Chapter 2
THE YEARS OF THE GREEKS
The Jewish World Confronts Greek Empires
So Alexander reigned twelve years, and then died. And his servants bare rule every one in his place. And after his death they all put crowns upon themselves; so did their sons after them many years: and evils were multiplied in the earth.
1 MACCABEES 1:7–9, KJV
IN 164 BCE, the Maccabean insurgents captured the Jerusalem Temple, which had been desecrated by pagan Greeks. The joyous rededication is recorded at length in an unabashedly triumphant history called the first book of Maccabees: “On the twenty-fifth day of the ninth month, which is the month of Chislev, in the one hundred and forty-eighth year, they rose and offered sacrifice, as the Law directs” (4:52–53). That is the origin of the feast of Hanukah, but the author dates the event in a curious way. He gives the exact date in terms of the traditional calendar still followed today by Jews, who begin Hanukah on the twenty-fifth day of the month Chislev. But “the one hundred and forty-eighth year” is based on the dating system of the “kingdom of the Greeks,” that is, the Seleucid era, which marked time from the conquest of Babylon in 312 BCE by the Greek general Seleucus I. Although that specific act of conquest is now largely forgotten (and who remembers the foes from whom he conquered it?), the long shadow it cast points to the lasting impact of those Greek dynasts. Well into the Middle Ages, many scholars in the Arab and Middle Eastern worlds continued to date by the Year of the Greeks, which was the practice of the great Syriac Christian churches. Even when a society attempted to secede from the Greek political order, as did the Maccabean revolutionaries, the wider cultural hegemony was almost inescapable. Jewish nationalists might retake Jerusalem, but the Greeks still owned time.
From the end of the fourth century, the Jewish world faced the challenge of Hellenization. New contacts with Greek culture at any stage would have been provocative, but the Jews were encountering a dazzling golden age of science and culture. Some of these influences proved highly attractive to Jewish thinkers, while others inspired resistance. And the exchange went both ways: Jews now had to present their religion to the wider world, and that act of interpretation forced a rethinking of basic categories. By no means were all the changes of the next 250 years a response to Hellenization, but that movement does provide the essential context and environment for what did occur. Greek was the language in which new developments were proposed and discussed.1
Alexander’s conquests began centuries of interaction between Greek and Jewish cultures, out of which would emerge most Western religious thought.2
HISTORIANS PROPERLY PAY attention to the world-conquering career of Alexander the Great but far less to the enduring and significant changes he sparked. If one story is vastly famous, the other is little known to nonspecialists. From the 330s through the mid-second century BCE, Jews were subject to one or other of the great Hellenistic empires that claimed Alexander’s heritage, the Ptolemaic and Seleucid realms. These empires battled for control over the region, which changed hands repeatedly: Palestine itself changed ownership seven times just between 323 and 301. Relative stability followed when the Ptolemies secured the area for most of the third century. The Seleucids then dominated from 200 through much of the second century. (Contrary to legend, only very slowly did the Maccabean revolt end the Greek dominance of Palestine.) Later regimes, including the Herodians and Romans, were suffused with those Greek-derived cultural and political ideas.3
The story of the two empires goes back to Alexander’s time and his refusal to name an heir on this deathbed. That left his Macedonian generals to fight for power, and fight they did. These were the Diadochi, the Successors. One of the clique was Seleucus Nicator, the Victor, a great general who campaigned as far east as India and inherited much of the vast eastern territory conquered by Alexander. Seleucus married a Persian princess, and their son succeeded him as Emperor Antiochus I. The next sovereign, Antiochus II, took the title Theos, “the god.”4
Through the third century BCE, the Seleucid Empire was a superpower, which in its extent recalled the ancient Persian Empire (see Table 2.1). Well into the second century, the core territories of this “Greek” empire comprised Syria, Mesopotamia, Babylonia, and western Iran. The empire was still a mighty force under Antiochus III, also termed the Great, who ruled from 222 to 187. Born in what is now Iran, this Antiochus reasserted his family’s rule over Parthia and Bactria and used war elephants to stage a new invasion of India. He invaded Greece and won historic victories against Ptolemaic Egypt. At first sight, his realm looks almost as grand as that of Alexander a century previously, although his reign ended in disastrous conflict with Rome. Antiochus’s son and eventual heir was Antiochus IV, who is notorious in Jewish history as a fanatical advocate of Greek culture and religion. Indicating the transnational quality of the empire’s power, that younger Antiochus originally bore the Iranian-derived name Mithridates.5
The other great Middle Eastern power was the Ptolemaic realm, which was centered in Egypt but at times extended its power into Cyprus and Asia Minor. Insofar as that empire is recalled today, it is usually as yet another Egyptian dynasty, the successor to its thirty native predecessors. We may imagine them in the stereotypical patterns of dress and appearance that we associate with the term “ancient Egyptian,” a timeless world with its pharaohs and pyramids, its hieroglyphic inscriptions and animal-headed deities. Yet the Ptolemaic ruling class was thoroughly Greek in language, culture, and personal names: Ptolemy is a Greek name that means “warlike.” The cultural mixing of the time is symbolized by the celebrated Rosetta stone, which was produced in 196 BCE under Ptolemy V Epiphanes. This stone is most famous today for containing a single text translated into multiple languages, allowing modern scholars for the first time to use Greek to comprehend hieroglyphic inscriptions. But the Rosetta text is a curious amalgam of traditions. It offers a barrage of Greek names (Alexander, Pyrrhides, Demetria, Arsinoë), but all in the context of ancient Egyptian ritual formulae and religious concepts. King Ptolemy himself is “Son of the Sun, beloved of [the Egyptian god] Ptah.” At his death in 181 BCE, he became the first royal Ptolemy to be mummified in the Egyptian mode rather than cremated in Homeric Greek style. Although the empire’s famous last ruler is sometimes depicted today in African guise, Cleopatra is a purely Greek name, which means “glory of the father.” She was the first of her dynasty who bothered to learn the Egyptian language.6
TABLE 2.1 THE HELLENISTIC DYNASTIES (SELECTED RULERS; ALL DATES BCE)
Seleucid dynasty: Seleucus I Nicator (312–281)
Ptolemaic dynasty: Ptolemy I Soter (323–285)
Seleucid dynasty: Antiochus I Soter (281–262)
Ptolemaic dynasty: Ptolemy II Philadelphus (285–246)
Seleucid dynasty: Antiochus II Theos (262–246)
Ptolemaic dynasty: Ptolemy III Euergetes (246–221)
Seleucid dynasty: Antiochus III the Great (223–187)
Ptolemaic dynasty: Ptolemy IV Philopator (221–204)
Seleucid dynasty: Seleucus IV Philopator (187–176)
Ptolemaic dynasty: Ptolemy V Epiphanes (204–181)
Seleucid dynasty: Antiochus IV (175–164)
Ptolemaic dynasty: Ptolemy VI Philometor (181–145)
Seleucid dynasty: Demetrius I Soter (161–150)
Ptolemaic dynasty: Ptolemy VIII Physkon Euergetes (169–116)
Seleucid dynasty: Alexander Balas (150–145)
Ptolemaic dynasty: •
Seleucid dynasty: Demetrius II Nicator (146–139 and 129–126)
Ptolemaic dynasty: •
Seleucid dynasty: Antiochus VII (138–129)
Ptolemaic dynasty: •
The Ptolemaic dynasty, or Lagids, was at its height in the first half of the third century. Ptolemy I was a companion of Alexander who took the title of Soter, “the Savior.” His best-known monument was the Great Library of Alexandria, one of the world’s foremost cultural centers for centuries to come. His son was Ptolemy II Philadelphus, a prestigious ruler whose diplomatic contacts extended to India. He even received Buddhist emissaries from the Indian court, as did his Seleucid contemporary Antiochus II. Ptolemy’s son in turn was Ptolemy III Euergetes, “the Benefactor.” Just six successive Ptolemies spanned the era from 323 to 145. Such long reigns imply stability, although later members of the dynasty were notorious for acts of tyranny, interfamily feuds and violence, and truly bizarre behavior. In the second century, the empire suffered from internecine court politics at its worst. Ptolemy II began the practice of kings marrying their sisters, and it is not surprising that their descendants often showed signs of mental illness and instability.7
Palestine had the ill fortune to find itself on the borders between these two superstates. The so-called Syrian Wars entangled the Ptolemies and Seleucids sporadically between 274 and 168. At the worst moments in these struggles, Palestine was squeezed between the twin imperial grindstones. The book of Daniel offers a knowledgeable summary of regional history and dynastic doings between 330 and 168, presented in the form of retroactive prophecy concerning the kings of the North (Seleucids) and the South (Ptolemies). One typical section tells how “the king of the South will march out in a rage and fight against the king of the North, who will raise a large army, but it will be defeated. When the army is carried off, the king of the South will be filled with pride and will slaughter many thousands, yet he will not remain triumphant” (11:11–12). The reference is to the rivalry between Ptolemy IV and Antiochus III in 217 as well as Ptolemy’s victory at the Battle of Raphia, one of the largest conflicts in the whole of ancient history. It was no mere antiquarian curiosity that made Jews care about these transactions. For almost two centuries, the political and cultural fate of the Jewish people depended on the successes and failures of those kings of the North and South.8
THE COMING OF the Hellenistic empires vastly expanded the geographical scope of the Jewish world, and raised Jewish awareness of distant lands and kingdoms scattered over three continents. Such interactions inevitably had their cultural impact. One convenient symbol of that wider world is the elephants that Hellenistic empires regularly used as vital weapons of war at Raphia and elsewhere, where the animals played a role equivalent to modern tanks. The kings obtained their elephants from India (attempts to use the more aggressive African elephants went disastrously wrong) and then deployed them across the known world. Quite regularly, the people of Palestine would have witnessed elephants either in action or en route to campaigns. Such animals were a vital and much-feared component of the Seleucid forces fighting the Maccabean rebels. The wide-ranging travels of the elephants suggest the global cultural synthesis that grew from Alexander’s achievement, into which Jews now entered.
The vast scale of that world is indicated by the hundreds of cities across the region named for the various Greek overlords. Alexander himself was an enthusiastic founder of cities, Egypt’s Alexandria being the most famous. But so were the various rulers called Seleucus and Antiochus, and Seleucias and Antiochs appear across the Hellenistic world. Six kings bore the name Seleucus, and there were thirteen Antiochi. Numerous Laodiceas and Philippis commemorated other royal kin, and names like Philadelphia recalled royal titles. (Philadelphus signified “brotherly love.”) Sometimes these cities were new foundations, but in other cases the kings granted their names to existing sites, to which they granted special favors. These cities were scattered from North Africa into India and throughout central Asia. Some of those Alexandrias, Antiochs, and Seleucias vanished or were annihilated, but others lasted into the Middle Ages or beyond, and they stubbornly continued to date their history according to the Year of the Greeks. (Some Christian tombstones in central Asia still used this dating as late as the fourteenth century CE.)
Jews spread widely across this world, which defined the limits of urban civilization for early Christians. Much of early Christian history concerns the great cities of Egyptian Alexandria and Syrian Antioch on the Orontes, where Jesus’s followers were first called Christians. The Seleucid Empire originally had its center at Babylon, but about 275 the kings built their new capital at Seleucia on the Tigris. Under later Parthian rule, that metropolis was merged into the new twin city of Seleucia-Ctesiphon, which at its height might have been the world’s most populous city. Seleucia-Ctesiphon in turn was the predecessor of Islamic Baghdad.9
Culturally and symbolically, Palestine during the Crucible years stood in a Hellenistic triangle, formed by imaginary lines joining the three great cities of (Syrian) Antioch, (Egyptian) Alexandria, and (Babylonian) Seleucia-Ctesiphon. Each, in its day, was one of the centers of the ancient world. Together, they exercised an overwhelming influence on non-Greek peoples. That triangle retained its pivotal role for a full millennium, until after the rise of Islam.
THE RULERS OF the Persian Empire had devoted themselves to spreading their culture, but Greeks were still more vaultingly ambitious in these matters. Indeed, they made culture a central ideological component of their rule and of the authority claimed by particular rulers and dynasties.
The modern word “Hellenistic” might suggest that this era was somewhat inferior to that of classical, Hellenic, Greece: it was only “Greek-ish.” But in terms of culture and scholarship, this was one of the greatest ages of human history, with few parallels before the European experience of the Renaissance and the scientific revolution. This era produced innovators and thinkers in an awe-inspiring range of fields, some of which were only now defined as scholarly disciplines. Beyond the work of individual pioneers, once separate cultures flowed together under the auspices of the Greek overlords to create new syntheses. Babylonian, Persian, and Indian cultural currents entered Greek thought and vice versa. Meanwhile, ideas and individuals spread rapidly through empires and across continents. The sheer pace and energy of innovation in these years, roughly between 300 and 100, are breathtaking. For anyone who cared about learning, science, or culture, whatever their race or religion, these were heady times.10
Listing just a few of the outstanding figures from these two centuries gives a sense of the range of accomplishments during this cultural explosion. The process of discovery and speculation continued apace long after my arbitrarily chosen terminal date of 100 BCE. The most celebrated thinkers of this era included Euclid the mathematician and the many-sided genius Archimedes. In astronomy, Hipparchus built on Babylonian precedent to map the stars; Aristarchus of Samos presented a heliocentric view of the solar system that prefigured Copernicus. Eratosthenes, the third-century librarian of the royal collection of Alexandria, was an astronomer, philologist, poet, and mathematician who founded the discipline of geography. Among other accomplishments, he was the first to calculate the circumference of the earth, which he did with high accuracy.11
At the core of the new science was a fascination with astronomy and cosmology, the study of the heavens, an area that also held enduring appeal for Jewish thinkers. This concern went far beyond a general interest in one single aspect of nature, penetrating as it did many other fields of thought. The religious implications were pervasive. Through studying stars and planets, scholars were addressing such key questions as the origin and creation of the world, the nature of heavenly hierarchies, and the spiritual forces or beings that governed these realities. That in turn shaped attitudes toward fate, determinism, and free will. The study of the heavens was also critical to such practical matters as the calendar and timekeeping. No hard-and-fast boundaries separated astronomy from astrology, and as such, it touched on many other disciplines, especially medicine. The human body, after all, was believed to reflect the structures of the heavens. Cosmology was no less intimately linked to political ideologies and concepts of power. The fact that Hellenistic kings wore solar diadems and radiate crowns was no mere fashion choice: they were the suns at the center of the political universe.12
Beyond theoretical speculation about the wider universe, Greek scholars of this time were prolific inventors. In the first century BCE, Hero of Alexandria became the world’s most prolific and versatile practical inventor until the time of Thomas Edison. This tradition is exemplified by the long-mysterious object found on a shipwreck at Antikythera in the Aegean Sea, dating from the second century BCE. This find is now recognized as a strikingly sophisticated analog computer designed to calculate the motions of the sun and moon for both calendrical and astrological purposes. In its spectacular original condition, before its long immersion under the sea, this Antikythera mechanism would have given observers a visually stunning illustration of the workings of the heavens as recognized by the best scholars of the day. Both Hipparchus and Archimedes have been credited as designers. Scarcely less amazing is what it implies about the technology of the time. Although the mechanism is unique, it must have formed part of a much larger tradition of sophisticated design and execution, of which it is presently the sole survivor.13
Other fields of knowledge advanced similarly. Herophilus of Alexandria pioneered the study of medical anatomy, while other scholars theorized about the role of the heart and the circulatory system. This was quite apart from the intense activity in the humanities—in literature, drama, and the newly founded genre of the novel.
Scholars of the time knew nothing of modern disciplinary labels. Much of what we would call science was incorporated under the general title of philosophy, the love of wisdom: the Greek word may date back to Pythagoras, around 500 BCE. In terms of their intellectual influence at the time, speculative philosophers were at least as prestigious as scientists or other scholars. Several great philosophical schools flourished in this era, and their ideas provided the essential matrix for civilized thought. The ideas of Plato and Aristotle were the most widely influential, but major new schools emerged from around 300. These included Stoicism, as well as the ideas of Epicurus, whose followers preached a daring materialism, grounded in atomic theory.14
Historians of the European Renaissance world often address the deeply destabilizing effects of all the new science and learning. New continents were being discovered, as were new substances and planets; even the size and location of the earth itself were being reimagined. As John Donne wrote around 1600, “New philosophy calls all in doubt.… ‘Tis all in pieces, all coherence gone.” No point of knowledge or culture seemed firm or dependable; all was in flux, everything open to debate and challenge. Yet every word of that description would apply precisely to the Hellenistic world in the golden age of Archimedes and Hipparchos—a proto-Enlightenment, yet in a world still suffused in ideas of the supernatural. Or according to the maxim proclaimed by the sage Thales in the sixth century BCE, it was a world in which “all things are full of gods.”15
MORE THAN JUST bringing disparate cultures into contact, the far-reaching power of the Greek regimes drove those conquered territories to present their ideas to a global audience. Egypt and Mesopotamia were two of the world’s oldest cultures, but it was in the third century BCE that representatives of each wrote widely influential accounts of their origins. In the 280s, Babylonian scholar Berosus wrote a Greek-language account of that culture’s history, mythology, and religious heritage, and he expounded matters of cosmology and astrology. Sometime during that same century, Egyptian priest Manetho likewise wrote a summary of his country’s history, and again, of course, he used Greek. Both writers exploited an opportunity that Greek thinkers themselves had made available when they admitted the existence of far older cultures that could legitimately claim to be the true cradles of civilization. Egypt and Babylonia both now staked their claims to that position.16
This is the context in which we should see the Jewish interaction with Greek thought, as Jews framed their beliefs according to cosmopolitan standards. (That word “cosmopolitan” was coined in the fourth century BCE, and it was a defining characteristic of the Hellenistic era.) Many educated Jews thought in Greek. One Jewish author from this time whose name we know is Eupolemus, who was probably the ambassador that Judah the Maccabee sent on a diplomatic mission to Rome around 160. Eupolemus wrote a now-lost history of the Jewish kings and people and was the first to integrate biblical sources with Greek historical materials, drawing from Egypt and Phoenicia as well as Greece itself. Besides this work, other texts purporting to come from his hand make striking claims about the Jewish contributions to the founding of civilization. Whether genuinely Eupolemus’s work or not, these other fragments assert that Abraham taught cosmology and astrology to neighboring Near Eastern cultures.17
Most such writers tried to show how closely Jews conformed to Greek standards, but a few subversive voices were also heard. A few years after Eupolemus, an anonymous Egyptian Jew surveyed the contemporary Greek world through a pseudoprophecy collected in the Sibylline Oracles. Not only did the “oracle” make Jews an integral part of world history, but it did so through proud assertions of Jewish strength and dignity. Jews were “a holy race of godly men… keeping to the counsels and mind of the Most High.… For to them alone the mighty God his gracious counsel gave and faith and noblest thought within their hearts.” Jews demonstrated their superiority to vulgar pagan idolatry and abstained from the pederasty that was the standard practice of most other nations. In the context of the time, the author verged on blasphemy by denouncing the works of Homer, whom he saw as a liar, plagiarist, and fabulist, with his ludicrous portrayals of bogus pagan gods. But for all the carping, even this text shows how carefully Jews had to think through their relations with the larger Greek world.18
JEWS TRAVELED AND settled across the Hellenistic world, so that a very wide-ranging Diaspora was in existence by the end of the third century BCE. The Diaspora experience was anything but new in this era. Jews had been forcibly transported to Babylon in the sixth century, but plenty of other examples point to voluntary migration in the intervening years. Much of Jewish history in the Crucible years took place in Egypt or was profoundly affected by developments in that country, while Samaritans also began their own wide Diaspora. Egypt had its own Jewish temples, counterparts of the great edifice in Jerusalem. In the sixth century, a temple was built to serve a Jewish community at Elephantine in upper Egypt, where YHWH was associated with other deities. Diaspora Jews were the first to create synagogues, local houses of assembly, prayer, and worship that made no attempt to compete with the great sacrificial rituals of the temples. The institution of the synagogue developed in Egypt in the third century BCE before spreading to Palestine itself.19
The greatest Diaspora center was Alexandria itself, the pinnacle of the Greek civilizing and Hellenizing mission. The city attracted a large Jewish population, and by the second century it was a key Jewish center, exceeded in importance only by Jerusalem itself. By the first century CE, the city had five sections or quarters, two of which were mainly Jewish. The city’s importance for Jewish culture can hardly be exaggerated. This was above all the home of the philosopher and scholar Philo (20 BCE–50 CE), to whom we will often have cause to return.20
Later Jews looked back fondly on the Ptolemies and their experiences in Egypt. Ptolemy I in particular left a golden reputation, and he reportedly made strong efforts to encourage Jews and Samaritans to settle in the land. But political factors also favored such glorification of early Gentile rulers, who were retroactively contrasted with their evil successors. Writing in hindsight, Jews wrote up the Ptolemaic dynasty in opposition to the rival dynasty of the Seleucids, with whom they had had such disastrous experiences.
The earlier Ptolemies also looked very benevolent when compared with their later successors, and that fact encouraged a degree of romanticization. By the first century CE, Alexandria’s Jewish community repeatedly struggled with non-Jews, and some of these battles approached the status of civil wars. Writers of the time idealized relations in bygone times in order to stress the positive role that Jews had played in founding the city. The later text 3 Maccabees actually claims that in the late third century, Ptolemy IV persecuted and tried to destroy Egyptian Jews, but this assertion has no basis in reality. This work includes the unforgettable image of the king attempting to annihilate the Jews by having them trampled by enraged elephants.21
Just how centrally the Ptolemies loomed in Jewish memory is indicated by Josephus’s history of the Jewish people. Much of his account of the third century was focused on Egyptian events and conditions, and he especially praises Ptolemy Philadelphus for his excellent relations with Jews. Ptolemy generously frees many thousands of Jews whom the Persians had taken into captivity in Egypt and sends rich presents to the Jerusalem Temple. Another story recorded by Josephus shows just how thoroughly at home Jews felt in Ptolemaic Egypt. During the lethal factional feuds in Jerusalem in the 170s, Onias, son of the high priest, sought refuge in Egypt. The then king, Ptolemy VI Philometor, received him warmly, granting him permission to build at Leontopolis a new Jewish temple, supposedly an imitation of the main Jerusalem sanctuary. Like Jerusalem, it was staffed by priests of the proper lineage and maintained all the forms of the sacrificial cult. As it would have had the requisite complement of scribes, Leontopolis might well have been yet another center of Jewish literary activity, over and above Jerusalem and Alexandria. This alternative Egyptian temple remained in operation for 240 years. Around 150 BCE, the same Ptolemy again ventured into Jewish affairs when he agreed to decide a dispute about the rival historical claims of Jews and Samaritans. One Andronicus championed the cause of the Jewish Temple, and the king deemed him the winner. He then executed the rival Samaritan debaters.22
Josephus tells the famous story of the first Ptolemy building up the library of Alexandria, as his librarian sought out the books of the Jews for collection and translation. This resulted in the translation of the Bible into Greek, the Septuagint, so called because it was supposedly the work of seventy-two scholars. (This story is also found in the Letter of Aristeas, written in the second century BCE.) Reputedly, when the translation work was completed, the joyous community that heard it read found the work nothing less than perfect. The priests and the elders of the translators, the Jewish community, and the leaders of the people stood up and said that “since so excellent and sacred and accurate a translation had been made, it was only right that it should remain as it was and no alteration should be made in it.” The translation work owed something to a desire to inform Gentiles about the Jewish religion, but by far the most important audience was Jews themselves, who increasingly found it difficult to read in Hebrew or Aramaic. Already by 160, this Greek translation was the main biblical source used by Eupolemus. For centuries to come, the Septuagint was the primary means by which Jews read the Bible, and that translation was the foundational text of early Christianity. (Other Greek translations circulated in various parts of the Jewish world, but the Septuagint was the most significant.) The New Testament is incomprehensible without grasping its very frequent references to the Old Testament, whether through direct quotations or by more subtle recollections and reminiscences. But throughout, the Old Testament is quoted through the Septuagint, that is, through an Egyptian Greek translation.23
Alexandria is the likely source of origin of many Jewish writings in the Crucible years. Repeatedly, such works use Egyptian locations or characters or deal with issues particularly relevant to Egyptian Jews. Several Jewish writers flourished in second-century Alexandria. Although most of their works are now lost, we at least know the names of Demetrius the Chronographer and the epic poets Philo and Theodotus. One surprising text is the Exagoge of Ezekiel the Tragedian, a Jewish dramatist living in Alexandria in the second century BCE. At first sight, the Exagoge is a standard Greek tragedy in five acts, in iambic pentameter. Its theme, though, is the story of the Exodus, with extensive speaking parts by the character of Moses himself. Jewish history has been transmuted into a format that we are more accustomed to seeing as a vehicle for the tales of Greek mythology.24
Rarely do we know the precise circumstances in which biblical books were written, but one exception is Sirach, or the Wisdom of Jesus ben Sira. It was originally written by the scribe of that name—actually, Yeshua ben Eleazar ben Sira—in Jerusalem, in Hebrew, around 190 BCE. His grandson then translated it into Greek, “when I came to Egypt in the thirty-eighth year of the reign of [Ptolemy VIII Physkon] Euergetes and stayed for some time” (prologue). That dates the grandson’s move precisely to 132 BCE. This is a specific reference to a Jew traveling to Egypt and making a text available to his Greek-speaking contemporaries. The story represents in microcosm a whole world of intercultural contact and exchange.25
Besides Ptolemaic Alexandria, the emerging Jewish Diaspora had a center in the Seleucid realm, at Babylon and its nearby successor capitals. Babylon has always played an ambiguous role in Jewish history, both as a symbol of oppression and as an idealized cultural homeland. Jews had been settled in Mesopotamia/Iraq during the exile of the sixth century, and a community had always remained. Jews flourished during the Seleucid Empire that ruled the land from the fourth century through the second and then under the Parthian Empire that conquered Seleucia in 141 BCE. For some centuries, that city was an eastern mirror image of Alexandria. The Jewish presence in Mesopotamia grew ever stronger as successive generations of Jewish rebels and dissidents took refuge from the power of Rome. In the early centuries of the Common Era, Babylonia became the intellectual heartland of Judaism worldwide.26
JEWS DID NOT even have to look to the Diaspora to see Greek influences, as so many Greek and Gentile settlers were to be found in the land of Palestine itself and on its immediate borders. Palestine had always been an ethnically mixed region, and ancient stories of conquest and conflict record relations with neighboring tribes and peoples, notably the Philistines, who feature in the history of the early monarchy. Palestine was never homogeneous or uniformly Hebrew. But the situation became still more diverse during the era of Greek supremacy.27
We observe this from a disaster suffered by the ruling Hasmonean dynasty in 143 BCE. The Hasmonean leader, high priest Jonathan Apphus, fell into a trap set by his enemy, the Seleucid general Trypho. Under the pretense of arranging a peace settlement, Trypho captured Jonathan and eventually killed him. The story in itself was a familiar-enough example of the backstabbing politics that prevailed in this era. For present purposes, what matters is the setting of the crime at Scythopolis, in what is now Beit Shean, in northern Israel. Scythopolis is literally the city of the Scythians, a warrior people who originated in the Pontic-Caspian steppe region of eastern Europe, north of the Black Sea, and supplied mercenary forces to Hellenistic rulers. In this instance, an ancient city settlement had been refounded no later than the third century as the home of a body of discharged pagan soldiers, who gave it its name.28
Under a policy dating back to Alexander the Great, successive Hellenistic regimes settled veterans like the Scythians in new lands as a means of rewarding followers, with the added bonus of establishing loyal bastions among restive alien populations. Greek kings deliberately settled new populations to spread Hellenization and to serve as cultural magnets for native peoples. Greek cities were concentrated along the coasts and also in the northeastern corner of Palestine, across the Jordan River in the region known as the Decapolis. These Ten Cities include Philadelphia (modern Amman), Gadara, Pella, and Gerasa, while Damascus was loosely affiliated. Adding to their impact, such communities were located physically very close to the better-known Jewish areas, in what to American eyes looks like a tiny area. Palestine, in its historic sense, covers a mere 11,000 square miles. As the crow flies (and ignoring modern borders and security walls), traveling from Jerusalem to Damascus in Syria is a mere 160 miles, while Jerusalem to Nazareth is around 70 miles. Only a few days’ walking allowed people to travel between multiple regions of culture, language, and faith.29
These multicultural settlements, this reverse Diaspora, encouraged intermarriage and a degree of hybridization. Palestinian Jews were thus regularly exposed to interactions with Greek thought and culture, much like their counterparts in Alexandria or the wider Greek world. Less happily, Jews also learned Greek and Gentile ways during their time as prisoners or slaves to Gentile masters, from which at least some were ransomed. Such diversity contributed to religious creativity and innovation, and also to heterodoxy.
FOREIGN TRADITIONS FLOWED easily into Jewish culture, enhancing and strengthening it. At the same time, those influences created a reaction and a call to return to older and purer standards. The tension between those two impulses, of accommodation and restriction, is a major part of the history of the Jewish people in this period, as it would be in so many later eras, especially in the post-Enlightenment world.30
Jewish elites vigorously debated what aspects of traditional faith and practice might be adjusted or even abandoned in order to promote accommodation, without betraying their fundamental ways. Critically for later concepts of the divine, Jews also discovered Greek philosophy during this period, causing an enduring dilemma. (I will discuss this at greater length in Chapter 9.) Yes, they wanted to absorb the latest forms of cutting-edge sophistication, yet at the same time, Jews resented the loss or contamination of older values. They knew that they must confront and absorb Greek philosophical ideas if they hoped to engage in communication with the educated world, but even so, they had to avoid any connection to pagan deities or anything hinting at polytheism.
Two features of Greek culture made the new empires potentially very dangerous to Judaic traditions. One was cultural inclusiveness. The Greeks, generally, were very open-minded about the cults and religions of the regions in which they settled, and Hellenistic cultures often reimagined local deities in forms more congenial to them. In Egypt the first Ptolemy deliberately created the new Greek-styled cult of Serapis in order to unify the empire’s old and new populations. This new god merged the ancient native cults of Osiris and Apis into a composite figure in the best Greek mode, and he attracted a widespread following. (We have already seen the royal adoption of Egyptian styles on the Rosetta stone.) The goddess Isis, meanwhile, was combined with multiple female Greek deities to construct an all-powerful Queen of Heaven. Sometimes such a foreign-derived figure became the centerpiece of one of the Greek mystery religions that were in vogue from the third century onward. Such movements took believers through successive levels of initiation and ritual performance in a process that granted them the promise of eternal life and happiness.
Beyond their natural syncretism, Greeks also possessed superlative skills of visual representation in sculpture and painting, allowing them to visualize deities according to the extraordinarily high aesthetic standards prevailing at this time. They were superb at making ethnic and regional gods look wholly Greek, as they did with Serapis himself. In central Asia and on the Indian frontiers, local gods and kings were portrayed in Greek form in statuary and carvings. For several centuries, the emerging faith of Mahayana Buddhism represented its bodhisattvas in pure Hellenistic style; today, scholars study the phenomenon of “Greco-Buddhism.” One famous Buddhist scripture features a noble patron of the faith called King Milinda, who was actually a Bactrian Greek sovereign called Menander Soter, the Savior. He ruled from ca. 160 to 130 BCE, making him a close contemporary of the Maccabean brothers who led the Jewish nationalist revolt. Menander, incidentally, had his capital at yet another city called Alexandria, which we know today as Kandahar, in Afghanistan.31
If those cultural pressures were so powerful as far afield as Kandahar and northern India, how much stronger were they for a Mediterranean community living amid Greek and pagan neighbors? In such a world, there was a natural temptation to assimilate the Jewish deity to Greek normality and ultimately to portray YHWH himself with an iconography close to that of Zeus. When pagans actually did penetrate the Holy of Holies—as did the forces of Antiochus IV in the 160s and the Romans a century later—they were stunned and baffled to find no actual figure of the deity, an absence quite contrary to the religious thought of the day. As far as we know, nobody actually dared take the step of commemorating YHWH in concrete form, but some such move was the logical next step in the Hellenization pushed so hard by Jewish enthusiasts. Perhaps a future statue in the Temple precincts might combine YHWH with one of the gods beloved by the Seleucid kings, such as Apollo or Zeus-Olympios (and as we will see something like that did happen in the 160s). Why should YHWH not merge into some new composite divinity who could generate the same broad multiethnic appeal as Serapis? The question was not whether there would be a Greco-Judaism, but rather how syncretistic it would become.
Politically, too, Greek assumptions posed serious difficulties for faithful Jews. Hellenistic kings made exalted claims for themselves, with their godlike rhetoric and their divine titles. When Alexander invaded the Persian realm in 334 BCE, Greek kingship still retained a good deal of popular approval and consultation, so that at least initially Macedonians did not claim a divine right to rule in anything like the Persian sense. Rapidly, though, Alexander’s successors adopted Persian and Egyptian concepts of divine kingship. Over the next three centuries, Seleucid and Ptolemaic kings regularly bore such titles as Soter (Savior), Epiphanes (“Made Manifest,” as in the Christian word “epiphany”), and even Theos (God). Initially, a title like Soter might reflect praise for a military victory, but over time the religious components became more explicit: they were considered true cosmic saviors.
As we have seen, it was in the early second century that the Ptolemies made the transition into divine Egyptian pharaohs. Court ceremonial developed apace in all the Hellenistic realms, mimicking Persian court customs, as did titles and court formulas. By the Crucible era, kings wore elaborate solar crowns and diadems. They were gods on earth and expected to be treated as such. The king was no mere first among equals but a lord, a despotes (the source of our word “despotism”). While such developments were most immediately apparent in the courts themselves, they soon had their impact on every corner of the empire and beyond, wherever might be found coins proclaiming all the new royal pretensions.32
Those divine pretensions were integral to the ideology of power. By this time, many older Greek deities had fallen out of fashion, to be replaced by either local gods and mystery cults or else the popular cult of Tyche, that is, Fate or Fortune. The other main religious expression of the time was the cult of the kings themselves, with their exalted titles that proved they were the ultimate beneficiaries of Tyche.33 That glorious achievement was celebrated in images, whether sculpted or painted, that demanded the homage and respect of subjects. For Jews, such figurative representation aroused concerns about idol worship and violating the commandment against graven images.
Kings demonstrated their wealth and power by ostentatious displays, through mighty building activities, and by organizing public shows and games, all of which featured ritual acts and consecrations. Pagan sacrifices were an integral part of all public life and communal action. Kings proved their Greekness by building cities with the requisite manifestations of culture, including gymnasia and baths. But even those seemingly harmless institutions posed new difficulties, in that games and gymnasia required nudity (gymnos signifies “naked”). Jewish participants could not participate naked without revealing the fact of circumcision, which Greeks considered an embarrassing form of mutilation. The only solution was to undergo a procedure to conceal that circumcision.34
Among both Jews and Gentiles, elites found these new ideologies attractive and tempting, encouraging lords and aristocrats of various kinds to adopt Greek styles. It was good to be a despot and still better to be a god-king. Jewish kings were not immune to these temptations, and that included the Hasmonean rulers who owed their power to the nationalist revolt against the Seleucids in the 160s. Ironically, by the end of the second century BCE, Hasmonean dynasts all adopted Greek royal names; it was an Aristoboulos who officially took the kingship in 104. Names as such were not necessarily ideological, and even faithful Jewish sages and rabbis might bear surprisingly Greek names (one famous scholar was Antigonus of Sokho). But the Hasmonean commitment ran still deeper. Archaeologists have recovered parts of the Hasmonean palace in Jerusalem, which was built according to the finest standards of contemporary Greek architecture. No less suited for the new Greek world was their winter palace near Jericho, with its very modern pools, baths, and gardens.35
But could faithful Jews acknowledge worldly rulers as gods on earth? If some Jewish elites envied and copied those styles, they were anathema to most religious believers, who denounced and parodied them in ways that echo through later scriptures. Over time, smoldering resentment developed into active political opposition and even (by the start of the Common Era) into militant religious nationalism. The more the Jews confronted what they saw as ruthless, blasphemous power, the grimmer and more threatening became their vision of cosmic warfare. Hellenistic theories of power in turn shaped Roman imperial ideologies, which are rejected so starkly in the New Testament and especially the book of Revelation. Jesus himself mocked the Gentile kings who loved to take such immodest titles as Benefactor (Luke 22:25). He also fielded thorny questions about how to handle coins that featured pagan images.
The anti-Greek reaction had its impact on concepts of the heavenly realms, as the large and very hierarchical Hellenistic courts contributed to emerging Jewish concepts of the ranks of angels serving and hymning God. But darker visions also prevailed. Some scholars see the evil fallen angels in 1 Enoch as veiled attacks on the Hellenistic rulers, with their divine claims and titles. This text, like many others from this period, might be a caricature of Hellenistic kings and magnates, the godling princes and proud courtiers whose supernatural counterparts likewise served an anti-God.36
BY THE START of the second century, Jewish society was drifting ever closer to absorption into the transcontinental Greek political and cultural realm, the oikou mene. In such circumstances, it hardly seemed possible for either people or religion to retain its traditional identity, and far from resisting such a synthesis, Jewish elites themselves were actively promoting it. The most intense debates, and the most violent confrontations, occurred not in far-flung Diaspora territories but in Jerusalem itself.