The Maccabean Revolution cretistic. The evidence is perfectly compatible with the possibility that it was
quite simply a pagan cult.
We may postpone this question in order to look first at some other as-
pects of this complex series of events. Firstly, Hengel considers only briefly
(–) the parallels afforded by other Semitic deities and their identifica-
tion with Greek gods. More significantly, he does not consider Hellenistic
influences on the Jews as part of the much wider, and in many respects ob-
scure and mysterious, process of the fusion of cultures in the whole south
Syrian region. But it would only be if we could understand their immedi-
ate neighbours, the Phoenicians, Samaritans, Idumaeans, Nabataeans, and the
(presumably) Aramaic-speaking peoples of Transjordan and southern Syria
that we could begin to ask how distinctive the Jews were, and what if any
type of fusion with Hellenism could have been expected of them. Though
the book of course contains references to the cultures of these peoples, they
do not serve to provide a perspective for it. In the next section an attempt
will be made to sketch some possible contributions of this perspective.
An incomparably more glaring omission is that Hengel does not attempt
to portray the ordinary, day-to-day Judaism and its practises which the re-
forms set out to transform or abolish: ‘‘his book really deals with the Hel-
lenization of an unknown entity.’’^3 Momigliano’s phrase justly characterises
the book (and also Hengel’sJuden, Griechen und Barbaren), but not the state
of our knowledge. The subsequent section (‘‘The Jewish Community in the
Early Hellenistic Period’’) will sum up briefly some aspects of the structure
and nature of the Jewish community in the early Hellenistic period. Even a
slight sketch will show how un-Hellenistic it was and remained, in political
institutions, in observances, and in its culture and literary products.
One fact on which some suggestions will need to be made is the rela-
tion of the Ptolemaic and Seleucid kings to the high priesthood. Here too
it is a weakness of Hengel’s book that, again following Bickermann, he ac-
cepts with only cursory discussion (–) the unimportance of the role of
Antiochus IV Epiphanes. But even if (as is beyond question) the initiatives
taken by the Hellenisers were of fundamental importance, it remains the case
that the interruption of the Temple cult and the prohibition of Jewish ob-
servances were enforced by royal orders and carried out by royal employees.
. A. D. Momigliano, in his review inJThS (): – Quinto Contributo alla
storia degli studi classicia del mondo antico(), –; for a further perspective, cf. his ‘‘J. G.
Droyser between Greeks and Jews,’’History and Theory (): – Essays in Ancient
and Modern Historiography(), –.