38 CHAPTER ONEconversion. Nevertheless, some Idumaeans fled to Egypt, and some of those
who stayed behind remained secretly devoted to their ancestral religion.^51
John’s final conquests, apparently in the last years of his reign, were of the
Gree kcities Samaria and Scythopolis–Beth Shean. These cities John treated
differently from the territories of the Samaritans and Idumaeans. He “de-
stroyed” them, which almost certainly means that he threw down their walls,
deconstituted them, enslaved part of their inhabitants, reduced the remainder
to subjection, and perhaps installed Jewish colonies. John’s treatment of the
Gree kcities thus forms a sharp contrast to his treatment of the non-Gree k
ethnic territories, which he apparently recognized as partly autonomous com-
ponents of his state, provided the inhabitants became Jewish.
John’s son Aristobulus (reigned 104–103) seems to have conquered all or
part of the district of Galilee, hitherto a pagan area with a small Jewish minor-
ity partly (?) ruled by an Arab tribe called the Ituraeans. Like the other non-
Gree kinhabitants of Palestine, the Galileans were forced/encouraged to con-
vert to Judaism. The Ituraeans among them may, like many Arab tribes, have
practiced circumcision in any case, but this is uncertain.
Alexander Yannai (reigned 103–76) greatly extended the Hasmonean con-
quests, concentrating on the Gree kcities of coastal Palestine and the mainly
Gree kcities east of the Jordan River. It is li kely that his normal treatment of
these cities was to “destroy” them in much the same way that his father had
destroyed Samaria and Scythopolis, but it is not impossible that he judaized
some of the cities and simply reduced others to subjection and tribute; Jose-
phus is remarkably vague. He was not invariably successful in his campaigns,
especially in Transjordan, where he came up against the Nabataeans.^52
Character, Causes, and Consequences of the ExpansionSeveral factors have suggested to many scholars that the conquests were not
quite what they seem from Josephus’s sketchy accounts, including the speed
and ease with which the conquests of the Palestinian interior (but not the
Gree kcities) occurred, the fact that the newly conquered districts never re-
belled, and the shakiness of the Hasmonean kingdom at the time of the con-
quests, under John Hyrcanus I and Aristobulus I. Some have argued that the
conquests may be more profitably viewed as a series of alliances formed by
the Hasmoneans with the leaders of the non-Gree kdistricts surrounding Ju-
daea aimed primarily against the local Gree kcities. In return for adopting
(^51) On the Idumaean refugees, see D. Thompson [Crawford], “The Idumaeans of Memphis
and Ptolemaic Politeumata,”Atti del XVII congresso internazionale di papirologia(Naples, 1984),
pp. 1069–75; U. Rappaport, “Les Idume ́ens en Egypte,”Revue de Philologie43 (1969): 73–82.
(^52) On the reigns of Aristobulus and Alexander, see Schu ̈rer-Vermes 1.216–28.