The Hellenistic World and Rome
Temple (on Dan. :; also on v. ), and that it was these which Daniel called
the ‘‘abomination of desolation.’’^48 The chronicler Georgius Syncellus (
Dindorf ) also reports the establishment of a statue of Zeus Olympius in the
Temple, while Ioannes Malalas states that the Temple was dedicated to Zeus
Olympius and Athena (– Dindorf ).
Later writers thus clearly assumed that the attribution of the Temple to
Zeus will have involved a cult statue. If we use their testimony at all—which
we probably should not—we cannot avoid its implications simply by deny-
ing, as did Bickermann,^49 that such statues will have been objects of cult. In
conclusion, however, it has to be admitted that we do not know whether
there was a cult statue, or more than one, in the Temple. All that we can be
certain of is that the Temple was dedicated to Zeus Olympius, the favoured
god of Antiochus, and that sacrifices of pigs were carried out on a pagan altar
constructed over the Altar of Burnt Offering.
But if the Temple was dedicated to one god, that was no more than a nor-
mal feature of paganism. It would imply some form of monotheism only if
our best evidence showed categorically that other cults were not imposed on
the Jewish population. But our most detailed evidence, Maccabees, shows
precisely that a number of altars and sacred precincts were established, and
specifically that rites in honour of Diosysus were required. In short, what
was imposed was paganism.
Conclusion
Little of the evidence discussed above is absent from Hengel’s learned and in-
valuable book. What is offered as a reflection on it is a basic change of empha-
sis. I would argue, firstly, that the evidence shows how un-Greek in structure,
customs, observance, literary culture, language, and historical outlook the
Jewish community had remained down the earlier second century, and how
basic to it the rules reimposed by Ezra and Nehemiah had remained.^50 That
. References are to the text inCorp. Christ. Lat. LXXVA (),S. Hieronymi Presbyteri
Opera.Commentarium in Danielem Libri III.
.Der Gott der Makkabäer,.
. I would thus not wish to accept the conclusions of Howard Clark Kee in his valu-
able and interesting review of the new Schürer inReligious Studies Review, Oct. , –:
namely that Schürer’s work, even as revised, represents an outdated conception of Jewish
life in this period as dominated by the Law; rather the future belongs with Hengel’s con-
ception of it as profoundly Hellenised. The evidence now available seems to me to suggest
otherwise even more strongly than did that known to Schürer.