Loading...In order to understand the difference between what the prophets of the Hebrew Bible proclaimed, and what came to be the views of apocalyptic Jews, I need to sketch a set of historical events that the people of Israel had to live through. Without this kind of historical knowledge, you simply will not understand ancient Judaism at the time of Jesus. That is to say, you really have to know what happened among ancient Jews in order to make sense of what their theological beliefs were, since these beliefs were molded by and informed by nothing so much as the historical context out of which they emerged.
And so here is a very brief sketch of the history of Judea over the four hundred years from approximately 540 BCE, when the Persians were in control, up to 63 BCE, when the Romans came in and took over. I’ve taken the sketch from my textbook, The Bible: A Historical and Literary Introduction.
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The Later History of Judea
In the Persian period (starting in the late 6th century BCE), the land of Judah came be a province called Judea. This will be its name in the time of the New Testament. So too, as we have seen, inhabitants of this land, and descendants of former inhabitants who maintained their ancestral religious and cultural traditions, were called Judeans, or Jews.
The Persian empire was to last for about two hundred years. In the mid- to late-fourth century, Greece, to the west, rose to prominence, especially under the leadership of Alexander of Macedonia, otherwise known to history as Alexander the Great. We will learn more about Alexander in chapter 9, as, somewhat ironically, his conquests proved to be more important for early Christianity than they were for the Hebrew Bible. Here suffice it to say that Alexander and his armies went on a massive campaign to the east, conquering Egypt and the Levant, and eventually the entire Persian empire, by 330 CE. Eventually they got as far east as the eastern edge of modern day India, before turning back.
Alexander was himself, culturally, Greek (although he was himself from Macedonia). He actually had the great Greek philosopher Aristotle (disciple of Plato, disciple of Socrates) as his private tutor when he was young – he considered Greek culture to be superior to all others. One of his goals was not simply to establish a worldwide empire, but also to
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> The revolt began as a small guerilla skirmish in 167 BCE
Where in Judea did that occur?
It started in Jerusalem.
“To the disappointment and chagrin of many Jews, the Maccabeans did not appoint a Zadokite to be priest, but a member from their own (priestly) family. This was to cause all sorts of resentment and inner turmoil in Jewish circles in the years that followed.”
This is a common assumption, but a very good case can be made that the Hasmonean line of priests was also probably Zadokite. Schofield and Vanderkam evaluate the evidence very carefully here:
Schofield, Alison, and James C. Vanderkam. “Were the Hasmoneans Zadokites?” Journal of Biblical Literature 124, no. 1 (2005): 73–87.
Interesting. Thanks.
I read the Schofiled and Vanderkam piece, and it is, as they themselves say at the end, reasonable but not completely convincing. But I think Jewish resistance to the Hasmoneans stems more from their insisting on being kings (starting around 104 BCE) as well as high priests. The two offices have to be separate – high priests are from the House of Aaron (Zadokite or otherwise), and kings from the House of David. The Hasmoneans had no right to the throne and that was the source of much resentment.
About the Seleucids, by the way: I don’t find very much about their rule over Judaea prior to Antiochus IV, but I don’t see that they treated the Jews any differently than the Ptolemaics had – that is to say, with benign neglect regarding religion. At most they probably encouraged the gymnasium as a cultural “infiltration,” but I don’t see that the Jews revolted against it prior to Antiochus’s selection of Jason and then Menelaus, who were extreme Hellenists.
Interesting overview. Thank you. I remember reading some years ago that Mel Gibson wanted to follow up the success of his movie Braveheart with another epic about the Revolt of the Maccabees, but it appears that idea has now been shelved. The Seleucid army of that period used mainly Roman equipment so any film seeking to be authentic could confuse viewers with scenes of Greek soldiers fighting in Roman uniforms. The Hasmoneans had one female ruler incidentally – Salome Alexandra.
Professor, this period is such a fascinating and crucial prelude to both pharisaic (Rabbinic) Judaism as well as Christianity. A question I’ve never been clear on. Do you see the Pharisaic belief in resurrection as developing independent (and perhaps as a prelude) of apocalyptic eschatology or were they one in the same? Some authors of Jewish history seemed to tie the Pharisaic ressurection beliefs to Hellenization (even back to Elesium) as a precursor to apocalyptic thinking.
It appears that apocalyptic thought began to emerge before there was a Pharisaic party; we have traces of it in some OT books (Isa 24-27) and 1 Enoch. My sense is that Pharisees were drawn to it rather than it being a Pharisaic creation.
In the realm of replying to comments from ages ago: Dr. Ehrman, I asked you for suggestions on literature related to the Maccabees a few months ago in a comment, and you recommended Daniel Harrington’s books. Thanks! They were pretty interesting.
(The reason was I was rewriting the Wikipedia article on the subject at the time… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maccabean_Revolt if anyone’s curious. Harrington got cited a bunch. Your book “Heaven and Hell” is briefly cited too, for the change in attitudes on divine rewards & punishments, and evolving beliefs about the afterlife… )
Are 1 and 2 Maccabees generally considered historically reliable?
1 Maccabees more than 2 as a rule.
I’ve heard somewhere that the traditional story was actual bunk and in reality it was the high priest menelaus that secured concessions for Jews, the hasmonians afterwards just taking credit for it.
Is this something even heard of in scholarly circles or just dismissed as crank history?
I’m afraid I don’t know!
It suddenly occurred to me… is the “-zedek” at the end of “Melchizedek” the same word as the priestly family of Zadok? (Melchizedek was remembered as a priest, and the Zadokites were priests…)
Different word. Zedek means “righteous” and Zadok was the name of a priest under King David.
Prof Ehrman,
You once mentioned that the Ebionites were the Christian group that were closest to the beliefs of the original followers of Jesus. But in what ways were their beliefs and practices different from the beliefs of the original followers of Jesus because you seem to imply that while they were the “closest” they were not an exact copy of the original Jesus movement.
It’s very hard to say, because we don’t have any writings from any of the original followers and only very few fragments of lines from “Ebionites.” Since they arose after the destruction of the Temple, though, they almost certainly had to be different — just as second century Jews across the board would have been different from Jews in Jesus’ day.
I recently finished Mark Smith’s The Origins of Biblical Monotheism. Here is a good summary of the book – https://bibleinterp.arizona.edu/articles/MSmith_BiblicalMonotheism. What do you think of Smith’s assertion that two factors (changing family structure and Israel’s loss of independence) led to Jewish monotheism (see the last two paragraphs in the summary)?
I’d say it’s a hugely complicated affair, as he knows better than me, that there must have been a number of factors, and that I don’t really know which were most important.
Alexander the Great was Greek. The ancient Macedonians were a Greek speaking tribe.
I believe Macedonia was a kingdom that conquered and controlled Greece under the rule of Alexander’s father, King Philip.
Alexander the Great died at the same age as Jesus.
I’m wondering what you think of the theory that I Maccabees was originally written in Hebrew or Aramaic, so that what we now have is a Greek translation. If true, does the book actually have a claim to be included in the “Hebrew Bible”?
When you read the book, does it strike you as being written in “translation Greek”?
It’s usually understood to have been originally written in Hebrew, but the original is lost. I don’t suppose books that were not accepted by Jews as part of Scripture would have any claim; in any event, it was widely thought to have been written after the period when Scripture was being written.
“Eventually they got as far east as the eastern edge of modern day India, before turning back.” I think you meant to write “western edge of modern day India.” This was the eastern edge of the Achaemenid Empire, of course.
Ha! I was turned upside down.