How does one preserve Jewish identity while simultaneously partaking of the riches of Hellenistic culture?
Alexander the Great died. The Greek Empire split into factions-the Seleucid Kingdom (Syria) and the Ptolemaic Kingdom (Egypt).
At first Judea was under the rule of the religiously tolerant Ptolemaics. Eventually, the Seleucids conquered Judea and the Jews came under the rule of Antiochus IV.
Antiochus IV was not religiously tolerant. He saw the Cohen Gadol (High Priest) as a government role that could be assigned rather than inherited. So, he appointed a High Priest
First Jason and then Menelaus were able to secure the position of High Priest from Antiochus IV Epiphanes by way of monetary bribes and other machinations. Jason and Menelaus wanted to preserve aspects of Judaism that fit with Greek ideals, like a universal God, but to remove those parts of Jewish practice that separated Jews from others: dietary laws, Sabbath observance, circumcision.
Central to any assessment of the Maccabees is an evaluation of the role of Hellenism, an ideology whose universalistic outlook was based on Greek ideas and athletic prowess. Following in the footsteps of Alexander the Great, Hellenism became a political tool used by the Syrian Greeks to consolidate their power among the wealthy bourgeoisie. In turn, the aristocratic elites who embraced Hellenism gained access to the social and economic perquisites flowing to citizens of a Greek polis, including the right to mint coins, to take part in international Hellenistic events, and to receive protection from the city’s founding ruler.
But Hellenism encompassed more than a pragmatic relationship between the ruler and local economic elites; it also represented an “enlightened” worldview considered by many to be the way of the future. Nations who shut themselves off and did not confront the challenge of Hellenism were falling by the wayside. Because it was viewed as the wave of the future, the pressure to acculturate to Hellenism was quite intense in Judea.
Therefore, the people of Judea had to decide whether the universalistic focus of Hellenism constituted a danger to their ancestral religion and its God or whether it simply represented a more modern and “progressive” way of life that could be merged with Jewish practice.
- I Maccabees 1:11
- “In those days there emerged in Israel lawless men [Jewish Hellenists] who persuaded many, saying, ‘Let us go and make a covenant with the nations that are around us; for since we separated ourselves from them, many evils have come upon us’”
- Some Hellenists continued to worship the Jewish God, but moved their worship to outdoor sanctuaries and sanctioned the pig as a sacrificial animal.
- II Maccabees 4:18-20
- When the quadrennial games were being held at Tyre and the king was present,[19] the vile Jason sent envoys, chosen as being Antiochian citizens from Jerusalem, to carry three hundred silver drachmas for the sacrifice to Hercules. Those who carried the money, however, thought best not to use it for sacrifice, because that was inappropriate, but to expend it for another purpose. [20] So this money was intended by the sender for the sacrifice to Hercules, but by the decision of its carriers it was applied to the construction of triremes.
Although these Hellenists were willing to participate in the athletic contests, they appear to have been squeamish about doing something completely counter to Torah law.
2 Macc 6:1-9
After little time, the king sent Geron of Athens to force the Jews to leave the ancestral laws and not gather in community in the laws of God, and to desecrate the Temple in Jerusalem and rename it temple of Zeus Olympios and the shrine in Gerizim, as the inhabitants asked, temple of Zeus Xenios. The extent of the evil was harsh and difficult to bear for all. For the shrine was filled with debauchery and revels by the nations, who caroused with hetairai and approached women within the precinct, and carrying within the forbidding things, and the altar was filled with things forbidden by the laws. It was not possible to observe sabbath or to keep the ancestral festivals or simply to call oneself Jew. In bitter compulsion, indeed, they were brought to partake of innards on the anniversary day of the king each month; when the festival of Dionysos took place, the Jews were forced, wearing ivy, to process for Dionysos. And a decree went to the neighboring Greek cities, at the proposal of Ptolemy, to have the same attitude towards the Jews and to make them partake of innards, and to cut the throat of those who did not wish to change to the Greek ways.
1 Macc 1:41-55
And king Antiochos wrote to his whole kingdom that all should become one people, and all should abandon their customs, and all the nations made show according to the word of the king. And many in Israel went along with his religion and sacrificed to idols and profaned the sabbath. And the kings sent books in the hand of messengers to Jerusalem and the cities of Judea, to follow customs alien to the land and prevent holocausts and sacrifice and drink offerings and profane the sabbath and the festivals and defile the shrine and the sacred folk, and build altars and sacred precincts and idols and sacrifice pigs and common cattle and let their sons uncircumcised, and to pollute their souls in all impure matter and profanation, so as to forget the law and change all the rites; and who ever did not act according to the king's edict, would die. According to all these words did he write to whole kingdom, and he established spies over
all the people and ordered the cities of Judea to sacrifice by city, and many of the people joined them, anyone who abandoned the law, and they committed evil in the land and hid Israel in all their refuges. On the 15th(?) day of Kislev, in year 145, they build the abomination of desolation in the temple and they built altars all around in the cities of Judea, and they sacrificed at the doors of the houses and in the streets ...
- Lower class Jews
- Powerless
- zealots
The Maccabees seem to have “liberated” the loyal Jewish masses from the Hellenist Jews and their Syrian Greek allies in the context of a civil war.
(כד) ויהי ככלותו לדבר, ויגש איש מבני ישראל לעיני כל הניצבים אל הבמה אשר במודעית לזבוח זבח כאשר ציוה המלך.
(כה) וירא מתתיהו, ויחם לבבו ותבער קנאתו על תורת אלוהיו.
(כו) וירוץ בחמתו אל האיש, וימיתהו אצל הבמה, וגם את הפקיד המית, ויתוץ את הבמה.
(כז) ויקנא לתורת אלוהיו כאשר עשה פנחס לזמרי בן סלוא.
(24) Now when he had left speaking these words, there came one of the Jews in the sight of all to sacrifice on the altar which was at Modin, according to the king’s commandment.
(25) Which thing when Mattathias saw, he was inflamed with zeal, and his reins trembled, neither could he forbear to shew his anger according to judgment:
(26) wherefore he ran, and slew him upon the altar. Also the king’s commissioner, who compelled men to sacrifice, he killed at that time, and the altar he pulled down.
(27) Thus dealt he zealously for the law of God like as Phinees did unto Zambri the son of Salom.
Should Maccabees be judged to be liberators or zealots?
Although the text of Maccabees views Judah as a liberator whose zealotry was necessary to preserve the Torah and the Jewish people, later rabbinic commentators frowned upon such zealotry, realizing the danger of individuals taking the law into their own hands and interpreting it in accord with their own interests. Consequently, normative Jewish law limits “legitimate” zealotry nearly to the point of nonexistence: A zealot is not allowed to act preemptively in expectation of a desecration, nor punitively after the desecration has been completed; if he does so, he is treated as a murderer. Because a zealot is considered to be acting outside the law, the desecrator has the right to kill a zealot in self-defense. In addition, rabbinical courts were forbidden to give permission to zealots to act or to teach zealotry.
ושלא ילמד את בנו יוונית ת"ר כשצרו מלכי בית חשמונאי זה על זה היה הורקנוס מבחוץ ואריסטובלוס מבפנים בכל יום ויום היו משלשלין דינרים בקופה ומעלין להן תמידים היה שם זקן אחד שהיה מכיר בחכמת יוונית לעז להם בחכמת יוונית אמר להן כל זמן שעוסקים בעבודה אין נמסרין בידכם למחר שלשלו להם דינרים בקופה והעלו להם חזיר כיון שהגיע לחצי חומה נעץ צפרניו נזדעזעה א"י ארבע מאות פרסה אותה שעה אמרו ארור אדם שיגדל חזירים וארור אדם שילמד לבנו חכמת יוונית
§ The mishna taught that during the War of Titus the Sages decreed that a person should not teach his son Greek. The Sages taught that this decree came about as a result of the following incident: When the kings of the Hasmonean monarchy besieged each other in their civil war, Hyrcanus was outside of Jerusalem, besieging it, and Aristoblus was inside. On each and every day they would lower dinars in a box from inside the city, and those on the outside would send up animals for them to bring the daily offerings in the Temple. A certain Elder was there, in Jerusalem, who was familiar with Greek wisdom. He communicated to those on the outside by means of Greek wisdom, using words understood only by those proficient in Greek wisdom. He said to them: As long as they are engaged in the Temple service, they will not be delivered into your hands. Upon hearing this, on the following day, when they lowered dinars in a box, they sent up a pig to them. Once the pig reached halfway up the wall, it inserted its hooves into the wall and Eretz Yisrael shuddered four hundred parasangs. When the Sages saw this, they said at that time: Cursed is the person who raises pigs, and cursed is the person who teaches his son Greek wisdom.