Chapter 3
ANTIOCH IN JERUSALEM
The Limits of the Law
In those days went there out of Israel wicked men, who persuaded many, saying, “Let us go and make a covenant with the heathen that are round about us: for since we departed from them we have had much sorrow.”
1 MACCABEES 1:11, KJV
IN 175 BCE, the high priest Onias was succeeded by his brother, Jason, who won the office by means of a sizable gift to the king Antiochus IV. Jason offered to advance the cause of Hellenization, to bring his people over to the Greek way of life, Hellenikon charaktera. Before adopting his Greek name, “Jason” was originally Yeshua or Joshua, and he also proposed to rename his city in proper Greek form, as Antioch-in-Jerusalem. That would imply all the trappings of such a city, including a temple to serve as a center for the royal cult, while schools would offer Greek education, paideia. Jewish historians remember this as the height, literally the acme, of Hellenization. In 172 the high priesthood passed to one Menelaus (formerly Honi), who won the office by giving the king an even larger bribe. Although Menelaus was also a vigorous Hellenizer, Jason attacked him as insufficiently Greek oriented and not truly loyal to the king. Each faction accordingly escalated its cultural bids. Jason, incidentally, was the son of the long-reigning high priest Simon, whom we have already encountered (2 Macc. 4).
In retrospect, such extreme policies of Hellenization look like acts of profound betrayal. The book of 1 Maccabees even calls the Hellenizers “lawless men” who “joined with the Gentiles and sold themselves to do evil” (1:11–15). The word “lawless”—or, better, Law-less—was much used in these years to condemn the Hellenizers, suggesting as it did a rejection of God, Covenant, culture, and nation.
Today, that whole controversy is recalled, if at all, through the Hanukah story, as a struggle for Jewish identity and freedom against persecution and tyranny. At the time, the dividing lines were far less clear, and conflict on that scale was anything but inevitable. Far from being alien intruders, the Hellenizers were an authentic and well-established faction within Judaism, with a lengthy history dating back generations before the immediate crisis of Jason’s time. They asked critical questions about the place of Jewish identity and belief in a complex world. As both modernizers and progressives, they spoke for educated city dwellers, while the nationalists found their following in the countryside. The resulting conflicts ushered in a century of chaos within the Jewish world. Over time, pro-Greek views would be so heavily defeated that their adherents were utterly discredited.1
THE RELIGIOUS REVOLUTION coincided with an era of acute political tensions and struggles within the Jewish nation. Our sources for that era are, however, slim and inconsistent, amazingly so in contrast with most periods of Jewish history. In stressing that relative silence, I am not merely making a professional complaint about the poor resources available to historians for a particular period; rather, I am drawing attention to a vital cultural transformation that occurred in Jewish cultural and religious life. The fact that our resources improve so enormously in the later third century indicates the rapid progress of several critical developments. Together, these developments contributed not just to creating bold new ideas but also to recording them and presenting them to a diverse public. This era marked a real watershed, and it was intimately connected to Hellenization.
Historians face real difficulties in approaching Jewish history in these years. Specifically, Jewish sources are virtually nonexistent for the years between roughly 310 and 260, which we know to have been a period of constant strife between the great Hellenistic empires, and these conflicts surely must have impinged on Palestinian realities. Certainly, some writings do survive for the larger period between 350 and 250, including several books now found in most Bibles—Chronicles and Proverbs as well as (possibly) Job and Jonah (see Table 1). What we are missing are sources that unquestionably tell us about the political and social conditions in Palestine at the time.
Just why those sources are so sparse demands explanation, and the problem is not just a matter of the chances of survival. If such sources ever existed, as at least some must have, they disappeared at a very early stage. Writing about 90 CE, historian Josephus struggled to say anything worthwhile about Jewish events in the long third century. His silence is all the more telling because his social standing would have given him excellent access to any materials that were available. The twelfth book of his Jewish Antiquities notionally covers the period from the death of Alexander the Great to the death of Judah the Maccabee, that is, from 323 through 160 BCE. About half of it, though, focuses on the very late years in that period, from the 180s onward. Even allowing for the fact that he was using legendary material or dubious documents, much of what he has to say about the third century concerns developments in Egypt or Asia Minor. The material on Palestine itself is painfully thin.2
Jewish religious sources present a similar picture. Anxious to claim continuity from Mosaic times, much later rabbinic authors described a learned tradition through the prophets and the Great Assembly (Knesset HaGedolah) that supposedly operated from the sixth century onward, and they credited to this assembly many vital decisions about Jewish law, liturgy, and biblical canon. Scant evidence exists for the historical existence of such an assembly. The real sequence of known scholars whose work is preserved dates only from the late third century, beginning with Simon the Just and his intriguingly Greek-named pupil Antigonus of Sokho. From Simon onward, we have an important series of legal decisions and wise sayings or apothegms, although we are less confident about the biographical details that later rabbis supplied for these venerated forefathers. Before 250 or so, then, sources are lacking, but matters changed fundamentally at the end of the century.
While the element of chance goes some way toward explaining the lack of documents (whether religious or secular) before 250, the volume of relevant material being produced in those years was almost certainly much more limited than in later eras. That lack of writing is all the more striking when compared with the phenomenal creativity that is evident from the end of the century (see especially the impressive list of dated works in Table 1). In order to explain this contrast, we need only look at the new forces coming into play in the later period that so stimulated cultural life but which had evidently played a smaller role in earlier times. Among those emerging themes, we can identify a vigorous tradition of competing schools and factions of religious thought, abundant opportunities for writing, diverse sources of patronage, and the greatly enhanced role of Diaspora communities. Through all these developments, moreover, we see the multifaceted role of Hellenization.
FROM THE LATER third century, when we begin to see more writing, thought, and debate, Jewish culture was characterized by what we might call creative fragmentation. Rabbinic tradition recalls this as the age of scholars and jurists who coexisted in learned duos or pairs, zugot, and a few of whose opinions were preserved in the Talmud. The proliferation of new theological currents spawned a range of schools of thought, some of which evolved into sects. Later rabbinic tradition plausibly dates the origins of the Pharisees and Sadducees to the start of the second century—indeed, to disputes among the pupils of Antigonus of Sokho. The Essenes emerged around the same time. Each movement explored its ideas through a variety of innovative forms and genres and presented its views in competition with its rivals. This suggests a real diversity not just of ideas but of centers producing and preserving writing. That in turn implies different kinds of patronage and support for intellectual endeavor beyond the older monopoly of the Temple and its elites.
Throughout these changes, too, Greek influences played a critical role. They supplied a massive incentive for work in that language, including new kinds of history and religious polemic. If you wanted to reach a wide and educated audience, you had to write in Greek. Even among the religious elite, the legal council dominated by the zugot was the Sanhedrin, which takes its name directly from the Greek original synedrion. At the same time, the ubiquitous Greek presence stirred a reaction and demanded intense debate about the proper limits of cultural accommodation. Jewish communities outside Palestine, especially in Egypt and Mesopotamia, were deeply involved in all these debates. One of the few later biblical books we can reliably attribute to a particular author is 2 Maccabees, which recounts the story of the Maccabean revolt. The book as we have it is an abridgement of a now lost multivolume work written by one Jason of Cyrene, in modern Libya; the authorship indicates its Diaspora context. For multiple reasons, then, the resulting era was incredibly fertile in producing pathbreaking scriptures, new religious insights, and also historical sources for political developments.
To understand the earlier, less fruitful, era, let us transform those later positives into negatives. Imagine a world without that spiritual ferment, without those rivalries, and without the same means of expressing ideas. Extending that contrast would lead us to expect a much more limited intellectual world between, say, 350 and 250 BCE, with fewer centers supporting the work of scholars and thinkers. At that time, there simply did not exist the kind of divisive movements and sects that we know from later years and presumably not the same kind of innovation and debate. Nor, in that earlier era, were external cultural pressures anything like as immediate or acute, whether the influences we are looking at were Persian or Hellenistic. Given the number of later works that critique imperial rule, albeit in coded guise, we must be struck by the lack of any such literature directed against the long era of Persian rule. In those earlier times, moreover, Diaspora communities were not as culturally active or vigorous. Fewer resentments and disputes existed to stir literary activity, and even then there were fewer opportunities to engage in such work.
Only in the midyears of the third century was a real change marked by the rise of the daring thinkers and activists who developed the explosive Enochian literature to be described in the next chapter. As we will see, some of that literature was highly critical of the Temple, implying that it must have originated from centers outside the older clerical world of Jerusalem. It was also suffused with diverse cultural influences, including strands from the Greek, Egyptian, and Babylonian worlds.
The hazards of arguing from silence are obvious enough, but in this case understanding the reasons for that historical obscurity points to momentous developments in cultural life from about 250 onward. Something very significant changed at that historical moment.
DESPITE THE GAPS in our knowledge, we can still say some things about Jewish history within the Greek imperial order. In terms of Palestine itself, Hellenistic rule differed substantially from the Persian precedent. For one thing, the new empires were physically much closer at hand, so that Palestine was much more directly affected by the doings in such great imperial cities as Antioch and Alexandria. In the latter days of the Seleucid Empire, its capital was very close by, at Antioch or even Damascus. Palestine was deeply and perilously involved in imperial rivalries, as factions within the Jewish polity defined themselves in terms of loyalty to one or another empire or dynasty.3
Third-century Palestine was part of the Ptolemaic Empire and was governed from the city of Ptolemais, the later Akko or Acre. But despite knowing so much about the dynasty and its Egyptian territories, we can say remarkably little about what was actually happening in Palestine in that era. Some evidence indicates a period of surprising peace and prosperity, barring sporadic raids from eastern nomads. When the Ptolemaic bureaucrat Zenon toured Palestine in 259–258 BCE, the record he left offers a picture of peace and order, with no reference to battles or civil unrest. The best literary monument of these Ptolemaic years is the book of Ecclesiastes, which depicts a stable and peaceful (if very unequal) society. All is futility, says the writer, even though he personally had gathered vast treasure, spent lavishly on building projects, accumulated legions of slaves, and acquired a harem (2:1–8). Although it survives in Hebrew, Ecclesiastes is richly laden with Greek concepts and philosophical terms, and it suggests the influence of Stoic, Epicurean, and rationalist perspectives. By the end of the third century, the Judean aristocracy moved from the countryside and the small towns to base itself in Jerusalem so as to participate fully in both the politics and the cosmopolitan cultural offerings of the growing metropolitan center.4
Ancient empires of necessity granted a lot of autonomy and recognized the power of local elites. That was not a question of enlightened liberalism, but rather a recognition of the weakness of effective government outside a regime’s core areas. In the Jewish case, political power was—and had been for many centuries—concentrated in the Temple and the high priesthood. Both institutions became strongly partisan and dynastic.5
The Jerusalem Temple was a place of special holiness, and the high priesthood was an enormously prestigious office, with strong theocratic and even messianic elements. Around 300, Hecataeus of Abdera described Jerusalem as a temple-state ruled firmly by a high priest who was “a messenger [angelos] of God’s commandments.” As such, the high priest expounded the commandments and “announce[d] what [was] ordained in assemblies.” There was even a theory that the high-priestly office carried with it a kind of prophetic or charismatic status. Of later king and high priest John Hyrcanus (134–104 BCE), Josephus records that God had given him three great privileges, namely, “the government of his nation, the dignity of the high priesthood, and prophecy; for God was with him, and enabled him to know futurities.” That power took material form in the legendary Urim and Thummim that formed part of the priest’s regalia and were used to foretell the future through a kind of sacralized coin toss. Some theorists claimed that the Urim and Thummim responded to questions by producing tongues of supernatural fire.6
Contemporary writers lauded the high priesthood in terms that went far beyond the conventional praise of powerful benefactors. Around 190 BCE, Sirach extolled the office to an amazing extent, raising the tradition of Aaron, founder of the priesthood, even over that of his brother, Moses. The work ends with extravagant praise of the current incumbent, Simon the Just. According to this panegyric, Simon was not merely a member of the long sequence of Israel’s glorious heroes and prophets, but almost their culmination and conclusion.7
In theory, the high priesthood and the Temple establishment should have proved a mighty bulwark for traditional values amid all the cultural change swirling from the mid-third century onward. Yet for all the priestly prestige, we also see signs of division, with recurring conflicts between the high priests and the gerousia, the aristocratic council, with its much intermarried local aristocrats and warlords. Those schisms were reflected in religious texts and scriptures, in which we trace a potent anti-Temple critique. Those internal divisions opened the way to accepting cultural innovations pressing in from the outside world.8
For much of the biblical period, the First Temple had enjoyed special sanctity among writers who exalted it and gave it a special role in their visions of God’s actions on earth, present and future. That is a common trait among religious traditions throughout the world. As religions become literate and hierarchical, great ritual sites become centers of scholarship and learning, where priests and scribes write ever more ambitious hymns to the role and function of their mighty temples and the cities in which they stand. The city becomes a microcosm of the universe; as time goes on, the city itself is seen as the center of the universe or a metaphor for the whole of Creation. Jerusalem was the sacred space in which human history would be performed. When fifth-century reformers restored the Temple, they hoped that the restored structure would inherit that older sanctity. Our major source for the restored institution is the highly partisan books of Ezra and Nehemiah, which present a story of the triumph of rigid monotheism. The Temple is restored, and so are the people of Israel, once they have been forced to renounce their foreign wives and families. They all lived piously ever after.9
But referring to the “Second Temple” can give a false sense of unbroken continuity, as the new institution never regained the awe that had been attached to the predecessor built by Solomon. However splendid the structure, and despite the pageantry associated with its priests, the new Temple enjoyed far less prestige and evident sanctity than the first. It was multiply tainted, both by its association with successive Gentile rulers and with a rapacious and often unpopular high-priestly caste. Around 200 BCE, a pseudoprophecy recorded in the book of Tobit promised the return from Babylonian Exile and the restoration of the Temple, implying that the current Temple was grossly lacking. Even so, this new institution would “not be like the former one, until the times of the age are completed” (14:5).10
As the story of Ezra’s ethnic and sexual cleansing suggests, the new Temple elite tried to enforce much greater orthodoxy and homogeneity than had previously existed, but Jerusalem’s leaders enjoyed very mixed success. Issues of assimilation proved contentious and durable. In fact, between the fifth and the third centuries BCE, a series of literary works expressed views on segregation and intermarriage quite antithetical to those of the priestly rigorists. This includes such biblical works as Jonah, Ruth, Tobit, and Esther, all of which offer favorable accounts of neighboring peoples, while Ruth and Esther both praise mixed marriages. The Song of Solomon idealizes sexual love between an Israelite and a foreign woman. Each text, in its way, was guaranteed to offend, and each would have had a special appeal for assimilationist enemies of the tradition of Ezra and Nehemiah.11
Meanwhile, the priestly class itself was riven by bitter conflicts. Splits were partly a matter of class and prestige, with lesser orders or families pitted against the elite. Those exalted clerics claimed the title of Zadokite, the descendants of Zadok, who had served as high priest under King David himself, and increasingly, they also boasted of their inheritance from Aaron. The Babylonian Exile destabilized older assumptions, allowing once inferior groups to gain confidence and independence. By the third and second centuries, some factions were openly rejecting the Temple and its hierarchy, urging a thorough purging and reformation. When postbiblical religious writings addressed the Temple, as they often did, it was in a different and more critical context than in earlier centuries. Yet even when they rejected the earthly Temple, as did some sectarians, it was because the Temple that did exist fell so badly short of the desired purity and perfection.12 The restored Temple divided as much as it united.
ALTHOUGH JOSEPHUS KNEW little about third-century conditions, he does sketch the history of the great families who dominated Palestine in this era. His major source is a novelistic family saga that is anything but an objective history and is usually called the Tobiad Romance. (It probably dates from the 170s BCE.) Through these stories, we see how family and clan loyalties shaped political divisions, which were intimately linked to issues of patronage and to access to the imperial court. Ultimately, too, they were conditioned by dynastic rivalries, which reached a new plateau in the mid-third century.13
Josephus discusses the interplay of two key aristocratic families, whose stories highlight the influence of the Ptolemaic and Seleucid dynasties on Palestinian elites. One clan, the Oniads, exercised total control of the high priesthood. One Onias held office between about 320 and 280, and thereafter, we trace a sequence of Oniads through the next century, as son followed father or brother succeeded brother. The Simon who is so extravagantly praised in Sirach was one of their line (see Table 3.1). Their rivals were the Tobiads, who formed the subject of the romance. That family traced its ancestry to a Tobiah/Tobias who was already an enemy of the emerging Second Temple establishment as far back as the time of Nehemiah, in the late fifth century. That particular Tobiah was thoroughly intermarried with the other great families of the time and boasted a daunting network of aristocratic friends and oath-bound followers. By the mid-third century, another Tobias was a great feudal lord with estates across the Jordan (and whom the bureaucrat Zenon met on his visit). At his fortress of Ammanitis, Tobias commanded an army of mixed Jewish and Greek soldiers.14
Josephus records some episodes in domestic political history, although problems of chronology mean that we must read his words with some caution. He describes an incident in the 240s, when the high priest Onias II withheld twenty talents in taxes due to the king, Ptolemy the Benefactor. Josephus tells the story as if it resulted from Onias’s simpleminded meanness. In the context of the time, however, such nonpayment was an overt act of rebellion, which local elites undertook at the risk of their heads. Such a gambit would make sense only if Onias was plotting a defection from the Ptolemaic Empire to the Seleucids, perhaps during a period of war or diplomatic crisis.
Ptolemaic forces prepared to invade and threatened to dispossess the Jews altogether. The crisis resulted in a shift of power to Tobias, who was married to Onias’s sister, and their son Joseph now claimed the high priesthood. Joseph undertook a diplomatic mission to Ptolemy, where he made an excellent impression and was given the position of tax farmer or collector. Such a collector contracted to deliver a particular sum to the government, but he kept what he could extract over and above that sum, making it a vastly profitable venture. So ruthless were his exactions that the Ptolemaic court openly joked that he had stripped his province to the bone. The empire also entrusted his family with devolved military powers.15
TABLE 3.1. HIGH PRIESTS, 320–37 BCE
Onias I, ca. 320–280
Simon I, son of Onias, ca. 280–260
Eleazar, son of Onias, ca. 260–245
Manasseh, ca. 245–240
Onias II, son of Simon, ca. 240–218
Simon II, son of Onias, 218–185
Onias III, son of Simon, 185–175, murdered 170
Jason, son of Simon, 175–172
Menelaus, 172–162
[Onias IV, son of Onias III, fled to Egypt]
Alcimus, 162–159
[No known high priest—possibly name or names lost, 159–153]
Jonathan Apphus, 153–143
Simon Thassi, 142–134
John Hyrcanus I, 134–104
Aristoboulus I, 104–103
Alexander Jannaeus, 103–76
John Hyrcanus II, 76–66
Aristoboulus II, 66–63
John Hyrcanus II (again), 63–40
Antigonus, 40–37
Joseph now became prostates, effectively the Jewish liaison in dealings with the Ptolemaic regime and a secular counterpart to the high priesthood. He cultivated excellent relations with the imperial family and operated as much in Alexandria as in Palestine. Around 240 Ptolemy III himself might have visited Jerusalem and offered sacrifice in the Temple, a glorious example of the biblical theme of Gentile rulers acknowledging the God of Israel. For twenty years, Joseph the Tobiad combined the sophistication of a courtier with his role as a border baron. He was as much at home in Greek language and culture as in the Jewish world or indeed the border societies of the East. (Reflecting the habits of the Greco-Egyptian court, he married his own niece, in flat violation of Jewish codes.) Like any dynast, Joseph sought to pass on his power to his heirs, and his son Hyrcanus inherited his military command on the eastern shores of the Jordan.16
Joseph’s descendants were central to the conflicts over Hellenization in second-century Judea. With Greek influence so strong in Jerusalem, we cannot speak of a simple schism between pro- and anti-Hellenizers. However, the Tobiads were normally the party opposed to the Temple establishment and also most sympathetic to sweeping Hellenization. As we will see, the Tobiads were probably the sponsors or patrons of the book of Tobit, which spoke disparagingly of the existing Temple.
Even the name Hyrcanus is suggestive in this context, as the term “Hyrcania” normally refers to a region on the Caspian Sea, with its Iranian peoples. Possibly the Tobiad name reflects a different derivation, but it might well represent some kind of otherwise unknown family linkage by this cosmopolitan house. As we have seen, foreign peoples like the Scythians were also present in Palestine itself. Whatever its origin, the name “Hyrcanus” would reappear in the Jewish context, including in the Hasmonean dynasty. A son of the historian Josephus bore the name Flavius Hyrcanus.
THE APPARENT HISTORY of internal tranquillity ended at the close of the third century, when foreign invasion was accompanied by fratricidal civil war. Seleucid emperor Antiochus III warred against Ptolemy IV Philopator and his successors. Antiochus invaded Palestine in 219 and won repeated victories until he was defeated at Raphia. In 200 Antiochus III in turn defeated the Egyptians at Panias, decisively winning Palestine for the Seleucid Empire.17
When territory shifted hands following the victory of one or another empire, each empire rewarded its partisans and proxies and severely punished those who had betrayed or abandoned it. Mass executions were a likely prospect for those who chose the wrong side. Hyrcanus the Tobiad was faithfully pro-Ptolemaic, but the high priests and most of his family were pro-Seleucid. The political crisis was disastrous for the Tobiads, as the elders and other members of the elite families turned against Hyrcanus and made war on him. The resulting struggle deeply divided what Josephus calls “the people” or “the multitude,” but a majority sided with the elders against Hyrcanus, as did his kinsman Simon, the high priest. This was a rare instance of popular politics being drawn into the elite world of family factions and dynastic feuds. Hyrcanus fled to his mighty fortress on the Arabian border, his so-called Tyre, which we know as the spectacular Hellenistic palace site of Qasr al-’Abd, in modern Jordan. (Accounts of Hyrcanus’s vast building activities make him sound as prodigious as that other later Transjordanian Herod the Great.) From this base, he remained in “perpetual war” with the local peoples. He remained there for seven years, until the accession of a new Seleucid ruler, Antiochus IV, in 175, which drove him to suicide.18
Other tremors shook the high priesthood through the 170s. A different official named Simon, the Temple captain, alerted Seleucid authorities to the presence of treasures in the Temple, including money deposited by Hyrcanus (2 Macc. 3:11). This was a sizable sum, four hundred talents of silver and two hundred of gold—a signal demonstration of just how profitable a couple of generations of tax farming could be. In 178 Seleucus IV duly attempted to seize the precious goods, provoking yet another conflict between priestly factions and an open battle for the high priesthood. The tale is convoluted, but it demands some discussion because both the events and the characters will appear later in this story. Moreover, it is an excellent example of the kind of constant backstabbing and conflict that wracked Palestine during this period.
On one side was the Simon who had been responsible for inviting royal forces to appropriate the treasures and who plotted against high priest Onias III. (Reputedly, the agents of this Simon advanced their cause by assassination.) Both parties now appealed to the Seleucid court to vindicate their claim. Onias was succeeded as high priest by his brother, Jason, and he in turn was followed by Menelaus, brother of the conspirator Simon. Menelaus had the support of the Tobiads in their long-running feud with the Oniad Temple elite. Between them, Jason and Menelaus now engaged in the dueling Hellenisms that we witnessed at the start of this chapter. Jason built a gymnasium, and the Jewish elite went further than ever before in adopting Greek clothes and fashions. Priests neglected their services in order to become spectators at contests in wrestling and discus throwing. Jason’s enthusiasm for things Greek seemed to know no bounds, and when the king held games at Tyre, the high priest sent money for sacrifices to Herakles (2 Macc. 4). Although his effort was thwarted, that would have meant a Jewish high priest directly, and unthinkably, sponsoring sacrifices to pagan gods.19
The family vendetta escalated when Onias exposed Menelaus’s theft of some Temple treasures, and in 170 Menelaus provoked his murder. Hearing a false rumor that the king Antiochus IV had died, Jason the Oniad hurriedly gathered a thousand men and launched an unsuccessful coup in Jerusalem, forcing Menelaus to take refuge with the Seleucid garrison. Antiochus saw such a blow against his authority and prestige as a deadly insult, if not a direct revolt against Seleucid rule. This was the detonator that led the king to attack Jerusalem himself.
THE LATE THIRD and early second centuries were marked by endemic turbulence and civil war. Even times of notional peace were marked by factional feuds, conspiracies, and murders, and high-priestly office played a pivotal role in all of them. Analogies with the Renaissance era, the age of papal Rome and the Borgias, are tempting. As the second century progressed, moreover, wars escalated into open revolution against the Seleucids. So extreme and persistent was the violence in this era that it must make us question the apparent stability we think we see in earlier times. We have no record of such domestic feuds in the early third century, but does that mean they were not occurring? Were the earlier decades in fact so tranquil? We know that Alexander’s various “successors” were rampaging through the Near East in the first quarter of the third century, while the Ptolemies and Seleucids were at war from 274 to 271, 260 to 253, and again from 246 to 241. Periods of warfare, in fact, were almost as frequent as those of peace, and it seems curious that they are so absent from the Jewish historical record. If fuller records were available for, say, the era 300–250, we might know more examples of border warlords like Hyrcanus, battling against or alongside successive high priests. We should be alert to the possibility of earlier crises and struggles that have simply dropped from the historical record.20
I have already mentioned several texts that shed some light on divisions and concerns in the post-250 era, including Sirach and Tobit. Other texts derive from this era, but their exact historical context is open to debate. One of the most cryptic, and influential, Old Testament texts is the final six chapters of the prophetic book of Zechariah, a section that is commonly labeled Deutero-(Second) Zechariah.
First Zechariah was a landmark text, but its later counterpart was arguably even more significant. First Zechariah belonged to the end of the sixth century BCE, and it was a kind of protoapocalyptic text, so it is not surprising that a later author would choose to expand on those elements. Virtually all scholars agree that this second portion was indeed written later, but there is wide disagreement about what the exact time interval might be. That question matters so much because Deutero-Zechariah exercised such an enormous influence on later religious thought. The story, which to us reads very cryptically, tells of a holy man who adopts the role of a false prophet, a wicked shepherd, who serves as a kind of provocateur. Ultimately, his misdeeds lead to his violent death. That in turn forces the people to realize their sinful state, and this initiates an apocalypse, in which Jerusalem is at the heart of a cosmic war against invading nations.21
Most surprising for modern readers are what look like numerous Christian references, or foretastes. Within a very short space, we find perhaps a half-dozen lines that would be quoted or referenced in the gospel accounts of Jesus’s final days. One verse describes a messianic king entering the city mounted on an ass; another speaks of selling a person for thirty pieces of silver. Still other phrases are quoted or included in the Christian Passion narrative, namely, “They will look on one they have pierced” and “Strike the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered.” Zechariah’s closing verse even imagines a Temple in which there are no traders, suggesting Jesus’s expulsion of the money changers. That is a potent list. Taken together, Deutero-Zechariah looks like a Passion Play in miniature. At the very least, the authors of the gospels were drawing heavily from this text in forming their view of Jesus and his messianic role. Conceivably, Jesus himself was deliberately modeling his actions upon these passages.22
Deutero-Zechariah must date from some point between 500 BCE and 170 BCE, but a more exact dating is difficult because so much of the text is hopelessly obscure to modern eyes. We cannot with any confidence say which kings, prophets, or priests are symbolically represented in the story of the wicked shepherd. The most likely context falls within the long third century, at either the start or the end of that period and referencing the imperial wars in the region. References to Yavan, Greece, point to a time when Israel was abundantly aware of Greek power and influence (Zech. 9:13). Apparent prophetic citations to Egypt and Assyria work well as metaphors for the Ptolemaic and Seleucid Empires rather than as literal characterizations of those historic states.23
If we are looking for a tumultuous period of intense crisis that fits the general description, the best candidate would be the years between about 205 and 175. Foreign invasion coincided with a multisided civil war in which the high priesthood was deeply implicated. Throughout, the wars involved the two empires of “Egypt and Assyria” as well as “the Greeks.” Intriguingly, the Zechariah narrative prominently mentions the stronghold of Tyre, which was a famous Mediterranean city—but it was also the name that Hyrcanus had given to his desert fastness.
THIS EXTRAORDINARILY SIGNIFICANT text likely emerged as a direct response to this specific era in Jewish history, from 205 to 175. If that dating is correct, then this pioneering manifesto of apocalyptic and messianic ideas grew directly out of these specific historical and political events. Not for the first time, apocalyptic crisis generated apocalyptic literature. And the first half of the second century would be profligate in creating visions of the End Times.