POLITICS AN DSOCIETY 41of so much new wealth into the district.^58 It is therefore especially frustrating
that our main ancient source, Josephus, has so little to say about the expansion
and its consequences. In part this was because Josephus, who lived in the
wake of the expansion, was blind to its effect on Palestinian Jewish life and
was hostile to and contemptuous of the non-Judaean Jews. It is nevertheless
clear that as a result of the conquests Palestinian Jewish society became expo-
nentially more complex, much richer, and much more turbulent than it had
ever been. Otherwise, the effects of the expansion may be summarized in
terms of four categories: demography, economy, politics, and religion.
Demography. The size of the population of ancient Palestine cannot be
determined, but 500,000 is a plausible figure for the population of the Pales-
tinian interior.^59 This would imply a population of 100,000–200,000 for the
district of Judaea, and so approximately a two- to fivefold increase in the Jewish
population of Palestine in the wake of the expansion, bearing in mind, though,
that an unknown proportion of the inhabitants of the annexed districts fled.
Economy. The Hasmonean state was enriched by its constant warfare and
plunder, especially of the wealthy Gree kcities of the coast and the desert
fringe, under Alexander Yannai. Much of this wealth went, first, into the pock-
ets of the kings, second, into the temple treasury, and, third, to the priests,
who were entitled to receive taxes in kind from all Israelites living in the land
of Israel. But the general population profited, too, for it was they, especially
perhaps the residents of the annexed districts, who formed the ran kand file
of the Hasmonean armies and kept part of what they plundered. Although we
would like to have numbers, the ancient sources, as always, provide none.
Perhaps of some limited heuristic value is Josephus’s statement that when the
Roman general Crassus plundered the Temple in 54B.C.E., only nine years
after Pompey and at the height of the Judaean civil war, he found 2,000 talents
of silver, a gold bar weighing 300 mnai (a mna is equivalent to at least one
Roman pound), and 8,000 talents of gold plate—which should be worth the
astonishing sum of 96,000 silver talents (Ant14.105–6). But these figures may
be unsalvageable. By contrast, Herod’s annual tax income was probably
around 1,000 silver talents.^60
Politics. Little is known for certain about how the Hasmoneans adminis-
tered their state, but it does seem likely that they ruled Judaea through the
established national institutions, and the annexed districts through “friendly”
(^58) See the final section of the next chapter.
(^59) On the size of the population, see introduction, note 13.
(^60) The commentators try to salvage Josephus’s figures by supposing that the gold plate was
worth 8,000 silver talents. This is more plausible, but it is not what Josephus says. On Herod’s
tax revenues, see E. Gabba, “The Finances of King Herod,” in A. Kasher, U. Rappaport, and G.
Fuks, eds.Greece and Rome in Eretz Israel: Collected Essays(Jerusalem: Yad Ben Zvi, 1990), pp.
160–68, especially 161.