98 A History of Judaism
long as they had the males circumcised and were willing to observe the
laws of the Jews. And so, out of attachment to the land of their fathers,
they submitted to circumcision and to making their manner of life con-
form in all other respects to that of the Jews. And from that time on they
have continued to be Jews.’^12
This policy of forcible conversion reflects the distinctively Jewish
ethos of the Hasmonaean dynasty once it was established. John Hyr-
canus issued coins proclaiming in Hebrew ‘Yehohanan the High Priest
and the hever [Congregation] of the Jews’. But in the reign of John
Hyrcanus the dynasty was already beginning to imitate the practices of
other Hellenistic states, not least in the use of mercenary troops to fight
aggressive wars for territory. The First Book of Maccabees, a product of
Hasmonaean propaganda about the origins of the dynasty, portrays the
Hasmonaeans as champions of Judaism against Hellenism, but the
more vociferous the hostility to Greek culture, the easier it proved to
adopt aspects of Hellenism at will.
In the political sphere, the Hellenization of the dynasty was already
apparent on the death of John Hyrcanus in 104 bce. Hyrcanus as ruler
had been content with the position of High Priest, but according to
Josephus his eldest son Aristobulus ‘saw fit to transform the govern-
ment into a kingdom ... and he was the first to put a diadem on his
head’. Both he and his younger brother Alexander Jannaeus, who suc-
ceeded him as king after only a year, pursued a policy of territorial
expansion. Aristobulus incorporated into the Jewish polity the Ituraean
nation in Galilee ‘whom he joined to them by the bond of circumcision’,
and Alexander conquered the Greek cities of the maritime plain. Jos-
ephus portrays the power behind the throne as Alexandra Salome, the
widow of Aristobulus. It was Alexandra who released Alexander Jan-
naeus from prison on Aristobulus’ death and appointed him king, and
when Jannaeus died in 76 bce she became queen in her own right.^13
For a female member of the dynasty to rule was not uncommon in
Hellenistic kingdoms – notably in Egypt, where Cleopatra VII, the par-
amour of Julius Caesar and Mark Antony in the second half of the first
century bce, was only the last of a series of powerful Ptolemaic queens –
but it was a major break with Jewish tradition. Since a woman could
not be High Priest, Alexandra appointed to that post her eldest son,
Hyrcanus. Both Josephus and the rabbis (who refer to her as Shelamzion)
preserve very favourable evaluations of the reign of Alexandra, in which
she is said to have ‘permitted the Pharisees to do as they liked in all mat-
ters, and also commanded the people to obey them; and whatever