RELIGION AND SOCIETY BEFORE 70C.E 51and obscure series of historical processes, which probably reached a peak in
Judaea only after the Maccabean revolt.^5
Another reason the ideological centrality of God-Temple-Torah cannot be
taken for granted is that by the turn of the era Jewish Palestine consisted of
much more than the little district of Judaea. As we have seen, in the late
second centuryB.C.E., the Hasmonean rulers of Judaea annexed the non-
Judaean districts of Palestine—Idumaea, Samaria, Galilee, and Peraea. Some
inhabitants of Samaria had long seen themselves as Israelites, but the inhabit-
ants of the other districts were by and large pagan. Having passed under Ju-
daean rule, all now became in some sense Jewish (see above). Can we assume
that the Judaism of Idumaea, Galilee, and Peraea (Samaria presents a special
set of problems) was roughly the same as that of Judaea?^6
That the judaization of the outlying parts of Palestine took place after the
Maccabean revolt implies that the Judaism introduced in these districts was
unambiguously Temple and Torah centered. But, as I have suggested, there
was necessarily an element of duress, since we must suppose that some inhab-
itants of the annexed districts were unwilling to become Jewish or to leave
their homes—the two alternatives reportedly offered them by the Hasmone-
ans. Thus there must have persisted alongside public Judaism a subterranean
pre-Jewish religious tradition. This would explain the famous case of Herod’s
kinsman Costobar (Ant15.253–58) who preserved, three generations after the
judaizationofIdumaea,devotiontotheancestralgod,Qos.Itmayalsoexplain
an Aramaic incantation text, possibly of the early first centuryB.C.E., found
near Beer Sheva, in Idumaea, which invokes such deities as Ta’, Tinshar,
Hargol, and Shebatbata, daughters of El, and A’asas son of Shamash.^7 In the
Idumaean case, the persistence of elements of the traditional religion in the
neighboring district of Nabataea and in the Idumaean diaspora in Egypt must
have facilitated the preservation of native traditions in Idumaea proper.^8 In
the course of time, though, these traditions themselves are likely to have lost
(^5) See S. J. D. Cohen, “Religion, Ethnicity, and ‘Hellenism’ in the Emergence of Jewish Iden-
tity in Maccabean Palestine,” in P. Bilde et al.,Religion and Religious Practice in the Seleucid
Kingdom(Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 1990), pp. 204–23, who argues that the Antiochan
persecution and the Maccabean revolt greatly enhanced the status of the Torah as a component
of Jewish self-definition.
(^6) See S. Schwartz, “John Hyrcanus I’s Destruction.”
(^7) See J. Naveh, “A Nabatean Incantation Text,”IEJ29 (1979): 111–19. Naveh calls it Naba-
tean because of some features of the script, while acknowledging that it is likely to have been
written by an Idumaean (112). The interpretation and dating of the text are, however, tentative.
(^8) For the worship of Qos in Nabataea, see most recently R. Wenning,Die Nabata ̈er—Denk-
ma ̈ler und Geschichte(Go ̈ttingen: Vandenhoeck-Ruprecht, 1987), pp. 77–81 (with some updat-
ing in D. Graf’s helpful review,Critical Revie wof Books in Religion3 [1990]: 98–101), and in
most detail, J. Bartlett, “From Edomites to Nabataeans: A Study in Continuity,”PEQ111 (1979):
53–66. On the Edomite diaspora in Egypt, see especially U. Rappaport, “Les Idume ́ens en
Egypte”; and Thompson [Crawford], “Idumaeans of Memphis.”