POLITICS AN DSOCIETY 39Judaism, probably more gradually and incompletely than Josephus implies,
the Idumaeans and the rest received not only Hasmonean protection but also
a chance to share in the spoils of further conquests.^53
This is an attractive hypothesis that likely contains some truth, but it fails
to explain why Josephus speaks so unambiguously of conquest. In all likeli-
hood the expansion depended on a combination of coercion and persuasion,
and gave the annexed nations a status that combined subjection and alli-
ance—but was in any case distinct from the fate of the conquered Gree kcities.
The annexed districts seem to have retained a sort of limited autonomy under
the rule of native governors who may have enjoyed the status of “friendship”
with the Judaean king (cf.Ant14.10). In a Hellenistic context, “friendship”
is a semiformal state of reciprocal obligation, not necessarily between equals.^54
Thus, the Idumaeans became Jewish but remained simultaneously Idu-
maeans. The Judaism of the annexed districts must indeed have been gradu-
ally adopted and was perhaps not at first very deep. Surely it involved loyalty
to the Jerusalem Temple and submission to the legal authority of the high
priest. Its main initial effect, though, must have been to change the character
of the public life in the annexed districts. John Hyrcanus I shut down not only
the Israelite temple on Mount Gerizim but also the pagan temples of Idu-
maea. Perhaps town markets were closed on the Sabbath. But otherwise, life,
even religious life, in the annexed districts at first went on pretty much as
before. Even if the Hasmoneans had wished to eradicate all traces of the pre-
Jewish religions of the districts, they could not have done so; the state simply
had no way to police the day-to-day activities of hundreds of thousands of
people. Probably the judaization of the districts—which was in the long term
successful in that Idumaea and Galilee remained Jewish even after the end
of Hasmonean rule and were thoroughly incorporated in the Jewish nation—
was helped by the profound cultural and religious ties that existed in any case
among the non-Gree kpeoples of Palestine. Still, there was resistance. The
Idumaeans who fled to Egypt in the late second centuryB.C.E. zealously culti-
vated there, over the course of centuries, the worship of their ancestral god
Qos; and in the late first centuryB.C.E. an Idumaean associate of King Herod
tried to restore the worship of Qos in his native district (Ant15.253–66). It
may, furthermore, be no coincidence that Christianity, which was from the
start ambivalent about the central institutions of Judaism, originated in Gali-
lee, another of the annexed districts.
(^53) See M. Smith,Studies in the Cult of Yahweh, 1:269–83, emphasizing the military alliance;
Kasher,Edom, Arabia, and Israel, pp. 48–76, follows the old hypothesis of U. Rappaport in regard-
ing the conversions as entirely voluntary; Cohen,Beginnings of Jewishness, pp. 109–39, presents
a more complex and convincing account.
(^54) See G. Herman, note 6, above.