by Hellenization. The
rise of the Pharisees may thus be seen, in a sense, as a reaction
against the more profound Hellenization favoured by the Sadducees, who
were allied with the philhellenic Hasmoneans. From the time of John
Hyrcanus the Sadducees generally held a higher position than the
Pharisees and were favoured by the Jewish rulers. Religiously more
circumscribed than the Pharisees, they rejected the idea of a revealed
oral interpretation of the Torah, even though they had their own
tradition, the sefer gezerot (“book of decrees” or “decisions”). They
similarly rejected the inspiration of the prophetic books of the Bible,
as well as the Pharisaic beliefs in angels, rewards and punishments in
the world to come, providential governance of human events, and
resurrection of the dead. For them Judaism centred on the Temple; but,
about 10 years before the Temple’s destruction in 70 ce, the Pharisees
prevented the Sadducees from entering it, and in effect the Sadducees
disappeared from Jewish life.
Not constituting any particular party were the unlearned rural masses
known as ʿamme ha-aretz (“people of the land”), who were found among
both the Pharisees and the Sadducees and even among the Samaritans. The
ʿamme ha-aretz did not give the prescribed tithes, did not observe the
laws of purity, and were neglectful of the laws of prayer; so great was
the antagonism between them and the learned Pharisees that the biblical
verse “Cursed be he who lies with any kind of beast” was applied to
their daughters. The antipathy was reciprocated, for in the same passage
in the Babylonian Talmud (the annotations and interpretations of the
Oral Law compiled by Babylonian Jewish scholars in the 5th century ce)
are added the words, “Greater is the hatred wherewith the ʿamme ha-aretz
hate the scholar than the hatred wherewith the heathens hate Israel.”
That there was social mobility, however, is clear from the Talmudic
dictum, “Heed the sons of the ʿamme ha-aretz, for they will be the
living source of the Torah.”
Proselytes (converts) to Judaism, though not constituting a class,
became increasingly numerous in Palestine and especially in the Diaspora
(the Jews living beyond Palestine). Scholarly estimates of the Jewish
population of this era range from 700,000 to 5,000,000 in Palestine and
from 2,000,000 to 5,000,000 in the Diaspora, the prevailing opinion
being that about one-tenth of the population of the Mediterranean world
at the beginning of the Christian era was Jewish. Such numbers represent
a considerable increase from previous eras and must have included large
numbers of proselytes. In a probable allusion to proselytism, in 139 bce
the Jews of Rome were charged by the praetor with attempting to
contaminate Roman morals with their religion. The first large-scale
conversions were conducted by John Hyrcanus and Aristobulus I, who in
130 and 103 bce, respectively, forced the people of Idumaea in southern
Palestine and the people of Ituraea in northern Palestine to become
Jews. The eagerness of the Pharisees to win converts is attested in The
Gospel According to Matthew (23:15), which states that the Pharisees
would “traverse sea and land to make a single proselyte.” To be sure,
some of the proselytes, according to Josephus, did return to their pagan
ways, but the majority apparently remained true to their new religion.
In addition, there were many “sympathizers” with Judaism (known as
sebomenoi, “fearers of the Lord”), who observed one or more Jewish
practices without being fully converted.
Outside the pale of Judaism in most, though not all, respects were
the Samaritans, who, like the Sadducees, refused to recognize the
validity of the Oral Law; in fact, the break between the Sadducees and
the Samaritans did not occur until the conquest of Shechem by John
Hyrcanus (128 bce). Like the later so-called Qumrān covenanters (the
monastic group associated with the Dead Sea Scrolls), they were opposed
to the Jewish priesthood and the cult of the Temple, regarded Moses as a
messianic figure, and forbade the revelation of esoteric doctrines to
outsiders.
Scholars have revised the conception of a “normative” Pharisaic
Judaism dominant in Palestine and a deviant Judaism dominant in the
Diaspora. On the one hand, the picture of normative Judaism is broader
than at first believed, and it is clear that there were many differences
of emphasis within the Pharisaic party. On the other hand, supposed
differences between Alexandrian and Palestinian Judaism are not as great
as had been formerly thought. In Palestine, no less than in the
Diaspora, there were deviations from Pharisaic standards.
Despite the attempts of the Pharisaic leaders to restrain the wave of
Greek influence, they themselves showed at least superficial
Hellenization. In the first place, as many as 2,500 to 3,000 words of
Greek origin are found in the Talmudic corpus, and they supply important
terms in the fields of law, government, science, religion, technology,
and everyday life, especially in the popular sermons preached by the
rabbis. When preaching, the Talmudic rabbis often gave the Greek
translation of biblical verses for the benefit of those who understood
only Greek. The prevalence of Greek in ossuary (burial) inscriptions and
the discovery of Greek papyri in the Dead Sea caves confirm the
widespread use of Greek, though it seems few Jews really mastered it.
Again, there was a superficial Hellenization in the frequent adoption of
Greek names, even by the rabbis; and there is evidence (Talmud, Soṭa [a
tractate in the Mishna]) of a school at the beginning of the 2nd century
ce that had 500 students of “Greek wisdom.” At the end of the 2nd
century, long after the rabbis prohibited the people from teaching their
sons Greek (117), Rabbi Judah ha-Nasi (135–220), the editor of the
Mishna, the authoritative compilation of the Oral Law, could still
remark, “Why talk Syriac in Palestine? Talk either Hebrew or Greek.” The
synagogues of the period are modeled after Hellenistic-Roman basilicas,
with inscriptions in Greek and even pagan motifs. Many of the anecdotes
told about the rabbis have Socratic and Cynic parallels. There is
evidence of discussions between rabbis and Athenians, Alexandrians,
Roman philosophers, and even the emperor Antoninus Pius (reigned
138–161); despite all of these discussions, only one rabbi, Elisha ben
Abuyah (early 2nd century), appears to have embraced gnosticism,
accepting certain esoteric religious dualistic views. The rabbis never
mention the Greek philosophers Plato (428/427–348/347 bce) and Aristotle
(384–322 bce) or the Hellenistic Jewish philosopher Philo Judaeus (c. 15
bce–c. 45 ce), and they never use any Greek philosophical terms; the
only Greek author whom they name is Homer. Again, the parallels between
Hellenistic rhetoric and rabbinic hermeneutics are in the realm of
terminology rather than of substance, and those between Roman and
Talmudic law are inconclusive. Part of the explanation of this may be
that, although there were 29 Greek cities in Palestine, none was in
Judaea, the real stronghold of the Jews.
The history of Judaism » Hellenistic Judaism (4th century bce–2nd
century ce) » The Greek period (332–63 bce) » Religious rites and
customs in Palestine: the Temple and the synagogues
Until its destruction in 70 ce, the most important religious institution
of the Jews was the Temple in Jerusalem (the Second Temple, erected
538–516 bce). Although services were interrupted for three years by
Antiochus IV Epiphanes (167–164 bce) and although the Roman general
Pompey (106–48 bce) desecrated the Temple in 63 bce, Herod lavished
great expense in rebuilding it. The high priesthood itself became
degraded by the extreme Hellenism of high priests such as Jason and
Menelaus, and the institution declined when Herod began the custom of
appointing high priests for political and financial considerations. That
not only the multitude of Jews but the priesthood itself suffered from
sharp divisions is clear from the bitter class warfare that ultimately
erupted in 59 ce between the high priests on the one hand and the
ordinary priests and the leaders of the populace of Jerusalem on the
other.
Although the Temple remained central in Jewish worship, synagogues
had already emerged as places for Torah reading and communal prayer and
worship during the Babylonian Exile in the 6th century bce, if not even
earlier. In any case, in the following century Ezra stood upon a pulpit
of wood and read from the Torah to the people (Nehemiah). Some scholars
maintain that a synagogue existed even within the precincts of the
Temple; certainly by the time of Jesus, to judge from the references to
Galilean synagogues in the Christian Scriptures, synagogues were common
in Palestine. Hence, when the Temple was destroyed in 70, the spiritual
vacuum was hardly as great as it had been after the destruction of the
First Temple (586 bce).
The chief legislative, judicial, and educational body of the
Palestinian Jews during the period of the Second Temple was the Great
Sanhedrin (council court), consisting of 71 members, among whom the
Sadducees were an important party. The members shared the government
with the king during the early years of the Hasmonean dynasty, but,
beginning with Herod’s reign, their authority was restricted to
religious matters. In addition, there seems to have been a Sanhedrin,
set up by the high priest, which served as a court of political council,
as well as a kind of grand jury.
The history of Judaism » Hellenistic Judaism (4th century bce–2nd
century ce) » The Greek period (332–63 bce) » Religious and cultural
life in the Diaspora
During the Hellenistic-Roman period the chief centres of Jewish
population outside Palestine were in Syria, Asia Minor, Babylonia, and
Egypt, each of which is estimated to have had at least one million Jews.
The large Jewish community of Antioch—which, according to Josephus, had
been given all the rights of citizenship by the Seleucid founder-king,
Seleucus I Nicator (died 280 bce)—attracted a particularly large number
of converts to Judaism. In Antioch the apocryphal book of Tobit was
probably composed in the 2nd century bce to encourage wayward Diaspora
Jews to return to their Judaism. As for the Jews of Asia Minor, whose
large numbers were mentioned by Cicero (106–43 bce), their not joining
in the Jewish revolts against the Roman emperors Nero (reigned 54–68
ce), Trajan (reigned 98–117), and Hadrian (reigned 117–138) would
indicate that they had sunk deep roots into their environment. In
Babylonia in the early part of the 1st century ce, two Jewish brothers,
Asinaeus and Anilaeus, established an independent minor state; their
followers were so meticulous in observing the Sabbath that they assumed
that it would not be possible to violate it even in order to save
themselves from a Parthian attack. In the early 1st century ce,
according to Josephus, the royal house and many of their entourage in
the district of Adiabene in northern Mesopotamia were converted to
Judaism; some of the Adiabenian Jews distinguished themselves in the
revolt against Rome in 66.
The largest and most important Jewish settlement in the Diaspora was
in Egypt. There is evidence (papyri) of a Jewish military colony at
Elephantine (Yeb), Upper Egypt, as early as the 6th century bce. These
papyri reveal the existence of a Jewish temple—which most certainly
would be considered heterodox—and some syncretism (mixture) with pagan
cults. Alexandria, the most populous and most influential Hellenistic
Jewish community in the Diaspora, originated when Alexander the Great
assigned a quarter of the city to the Jews. Until about the 3rd century
bce the papyri of the Egyptian Jewish community were written in Aramaic;
after that, with the exception of the Nash papyrus in Hebrew, all papyri
until 400 ce were written in Greek. Similarly, of the 116 Jewish
inscriptions from Egypt, all but five are written in Greek. The process
of Hellenistic acculturation is thus obvious.
The most important work of the early Hellenistic period—dating,
according to tradition, from the 3rd century bce—is the Septuagint, a
translation into Greek of the Hebrew Scriptures, including some works
not found in the traditional Hebrew canon. The name of the work (from
the Latin septuaginta, “70”) derived from the belief that 72
translators, 6 from each of the 12 tribes, worked independently on the
entire text and produced identical translations. As revealed in the
Letter of Aristeas and the works of Philo and Josephus, the Septuagint
was itself regarded by many Hellenized Jews as divinely inspired. The
translation shows some knowledge of Palestinian exegesis and the
tradition of Halakhah (the Oral Law); but the rabbis themselves, noting
that the translation diverged from the Hebrew text, apparently had
ambivalent feelings about it, as is evidenced in their alternate praise
and condemnation of it, as well as in their belief that another
translation of the Scriptures into Greek was needed. The fact that
“Torah” was translated as nomos (“law”) and tzedaqa as dikaiosynē
(“justice”) indicates how deeply the authors of the Septuagint believed
that Judaism could be accurately expressed using Greek concepts.
The fact that the temple at Leontopolis in Egypt was established (c.
145 bce) by a deposed high priest, Onias IV, clearly indicates that it
was heterodox; as merely the temple of a military colony, it never
really offered a challenge to the Temple in Jerusalem. It is significant
that the Palestinian rabbis ruled that a sacrifice intended for the
temple of Onias might be offered in Jerusalem. The temple of Onias made
little impact upon Egyptian Jewry, as can be seen from the silence about
it on the part of Philo, who often mentions the Temple in Jerusalem. The
temple of Onias, however, continued until it was closed by the Roman
emperor Vespasian (reigned 69–79 ce) in 73.
The chief religious institutions of the Egyptian Diaspora were
synagogues. As early as the 3rd century bce, there were inscriptions
mentioning two proseuchai, or Jewish prayer houses. In Alexandria there
were numerous synagogues throughout the city, of which the largest was
so famous that it is said in the Talmud that he who has not seen it has
never seen the glory of Israel.
The history of Judaism » Hellenistic Judaism (4th century bce–2nd
century ce) » The Greek period (332–63 bce) » Religious and cultural
life in the Diaspora » Egyptian Jewish literature
In Egypt the Jews produced a considerable literature (most of it now
lost), intended to inculcate in Greek-speaking Jews a pride in their
past and to counteract a sense of inferiority that some of them felt
about Jewish cultural achievements. In the field of history, Demetrius
near the end of the 3rd century bce wrote a work titled On the Kings in
Judaea; perhaps intended to refute an anti-Semitic Egyptian priest and
author, it shows considerable concern for chronology. In the 2nd century
bce a Jew who used the name Hecataeus wrote On the Jews. Another,
Eupolemus (c. 150 bce), like Demetrius, wrote a work titled On the Kings
in Judaea; an indication of its apologetic nature may be seen from the
fragment asserting that Moses taught the alphabet not only to the Jews
but also to the Phoenicians and to the Greeks. Artapanus (c. 100 bce),
in his own book On the Jews, went even further in romanticizing Moses—by
identifying him with Musaeus, the semi-mythical Greek poet, and Thoth,
the Egyptian god of writing and culture, by asserting that Moses was the
real originator of Egyptian civilization, and by claiming that Moses
taught the Egyptians the worship of Apis (the sacred bull) and the ibis
(sacred bird). Cleodemus (Malchus), in an attempt to win for the Jews
the regard of the Greeks, asserted in his history that two sons of
Abraham had joined Heracles in his expedition in Africa and that the
Greek hero had married the daughter of one of them. On the other hand,
Jason of Cyrene (c. 100 bce) wrote a history, of which 2 Maccabees is a
summary, glorifying the Temple and violently attacking the Jewish
Hellenizers, but his manner of writing history is typically Hellenistic.
In addition, 3 Maccabees (1st century bce) is a work of propaganda
intended to counteract those Jews who sought to win citizenship in
Alexandria. The Letter of Aristeas, though ascribed to the Egyptian king
Ptolemy II Philadelphus (308–246 bce), was probably composed by an
Alexandrian Jew about 100 bce to defend Judaism and its practices
against detractors.
Egyptian Jews also composed poems and plays, now extant only in
fragments, to glorify their history. Philo the Elder (c. 100 bce) wrote
an epic, On Jerusalem, in Homeric hexameters. Theodotus (c. 100 bce)
also wrote an epic, On Shechem; it was quite clearly apologetic, to
judge from the fragment connecting the name of Shechem with Sikimios,
the son of the Greek god Hermes. At about the same time, a Jewish poet
wrote a didactic poem, ascribing it to the pagan Phocylides, though
closely following the Bible in some details; the author disguised his
Jewish origin by omitting any attack against idolatry from his
moralizing. A collection known as The Sibylline Oracles, containing
Jewish and Christian prophecies in pagan disguise, includes some
material composed by a 2nd-century-bce Alexandrian Jew who intended to
glorify pious Jews and perhaps win converts.
A Jewish dramatist of the period, Ezekiel (c. 100 bce), composed
tragedies in Greek. Fragments of one of them, The Exodus, show how
deeply he was influenced by the Greek dramatist Euripides (484–406 bce).
Whether or not such plays were actually presented on the stage, they
edified Jews and showed pagans that the Jews had as much material for
drama as they did.
The greatest achievements of Alexandrian Judaism were in the realm of
wisdom literature and philosophy. In a work on the analogical
interpretation of the Law of Moses, Aristobulus of Paneas (2nd century
bce) anticipated Philo in attempting to harmonize Greek philosophy and
the Torah. He used allegory to explain anthropomorphisms in the Bible
and asserted that the Greek philosophers were indebted to Moses. The
Wisdom of Solomon, dating from the 1st century bce, shows an
acquaintance with the Platonic doctrine of the preexistence of the soul
and with a method of argument known as sorites, which was favoured by
the Stoics (see Stoicism). During the same period, the author of 4
Maccabees showed an intimate knowledge of Greek philosophy, particularly
of Stoicism.
By far the greatest figure in Alexandrian Jewish literature is Philo,
who has come to be recognized as the first Jewish theologian. His use of
Greek philosophy, particularly that of Plato, to explicate the ideas of
the Torah and his formulation of the Logos (Word, or Divine Reason) as
an intermediary between God and the world helped lay the foundations of
Neoplatonism, gnosticism, and the philosophical outlook of the early
Church Fathers. Philo was a devotee of Judaism neither as a mystic cult
nor as a collateral branch of Pharisaic Judaism. With his profound
knowledge of Greek literature—and despite his almost total ignorance of
Hebrew—he tried to find a way in which Judaism could appropriate
Hellenic thought.
There was also a Jewish community in Rome, which numbered perhaps
50,000. To judge from the inscriptions in the Jewish catacombs, it was
predominantly Greek-speaking. References by Roman writers, particularly
Tacitus (56–120 ce) and the satirists, have led scholars to conclude
that the community was influential, that it observed the Sabbath and the
dietary laws, and that it actively sought converts.
The Hellenization of the Diaspora Jews is reflected not merely in
their literature but even more in various papyri and art objects. As
early as 290 bce, Hecataeus of Abdera, a Greek living in Egypt, had
remarked that under the Persians and Macedonians the Jews had greatly
modified the traditions of their fathers. Other papyri indicate that at
least three-fourths of Egyptian Jews had personal names of Greek rather
than Hebrew origin. The only schools mentioned are Sabbath schools
intended for adults; this suggests that Jews were extremely eager to
gain admittance for their children to Greek gymnasia, where quite
obviously they would have had to make compromises with their Judaism.
Again, there are a number of violations from the norms of Halakha (which
precluded the charging of interest for a loan): most notably, 9 of 11
extant loan documents charge interest. There are often striking
similarities between Jewish and Greek documents of sale, marriage, and
divorce in Egypt, though some of this—as with the documents of the
Elephantine Jewish community—may be due to a common origin in the law of
ancient Mesopotamia. The charms and apotropaic amulets are often
syncretistic, and the Jews can hardly have been unaware of the religious
significance of symbols that were still very much filled with meaning in
pagan cults. The fact that the Jewish community of Alexandria was
preoccupied in the 1st century bce and the 1st century ce with obtaining
rights as citizens—which certainly involved compromises with Judaism,
including participation in pagan festivals and sacrifices—shows how far
they were ready to deviate from earlier norms. Philo mentions Jews who
scoffed at the Bible, which they insisted on interpreting literally, and
others who failed to adhere to biblical laws that they regarded as mere
allegory; he writes too of Jews who observed nothing of Judaism except
the holiday of Yom Kippur. But despite such deviations, pagan writers
constantly accused the Diaspora Jews of being “haters of mankind” and of
being absurdly superstitious. Christian writers later similarly attacked
the Jews for refusing to give up the Torah. The Jews of Egypt were at
least loyal in their contributions of the Temple tax and in their
pilgrimages to Jerusalem on the three festivals. Virulent anti-Semitism
and massacres perpetrated by non-Jews in Egypt apparently discouraged
actual apostasy and intermarriage, which were not common.
The history of Judaism » Hellenistic Judaism (4th century bce–2nd
century ce) » The Greek period (332–63 bce) » Religious and cultural
life in the Diaspora » Palestinian literature
During this period, literature was composed in Palestine in Hebrew,
Aramaic, and Greek; the original language of many of these texts remains
disputed by scholars, and the works that have survived were apparently
composed by more than one author over a considerable period of time. Of
the works originally composed in Hebrew, many—including Ecclesiasticus,
1 Maccabees, Judith, Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, Baruch, Psalms
of Solomon—existed only in Greek during the remainder of the Hellenistic
period. They and many of the Dead Sea Scrolls are generally conscious
imitations of biblical books, often reflecting the dramatic events of
the Maccabean struggle and often tinged with apocalyptic themes
(involving the dramatic intervention of God in history). The literature
in Aramaic consists of biblical or Bible-like legends or Midrashic
(interpretive) additions (Testament of Job, Martyrdom of Isaiah [see
Isaiah, Ascension of], Paralipomena of Jeremiah, Life of Adam and Eve,
Genesis Apocryphon [from the Dead Sea Scrolls], book of Tobit, History
of Susanna, and the story of Bel and the Dragon) and of apocalypses (the
First Book of Enoch [perhaps originally written in Hebrew], Assumption
of Moses, Syriac Apocalypse of Baruch, Second Book of Esdras, and
Apocalypse of Abraham). In Greek the chief works by Palestinians are
histories of the Jewish war against Rome and of the Jewish kings by
Justus of Tiberias (both are lost) and, by Josephus, History of the
Jewish War, originally in Aramaic, and Jewish Antiquities (both written
in Rome).
Of the wisdom literature composed in Hebrew, the book of the Wisdom
of Jesus the Son of Sirach, or Ecclesiasticus (c. 180–175 bce), modeled
on the book of Proverbs, identified Wisdom with the observance of the
Torah. The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, probably written in the
latter half of the 2nd century bce, patterned on Jacob’s blessings to
his sons, is thought to belong to eschatological literature related to
the Dead Sea Scrolls. The identification of Wisdom and Torah is stressed
in the Mishnaic tract Pirqe Avot (“Sayings of the Fathers”), which,
though edited about 200 ce, contains the aphorisms of rabbis dating back
to 300 bce.
Books such as the Testament of Job, Genesis Apocryphon, the Book of
Jubilees (now known to have been composed in Hebrew, as seen by its
appearance among the Dead Sea Scrolls), and Biblical Antiquities
(falsely attributed to Philo; originally written in Hebrew, then
translated into Greek, but now extant only in Latin), as well as the
first half of Josephus’s Jewish Antiquities, often show affinities with
rabbinic Midrashim (interpretive works) in their legendary accretions of
biblical details. Sometimes, as in Jubilees and in the Pseudo-Philo
work, these accretions are intended to answer the questions of heretics,
but often, particularly in the case of Josephus, they are apologetic in
presenting biblical heroes in a guise that would appeal to a Hellenized
audience.
Apocalyptic trends, given considerable impetus by the victory of the
Maccabees over the Syrian Greeks, were not (as was formerly thought)
restricted to Pharisaic circles. They were (as is clear from the Dead
Sea Scrolls) found in other groups as well and are of particular
importance for their influence on both Jewish mysticism and early
Christianity. These books, which have a close connection with the
biblical Book of Daniel, stress the impossibility of a rational solution
to the problem of theodicy. They also stress the imminence of the day of
salvation, which is to be preceded by terrible hardships, and presumably
reflected the current historical setting. In the First Book of Enoch
there is stress on the terrible punishment inflicted upon sinners in the
Last Judgment, the imminent coming of the messiah and his kingdom, and
the role of angels.
The sole Palestinian Jewish author writing in Greek whose works are
preserved is Josephus. His account of the war against the Romans in his
Life—and, to a lesser degree, in the Jewish War—is largely a defense of
his own questionable behaviour as the commander of Jewish forces in
Galilee. But these works, especially Against Apion and Jewish
Antiquities, are also defenses of Judaism against anti-Semitic attacks.
The Jewish War often quite deliberately parallels the History of the
Peloponnesian War by Thucydides (c. 460–c. 404 bce); and the Jewish
Antiquities quite deliberately parallels the Roman Antiquities by
Dionysius of Halicarnassus (c. 20 bce), a work that dates from earlier
in the same century.
The history of Judaism » Hellenistic Judaism (4th century bce–2nd
century ce) » The Roman period (63 bce–135 ce) » New parties and sects
Under Roman rule a number of new groups, largely political, emerged in
Palestine. Their common aim was to seek an independent Jewish state.
They were also zealous for, and strict in their observance of, the
Torah.
After the death of King Herod, a political group known as the
Herodians, who apparently regarded Herod as the messiah, sought to
reestablish the rule of Herod’s descendants over an independent
Palestine as a prerequisite for Jewish preservation. Unlike the Zealots,
however, they did not refuse to pay taxes to the Romans.
The Zealots, whose appearance was traditionally dated to 6 ce, were
one of five groups that emerged at the outset of the first Jewish war
against Rome (66–73 ce), which began when the Jews expelled the Romans
from Jerusalem, the client king Agrippa II fled the city, and a
revolutionary government was established. The Zealots were a mixture of
bandits, insurgents from Jerusalem, and priests, who advocated
egalitarianism and independence from Rome. In 68 they overthrew the
government established by the original leaders of the revolt and took
control of the Temple during the civil war that followed; many of them
perished in the sack of Jerusalem by the Roman general (and later
emperor) Titus (reigned 79–81) or in fighting after the city’s fall. The
Sicarii (Assassins), so-called because of the daggers (sica) they
carried, arose about 54 ce, according to Josephus, as a group of bandits
who kidnapped or murdered those who had found a modus vivendi with the
Romans. It was they who made a stand at the fortress of Masada, near the
Dead Sea, committing suicide rather than allowing themselves to be
captured by the Romans (73).
A number of other parties—various types of Essenes, Damascus
covenanters, and the Qumrān–Dead Sea groups—were distinguished by their
pursuit of an ascetic monastic life, disdain for material goods and
sensual gratification, sharing of material possessions, concern for
eschatology, strong apocalyptic views in anticipation of the coming of
the messiah, practice of ablutions to attain greater sexual and ritual
purity, prayer, contemplation, and study. The Essenes differed from the
Therapeutae, a Jewish religious group that had flourished in Egypt two
centuries earlier, in that the latter actively sought “wisdom” whereas
the former were anti-intellectual. Only some of the Essenes were
celibate. The Essenes have been termed “gnosticizing Pharisees” because
of their belief, shared with the gnostics, that the world of matter is
evil.
The Damascus sect (New Covenanters) was a group of Pharisees who went
beyond the letter of the Pharisaic Halakha. Like the Essenes and the
Dead Sea sects, they adopted a monastic lifestyle and opposed the way in
which sacrifices were offered in the Temple.
The discoveries of scrolls in the caves of Qumrān, near the Dead Sea,
beginning in 1947, focused attention on the groups that had lived there.
On the basis of paleography, carbon-14 testing, and the coins discovered
in the caves, most scholars accept a 1st-century date for them. A
theoretical relationship of the communities with John the Baptist and
the nascent Christian groups remains in dispute, however. The sectaries
have been identified variously as Zealots, an unnamed anti-Roman group,
and especially Essenes. That the groups had secret, presumably
apocalyptic teachings is clear from the fact that some of the scrolls
are in cryptographic script and reversed writing; yet, despite the
sectaries’ extreme piety and legalistic conservatism, they apparently
were not unaware of Hellenism, to judge from the presence of Greek books
at Qumrān.
It has long been debated whether gnosticism originated in the
apocalyptic strains of Judaism that were prevalent when the Temple was
destroyed in 70. Although it is doubtful that there is any direct Jewish
source of gnosticism, some characteristic gnostic doctrines are found in
certain groups of particularly apocalyptic 1st-century Jews—the
dichotomy of body and soul and a disdain for the material world, a
notion of esoteric knowledge, and an intense interest in angels and in
problems of creation.
The history of Judaism » Hellenistic Judaism (4th century bce–2nd
century ce) » The Roman period (63 bce–135 ce) » Origin of Christianity:
the early Christians and the Jewish community
Although it attracted little attention among pagans and Jews in its
early years, the rise of Christianity was by far the most important
“sectarian” development of the Roman period. Largely owing to the
discoveries at Qumrān, many scholars now regard primitive Christianity,
with its apocalyptic and eschatological interests, as part of a broad
spectrum of attitudes within Judaism itself, rather than as peripheral
to Jewish development or to the norm set by Pharisaic Judaism. Indeed,
Jesus himself may now be classified as an apocalyptic prophet whose
announced intentions were not to abrogate the Torah but to fulfill it.
It is possible to envision a direct line between Jewish currents, both
in Palestine and the Diaspora in the Hellenistic Age, and
Christianity—particularly in the traditions of martyrdom, proselytism,
monasticism, mysticism, liturgy, and theology and especially with the
doctrine of the Logos (Word) as an intermediary between God and the
world and as the connection of faith and reason. The Septuagint in
particular played an important role both theoretically, in the
transformation of Greek philosophy into the theology of the Church
Fathers, and practically, in converting Jews and Jewish “sympathizers”
to Christianity. In general, moreover, Christianity was more positively
disposed toward Hellenism than was Pharisaism, particularly under the
leadership of Paul, a thoroughly Hellenized Jew.
Even after Paul proclaimed his opposition to observance of the Torah
as a means of salvation, many Jewish Christians continued the practice.
Among them were two main groups: the Ebionites—probably the people
called minim, or “sectaries,” in the Talmud—who accepted Jesus as the
messiah but denied his divinity; and the Nazarenes, who regarded Jesus
as both messiah and God yet still regarded the Torah as binding upon
Jews.
The number of Jews converted to any form of Christianity was
extremely small, as can be seen from the frequent criticisms of Jews for
their stubbornness by Christian writers. In the Diaspora, despite the
strong influence of Hellenism, there were relatively few Jewish
converts, though the Christian movement had some success in winning over
Alexandrian Jews.
There were four major stages in the final break between Christianity
and Judaism: (1) the flight of the Jewish Christians from Jerusalem to
Pella across the Jordan in 70 and their refusal to continue the struggle
against the Romans, (2) the institution by the patriarch Gamaliel II of
a prayer in the Eighteen Benedictions against such heretics (c. 100),
and (3 and 4) the failure of the Christians to join the messianic
leaders Lukuas-Andreas and Bar Kokhba in the revolts against Trajan and
Hadrian in 115–117 and 132–135, respectively.
The history of Judaism » Hellenistic Judaism (4th century bce–2nd
century ce) » The Roman period (63 bce–135 ce) » Judaism under Roman
rule
When Pompey entered the Temple in 63 bce as an arbiter both in the civil
war between John Hyrcanus and Aristobulus I and in the struggle of the
Pharisees against both Jewish rulers, Judaea in effect became a puppet
state of the Romans. During the civil war between Pompey and Julius
Caesar (c. 49–45 bce), the Idumaean Antipater (died 43 bce) ingratiated
himself with Caesar and was rewarded by being made governor of Judaea;
the Jews were rewarded through the promulgation of a number of decrees
favourable to them, which were reaffirmed by Augustus (reigned 27 bce–14
ce) and later emperors. Antipater’s son Herod, king of Judaea, an
admirer of Greek culture, supported a cult worshipping the emperor and
built temples to Augustus in non-Jewish cities. Because he was by origin
an Idumaean, he was regarded by many Jews as a foreigner. (The
Idumaeans, or Edomites, had been forcibly converted to Judaism by John
Hyrcanus.) On several occasions during and after Herod’s reign,
Pharisaic delegations sought to convince the Romans to end the
quasi-independent Jewish government. After the death of Herod’s son and
successor, Archelaus, in 6 ce, Herod’s realms were ruled by Roman
procurators, the most famous (or infamous) of whom, Pontius Pilate (died
36), attempted to introduce busts of the Roman emperor into Jerusalem
and discovered the intense religious zeal of the Jews in opposing this
measure. When the emperor Caligula (reigned 37–41) ordered that a statue
of himself be erected in the Temple, a large number of Jews proclaimed
that they would suffer death rather than permit such a desecration. In
response, the governor of Syria, Petronius, succeeded in getting the
emperor to delay. The procurators of Judaea, being of equestrian
(knightly) rank and often of Oriental Greek stock, were more anti-Jewish
than the governors of Syria, who were of the higher senatorial order.
The last procurators in particular were indifferent to Jewish religious
sensibilities; and various patriotic groups, to whom nationalism was an
integral part of their religion, succeeded in polarizing the Jewish
population and bringing on the first war with Rome in 66. The climax of
the war, as noted earlier, was the destruction of the Temple in 70,
though, according to Josephus, Titus sought to spare it.
The papyri indicate that the war against Trajan—involving the Jews of
Egypt, Cyrenaica, Cyprus, and Mesopotamia (though only to a minor degree
those of Palestine)—was a widespread revolt under a Cyrenian
king-messiah, Lukuas-Andreas, aimed at freeing Palestine from Roman
rule. In 132–135 the same spirit of freedom inspired another uprising,
the Second Jewish Revolt, led by Bar Kokhba, who may have had the
support of the greatest rabbi of the time, Akiba ben Joseph (40–c. 135).
The result was Hadrian’s decrees prohibiting circumcision and public
instruction in the Torah, though these were soon revoked by Antoninus
Pius (reigned 138–161). Having suffered such tremendous losses on the
field of battle, Judaism turned its dynamism to the continued
development of the Talmud.
Louis H. Feldman
