capture of Gaza in 332, attributed his victories to the favor of the Jewish
god, guaranteed all Jews the right to live by their ancestral laws, and in-
vited any who wished to join the Macedonians in their war against Persia
(Ant.11.325-39). Hecataeus of Abdera (or, more likely, a Jewish pseudepig-
rapher writing in his name) preserves episodes involving Jewish soldiers
in Alexander’s forces (apudJosephus,Ag. Ap.1.192, 200-204). Although
judged to be fictional by most scholars, these and other imaginative re-
constructions reflect the fact that Jews did serve in the armies of the Hel-
lenistic monarchies.
Alexander died in 323 without a viable heir and apparently without
any clear instructions for choosing one. The result was a series of ulti-
mately unsuccessful attempts by his former companions to prevent the
fragmentation of Alexander’s realm. The rival maneuverings of these gen-
erals, collectively dubbed the Diadochoi (“Successors”) by later historians,
turned the lands of the Near East into an incessant battleground (see map
2). The loss of Alexander’s natural kin to attrition removed the Macedo-
nian royal house as a putative object of common allegiance, impelling each
of the Diadochoi in turn to proclaim himself king. The failure of the stron-
gest of these to achieve ascendancy over his rivals at the Battle of Ipsus in
301 b.c.e.precipitated a division of territory that would eventually harden
into three relatively stable monarchies: Antigonid Greece, Seleucid Asia,
and Ptolemaic Egypt.
References to Jewish fortunes during the early wars of the Diadochoi
are sparse. The Alexandrian historian Agatharchides of Cnidus relates that
Ptolemy I captured Jerusalem, probably in 312b.c.e.(apudJosephus,Ag.
Ap.1.209-11; cf.Ant.12.6). TheLetter of Aristeasstates that Ptolemy en-
slaved some of its inhabitants and relocated others to Egypt, absorbing
roughly a third of the latter into his defense forces.Aristeas’s numbers
(100,000 deportees) are clearly exaggerated; but even if the story oversim-
plifies a more complicated series of population transfers, it surely reflects
at least one source of Egypt’s Jewish population during the early Hellenis-
tic period. Josephus also claims Jews served in the armies of Seleucus I
(ruled 305-281) and were rewarded with citizenship in the cities he
founded (Ant.12.119). As with the Ptolemaic tales, this tradition smacks of
retrospection by later Jewish inhabitants of these cities — especially those
of the Seleucid capital at Antioch (Ant.12.120-24). A precise chronology of
early Jewish settlement within the Ptolemaic and Seleucid realms is not re-
coverable.33
Jewish History from Alexander to HadrianEERDMANS -- Early Judaism (Collins and Harlow) final text
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