40 CHAPTER ONECausesIt is unclear why the Hasmoneans undertoo ktheir expansion. An obvious
answer should not be overlooked—they expanded because they could. Histor-
ically most states have viewed acquisition of territory and people with favor,
and there is no reason for the Hasmoneans not to have done the same. Though
they were weak, they may still have been stronger than poorly centralized
districts like Idumaea and Galilee and surely had a more experienced army.
Conquest tended to generate conquest because it was sensible to pacify con-
quered peoples by giving them a share in future plunder—one of the chief
sources of new wealth in the premodern state.^55 As to the Hasmoneans’ policy
of judaizing the conquered nations, we have already seen that the notion that
outsiders could join the Jewish nation was several centuries old by the time
John Hyrcanus pushed it to its logical limits. The first description we have of
a more or less formal ritual of conversion to Judaism appears in a wor kof
fiction, the apocryphal boo kof Judith, probably written around the time of
the Maccabean revolt; the second appears in 2 Maccabees, where, in one of
the book’s more absurd scenes, Antiochus IV, on his deathbed, promises to
convert to Judaism, having recognized the error of his ways! Although there
was no precedent for mass conversion, it was at least based on firmly estab-
lished conceptual ground, and the idea of conversion seems to have exerted
special fascination in circles close to the Hasmoneans.^56 When they imposed
Judaism on their subjects, the Hasmoneans may have been motivated by the
biblical idea that the Land of Israel should be “unpolluted” by idolatry. Or
they may have been inspired by the example of their allies and friends the
Romans, who had for centuries been successfully expanding their territory by
combining exceptionally violent military activity with judicious grants of
Roman citizenship to some of the people they conquered.^57
ConsequencesObviously, the Hasmonean expansion exerted a profound effect on every as-
pect of Jewish and eastern Mediterranean history. The finances of the Jerusa-
lem temple and the Judaean priesthood felt the impact of the vast expansion
of their tax base, and the entire Judaean economy was unsettled by the influx
(^55) In other words, I am suggesting that Hasmonean imperialism was a small-scale version of
Roman imperialism: see W. V. Harris,War and Imperialism in Republican Rome, 327–70 B.C.
(Oxford: Clarendon, 1979).
(^56) See S. Cohen,Beginnings of Jewishness, 109–74
(^57) So M. Smith, “Rome and the Maccabean Conversions,” in E. Bammel et al., eds.,Donum
Gentilicium: New Testament Studies in Honour of David Daube(Oxford: Clarendon, 1978), pp.
1–7.