Chapter 13
Bracketed by Exile: The Second Temple
In This Chapter
The Jews exiled in Babylonia
The great return: Rebuilding the Temple in Jerusalem
The Greeks and Romans come to visit . . . and stay
When Jews fight Jews: The second destruction of the Temple
When we hear someone talking about “the sixth century BCE” it’s almost as though they’re telling us about some other planet. When reading all this history, it’s so easy to forget that people 2,500 years ago weren’t all that different than today. They had relationships, paid taxes, and complained about the government, just like people do now. So when we talk about what was happening in the sixth century BCE, remember that this isn’t Tales from Planet 9, but rather the real-life history of real-life people who were caught up in forces bigger than themselves.
In this chapter, we talk about what happened after the Babylonian exile (see the preceding chapter). The Jewish people and the land of Israel (of course, it wasn’t called Israel back then) got caught up in a game dominated by four enormous empires: Babylonia, Persia, Greece, and Rome.
The sixth century BCE was a spiritually rich time, when the prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel helped lead a Jewish renewal. At the same time, two other major religions were being founded: Zoroastrianism began in Persia, and the Buddha became enlightened in India.
Finding a Home away from Home
Nebuchadnezzer’s destruction of the Temple (see the previous chapter) signaled a radical change for the Children of Israel: There were now more Jews in exile than in Judea — mostly in Babylon, though some lived in Egypt and other lands.
The Jews who were taken to live in Babylon, aside from being upset about being torn away from their homes, actually lived fairly well. They were allowed to own land, to farm, and to practice Judaism — although for the first time in Jewish history, the practice no longer included animal sacrifice (because they were separated from the Temple).
The exile from Judea lasted almost 50 years, until 539 BCE, when Cyrus of Persia conquered Babylonia. Under a remarkable policy of ethnic tolerance, Cyrus gave permission for the exiled Jews to return to Judea and rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem. In fact, because of his respect and open-mindedness, Cyrus is today considered one of the most important non-Jews in the Bible.
There’s no place like home
Although 50 years in exile doesn’t sound that long, it was long enough for the Jews to learn a new language (some even forgetting Hebrew in the process) and become comfortable in the very fertile land of Babylon. So when Cyrus announced that they could leave, only a handful jumped at the chance — mostly priests, a few prophets, and several people who claimed to be descendants of King David (perhaps with political aspirations).
In fact, several prophets, in particular Zechariah and Haggai, were very enthusiastic about creating a new Judean kingdom. The Persian government was tolerant, but not that tolerant, and around this time, anyone who spoke too loudly about being of Davidic descent tended to disappear.
In the meantime, the Jews in exile in Babylon acted much as Jews outside of Israel do today: A few emigrated, but most chose to stay put and send charitable donations to support the home-team effort. The Babylonian Jewish community flourished, laying the intellectual and religious foundations that would flower as the major center of Jewish culture and learning 500 years later (see Chapter 14).
Building and rebuilding
The returning Jews built the Second Temple in Jerusalem, but Judaism seemed to flounder for some 50 years, until the Persian government sent Nehemiah as a new provincial governor. Some years later the king of Persia sent Ezra, a Jewish scribe of priestly descent, to enforce the law of the God of Israel (and probably the Persian law, too).
Both Ezra and Nehemiah rededicated the Temple together in 428 BCE by gathering the community and reading the entire Torah. The reading was translated into Aramaic for those who had forgotten Hebrew while living in exile.
While the “kingdom” was a kind of “Temple State,” ruled by the high priests and governors of the Persian empire, the next 100 years were relatively good for the Jewish people. The only real difficulty during this time was a power struggle between those who returned to Judea from exile and those who had never left. It’s an interesting issue that in some way continues to this day in a slightly different form: “Who is more Jewish? The people who never left the area or the people from the Diaspora (outside of Israel)?”
It’s All Greek to Me
Nothing lasts forever, including the Persian empire, which was conquered by the Greeks (led by Alexander the Great) in 332 BCE. At first, this meant little to the Jews, other than having to learn Greek. However, after Alexander’s death, nine years later, the empire was split among four Greek generals, two of whom are important to Jewish history:
Seleucas: He formed the Seleucid (pronounced “sell-oo-sid”) empire and had control over what had been the Persian empire.
Ptolemy: He formed the Ptolemaic (pronounced “p’tall-eh-may-ick”) empire and had control over Egypt.
The Seleucid and Ptolemaic empires were in almost constant warfare over their boundaries. Unfortunately, Judea sat right in the middle of the two and was passed back and forth many times.
The ptol and short of it
For most of the next century, Jerusalem and the Judean “kingdom” were ruled by the Ptolemaic empire, and life was fairly good. It was so good that many Jews spoke only Greek (especially those who lived in the Egyptian city of Alexandria), and Jews became increasingly “Hellenized” — that is, they assimilated into the Greek culture of philosophy, art, and sport. Above all, the culture focused on physical pleasure and beauty, which may have felt like a relief to many of the Jews who yearned to become part of the new cultural opportunities.
At around 250 BCE the biblical texts were translated for the first time (legend has it that the Ptolemaic emperor wanted the translation for his vast library collection at Alexandria). Of course, any text loses something in translation, and the priests worried that the new Greek version of the Holy Scriptures wouldn’t be faithful to the original. There is a wonderful story that 70 scholars, each separated from the others, miraculously translated the texts exactly the same way, proving that this one translation was correct.
This translation, along with texts added later, became known as the Septuagint (which means “the seventy”), and it included a number of books that the Jews didn’t keep in the Hebrew Bible, such as Tobit, Judith, Maccabees, and Sirach (also called Ecclesiasticus). Today, Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Bibles still include these additions — called the Apocrypha — but Protestant and Jewish bibles don’t.
The last emperor
This period of relative calm and peace came to an end when Judea fell under control of the Seleucid emperor Antiochus IV, around 176 BCE. Antiochus, apparently more neurotic than his predecessors, insisted that the peoples of his empire assimilate or die (not unlike the Borg in Star Trek: The Next Generation). As Antiochus imposed greater taxes and restrictions on acting Jewish, the resentment against his rule grew.
Life for the Jews got worse after Antiochus looted the Temple to fill his wallet, removed the current high priest, and then replaced him with the highest bidder, a scheming guy who probably wasn’t even an official priest. The situation was ugly, and the future didn’t look good for this little tribe.
A Parting of Ways
When people say that the land of Israel has been a land of strife and combat for thousands of years, they really mean it! After 15 years of increasingly harsh rule under Antiochus, rebellion broke out. It began with a small-town Jewish priest named Mattathias who, with his sons, used guerilla warfare tactics to attack the Seleucid armies and the false high priests, as well as destroy the Greek pagan temples. Mattathias died in battle, but his sons fought on, especially Judah, who soon became known as Judah Maccabee (“Judah the Hammer”).
A year later, Jerusalem was recaptured by the religious Jews and the Temple was rededicated, ending about 175 years of Greek rule over the city, a feat that is to this day celebrated on Chanukkah (see Chapter 22). Unfortunately, the fighting didn’t stop there. As soon as the Maccabees (the whole family took on the name) were in power, they became as tight-fisted as the Seleucids they had conquered.
After a short time, all but one of the Maccabee brothers had died or been assassinated, and the last Maccabee, Simeon, decided to appoint himself king. For the first time in nearly 400 years Judea was ruled by a Jewish king and so no longer subject to the approval of a non-Jewish power. His dynasty (known as the Hasmonean dynasty) lasted a century, but it was a century of turmoil, not only with neighboring countries but especially between the two major parties that grew up within Judaism: the Pharisees and the Sadducees.
All Roads Lead to Rome
The kings and priests who followed Simeon supported the Sadducees, the priestly Jews who believed fervently and righteously in the sacrificial services of the Temple (also called the Temple Cult). Some Jews, disgusted by what they considered the desecration of the Temple, and the leaders’ attraction to Greek practices, split off and became the Essenes, a semimonastic group widely believed to have written the Dead Sea Scrolls.
The other group unhappy with the Hasmonean and Sadducean rule were the Pharisees, who believed in the Oral Torah (an additional teaching they understood was received by Moses along with the contents of the written Torah, and which later became the basis of the Talmud; see Chapter 3). Insisting that each Jew was responsible for his or her own relationship with God, the Pharisees firmly downplayed the primacy of the Temple and its sacrifices. They didn’t accept the authority of the priests of the Temple, and they urged Jews to worship in synagogues and to study Torah. In this way, the Pharisees laid the groundwork for an intellectual and theological flexibility that enabled Judaism to survive the destruction of the Second Temple and allowed it to continue to evolve over the ages. At the time, however, this support didn’t put them in good stead with the priestly ruling powers.
John Hyrcanus and his son Alexander Jannaeus were two rulers who often resorted to violence to repress the Pharisees and support the Sadducees, killing thousands of Pharisees in order to maintain power. At the same time, these two men also greatly expanded the land of Judea, resulting in the forced conversion of other tribes to Judaism. As we discuss later in this chapter, it’s rarely a good idea to convert people against their will.
Alexander’s wife, Queen Salome (this is a different Salome than the one, some years later, who wanted John the Baptist dead) became more political after he died, keeping the peace by offering much more power to the Pharisees while still maintaining her son Hyrcanus II as high priest. But trouble brewed under the surface, and after Queen Salome died in 67 BCE, her younger son, backed by the Sadducees, wrested power from his brother and assumed not only the role of King but also of high priest.
With Judea continually involved in a civil war for three years, Hyrcanus II finally decided to invite the Roman Emperor Pompey to settle the dispute between the two brothers. Pompey did what any reasonable Roman general would do: He decided in favor of Rome, stripping both brothers of power and insisting that Judea start paying tribute as a vassal state (though he did leave Hyrcanus II as high priest). Rome was the dominant power across Europe, Egypt, and now Judea.
An Edifice Complex
Hyrcanus II continued ruling as high priest under the greater control of Rome for over 20 years. After Pompey died, Julius Caesar became the uncontested leader of the entire Roman empire, though he was soon murdered and was eventually succeeded by Mark Antony. Antony wanted a governor of Judea whose first loyalty would be Rome, and so he picked a man who, while Jewish “in name,” had little connection to the Jews: Herod, whose father had been forcibly converted to Judaism by John Hyrcanus.
Herod was an ambitious, scheming, paranoid man — and those were his good qualities. He didn’t favor the Pharisees or the Sadducees, but rather annoyed just about every Jewish faction. For example, one of his early orders of business was to marry the only living Hasmonean female and have the high priest, her brother, assassinated. He then angered many by appointing a new high priest whenever he wanted to. Later, afraid of a possible coup, he had his wife and two children killed. He was that kind of leader.
Herod was clearly a terrible guy, but he is widely remembered for the amazing structures he built or rebuilt, including the desert fortress of Masada and the port city of Caesarea. You can still see the ruins of both today. Most importantly, while Herod wasn’t the least bit religious, he vastly built up the Second Temple, creating one of the most amazing architectural wonders in the Empire. The Western Wall in Jerusalem, which some people call the “Wailing Wall,” is the remnant of the outer retaining wall that Herod built around the rebuilt Temple.
Not one but many messiahs
It seems that no one, except perhaps Herod himself, was happy under his rule. Each sect — the Sadducees, the Pharisees, and many others — wanted to rebel. False prophets and false descendants of King David appeared out of the woodwork, spreading unrest among the people. To add to the complexities, the nature of messianism changed during this time period.
In earlier years, the term mashiach (“anointed one,” or “messiah”) simply referred to both high priests and kings, who were anointed with oils as a sign of office. However, during Herod’s reign, in the first century BCE, the idea that a messiah would come who could perform miracles began to gain popularity. Later, when Herod died in 4 BCE, the chaos and wild hopes in the land intensified. People were primed for change and for something new in which to believe.
Death and dismemberment
After Herod’s death, his sons fought for control over the land. Rome, while not eliminating the Herodian Dynasty, decided to limit its control, so they appointed each of Herod’s four sons to a small part of the greater kingdom. Then the Romans brought in “procurators” to act as governors, maintaining Roman law. These men were mostly scoundrels, more concerned with filling their wallets than with keeping the peace or taking care of the people under their control.
Today, the most famous of Herod’s sons was Herod Antipas, who had John the Baptist beheaded, possibly for speaking publicly against Antipas’s marriage to his own sister-in-law. Similarly, the most famous of the Roman procurators was Pontius Pilate, who ordered the crucifixion of a young Jewish preacher from Galilee named Jesus, along with hundreds, and probably even thousands of other Jews who threatened the political power of the Romans. (For a discussion on whether the Jews killed Jesus, see Chapter 17; for information on why Jews don’t believe Jesus was the messiah, see Chapter 29.) A few years later, Pilate was dismissed as governor because he proved too cruel to his subjects.
Sects and Violence
It’s tempting to talk about what “the Jews” and “Judaism” were like in the first century CE as if there was only one thing going on. But, then as now, there were many groups within Judaism and many factions of the community.
Judea was a mess politically: The Sadducees fought with the Pharisees over philosophy, religious practice, and control of the Temple compound. Class differences also existed; the Sadducean priests were aristocratic, while the Pharisees were mostly farmers as well as scribes and scholars who would go on to become the rabbis. Most Jews were lower class subsistence farmers working for absentee landlords and were taxed to death by the Temple and Rome.
More than anything, though, none of the Jewish groups liked the Romans. Gangs of Jews, called the Zealots, began to appear, violently attacking Jews who were known to be in collaboration with the Romans or were simply not anti-Roman enough. Ultimately, in 66 CE, this popular uprising evolved into a full-scale war against Rome.
Unlike most wars, this war was incredibly disorganized. Although the various sections of Judean society all agreed in the “freedom of Zion” (a slogan seen on coins dating from this era), they disagreed over who should lead the rebellion. In fact, near the end of the war, when the walls of Jerusalem were about to fall to the Romans, there were three factions in Jerusalem fighting for control of the Temple. They clearly preferred to fight each other rather than the really dangerous enemy.
In the end, Titus, the son of Vespasian, the new Roman Emperor, conquered Judea and Jerusalem in 70 CE on the day of Tisha B’Av (see Chapter 27). The great Temple was destroyed and legions of Jews, along with their religious artifacts, were marched more than 1,500 miles back to Rome as prisoners and slaves.
The war wasn’t entirely over, though. Over the next few years, several small Jewish outposts continued to fight the Romans. The last surviving group lived at Masada (the mountain fortress built by Herod that overlooked the Dead Sea). When the Romans finally broke into the fortress, they found that the Jews had killed themselves rather than be captured. Although some scholars debate the truth of this story, it has great meaning in modern Israeli ideology; up until recently, the soldiers of the Israeli Defense Forces were sworn in on top of the mountain, which served as a symbol of Jewish heroism.