Early Judaism- A Comprehensive Overview

In 2 Maccabees, which deals with the history of the Jewish people in Judea

at the time of Antiochus IV Epiphanes (175-164b.c.e.), history is presented

according to a Jewish interpretative scheme in which the causes of events

are sought in the spiritual rather than the political realm. Accordingly, the

religious persecution is regarded as punishment for the sins committed by

the Jews, sins which are identified with the extreme Hellenization of those

Jews who had been ready to give up the exclusivity of Judaism in order to

become an integral part of the Hellenistic world. From a theological point

of view, this book is a distinctly Jewish work, while formally and literarily

it is completely Greek.

Yet there are early Jewish works that reflect cultural antagonism of one

sort or another. One of them is the Wisdom of Solomon, in which consid-

erable learning, sophisticated vocabulary, developed rhetorical features,

and Hellenistic philosophical influences are employed not to integrate Ju-

daism with its environment but to construct a sophisticated attack upon it,

focusing on worship of animals and idolatry, which are presented as the

height of folly and the root of immorality. Another case is that of

3 Maccabees, where the narrative centers on the hostility between Jews and

Gentiles, andJoseph and Aseneth,a work fiercely antagonistic to all non-

Jewish religion. Similar features are displayed by the third book of theSib-

ylline Oracles,which may reflect a revival of Jewish nationalistic sentiment

in the wake of the Maccabean revolt. Directed against the unjust regimes

of Greece, Macedonia, and Rome, it predicts woes and cosmic disasters,

followed by visions of worldwide repentance and the worship of all na-

tions at the Temple of God.

In the practical domain, too, Hellenism influenced Jewish life in dif-

ferent ways. Recent scholarship distinguishes between assimilation (social

integration) and acculturation (linguistic, educational, and ideological

integration). At one end of the spectrum, we find a complete submersion

of Jewish cultural uniqueness, well illustrated by the cases of Dositheos

son of Drymilos in the third centuryb.c.e.and of Tiberius Julius Alexan-

der in the first centuryc.e.Both of these men abandoned Jewish ancestral

traditions and made brilliant carriers in the Ptolemaic and Roman ad-

ministrations. At the other end of the spectrum are the Therapeutae, who

closely resembled the Essenes while including women; they were an as-

cetic Jewish community living in the vicinity of Alexandria who devoted

themselves to study and contemplation. Philo calls them “the citizens of

heaven and of the universe.” In the middle between these extremes, there

were “mainstream” Jews whose cultural identity was well defined and

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miriam pucci ben zeev

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