The Jewish Annotated New Testament (139 page)

This is the covenant that I will make with the
               house of Israel
        after those days, says the Lord:

I will put my laws in their minds,
       and write them on their hearts,

and I will be their God,
       and they shall be my people.

And they shall not teach one another
        or say to each other, ‘Know the Lord,’

for they shall all know me,
        from the least of them to the greatest.

For I will be merciful toward their iniquities,
       and I will remember their sins no more.”

In speaking of “a new covenant,” he has made the first one obsolete. And what is obsolete and growing old will soon disappear. (Heb 8.6–13)

The latest books of the Hebrew Bible, including Daniel, are usually understood to have been written in the second century BCE, although biblical ideas continued to flourish later, while the first rabbinic book, the Mishnah, is dated to approximately 200 CE, although it incorporates earlier traditions. From a chronological perspective, these two corpora—the Tanakh and rabbinic literature— form bookends around the New Testament and offer much context that clarifies its meaning. The New Testament is a Christian book—the final part of a Scripture of a community that had come, by the time these books were regarded as a distinct collection, to view itself as separate from the Jewish community. Nevertheless, the Hebrew Bible and rabbinic literature, as well as the Jewish literature contemporaneous with the New Testament, offer an important context for any reader who is trying to understand it. In turn, reading the New Testament provides additional lenses by which we might understand the lives, the ideas, and the practices of many Jews, both those who chose to follow Jesus of Nazareth and those who chose the various other paths that comprised late Second Temple Judaism. In that sense, the New Testament is very much part of Jewish history.

JEWISH HISTORY, 331 BCE–135 CE

Martin Goodman

FROM ALEXANDER THE GREAT TO THE MACCABEAN REVOLT

Alexander of Macedon, known as “the Great,” conquered the Near East in a rapid series of campaigns beginning in 331 BCE and so wrested the land of Israel from the Persians; by the time of his death in 323, he had gained control not only of parts of Europe but also of Syria, Egypt, Mesopotamia, and the entire Persian Empire. In his wake, the Jewish populations in the land of Israel and in the Diaspora, like other peoples whom Alexander ruled, came firmly under the influence of Greek thought and the Greek language. Scholars have given the name “Hellenism” to the synthesis Alexander encouraged between the indigenous cultures of his empire and his Greek-Macedonian ethos. In Judea and Galilee, Aramaic and Hebrew remained in general use, but in most Diaspora communities apart from Babylon, Greek came to be the preferred language and Hebrew was in some cases unknown.

In Alexander’s time, the only large Jewish Diaspora population was in Babylon; this population was descended from the Judahites taken into exile by the Babylonians in the sixth century BCE. But by the first century BCE Jewish communities existed far beyond Judea’s borders: from Rome and Greece to Cyrene in Libya, to the Anatolian plateau in Western Asia Minor (now Turkey), and to Syria and Egypt. The largest Diaspora communities were in Alexandria in Egypt and in Syrian Antioch. Some of these Jews were descendants of slaves taken captive in the numerous wars following Alexander’s death; others were the heirs of Jews employed by various Hellenistic rulers as soldiers for hire. Some Jews relocated from Judea because of overpopulation. Jewish numbers also increased in the Diaspora because of proselytes: while Jews did not actively campaign to gain converts, they did welcome Gentile affiliates.

Following Alexander’s death, his generals divided the conquered lands. Of the dynasties these generals formed, two—the Ptolemies of Egypt and the Seleucids of Syria-Mesopotamia—would determine the fate of the land of Israel for the next 200 years. From 301 BCE to 198 BCE, the land formed part of the Ptolemaic state, although Seleucid authorities continued to dispute Jerusalem’s ownership. After six unsuccessful attempts at seizing the land of Israel from Ptolemaic control, the Seleucid king Antiochus III annexed the Jewish homeland to his empire at the battle of Paneas in 198.

This shift in state control signaled more than the direction in which taxes would flow; it also created new cultural and political opportunities. The Ptolemaic government had the structure of a large bureaucracy, in part necessitated by Egypt’s reliance on state-controlled irrigation for agriculture. When Egypt gained colonial conquests, it extended its bureaucratic governmental system as well. Thus there was little room for local populations to exercise extensive political power. The Seleucids, on the other hand, substantially ruled through cooperation with elite members of the conquered populations, to whom they provided financial and political incentives. Consequently, under the Seleucid system, there was greater room for political advancement provided that non-Greek elites were completely loyal to the Syrian rulers and were sufficiently Hellenized. While some members of Jerusalem’s ruling elite—principally the high priestly families—did not embrace Hellenistic culture, others did. The first quarter of the second century BCE witnessed Jewish high priests with Greek names such as Menelaus and Jason, the occasional practice of epispasm (the removal, or attempt to remove, the mark of circumcision through surgery), and Jews undergoing a gymnasium education. The adoption of some elements of Greek culture need not in itself have weakened Jewish identification, as the writings of the highly Hellenized first-century CE Jewish philosopher Philo indicate;
enforced
acculturation, however, would have ended the Jews’ distinctive beliefs and practices.

In 167 BCE, the Seleucid ruler Antiochus IV Epiphanes, with the collaboration of the Hellenized ruling elite in Jerusalem, ordered the conversion of the Jerusalem Temple into a pagan shrine. According to 1 Maccabees, the Hellenization program encompassed more than the Temple system; it was also designed to eradicate distinct Jewish practice.

Then the king wrote to his whole kingdom that all should be one people, and that all should give up their particular customs. All the Gentiles accepted the command of the king. Many even from Israel gladly adopted his religion; they sacrificed to idols and profaned the sabbath.… They were to make themselves abominable by everything unclean and profane, so that they would forget the law and change all the ordinances. He added, “And whoever does not obey the command of the king shall die.” (1 Macc 1.41–50)

Such a move to dismantle the ancestral religion of a conquered nation was unprecedented in either Ptolemaic or Seleucid history. The main sources describing this policy, 1 and 2 Maccabees, suggest that factionalism within the Jewish ruling class and, especially, the attempt by some within the high priestly circles to gain power via Hellenization prompted the innovation, but only in these books does an explicit contrast between Judaism and Hellenism surface. It is also possible that Antiochus, who had attempted to lay siege to Egypt but had been forced by the Romans to withdraw, was either seeking a firmer consolidation of his holdings or simply looting wealth from the Temple treasury.

THE HASMONEAN DYNASTY

Opposing this Hellenization, with its enforced transgression of Jewish practice, Mattathias, a priest from Modi’in northwest of Jerusalem, together with his five sons, led a guerrilla-style revolt against Seleucid rule. In 164, under the leadership of Mattathias’s son Judah (Gk Judas) Maccabeus (“hammer”), they defeated the Syrian forces and purified and rededicated the Temple. This is the origin of the festival of Hanukkah, whose name means “dedication” (see Jn 10.22); 1 Maccabees 4.56–59 describes the eight-day celebration, but the story of the miraculous cruse of oil that lasted for eight days does not appear until the Babylonian Talmud (
b. Shabb
. 21a). A new high priest, Alcimus, who had been an associate of the previous priestly regime, served the restored Temple system, and Judah took over the government. The Syrian military defeat did not create peace in the area, however. Judah also repelled Syrian-Greek attacks on Jewish communities in the Transjordan and Galilee, and he attacked the Syrian troops stationed at the citadel at Acre. Alcimus also faced opposition, including from Judah; the high priest then sought support from the Syrian government, while Judah signed a treaty with Rome.

In 161 BCE Judah was killed in battle against Syrian-Greek forces; his brother Jonathan replaced him as political and military leader. Alcimus died in 159, and in 152 Jonathan arranged with his Seleucid allies to be appointed to the high priesthood. From 152 until 37 BCE, when Herod the Great gained control over Judea, all the high priests as well as the kings came from the family of Mattathias. Their dynasty took the name “Hasmonean,” from an ancestor of Mattathias.

The early Hasmoneans were clients of the Syrian-Greek government. The Seleucids kept a garrison in Jerusalem until ca. 129 BCE, and the dynasty continued to interfere in local governance. But internal disintegration and external pressure from Rome, which had taken an increasing interest in the Eastern Mediterranean during the second century BCE, allowed the Hasmoneans greater autonomy. Jonathan took Ashkelon peacefully and Gaza by force, while his brother Simon, who received from the Seleucids vassal control over the coastal regions from Tyre to the Egyptian frontier, conquered the fortress of Beth-Zur.

It is in the context of Jonathan’s high priesthood, ca. 145, that Josephus describes the “schools of thought” (Gk
haireseis
) of the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes (
Ant
. 13.171–73). Some have argued that it was at this time, if not earlier, that a group of Jews, led by the “Teacher of Righteousness” mentioned in some of the Dead Sea Scrolls, rejected both the Temple and Jerusalem and eventually settled at Qumran, by the Dead Sea.

In 142 BCE, when the Seleucid general Diodotus Tryphon captured Jonathan and his children, Simon paid the ransom, but he also blocked the general from further movement. Diodotus Tryphon then executed Jonathan, and Simon became, in 141, both “prince” of Israel and high priest. The fate of Jonathan’s children is not recorded, although one of his daughters was the ancestor of the first-century Jewish military leader and historian Josephus.

Simon ruled until 135 BCE, when his son-in-law arranged his assassination. Two of his sons were also killed, but the third son, John Hyrcanus, took both the throne and the high priesthood from 135 until 104. By the 120s, Hyrcanus had sufficient autonomy to expand the borders of his kingdom: in ca. 112 he brought the region of Idumea, south of Judea, under his control (
Ant
. 13.257–58). Included in Hyrcanus’s expansion were Galilee, Samaria (where he destroyed the Samaritan Temple on Mount Gerizim), and the Transjordan. Hyrcanus’s son Aristobulus, who ruled only one year, from 104 to 103, brought the Ituraeans under Judean control as well.

But under Aristobulus, known as “philhellene” (“lover of Greek culture”), Hasmonean power took a new step. Whereas his grandfather held the title of “prince” and his father “ethnarch” (lit., “ruler of a nation”; the term indicates a status below that of a king), Aristobulus declared himself “king.” He and his successor, Alexander Jannaeus (103–76 BCE) then ruled as did other Hellenistic kings: they used mercenary soldiers to secure their rule and continued their expansionist policies. Jannaeus conquered Gaza and the Golan Heights, and he took over Nabatean trade routes. Internally, Jannaeus, who received support from the Sadducees, faced a rebellion from Pharisees and others. According to Josephus, while Jannaeus “was feasting with his concubines, in the sight of all the city, he ordered about eight hundred of [his opponents] to be crucified; and while they were living, he ordered the throats of their children and wives to be cut before their eyes” (
Ant
. 13.380). The dynasty that began as a defense of Judaism against Hellenism came to epitomize Hellenistic rule. When Jannaeus died, his wife Alexandra Jannaea Salome became queen (76–67 BCE); this type of inheritance was found elsewhere in the Hellenistic world, but having a legitimately recognized queen (in contrast to Athalya, the ninth-century BCE queen of Judah) was an innovation for Jews.

ROMAN RULE

The Hasmonean dynasty declined because of a combination of internal dissent and Roman ambition. In 67 BCE, Salome Alexandra’s sons, Hyrcanus II and Aristobulus, vied for political control; Rome, which had in the 70s gained control of the remnants of the Seleucid empire, stepped into politics of Judea. In 63, the Roman general Pompey intervened, ostensibly on behalf of Hyrcanus, but he then put Jerusalem under siege and, appalling the Jewish population, entered the Temple’s Holy of Holies. His motive was curiosity regarding the rumor that the sanctuary contained no cult object. For the Jews, however, the act was the height of transgression (cf. Lev 16). Pompey then took control over the Hasmonean areas of Judea, Galilee, Idumea, and Perea.

Typically, Rome utilized client kings for provincial rule, but this policy proved impossible in Judea in 40 BCE because of Parthian intervention. The Parthians—rulers of an empire based east of the boundaries of the Roman empire, roughly where modern Iran is located—took advantage of civil war in the Roman world to invade the eastern regions under Roman control, including Judea. They imprisoned Hyrcanus and replaced him with his nephew Antigonus. Antigonus then made sure that Hyrcanus would no longer serve as high priest by mutilating his ears (cf. Lev 21.17). The Romans—lacking both political control in Judea and their own suitable Hasmonean candidate for the throne—opted to back Herod. The young man had the powerful political connections: his grandfather, Antipater, was an Idumean and convert to Judaism whom Alexander Jannaeus had appointed
strategos
(in effect, military governor) over the recently incorporated Idumea. His father, also called Antipater, had sided with Pompey in the Roman capture of Jerusalem and then aided Hyrcanus II to regain the throne under Roman auspices. When Julius Caesar defeated Pompey in 48 BCE, he appointed Antipater the procurator of Judea and granted him Roman citizenship. In 47, Antipater in turn appointed Herod governor of Jerusalem.