The Maccabean Revolution there was a ‘‘Hellenising movement’’ is beyond all question, but by far the best
evidence for it relates to the first phase, the establishment of Jerusalem as a
Greek city called ‘‘Antiochia’’ and its gymnasium in the s. To see the whole
course of events as the work of a ‘‘Hellenising party’’ is to ignore the change
of the high priesthood from Jason to Menelaus; to underestimate the vio-
lence and extent of direct Seleucid administrative and military intervention;
and to build an immense structure on a few fragments of evidence (almost
entirely from Josephus’ confused account) laying the responsibility for what
happened on Menelaus and his associates.
However difficult it may be to accommodate it within our normal views
of Hellenistic rule in Asia, the evidence, both Jewish and pagan, asserts that
the programme of ‘‘forced’’ conversion to Hellenism (or paganism) was that
of Antiochus and was carried out by his agents. He did not, it is true, con-
duct it in person; moreover, by .., the need to exact taxes from the
central Asian provinces of his empire was more pressing than the concerns
of Judaea, and he died far away in Elymais at just about the moment when
Jewish worship was restored in the Temple. Even before that he had begun to
compromise, and his son Antiochus V at once formally abandoned his father’s
attempt to force the Jews to accept ‘‘Greek customs.’’
That was what it had been (as indeed Hengel admits, ). It follows that
literary or philosophical identifications of the Jewish God with Zeus or a
‘‘Highest God’’ of the pagan pantheon would have only a restricted relevance,
even if—which is not the case—they could be shown to have been shared by
persons living in Judaea in the period leading up to the ‘‘reform attempt.’’ For
the events of we lack not only any convincing evidence of the theology
of the putative ‘‘reformers’’ or (as above) for their influence on Antiochus,
but also any adequate grounds for believing that the cult then established had
clearly monotheistic features, or retained anything from the previous wor-
ship in the Temple which would entitle it to be called a ‘‘reform’’ rather than
an abolition.
These are difficult questions, if of the greatest historical importance; and
no one, least of all the author, will wish to claim that he has divined with
certainty a reality different from that portrayed in Hengel’s great work. But
it may yet be helpful to put forward, as hypotheses, a number of proposi-
tions which together would present a totally different conception of these
events from that of Hengel: (a) that what was significant about the Jewish
community of the third and second centuries..was the superficiality of
its Hellenism; (b) that there was a reform attempt, initiated from within the
community, but confined to the high priesthood of Jason; (c) that the crisis