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While the Jews, their society and their religion form the historical context for the foundation of Christianity, we must remember that this Jewish context is within the larger setting of the Roman world. When Christianity emerges from the Jewish nursery it must make its way in the wider non-Jewish world, but in these pages we must focus on the Jewish world.
Scattered communities of Jews including both priestly and nonpriestly families existed both inside and outside the boundaries of the Roman Empire. Jews living in the scattered communities away from Judea are distinguished from the Jews of Palestine by being commonly referred to as the Diaspora, or dispersion. Guesses on the size of the Jewish population in the first century AD range above five million with perhaps as many as four million within the confines of the Roman Empire. Of those, perhaps only about 700,000 lived in the Palestinian region.
There were Jewish agricultural communities located in the rural areas of Phrygia, Cappadocia, and Asia (all in what is today Turkey), as well as the island of Cyprus, and the north African countries of Cyrene (modern Libya) and Egypt. These communities undoubtedly assimilated many features of the local rural culture including the various non-Greek language dialects used by the rural populations. In the rural areas of Syria and Palestine and beyond the imperial frontiers to the East, most local Jewish communities spoke dialects of Aramaic and displayed aspects of the various local cultures.
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Thousands of Jews lived in the cities over an even wider area. The largest single Jewish urban population was evidently in Alexandria, Egypt. Other significant Jewish urban populations were found in cities like Antioch in Syria, Tarsus in Cilicia, Corinth and several other cities in Greece, and Naples in Italy among hundreds of others. The outstanding characteristic of all the urban Diaspora was their use of the Koiné Greek in their everyday activities at home and at work. The Koiné Greek was the hallmark of Hellenistic culture in all its variety. Jewish Communities located in the various cities of the Empire displayed varying degrees of Hellenistic culture.
For further elaboration on the realities associated with Hellenistic civilization please refer to Lecture/Essay One.
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[Note: See the somewhat parallel but more extensive account of Jewish circumstances in the early Hellenistic period in Appendix III.)]
As we take a look at the Eastern Mediterranean world of the last four centuries BC the Jewish people stood out as the one group decidedly out of step in a population dancing enthusiastically to the drum of polytheism. Their ethnic tradition of monotheism came across to their Gentile neighbors as a tragic anomaly, a pitiful case of cultural ignorance and superstition.
The Jews were found living in many different parts of the Near Eastern world throughout this period prior to the arrival of Rome in the first century BC. The Jews in Judea and the ancient city of Jerusalem attract our immediate attention as the focal point of the Jewish people, but number-wise the Jewish population outside Judea was certainly larger. The Jews residing in the Hellenistic cities like Alexandria, Antioch in Syria, Ephesus, Thessalonika, Corinth and many others all reflected the Hellenistic culture of those cities. Even the Jews residing in the city of Jerusalem where they regularly hosted Jewish visitors from outlying lands were much more Hellenistic than the Jews living in the rural villages of Judea around Jerusalem. Then again, the wealthy and aristocratic Jewish families in Jerusalem and Judea were likewise more influenced by the Hellenistic culture than their less affluent neighbors with the less illustrious pedigrees. The language and culture of rural Judea was Aramaic, a people spoken of in the New Testament as "the ignorant and unlearned."
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After the destruction of Solomon's Temple, the city of Jerusalem and the Judean state by Nebuchadnezzar in the early sixth century BC a remnant had returned and rebuilt the Jerusalem temple before the end of that century. The new Judean community struggled for centuries to prevent itself being absorbed into the mix of peoples crowding them for space in the region. For two centuries the new Judea was subject to the Persian kings. Yet, in that period Greek-speaking merchants and settlers from the Aegean area influenced the area of south Syria. At approximately the same time that Ezra the Scribe arrived in Jerusalem (Ezra 7:7) the Athenian navy was operating out of the Judean coastal city of Dor (just south of Mt. Carmel). These Greek sailors were allies of the Egyptian rebels fighting since 460 BC against Artaxerxes I, the Persian king. These Athenian mercenaries defended themselves successfully against the whole Phoenician and Cilician navies under Artabazos, but their Egyptian employers were defeated by 454. The Greeks left Dor only when Megabazus returned from his success in Egypt and threatened them on land. While this single event of recorded history does not amount to much the archaeological evidence of Aegean pottery and coinage fills in the story. The oldest numismatic evidence, a sixth century Athenian coin, was found near Jerusalem, and Athenian coins continued to be the most frequently found in excavations from the Taurus Mountains in north Syria to the Sinai in the South during the Persian period. This indicates the penetration of Aegean trade in part mediated by the Phoenicians. Fifth century Greek sources happen to mention a colony of Greek merchants on the coast of Galilee at Acco. There were probably others.
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In 336 BC Manesseh, the brother of the high priest of Jerusalem, married the daughter of the governor of Samaria. The Governor petitioned Persian authorities to allow Manesseh to succeed him since he had no heirs and to give him permission to build a small temple on Mt. Gerezim and act as its high priest.
Alexander the Great conquered south Syria and Jerusalem in 333. Manesseh and his father in law, Sanballat, turned their army over to Alexander to assist in the conquest of Egypt late in 332. Alexander made Damascus the capital of the area and conquered Gaza establishing a Macedonian Veteran colony there. The Jewish historian Josephus, writing at the end of the first century AD reported that Alexander had visited Jerusalem just before his invasion of Egypt in the early Fall 332. The account is difficult to accept for it says that Alexander bowed to the High Priest and was allowed to sacrifice in the Temple. The people of Samaria rebelled in 331 while Sanballat was in Eygpt with Alexander. Samaria was taken and systematically sacked and destroyed; a remnant of the indigenous population of Samaria were resettled at Shechem, below Mt. Gerezim, where they survived as the Samaritans of the New Testament period. Josephus reports that these Samarians of Shechem went ahead and built a temple on Mt. Gerizim.
The city of Samaria laid in ruins for a while after Alexander's death. In about 322 the ruling General Perdiccas ordered Samaria rebuilt as a Macedonian veteran colony just before he was assassinated during his attempt to dislodge Ptolemy from Egypt in 321. Ptolemy promptly annexed south Syria including all the Jews, but he only held it about four years before Antigonus Monophthalmos and his son Demetrius Poliorcetes conquered south Syria in 315-312 driving Ptolemy's occupation forces back into Egypt. When Ptolemy surrendered Jerusalem in 312 he took a number of Jews with him back to Egypt including the current High Priest. These Jews were settled at Alexandria. Demetrius attacked. Ptolemy fell back to Gaza but Demetrius was defeated. In 311 Demetrius counter-attacked with reinforcements and captured 6000 of Ptolemy's Aegean troops with their commander. Frightened, Ptolemy withdrew his garrisons at Acco, Joppa, Samaria and Gaza and left south Syria to Demetrius. Antigonus and Demetrius now settled seven veteran colonies of Macedonians, three in the Philistine territory and four in the trans-jordan southeast of the Sea of Galilee, Hippos and Gadara--of Gadarean Demoniac fame--among them. Demetrius and his father launched an unsuccessful campaign into Egypt in 306.
In 301 when Demetrius and Antigonus were drawn into the civil war at Ipsus in Turkey, Ptolemy counter-attacked unsuccessfully. He did capture Jerusalem on the Sabbath and took better than 100,000 prisoners of war from Judea back to Alexandria with him. 30,000 of these were selected for garrison duty, guarding Alexandria from the Copts, and the rest sold into slavery.
Demetrius attempted to recapture South Syria after Ipsus, but succeeded only in destroying the city, the fortifications and Ptolemy's garrison at Samaria yet again. Demetrius finally abandoned South Syria to Ptolemy in 291.
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The Jewish population of south Syria lived under Ptolemaic regime from the 291 (early third) to 195 (early second) when the Seleucids under Antiochus III finally wrested all south Syria away from the Ptolemies under Ptolemy V.
During this Ptolemaic century the Jews in South Syria were closely integrated with the Jews living in Alexandria. Josephus includes information that the Jews in Alexandria had been given full citizenship by Ptolemy I. Ptolemy II is reported to have purchased the freedom of 120,000 South Syrian Jews and Samaritans. He also allowed the Jews in Alexandria to organize in a polis-like organization called a polituema, or little polis. The Greek term polis means "state", or "city-state". Hence a little polis was a semi-autonomous organization within a larger polis. The Jewish politeuma consisted of the several Alexandrian synagogue communities. A council of seventy drawn from the elders of those Alexandrian synagogue communities served as the ruling body of this polituema and the president of the council was the chief spokesman for the Alexandrian Jewish population. The Jewish population at Alexandria continued to grow.
Ptolemy II was a patron of scholarship and literature. He enrolled Demetrius of Phalerum to gather a collection of literature for a library. Demetrius scrounged up a reported 500,000 scrolls of Greek text to make Ptolemy's library second to none any where in the world. It was housed in a temple dedicated to the Muses, the relatively obscure Greek deities of intellect and literacy. The Museum, as it was called, under the direction of a scholar who served as priest of the Muses, became the center for scholarly research. Soon they began to publish standardized texts of all Greek literature beginning with Homer. It soon replaced the Lyceum at Athens founded by Aristotle as the center of scientific and literary studies in the Hellenistic world. Demetrius was not only interested in collecting Greek literature, he became interested in translating the Hebrew books of the Old Testament into Greek. The Hebrew manuscripts they had were for some reason unsatisfactory, so they enlisted the Jews in South Syria to provide the Hebrew manuscripts, come to Alexandria, and do the translation into Greek. Six men from each of the 12 tribes, allegedly, brought their scrolls to Alexandria and finished the possibly as many as 50 scrolls of the whole Torah in 72 days. The proper translation into Greek was determined orally and then reported to Demetrius' scribes who wrote it down. This account of the origin of the Septuagint is considered legendary if not a bit fanciful, by many scholars. For one thing they find it hard to believe that the Koiné Greek had such impact on the rural population of South Syria that these 72 Jewish elders would be capable of translating the Hebrew into Greek. Yet the Septuagint ("seventy" in Latin, or LXX in Roman numerals. Note: It does not stand for 72.), the Greek translation of the Old Testament, doubtless came into existence in the Alexandrian scholarly climate. The Septuagint is important because it became the Old Testament preferred by the majority of early Christians.
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In the first decade of the second century BC Judea passed from the Ptolemaic regime to the Seleucid regime. At first this was not an unhappy situation except that the family members living in Alexandria were now across a hostile frontier from those remaining in Judea. This made it much more difficult for Egyptian Jews to worship in Jerusalem every Spring and Summer. Understandably, Antiochus IV, concerned with the religious and cultural links between the Jews in Alexandria and those in Jerusalem first contemplated annexing Egypt to the Seleucid realm.
This plan progressed toward fruition as the result of a brief but victorious war between Antiochus and Ptolemaic Egypt in 170 BC. While in Egypt a false rumor of Antiochus' death persuaded the people of Jerusalem to rebel. The rebellion was crushed and some 1800 talents of silver utensils including the seven-branched candlestick were taken from the Temple. Judea was placed under the control of two Seleucid garrison commanders, one at Jerusalem and one at Schechem. This was a holding pattern to stabilize south Syria until Egypt could be annexed.
Antiochus IV took his armies into Egypt early in 168 in anticipation of the annexation, but a "friendly" Roman deputation showed up with a "friendly" warning that sent Antiochus scurrying back to Syria. You don't mess with Rome's "friends".
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Antiochus did not want to mix it up with Rome so he resigned himself to have to give up that idea and strengthen his south Syrian frontier. It is unclear what precipitated Antiochus' next move in late 168 BC. In any case he was highly frustrated by the Roman intrusion. For whatever reason he ordered the entire Seleucid army in a full-scale assault on Jerusalem for the purpose of destroying its fortifications and sacking the homes of the wealthy. Resisters were massacred; their families sold into slavery. A huge fortress called the Akra was erected on the ridge south of the Temple. The exact nature of the decree now issued by Antiochus can only be inferred by the Jew's reaction to it and a few other hints. It has been hypothesized that Antiochus outlawed specifically Jewish religious customs in Jerusalem and Judea only. Other scholars have built a hypothesis on a few coins and the title Antiochus theos epiphanes, Antiochus the immanent god, that sees him attempting to use his alleged divinity to politically unify his whole kingdom.
The policy experienced by the Judean Jews was extreme and to the point, either fit in with Hellenistic society and abandon your unique Jewish practices or die. Ironically, the current Jewish high priest, a thoroughly Hellenized Jew named Menelaus, was quite cooperative with the monthly searches for illegally circumcised infants, illegal copies of the Torah, or people caught keeping the Sabbath. Inspectors went from village to village forcing the inhabitants to participate in pagan sacrifices or be sold into slavery. On December 6, 167 a pagan altar was built atop the great altar of sacrifice in the Temple. On December 16 a sacrifice to a pagan god was made on that altar.
In that same year the Maccabean rebellion began in rural Judea led by an aged priest named Mattathias of the family of Asamonaios, called Hasmonaean, and his 5 sons. The oldest son soon assumed the leadership of the rebellion, his name was Judas and he was nicknamed the Hammer, maqqebeth, the Maccabee. Judas recaptured Jerusalem, cleansed and rededicated the Temple on December 14, 164. In the ongoing struggle Judas was killed in 161, as was his brother Jonathan in 143. Judas had, however, secured a friendship treaty with Rome before he died. Finally Simon, the remaining brother became King and High Priest at Jerusalem in 142 officially launching The Hasmonaean dynasty as the head of a state now for the moment free of Seleucid control. A free and independent Judea could be maintained only if the Seleucid attempts to reconquer her could be defeated. Rome intervened on one occasion in 133 and forced the Seleucids to withdraw and leave Judea free. The Hasmonaean monarchy continued to grow stronger and to conquer several surrounding regions forcing the inhabitants to either convert to Judaism or vacate the region. One of these conquered regions was Idumea.
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[The Roman arrival in Judea and the following subjects are discussed in more detail in Appendix IV.]
Two Hasmonaean brothers fought over the possession of the offices of priest and king beginning in 67 BC. Meanwhile the Roman Warlord, Pompey, had come to Asia Minor to finish off the third war with Pontus. While he was there he was called into a dynastic struggle between two Seleucid survivors. This brought Pompey and his army to Antioch in Syria where he learned that the Nabataeans of Arabia had been causing the Seleucids trouble. He moved his forces to Damascus to prepare for a Nabataean campaign. There he received invitations and gifts from both the Hasmonaean brothers to come assist them in their respective efforts against each other.
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The Nabataean campaign was aborted when the Nabataeans sued for peace and accepted a Roman treaty. So Pompey came to Judea, arrested one Hasmonaean brother (Aristobulus II) and established the other (Hyrcanus II) as High Priest and ruler of a reduced Judea. Hyrcanus now signed a treaty officially becoming an ally of Rome. This treaty allowed the Jews in Judea to continue their Jewish customs without hindrance so long as Jewish priests would sacrifice daily at Jerusalem in behalf of the leaders and people of Rome. The Romans even agreed to pay for the sacrificial animals. Other parts of the former Hasmonaean kingdom became eight or nine separate provinces under the supervision of the governor of the new Roman province of Syria formed on Pompey's say so that same year, 63 BC.
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When Judea was briefly reconquered by Aristobulus II in 58, the Romans made it part of the province of Syria leaving Hyrcanus II as High Priest. The Roman general Crassus looted the Temple of Jerusalem of better than 10,000 talents of treasure in preparation for his Parthian War in 53. Julius Caesar made Judea once again an allied state under the rule of High Priest Hyrcanus II in 47 BC. Further benefits were confirmed to Judea at that time. Jerusalem's wall was to be rebuilt and no Roman army camp would be built in Judea. Antipater of Idumea and his two sons Phasael and Herod now played prominent roles in Judean government. Hyrcanus negotiated with the Roman Senate and got them to extend the guarantees of religious freedom to the Jews in the province of Asia and grant Roman protection to the Jews in Ptolemaic Alexandria. In 41-40 BC Antigonus, youngest son of Aristobulus II, using a Parthian army successfully conquered Judea and ruled it for four years. Herod but not his brother had escaped Antigonus' purge. Herod fled to Rome where Mark Antony convinced the Senate to make him king of a considerably enlarged Judea as an ally of Rome. He finally drove out Antigonus and the Parthians and took control in 37 BC. As King of Judea Herod remained a loyal ally of Rome. After Herod's death in 4 BC Judea was divided into four "quarter kingdoms" tetrarchies, three of which were turned over to his three surviving heirs, each a Roman ally.
The ruler of the part called Judea was deposed by the Romans in 6 AD and that quarter became and remained a Roman province for 36 years, then between 41 and 44 AD another descendant of Herod (Agrippa II) ruled Judea as King and Roman ally. Thereafter, until the outbreak of the Judean Rebellion in 66 Judea was once again a Roman Province.
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During this period the Judean Jews became increasingly hostile on two fronts. They became increasingly intolerant of the Herodians and others who favored working with Rome and her governors. And they became increasingly hostile to any kind of innovation or challenge to the traditional Jewish life-style and interpretation of the Torah such as offered by some Hellenistic Jews and by the Christian Jews in particular. This hostility is identified as being zealous for the Law of Moses. Eventually this hostility irrupted in open rebellion against Rome. The rebellion elicited a predictably harsh Roman reaction. The Judean resistance was crushed, Jerusalem was besieged, conquered, sacked, pillaged, depopulated and burned, and the Temple was destroyed in 70 AD. Over a million Jews died in the war. Forty thousand of the surviving prisoners of war who were under 17 years old were sold into slavery. The special religious concessions to Judea were not restored, but Jews everywhere were assured that they were still free to worship peacefully.
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[Jewish cultural heritage is discussed in more detail in Appendix IV.]
The dispersed Jews already in the second century BC were organized in the typical local Jewish community organization for worship and government--this all-purpose localized organization is known by its Greek name, synagôgé, the Synagogue. In isolated villages of Jews the name was applied to the village government association (Hebrew: khever), whose officials presided over the gatherings (Hebrew: qahal and ‹edah) of villagers for whatever reason. In cosmopolitan urban settings like Alexandria and Jerusalem, the synagogues provided an organization for Jews from various cultural niches of the Hellenistic world to have fellowship with their cultural peers. We are told by the rabbinical tradition that there were 480 such synagogues in Jerusalem in the New Testament period playing host to the visiting Jews coming to worship in the Temple. Any sort of common heritage might be justification for a synagogue. For example there was a synagogue in Jerusalem made up of former slaves from certain Roman provinces in what is now Turkey.
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The Jews were quite diverse in terms of the culture of their homelands across the Hellenistic world both inside and outside the Roman dominion. They were also divided into various schools of thought and practice such as Sadducees, Pharisees, Essenes, etc. The Sadducees were the highly Hellenistic local Judean aristocrats who understood Judaism as following the written Torah for strictly religious matters but accommodating all else with modern society. The Pharisees were the highly educated Rabbis and their less will educated followers both in Judea and in the Dispersion. They put great emphasis on the traditional "oral law" which mediated and extended the Written Torah to all aspects of contemporary life and religion. The Essenes favored applying the Written Torah to every day life and culture as well as to religious issues. They were particularly suspicious of all recent Hellenistic influences in both culture and religion.
Despite their diversity Jews everywhere considered the Temple at Jerusalem the symbol of their ethnic unity. They not only scrimped and saved to worship there once in their life-times, every Jewish family paid and annual tax for the upkeep of the Temple whether they lived in Jerusalem or far away at Naples or Rome in the West, or in Babylon or other settlements in the East. After the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD, Emperor Vespasian continued to honor the general agreement with the Jews that they could worship freely where ever they lived, but he did decree that they should continue to pay the Temple tax until the Roman war chest was replenished.
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Return to the Lecture/Essay Table of Contents for Part I
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Most recently edited 19 November 2003