Early Judaism- A Comprehensive Overview

Syria.... There... they built in the land now called Judea a city... and

gave it the name of Jerusalem” (Ag. Ap.1.73-91).

The other account of Manetho quoted by Josephus draws on popular

legends and recounts the segregation of a crowd of lepers, led by a priest

named Osarseph, identified with Moses, who advocated social isolation

and taught them not to worship the Egyptian gods but rather to sacrifice

the Egyptian sacred animals. In the end, the Egyptian king defeats the lep-

ers and expels them from Egypt, pursuing them to the frontiers of Syria

(Ag. Ap.1.228-52). Similar stories with different details were recounted be-

tween the second centuryb.c.e.and the first centuryc.e.by other Greco-

Egyptian authors such as Lysimachus, Chaeremon, Ptolemy of Mendes,

and Apion. Written in Greek, these accounts deeply influenced public

opinion even outside Egypt, as the later RomanHistoriesof Tacitus witness

(5.3.1–5.4.2).

These are not the only manifestations of antagonism preserved by our

sources. 3 Maccabees reflects memories of a conflict between the Jews and

theEgyptianruler—apersecution sparked by Jewish religious practices

that was thwarted thanks to divine intervention. The conflict probably be-

longs to a later historical period, but it remains significant that the author

of the book places it in the Hellenistic age, at the time of Ptolemy IV

Philopator in the third centuryb.c.e.(Josephus dates the event to the

reign of Ptolemy Physcon [Euergetes II] in the second centuryb.c.e.)

Toward the end of the Ptolemaic period, the rule of the kings weak-

ened under the strain of dynastic strife, and the security that the Jews had

enjoyed in the early period could no longer be taken for granted. In the

first half of the first centuryb.c.e., a papyrus dealing with commercial is-

sues warns that in Memphis “they loathe the Jews” (CPJ1:141).

Jewish Engagement with Hellenism

At the end of the fourth centuryb.c.e., the conquests of Alexander the

Great brought a real revolution not only on the political level but also in

the cultural sphere. All over the Near East, people came in close contact

with the thought, cultural values, and institutions of the Greeks; among

them, a special role was played by the gymnasium, where people trained

in physical exercises and devoted themselves to letters, music, rhetoric,

and philosophy. Through the medium of a common language — the

Hellenistic form of Greek, the so-calledkoine,which soon became the

370

miriam pucci ben zeev

EERDMANS -- Early Judaism (Collins and Harlow) final text
Tuesday, October 09, 2012 12:04:15 PM