5
Jews in a Graeco- Roman World
The Bible took shape at a time when Jews and Judaism, nurtured in the
world of the Near East, first came into the orbit of the civilizations of
the northern Mediterranean. The power of Assyria, Babylonia and Per-
sia, which had dominated the Near East in the first half of the first
millennium bce, was eclipsed from the late fourth century bce by the
Graeco- Macedonian empire of Alexander the Great and his successors,
and, from the last century of the millennium, by Rome. Responses to
Greek culture, from syncretism or acculturation to rejection or oppos-
ition, help to explain much of the variegated history of Judaism from
the third century bce to the end of antiquity. The response to Rome led
most fatally to the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 ce and the
end of sacrifice as the primary focus of Jewish worship.
Greeks had for centuries made contact with the Levant for trade, but
the immediate impetus for the influence of Hellenistic culture through-
out the Near East from the late fourth century bce was political and
military. As we have seen in Josephus’ narrative (Chapter 1), in 332 bce
Alexander the Great, king of Macedon, embarked on an extraordinary
campaign which ended in the conquest of the Persian empire and terri-
tory as far east as India. After Alexander’s premature death in 323 bce,
his generals fought each other for more than two decades before estab-
lishing a longer- term division of the Near East in 301 bce. Ptolemy and
his descendants became rulers of Egypt, and the dynasty established by
Seleucus ruled a territory which stretched from Turkey in the north-
west to Iran in the east. These dynasties retained power over the next
two and a half centuries, although internal conflict within each dynasty
as well as between the Ptolemaic and Seleucid monarchs seeking glory
through victory caused frequent instability.
The power of these kingdoms was eventually brought to an end
through intervention by Rome. A city state in origin, Rome had gained
control over all Italy by the fourth century bce and over the western