IV. HELLENISM AND THE JEWS

The history of Judea in the Hellenistic age turns on two conflicts: the external struggle between Seleucid Asia and Ptolemaic Egypt for Palestine, and the internal struggle between the Hellenic and the Hebraic ways of life. The first conflict is dead history, and may be briefly dismissed; Matthew Arnold believed the second conflict to be one of the lasting cleavages of human feeling and thought. In the original division of Alexander’s empire Judea (i.e., Palestine south of Samaria) had been awarded to Ptolemy. The Seleucids never accepted this decision; they saw themselves separated from the Mediterranean, and coveted the wealth that might come from the trade that passed through Damascus and Jerusalem. In the resultant wars Ptolemy I won, and Judea remained subject to the Ptolemies for more than a century (312-198). It paid an annual tribute of eight thousand talents, but despite this burden the land prospered. Judea was left a large measure of self-government under the hereditary high priest of Jerusalem and the Great Assembly. This gerousia, or Council of Elders, which Ezra and Nehemiah had formed two centuries back, became both a senate and a supreme court. Its seventy or more members were chosen from the heads of the leading families, and from the most learned scholars (Soferim) of the land. Its regulations—the Dibre Soferim—set the pattern of orthodox Judaism from the Hellenistic age to our own.

The basis of Judaism was religion: the idea of a surveillant and upholding deity entered into every phase and moment of Jewish life. Morals and manners were ordained by the gerousia in strictness and detail. Entertainments and games were few and restrained. Intermarriage with non-Jews was forbidden; so were celibacy and infanticide. Hence the Jews bred abundantly, and reared all their children; despite war and famine their numbers grew throughout antiquity, until in the time of Caesar there were some seven million Jews in the Roman Empire. The bulk of the population, before the Maccabean era, was agricultural. The Jews were not yet a nation of traders; even as late as the first century A.D. Josephus wrote: “We are not a commercial people“;¹³ the great trading peoples of the age were the Phoenicians, the Arabs, and the Greeks. Slavery existed in Judea as elsewhere, but the class war was relatively mild. Art was undeveloped; only music flourished. The flute, the drum, the cymbal, the “ram’s horn” or trumpet, the lyre, and the harp were used to accompany the single voice, the folk song, or the solemn religious antiphons. Jewish religion scorned the concessions of Greek ritual to popular imagination; it would have nothing to do with images, oracles, or birds’ entrails; it was less anthropomorphic and superstitious, less colorful and joyful, than the religion of the Greeks. Face to face with the naïve polytheism of Hellenic cults, the rabbis chanted the sonorous refrain still heard in every Jewish synagogue: Shammai Israel, Adonai eleënu, Adonai echod—”Hear, O Israel: the Lord is our God, the Lord is one.”

Into this simple and puritan life the invading Greeks brought all the distractions and temptations of a refined and epicurean civilization. Around Judea was a ring of Greek settlements and cities: Samaria, Neapolis (Shechem), Gaza, Ascalon, Azotus (Ashdod), Joppa (Jaffa), Apollonia, Doris, Sycamina, Polis (Haifa), and Acco (Acre). Just across the Jordan was a leagued decapolis of Greek cities: Damascus, Gadara, Gerasa, Dium, Philadelphia, Pella, Raphia, Hippo, Scythopolis, and Canetha. Each of these had Greek institutions and establishments—temples to Greek gods and goddesses, schools and academies, gymnasiums and palaestras, and nude games. From such cities, and from Alexandria, Antioch, Delos, and Rhodes, Greeks and Jews came to Jerusalem, bringing the infection of a Hellenism devoted to science and philosophy, art and literature, beauty and pleasure, song and dance, drinking and feasting, athletics and courtesans and handsome boys, along with a gay sophistication that questioned all morals, and an urbane skepticism that undermined all supernatural belief. How could Jewish youth resist these invitations to delight, this easy liberation from a thousand irksome restraints? Young wits among the Jews began to laugh at the priests as moneygrubbers, and at their pious followers as fools who allowed old age to come upon them without having ever known the pleasures, luxuries, and subtleties of life. Rich Jews were also won over, for they could afford to yield to temptation. Jews who sought appointment from Greek officials felt it the part of policy to speak the Greek language, to live in the Greek way, even to say a few kind words to the Greek gods.

Against this powerful assault upon both the intellect and the senses three forces defended the Jews: the persecution under Antiochus IV, the protection of Rome, and the power and prestige of a Law believed to be divinely revealed. Like antibodies gathering to attack an infection, the more religious among the Jews formed themselves into a sect called Chasidim—the Pious. They began (about 300 B.C.) with a simple pledge to avoid wine for a given period; later, by the inevitable psychology of war, they went to the extremes of Puritanism, and frowned upon all physical pleasure as a surrender to Satan and the Greeks. The Greeks marveled at them, and classified them with the strange “gymnosophists,” or nude ascetic philosophers, whom Alexander’s army had come upon in India. Even the common Jew deprecated the severe religiosity of the Chasidim, and sought for some middle way. Perhaps a compromise would have been reached had it not been for the attempt of Antiochus Epiphanes to force Hellenism upon Judea by persuasion of the sword.

In 198 Antiochus III defeated Ptolemy V, and made Judea a part of the Seleucid Empire. Tired of the Egyptian yoke, the Jews supported Antiochus, and welcomed his capture of Jerusalem as a liberation. But his successor, Antiochus IV, thought of Judea as a source of revenue; he was planning great campaigns, and needed funds. He ordered the Jews to pay in taxes one third of their grain crops and one half of the fruit of their trees.¹⁴ Ignoring the usual inheritance of the office, he appointed as high priest the sycophantic Jason, who represented the Hellenizing party in Jerusalem and sought permission to establish Greek institutions in Judea. Antiochus heard him gladly, for he was disturbed by the diversity and persistence of Oriental cults in Greek Asia, and dreamed of unifying his polyglot empire through one law and one faith. When Jason went about these matters with insufficient haste Antiochus replaced him with Menelaus, who gave him larger promises and a fatter bribe.¹⁵ Under Menelaus Yahweh was identified with Zeus, Temple vessels were sold to raise funds, and in some Jewish communities sacrifices were offered to Hellenic deities. A gymnasium was opened in Jerusalem, and Jewish youths, even priests, took part, naked, in athletic games; some young Jews, in the ardor of their Hellenism, underwent operations to remedy the physiological shortcomings that might reveal their race.¹⁶

Shocked by these developments, and feeling their religion challenged in its very existence, the majority of the Jewish people went over to the side and view of the Chasidim. When Antiochus IV was expelled from Egypt by Popilius (168), the news reached Jerusalem in the form of a report that he had been killed. The rejoicing Jews deposed his appointees, massacred the leaders of the Hellenizing party, and cleansed the Temple of what they felt to be pagan abominations. Antiochus, not dead but humiliated, moneyless, and convinced that the Jews had obstructed his campaign against Egypt and were conspiring to return Judea to the Ptolemies,¹⁷ marched up to Jerusalem, slaughtered Jews of either sex by the thousand, desecrated and looted the Temple, appropriated for the royal coffers its golden altar, its vessels, and its treasuries, restored Menelaus to supreme power, and gave orders for the compulsory Hellenization of all Jews (167). He commanded that the Temple be rededicated as a shrine to Zeus, that a Greek altar be built over the old one, and that the usual sacrifices be replaced with a sacrifice of swine. He forbade the keeping of the Sabbath or the Jewish festivals, and made circumcision a capital crime. Throughout Judea the old religion and its rites were interdicted, and the Greek ritual was made compulsory on pain of death. Every Jew who refused to eat pork, or who was found possessing the Book of the Law, was to be jailed or killed, and the Book wherever found was to be burned.¹⁸ Jerusalem itself was put to the flames, its walls were destroyed, and its Jewish population was sold into slavery. Foreign peoples were brought in to resettle the site, a new fortress was built upon Mt. Zion, and a garrison of troops was left in it to rule the city in the name of the King.¹⁹ At times, it seems, Antiochus thought of establishing and requiring the worship of himself as a god.”²⁰

The orgy of persecution became intensified as its proceeded. There is always, in any society, a minority whose instincts rejoice in the permission to persecute; it is a release from civilization. The agents of Antiochus, having put an end to all visible expression of Judaism in Jerusalem, passed like a searching fire into the towns and villages. Everywhere they gave the people a choice between death and participation in Hellenic worship, which included the eating of sacrificial swine.²¹ All synagogues and Jewish schools were closed. Those who refused to work on the Sabbath were outlawed as rebels. On the day of the Bacchanalia the Jews were compelled to deck themselves with ivy like the Greeks, to take part in the processions, and to sing wild songs in honor of Dionysus. Many Jews conformed to the demands, waiting for the storm to pass. Many others fled into caves or mountain retreats, lived on clandestine gleanings from the fields, and resolutely carried on the ordinances of Jewish life. The Chasidim circulated among them, preaching courage and resistance. A detachment of royal troops, coming upon some caves in which thousands of Jews—men, women, and children—were hiding, ordered them to come forth. The Jews refused; and because it was the Sabbath, they would not move the stones that might have blocked the entrance to the caves. The soldiers attacked with fire and sword, killing many of the refugees and asphyxiating the remainder with smoke.²² Women who had circumcized their newborn sons were cast with their infants over the city walls to death.²³ The Greeks were surprised to find the strength of the old faith; not for centuries had they seen such loyalty to an idea. The stories of martyrdom went from mouth to mouth, filled books like the First and Second Maccabees, and gave to Christianity the prototypes of its martyrs and its martyrology. Judaism, which had been near assimilation, became intensified in religious and national consciousness, and withdrew into a protective isolation.

Among the Jews who in those days fled from Jerusalem were Mattathias—of the family of Hasmonai, of the tribe of Aaron—and his five sons—Johannan Caddis, Simon, Judas, Eleazar, and Jonathan. When Apelles, an agent of Antiochus, came to Modin, where these six had sought refuge, he summoned the inhabitants to repudiate the Law and sacrifice to Zeus. The aged Mattathias came forward with his sons and said: “Even should all the people in the kingdom obey the order to depart from the faith of their fathers, I and my sons will abide by the Covenant of our ancestors.” As one of the Jews approached the altar to make the required sacrifice Mattathias slew him, and slew also the King’s commissioner. Then he said to the people: “Whoever is zealous for the Law, and wishes to support the Covenant, let him follow me.”²⁴ Many of the villagers retired with him and his sons to the mountains of Ephraim; and there they were joined by a small band of young rebels, and by such of the Chasidim as were still alive.

Soon afterward Mattathias died, having designated as captain of his band his son Judas, called Maccabee.* Judas was a warrior whose courage equaled his piety; before every battle he prayed like a saint, but in the hour of battle “he was like a lion in his rage.” The little army “lived in the mountains after the manner of beasts, feeding on herbs.” Every now and then it descended upon a neighboring village, killed backsliders, pulled down pagan altars, and “what children soever they found uncircumcized, those they circumcized valiantly.”²⁵ These things being reported to Antiochus, he sent an army of Syrian Greeks to destroy the Maccabean force. Judas met them in the pass of Emmaus; and though the Greeks were trained mercenaries fully armed, and Judas’ band was poorly armed and clad, the Jews won a complete victory (166). Antiochus sent a larger force, whose general was so confident that he brought slave merchants with him to buy the Jews whom he expected to capture, and posted in the towns the prices that he would ask.²⁶ Judas defeated these troops at Mizpah, and so decisively that Jerusalem fell into his hands without resistance. He removed all pagan altars and ornaments from the Temple, cleansed and rededicated it, and restored the ancient service amid the acclaim of the returning orthodox Jews (164).†

As the regent Lysias advanced with a new army to recapture the capital, the news came—this time true—that Antiochus was dead (163). Desiring to be free for action elsewhere, Lysias offered the Jews full religious freedom on condition that they lay down their arms. The Chasidim consented, the Maccabeans refused; Judas announced that Judea, to be safe from further persecutions, must achieve political as well as religious liberty. Intoxicated with power, the Maccabeans now took their turn at persecution, pursuing the Hellenizing faction vengefully not only in Jerusalem but in the cities that bordered the frontier.²⁷ In 161 Judas defeated Nicanor at Adasa, and strengthened himself by making an alliance with Rome; but in the same year, fighting against great odds at Elasa, he was slain. His brother Jonathan carried on the war bravely, but was himself killed at Acco (143). The only surviving brother, Simon, supported by Rome, won from Demetrius II, in 142, an acknowledgment of Judean independence. By popular decree Simon was appointed both high priest and general; and as these offices were made hereditary in his family, he became the founder of the Hasmonean dynasty. The first year of his reign was counted as the beginning of a new era, and an issue of coinage proclaimed the heroic rebirth of the Jewish state.