RELIGION AND SOCIETY BEFORE 70C.E 53and its staff is indicated by a series of letters, rescripts, and memoranda, quoted
by Josephus inAnt12, 14, and 16 and in 2 Maccabees 11. Most explicit is the
letter sent by the Seleucid emperor Antiochus III to Ptolemy, governor of
Coele-Syria-and-Phoenicia, a province that included Palestine, shortly after
Antiochus’s conquest of the province in 200B.C.E.(Ant12.137–44):
KingAntiochustoPtolemy, greeting. Inasmuch asthe Judaeans, from the moment
we entered their territory, showed their enthusiasm for us, and received us splen-
didly when we visited their city, greeting us with theirgerousia[council of elders],
supplied our soldiers and elephants unstintingly, and helped us in expelling the
Egyptian garrison in the citadel, we ourselves have seen fit to compensate them
for these favors, to restore their city ruined by the accidents of war, and to resettle
it by causing to return to it its scattered inhabitants. First, we have decided on
account of their piety to provide for their sacrifices an allowance of sacrificial ani-
mals, wine, oil and incense, to the value of twenty thousand pieces of silver, and
[... (number omitted)] sacredartabaeof fine flour according to their native stan-
dard, and one thousand four hundred and sixtymedimnoiof wheat and three hun-
dred and seventy fivemedimnoiof salt. I [sic] wish that these things be done for
them as I have commanded, and that the work on the temple be completed, the
porticoesandanythingelserequiringconstruction.Letthetimberbebroughtfrom
Judaea itself and from the other ethnic districts [viz., of Palestine], and from the
Lebanon, without the imposition of tolls—likewise for the other materials needed
to make the restoration of the temple more splendid. Let all those from the nation
conduct their lives according to their ancestral laws, and let thegerousiaand the
priests and scribes of the temple and the temple singers be released from the head-
tax and the crown tribute and the remaining taxes [or, the salt tax]. In order that
the city may be resettled more quickly, I [sic] grant both to the current inhabitants
and to those who will return before the month of Hyperberetaios exemption from
taxes for three years. And in future we release them from a third part of the tribute,
so that the damage may be corrected. And all those taken from the city and en-
slaved, we set them and the children born to them free, and order that their prop-
erty be returned to them.^12 (my translation, based on Thackeray, LCL)claimed—but we cannot be certain. Nor is there any explicit information about Alexander’s
Successors, though the persistence of a Judaean silver coinage from about 380B.C.E. through the
reign of Ptolemy I (died 283–282B.C.E.) suggests at least some form of autonomy. I have con-
cluded from the subsequent suspension of coinage and the evidence of the Zenon papyri that
Ptolemies II–IV did not recognize Judaea’s autonomy, though there is disagreement on the mat-
ter. But from Antiochus III (conquered Palestine 200B.C.E.) on, the evidence is unambiguous;
see S. Schwartz, “On the Autonomy of Judaea.”
(^12) In the decree Josephus quotes immediately following (145–46), Antiochus also ratifies
priestly regulations concerning admittance to the Temple and importation of forbidden animals
into Jerusalem. This last clause has aroused interest because it is hard to imagine that donkeys
and horses were excluded from the city; a similar law, furthermore, is found in the Temple Scroll,
confirming the feeling that the la wis utopian and the document in which it is found unhistorical.
Perhaps. And it is indeed hard to imagine that standard beasts of burden were barred from the