The Hellenistic World and Rome
circumcision^34 and the avoidance of pork,^35 the existence of a complex set
of observances binding (in principle) on the whole population has no paral-
lel; nor do we yet know of any other Near Eastern people speaking a Semitic
language who in the Hellenistic period generated a whole range of works in
different genres in their own language (or languages, Hebrew and Aramaic).
Finally, if slight traces reveal (text to n. above) that the Phoenicians still
possessed a historical tradition of their own, nothing parallels the existence
of a sacred book which was at the same time a national history, and which,
as Ben Sira, Maccabees, and the Qumran documents all show, was in active
circulation among the people and was the primary agent in forming their
consciousness.
The proclamation of Antiochus III had explicitly recognised both the dis-
tinctive socio-political status and the distinctive observances of the Jewish
people. Have we enough evidence to say whether the events under Anti-
ochus IV were the product of a new policy or conviction, and if so why and
to what end?
Antiochus Epiphanes and Judaism
It is a striking feature of modern historiography that there should be so
strong a tendency to look to sources other than the reigning Seleucid king
himself for the explanation of a persecution carried out by royal command
and by royal agents.^36 The presumption that changes should be seen in terms
of the wider structures and ideologies of society is not easily reconciled with
the fact of monarchy. Yet both pagan and Jewish sources reflect the view
that Antiochus did intend some overall change in Jewish observance. Diodo-
rus, in retailing the siege of Jerusalem by Antiochus VII Sidetes, used a story
which represented the king’s advisers as reminding him of how Epiphanes
had entered the Holy of Holies and found an image which he supposed to
be that of Moses, who had created the misanthropic customs of the Jews:
And since Epiphanes was shocked by such hatred directed against all
mankind, he had set himself to break down their traditional practices.
Accordingly, he sacrificed before the image of the founder and the
open-air altar of the god a great sow, and poured its blood over them.
Then, having prepared its flesh, he ordered that their holy books, con-. See the references in Schürer, Vermes, and Millar,HistoryI, –.
. See, e.g., Bickermann,Der Gott der Makkabäer, .
. So, before Hengel, Bickermann,DerGottderMakkabäer, ff.; but cf. V. Tcherikover,
Hellenistic Civilisation and the Jews(), ff.