Jew and Gentile in the Ancient World: Attitudes and Interactions from Alexander to Justinian

Jew and Gentile

in the Ancient World

Jew and Gentile

in the Ancient World

ATTITUDES AND INTERACTIONS

FROM ALEXANDER TO JUSTINIAN

Louis H. Feldman

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY

Copyright © 1993 by Princeton University Press

Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street,

Princeton, New Jersey 08540

In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, Chichester,

West Sussex

All Rights Reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Feldman, Louis H.

Jew and Gentile in the ancient world : attitudes and interactions from

Alexander to Justinian I Louis H. Feldman.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

isbn 0-691-07416-x

isbn 0-691-02927-x (pbk.)

1. Judaism—Relations. 2. Jews—Public opinion—History.

3.Jews—History—586 B.C-70a.d. 4.Jews—History—70-638.

5. Antisemitism—History. 6. Judaism—Controversial literature—

History and criticism. 7. Proselytes and proselyting, Jewish—History.

8. Philosemitism—History. I. Title.

BM534.F45 1992

292.3’87209015 —DC2O 92-II952

Publication of this book has been aided by a grant from the Lucius N.

Littauer Foundation, Inc.

eISBN: 9781400820801

R0

To the Memory

of my mother,

of blessed memory,

whose lullaby

still rings

in my ears:

Vos iz di beste schorah?

Das kind vet lernen

Torah."

CONTENTS

Preface  xi

CHAPTER 1: Contacts between Jews and Non-Jews in the Land of Israel  3

1. Contacts Prior to Alexander the Great  3

2. Literary Contacts between the Time of Alexander and the Maccabean Revolt  6

3. Military, Political, and Economic Contacts between Greeks and Jews from the Time of Alexander to the Maccabean Revolt  11

4. Linguistic Contacts between Greeks and Jews before the Maccabean Revolt  14

5. Influence of Greek Ideas before the Maccabees  16

6. Political Contacts between Greeks and Jews during the Hasmonean and Roman Periods  18

7. Cultural Contacts between Greeks and Jews during the Hasmonean and Roman Periods: The Alleged Influence of the Greek Language  19

8. Hellenization in Lower vs. Upper Galilee during the Hasmonean and Roman Periods  24

9. Cultural Contacts between Greeks and Jews during the Hasmonean and Roman Periods: Education and Literature  25

10. Alleged Greek Influence on the Talmudic Rabbis in the First Five Centuries C.E.  31

11. Greek Influence on Jewish Art  39

12. Summary  42

CHAPTER 2: The Strength of Judaism in the Diaspora 45

1. Pagan Views on Jewish Unity and Diversity  45

2. Assimilation of the Jews to Greek Language and Thought 31

3. Secular Education of Jews in the Diaspora  57

4. Jews and Athletics 5  9

5. Jews and the Theater  61

6. The Organization of the Jewish Community  63

7. Syncretism among the Jews  65

8. The Strength of Judaism in Asia Minor  69

9. Excesses in Interpretation of the Law: Literalists and Allegorists  74

10. Deviations from Jewish Law  76

11. Intermarriage  77

12. Apostasy  79

CHAPTER 3: Official Anti-Jewish Bigotry: The Responses of Governments to the Jews  84

1. Anti-Jewish Bigotry before the Era of Alexander the Great  84

2. Jews under Egyptian Ptolemies and Syrian Seleucids  86

3.The Attitudes of the Roman Government toward the Jews  92

4. The Reactions of the Jews to the Roman Government  102

CHAPTER 4: Popular Prejudice against Jews 107

1. The Economic Factor  107

2. The Attack on the Jews in Alexandria in the Year 38  113

3. Attacks on the Jews in the Year 66  117

4. The Aftermath of the War of 66-74  120

CHAPTER 5: Prejudice against Jews among Ancient Intellectuals  123

1. How Much Anti-Jewish Prejudice Was There among Ancient Intellectuals?  123

2. The Alleged Jewish Misanthropy  125

3. Answers to Charges of Misanthropy in Graeco-Jewish Writers before Josephus  131

4. Answers to Charges of Misanthropy in Josephus’s Antiquities  133

5. Answers to Charges of Misanthropy in Josephus’s Against Apion  142

6. Attacks on Jewish Theology  149

7. The Attack on Jewish Circumcision  153

8. The Attack on the Jewish Observance of the Sabbath  158

9. The Attack on the Jewish Dietary Laws  167

10. Contempt for the Jews ’ Credulity  170

11. Contempt for the Jews as Beggars  171

12. Alleged Jewish Influence  172

CHAPTER 6: The Attractions of the Jews: Their Antiquity  177

1. The Importance of Antiquity  177

2. Writers Mentioned by Josephus  178

3. Other Classical References to the Antiquity of the Jews  182

4. Tacitus’s Account of the Origin of the Britons and the Germans as Compared with the Origin of the Jews  183

5. Tacitus’s Theories of the Origin of the Jews  184

6. The Importance for Christianity of the Ancient Jewish Connection  196

7. The Importance of the Antiquity of the Jews as Seen by Origen  198

CHAPTER 7: The Attractions of the Jews: The Cardinal Virtues  201

1. Early Greek Writers on the Wisdom of the Jews  201

2. Later Greek and Roman Writers on the Wisdom of the Jews  204

5. Alleged Graeco-Jewish Historians before Josephus on the Wisdom of the Jews  207

4. Philo on the Wisdom of the Jews  209

5. Josephus on the Wisdom of the Jews  210

6. Second-, Third-, and Fourth-Century Writers on the Wisdom of the Jews  214

7. Praise by Pagans of the Courage of the Jews  220

8. Josephus on the Courage of Jewish Heroes  222

9. Praise by Pagans of the Temperance of the Jews  223

10. Josephus on the Temperance of Jewish Heroes  225

11. Praise by Non-Jews of the Justice of the Jews  226

12. Josephus on the Justice of Jewish Heroes  227

13. Praise by Pagans of the Piety of the Jews  230

14. Josephus on the Piety of Jewish Heroes  231

CHAPTER 8: The Attractions of the Jews: The Ideal Leader, Moses  233

1. The Portrayal of Moses by Pagan Writers  233

2. The Virtues of Moses according to Graeco-Jewish Historians  242

5. The Virtues of Moses according to Josephus  243

4. Moses the Magician  285

CHAPTER 9: The Success of Proselytism by Jews in the Hellenistic and Early Roman Periods  288

1. The Idea of Conversion  288

2. The Case for Non-Missionary Activity  290

5. The Demographic Evidence for Missionary Activity  293

4. The Literary Evidence for Missionary Activity  293

5. Evidence from Resentment against Proselytism  298

6. Expulsions of Jews as Evidence of Missionary Activity  300

7. The Means of Conversion  305

8. Converts in the Land of Israel and in the Various Lands of the Diaspora  324

9. Motives of Jews in Seeking Converts  332

10. Reasons for the Success of the Proselyting Movement in the Hellenistic and Early Roman Periods  334

11. Motives of Proselytes in the Hellenistic and Early Roman Periods  335

12. The Status of Proselytes and the Attitude of Born Jews toward Them in the Hellenistic and Early Roman Periods  338

CHAPTER 10: The Success of Jews in Winning Sympathizers  342

1. The Problem  342

2. Circumstantial Evidence  343

3. Pagan References  344

4. Jewish References  348

5. Christian References  356

6. Epigraphical and Papyrological Evidence  358

7. Aphrodisias: The Dramatic New Inscriptions and Their Implications  362

8. Factors That Attracted Non-Jews to Judaism in the Third Century  369

CHAPTER 11: Proselytism by Jews in the Third, Fourth, and Fifth Centuries  383

1. Issues  383

2. The Sources: Roman Imperial Legislation  385

5. The Sources: Church Canons  397

4. The Sources: Church Fathers before John Chrysostom  400

5. The Sources: John Chrysostom and Subsequent Church Fathers  405

6. The Sources: Rabbinic Literature  408

7. The Sources: Inscriptions and Papyri  411

8. Reasons for Jewish Success in Winning Converts  412

9. The Decline of the Outreach Movement and Its Renewal  413

10. Summary  413

CHAPTER 12: Conclusion  416

Abbreviations  447

Notes  461

Bibliography  587

Indexes  621

Passages from Ancient Writers  623

1. Jewish Scriptures  613

2. Apocrypha, Pseudepigrapha, and Dead Sea Scrolls  624

3. New Testament  625

4. Hellenistic Jewish Literature: Josephus, Philo, Other (Alleged) Graeco-Jewish Writers  625

5. Rabbinic and Allied Literature  631

6. Christian Writings (Greek, Latin, Syriac, and Arabic) and Canons of Church Councils  634

7. Inscriptions and Papyri  636

8. Classical Greek Authors  636

9. Classical Latin Authors  643

Names and Subjects  646

Geographical Place-Names  662

Greek, Latin, and Hebrew and Aramaic Words  664

Modern Scholars  672

PREFACE

THIS BOOK began with a question: How can we explain why the Jews in antiquity—so bitterly hated, as so many scholars have insisted—succeeded in winning so many adherents, whether as sympathizers who observed one or more Jewish practices or as full-fledged proselytes?

Of course, we might conclude that they were not so bitterly hated after all, though that seems to contradict deep-seated assumptions and stereotypes. Some years ago, when I wrote an article entitled Philo-Semitism among Ancient Intellectuals, a colleague of mine at Yeshiva University indignantly objected to the very idea that non-Jews ever failed to hate Jews. He had quite clearly adopted the lachrymose conception of Jewish history as a narration of uninterrupted suffering; thus he felt uncomfortable with the notion that Jews were sometimes strong, self-confident, and influential, winning many to their cause.

Alternatively, we might deny that they had really been so successful in winning adherents, or in any case adopt a show me attitude, asking for hard evidence for large-scale proselytizing by Jews. How could the Jews have converted so many when we do not have a single missionary tract and when the only missionaries that we know of by name are those such as Paul, Peter, and Barnabas, who preached the Gospel? Indeed, it would seem that the proper question is, How, in view of the tremendous strength and attractiveness of Hellenism and of the various pagan cults, the Jews managed to avoid assimilation both in the Land of Israel and especially in the Diaspora.

The missing link that precipitated this book was the publication in 1987 of the Aphrodisias inscriptions from Asia Minor. These seemed to establish once and for all the existence of a large class of G-d-fearers or sympathizers, people who adopted certain practices of Judaism without actually converting. I had always assumed that Judaism’s outreach to Gentiles had ended for all practical purposes with the Bar Kochba rebellion (132-135 C.E.), one result of which was to make proselytism a capital crime. And yet, in the third century, in an area where Christianity was supposedly making tremendous inroads, Judaism seemed to be counterattacking, as it were, with great success. This led me to re-examine the whole picture of the relationship between Jew and Gentile in the Hellenistic and Roman world.

Portions of this work have appeared in preliminary form in the following publications: Chapter 1: "Hengel’s Judaism and Hellenism in Retrospecif Journal of Biblical Literature 96 (1977): 371-82; How Much Hellenism in Jewish Palestine? Hebrew Union College Annual 57 (1986): 83-111; Chapter 2: The Orthodoxy of the Jews in Hellenistic Egypt, Jewish Social Studies 22 (1960): 212-37; Chapters 3-5: Philo-Semitism among Ancient Intellectuals, Tradition 1 (1958-59): 27-39; AntiSemitism in the Ancient World, in David Berger, ed., History and Hate: The Dimensions of Anti-Semitism (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1986), 15-42; The Jews in Greek and Roman Literature [in Hebrew], in Menahem Stern and Zvi Baras, eds., World History of the Jewish People, First Series: The Diaspora in the Hellenistic-Roman World (Jerusalem: Am Oved, 1984), 265-85, 361-65, 383-84; Chapter 6: "Origen’s Contra Celsum and Josephus’s Contra Apionem: The Issue of Jewish Origins," Vigiliae Christianae 44 (1990): 105-35; Chapter 7: Use, Authority, and Exegesis of Mikra in the Writings of Josephus, in Jan Mulder and Harry Sysling, eds., Mikra: Text, Translation, Reading and Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity (Compendia Rerum ludaicarum ad Novum Testamentum [Assen: Van Gorcum, 1988], Sect. 2, vol. 1), 455-518; Chapter 8: Josephus’s Portrait of Moses, Jewish Quarterly Review 82 (1991-92), forthcoming; Chapter 9: Proselytism and Syncretism [in Hebrew], in Menahem Stern and Zvi Baras, eds., World History of the Jewish People, First Series: The Diaspora in the Hellenistic-Roman World (Jerusalem: Am Oved, 1984), 188-207, 340-45, 378-80; Chapter 10: Proselytes and ‘Sympathizers’ in the Light of the New Inscriptions from Aphrodisias, Revue des Études juives 148 (1989): 265-305; Chapter 11: Proselytism by Jews in the Third, Fourth, and Fifth Centuries, Journal for the Study of Judaism 23 (1992), forthcoming. AU are republished here with the permission of the publishers, though most have been altered very substantially.

I am most grateful to the following for assistance: William Adler, Bezalel Bar-Kochva, Christopher T Begg, Herbert W. Benario, Frederick E Bruce, Randall D. Chesnutt, Naomi G. Cohen, Shaye J. D. Cohen, David Daube, Robert Doran, Zvi Erenyi, Wolfgang Fauth, Paula Fredriksen, Gilad J. Gevaryahu, Jonathan A. Goldstein, Martin Goodman, Joan Haahr, Howard Jacobson, Aryeh Kasher, A. Thomas Kraabel, William Lee, David Levenson, Amy-Jill Levine, Thomas E McDaniel, James T. McDonough, Jr., Scot McKnight, Ronald H. Martin, Eric M. Meyers, Richard Nochimson, David Olster, Charles Persky, Michael B. Poliakoff, Charlotte Roueché, Lawrence H. Schiffman, Daniel R. Schwartz, Seth Schwartz, Alan F. Segal, Carole Silver, Morton Smith (of blessed memory), Marta Steele, Robert Tannenbaum, Ben Zion Wacholder, Manfred Weidhorn, and Robert L. Wilken.

I am deeply grateful to the Lucius N. Littauer Foundation and to its president, Mr. William Frost, for helping to make this work possible.

Jew and Gentile

in the Ancient World

CHAPTER 1

CONTACTS BETWEEN JEWS AND NON-JEWS IN THE LAND OF ISRAEL

1. CONTACTS PRIOR TO ALEXANDER THE GREAT

It always comes as a surprise—perhaps even a shock—that the two peoples who have most profoundly influenced Western civilization, the Jews and the Greeks, seem to have been just about unaware of each other, at least in a cultural sense, until the fifth century B.C.E. at the very earliest.

Apparently, however, the Pentateuch is aware of a relationship between Semites and Greeks, because it declares that Shem, the ancestor of the Semites, and Japheth, almost certainly the ancestor of the Greeks, are brothers. The very name of Japheth reminds us strongly of the Greek lapetos, the father of Prometheus, and the Hebrew letters for Japheth’s son Javan are YWN, the equivalent of the Greek Ion, the ancestor of the lonians (though Greek mythology knows of no relationship between lapetos and Ion).

Even a glance at a map of antiquity will indicate that the land of Javan, Ionia, is not far from the land of Shem, Israel, while the Biblical references (2 Sam 20:23, 1 Kgs 1:38) make it probable that King David in the tenth century B.C.E. employed Cretan mercenaries. Moreover, the brother of the famous Greek poet Alcaeus at the end of the seventh century B.C.E. served as a mercenary in the army of the Babylonians and apparently took part in the capture of the city of Ashkelon in the Land of Israel, indicating probable military contact between the two peoples.¹ During the fourth century B.C.E., military affairs, particularly the continued struggle of the Greeks against the Persian empire, called the attention of the Athenians to the Land of Israel.

Finds of Greek pottery on such sites as Samaria reveal commercial ties at least as early as the eighth century B.C.E.² As early as the fifth century B.C.E., the Jews minted coins on the Attic standard and with the characteristic Athenian emblem of the owl, similarly indicating commercial contact.³ Likewise, Herodotus’s mention in the fifth century B.C.E. of Ashkelon (1.105.2-4) and of Cadytis (presumably Gaza) (3.5.1-2) suggests Greek acquaintance with Philistia, the coast of the Land of Israel.

We also find that several Greek words have penetrated the Hebrew Bible itself, notably Hebrew darkemonim (Ezra 2:69, Nehemiah 7:69-71), where, in view of the context, it must mean Greek drachmas; qiteros (Daniel 3:5, 3:7) = Greek (lyre), pesanterin (Daniel 3:5, 3:7, 3:10, 3:15) = (harp), sumponeya (Daniel 3:5, 3:15) = via (harmony, orchestra), and sabbeka (Daniel 3:7, 3:10, 3:15) = (a triangular musical instrument with four strings). But most such words reflect commercial rather than cultural contacts between the Israelites and the Greeks during the sixth and fifth centuries B.C.E., the period of Ezra, Nehemiah, and Daniel. In fact, Greek words in the Hebrew Bible and, for that matter, in the Hebrew texts of the Apocrypha, Pseudepigrapha, and extra-biblical Qumran manuscripts prove strikingly few.⁴

Demosthenes (52.20) and Isaeus (4.7) imply that Athenians inhabited the coast of the Land of Israel at Acre in the fourth century B.C.E. During that century the Athenians certainly maintained close commercial contacts with Sidon and with other Phoenician cities. Thus, Xenophon (Hellenica 3.4.1) tells of the visit of Herodas of Syracuse to Phoenicia in 399 B.C.E.⁵ The presence of Phoenicians in Athens during this period is well attested; and these Phoenicians, we may guess, knew something about their Jewish neighbors.⁶ The mention by Pseudo-Scylax,⁷ in the middle of the fourth century B.C.E., of Acre, Dor, Carmel, Ashkelon, and Jaffa along the coast of the Land of Israel again indicates possible commercial contact, though we must not forget that in this period and indeed for centuries thereafter, according to Josephus (Against Apion 1.60), the Jews were not living along the coast and were not a maritime people. The famous myth of Perseus and Andromeda, which is so frequently cited by ancient writers,⁸ may well have aroused interest in the place, Joppa, where this episode supposedly occurred, but again this was along the coast, where the Jews were not yet living.

The earliest reference to the Jews in Greek literature would appear to be in Herodotus, if we accept Josephus’s view that Herodotus’s mention of the circumcised Syrians of Palestine refers to the Jews. Even if it does refer to Jews, however, Herodotus never refers to any exchange of ideas.⁹

Another fifth century B.C.E. writer, the historian Hellanicus, together with the third century B.C.E. historian Philochorus, is quoted by the third century Pseudo-Justin (Cohortatio ad Gentiles 9) as mentioning Moses as a very ancient leader of the Jews; but the Cohortatio contains some of the most glaring forgeries of Hellenistic Jewish literature.¹⁰ In that light, it would appear significant that Josephus, who was seeking high and low for references to Jews in early Greek writers and who does mention Hellanicus (Against Apion 1.16), does not cite this passage mentioning Moses.¹¹ Moreover, it is most probable that the Cohortatio draws on a passage in Africanus (quoted in Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica 10.10.7-9) that mentions Hellanicus and Philochorus but does not refer to Moses. Africanus is unlikely to have drawn on the Cohortatio, for it is hardly imaginable that he would have closely paraphrased the Cohortatio yet ignored the reference to Moses.

The poet Choerilus, who lived in the second half of the fifth century B.C.E., is cited by Josephus (Against Apion 1.172-73) as referring to Jews in the army of Xerxes during his invasion of Greece. Choerilus does not mention the Jews by name, however; rather, he speaks of people living in the Solymian hills. Most likely he is alluding to the Solymoi referred to by Homer (Iliad 6.184). Choerilus describes the hair on the heads of the warriors as shorn in a circle, a practice forbidden by the Torah (Lev 19:27), further militating against an identification with Jews. At best this source indicates relations between Persians and Jews, referring in any case to military, not cultural, contact.¹²

The first cultural contact between Greeks and Jews is said to have occurred in the fourth century B.C.E., when a learned Jew from Coele-Syria supposedly met Aristotle in Asia Minor. This meeting, which took place about 340 B.C.E., is reported by Clearchus of Soli (about 300 B.C.E.), as quoted in Josephus (Against Apion 1.176-83). The passage is extremely complimentary to the Jews, who are said to be descended from the philosophers of India. This particular Jew, we are told, not only spoke Greek but had the soul of a Greek. He had come to test Aristotle’s learning but, in the end, it was he who imparted to Aristotle knowledge of his own. Clearchus marvels, in particular, at the astonishing endurance and sobriety displayed by this Jew in his way of life.

Lewy, however, cites cogent reasons for concluding that the Jew whom Aristotle met is a figment of Clearchus’s imagination similar to those representatives of Oriental priestly wisdom who are often depicted as superior in wisdom to the great Greek philosophers. Admittedly, Clearchus’s attempt to approximate the Hebrew name for Jerusalem (Against Apion 1.179) is an indication that he had met a real Jew.¹³ But even if the meeting did take place, it represents the contact of a single Jew, rather than of groups of Jews, with a single Greek philosopher; and it took place in Asia Minor, not in the Land of Israel. Even if we assume that he existed, the Jew might have learned his Greek in Asia Minor, where he met Aristotle. We must beware of imitating Aristotle, who apparently was so impressed with this one Jew that he forgot his celebrated logic and generalized from this one case to the Jews as a race of philosophers. In actuality, the whole story appears to be imaginary and stereotyped, relayed secondhand through Clearchus of Soli. We can conclude that Aristotle had not met Jews before, inasmuch as Clearchus has to explain to his readers who the Jews are and remarks that their city has an unusually odd name, Hierusaleme.

In Aristotle’s own writings (Meteorologica 2.359A) there is one reference to a bitter and salty lake in Palestine, presumably the Dead Sea, in which it is impossible to sink; but that he locates it not in Judaea but in Palestine, which in this period refers to the area along the Mediterranean coast,¹⁴ so called because it had been inhabited by the Philistines, would indicate that he derived his information secondhand. In any case, again, this hardly indicates cultural contact.

2. LITERARY CONTACTS BETWEEN THE TIME OF ALEXANDER AND THE MACCABEAN REVOLT

The usual picture of the era following the death of Alexander is one of the universal missionary propagation of Greek culture, in all its aspects—language, literature, art, religion, and, indeed, total way of life—for the benefit of the unenlightened backward peoples. If so, we should expect the Jews also to be deeply affected. But Green has convincingly demonstrated that this is a most pernicious myth, compounded of anachronistic Christian evangelicism and Plutarch-inspired wishful thinking.¹⁵ Rather, what motivated the Greeks and Macedonians was the power-hungry imperialist lure of conquest, commercial profits, and general land grants; and their contempt for the non-Greeks—the barbarians as they termed them—was met at almost every turn by the stubborn refusal of the conquered peoples to accept the enlightenment thrust on them.¹⁶ Indeed, in such lands as India, especially where there was a religious and ideological and ethnic basis to the opposition, we find real hostility; and this is precisely what we should expect in the Land of Israel, with its religious and ideological uniqueness. In fact, the dissemination of Hellenism, when it finally came, was usually incidental rather than conscious and deliberate.

Moreover, the agents of this alleged Hellenization were, to a considerable degree, soldiers and businessmen—hardly the kind of people that we would term intellectuals or a cultural elite. Those who were impressed and influenced by Hellenism were either puppet rulers who sought social and political advancement thereby or collaborators who served as administrators for the occupying power and wanted to rise in the bureaucracy, starting as petty clerks and tax collectors. And even they did not constitute more than 2.5 percent of the official class, and that only after two generations.¹⁷

Furthermore, what Alexander and his successors set up were islands of Graeco-Macedonian culture for a ruling elite and their professional or commercial adherents in a sea of alien native cultures. Green draws a parallel with the relationship in India between the British and the natives; there, too, we find some natives who, in their ambition for power, even of a petty sort, went to England for their higher education. And yet, even after adopting the mores of the British clubs, they did not sever themselves from their deep cultural and religious roots.¹⁸

To be sure, after Alexander the evidence for contact between Greeks and Jews, far from remaining scarce and dubious, gradually becomes more impressive, but not if we confine ourselves to the period before the Hasmoneans (167 B.C.E.).

An examination of the earliest Greek literature for this period reveals seven references to Jews or to their land in the works of Aristotle’s pupil and successor Theophrastus (372-287 B.C.E.). Five of them, however, come from his Historia Plantarum (2.6.2-8, 4.4.14, 74.8-9, 9.1.6, and 9.6.1-4), where he mentions plants and trees that grow in Coele-Syria. Nowhere does he mention Judaea or Jerusalem, and it is most likely that his information is secondhand. Nor does such information indicate a cultural encounter. With regard to the other two passages, Josephus (Against Apion 1.166-67), as evidence that various cities were acquainted with the existence of the Jews and that many Jewish customs had found their way to some of them, cites a passage from Theophrastus’s On Laws which states that the laws of the Tyrians prohibit the use of foreign oaths, including the oath Korban. But it is clear that Josephus himself has drawn the conclusion that the reference is to a Jewish oath, inasmuch as he adds that this oath is found nowhere except among the Jews. Theophrastus himself does not here mention Jews at all: Although the oath Korban exists among the Jews, it seems that Theophrastus thought that it was a word in the Phoenician language, not its near neighbor, Hebrew.¹⁹

Finally, the most substantial passage, from a lost work On Piety, as quoted by Porphyry (De Abstinentia 2.26), describes the method by which the Syrians, of whom the Jews constitute a part, conduct their sacrifices. He speaks of these Syrians with the highest praise, referring to them as philosophers by race. But it is clear that Theophrastus had not visited the Land of Israel and was not conveying firsthand information about Jewish sacrifices, for he makes the egregious error of claiming that the sacrifices include living beings as well as self-immolation.²⁰ Likewise, his statement that honey and wine are poured on the sacrifices is inconsistent with what we know of Jewish sacrifices from the Bible (Lev 2:11), as well as from Plutarch (Quaestiones Convivales 4.6.2.672B). A closer look at the passage reveals that Theophrastus does not say that this is specifically the Jewish method of sacrifice; what he does say is that this is the way that the Syrians, of whom the Jews constitute a part, offer their sacrifices.

About the year 290 B.C.E., a certain Megasthenes (quoted in Clement of Alexandria, Stromata 1.15.72.5) in his work Indica states that all of the ancients’ opinions concerning nature can also be found in, and presumably were derived from, the philosophers outside Greece, some among the Indian Brahmans and others in Syria among those called Jews. We can immediately call to mind the statement ascribed to Aristotle (quoted in Josephus, Against Apion 1.179) that the Jews are descendants of the Indian philosophers, and that philosophers are called Calani in India and Jews in Syria, as well as the remark of Theophrastus (quoted in Porphyry, De Abstinentia 2.26) that during the time that they engage in sacrifices, the Syrians, of whom the Jews constitute a part, being philosophers by race, converse with each other about the deity. This view of Jews as philosophers and the theory connecting them with the Indians would seem to link all three references; but it would also seem to indicate that what we have here is not direct knowledge of the Jews by the Greeks but rather a commonplace view of the Orientals as philosophers from whom the Greeks drew their wisdom.²¹

The longest and most important of these earliest extant references to the Jews lies among the fragments of Hecataeus of Abdera. According to Josephus (Against Apion 1.183), Hecataeus wrote a book entirely about Jews in which he mentions, approvingly, that the Jews have a high regard for their laws, that they razed pagan temples in their land, that their population is vast, that their capital city, Jerusalem, and, in particular, their temple have great beauty, and that they proved themselves excellent fighters in the armies of Alexander and of his successors. But there is good reason to doubt that Hecataeus wrote such a work.²² We know of at least one book, about Abraham, fabricated by Jewish apologetic writers and attached to the name of Hecataeus. Doubt about its authenticity had already been expressed by Herennius Philo (quoted in Origen, Against Celsus 1.15) at the beginning of the second century C.E., and its panegyrical tone is considerably different from the detached tone in the passage cited by Diodorus (40. 3).²³

As for the passage cited by Diodorus, if Hecataeus had been well informed, he could hardly have remarked (quoted in Diodorus 40.3.5) that the Jews have never had a king, though, to be sure, centuries had passed by without a king. That Hecataeus locates the Temple in almost the center of Jerusalem (quoted in Against Apion 1.198) shows that he had never visited Jerusalem (unless, of course, he is thinking of the ideal Jerusalem) and that his source was not well informed. Again, the statement (cited in Against Apion 2.43) that, as a reward for Jewish loyalty, Alexander the Great assigned Samaria to the Jews free of tribute would seem to be an anachronism, reflecting the second century B.C.E., when Demetrius II (1 Mac 11:34) awarded three Samaritan districts to Jonathan the Hasmonean.²⁴ All of this indicates lack of firsthand contact with Jews.²⁵ Moreover, the passage in Diodorus (40.3) comes from a brief digression within Hecataeus’s Aegyptiaca, which, of course, focused on Egypt. It is highly probable that Hecataeus received his information in Egypt, which he had visited (Diodorus 1.46.8). Hence, this passage tells us nothing directly about cultural contact between Greeks and Jews in the Land of Israel.²⁶

The third century B.C.E. Hermippus of Smyrna (cited in Josephus, Against Apion 1.164-65) refers to Pythagoras, the semilegendary philosopher of the sixth century B.C.E., as imitating and appropriating the doctrines of Jews and Thracians. Stern points out that the passage hardly redounds to the glory of the Jewish people, because the Jews are put on a level with the Thracians;²⁷ but Josephus, who cited the text in an apologetic context, certainly thought that it did enhance the reputation of the Jews. Significantly, he follows up this statement in more decisively glowing terms: In fact, it is actually said that that great man [i.e., Pythagoras] introduced many points of Jewish law into his philosophy.²⁸ Hermippus, as a pupil of the famous Callimachus, must have worked in Alexandria; and the possibility should not be excluded that he himself had been influenced by Jewish theories, which were probably already widespread at that time in Alexandrian circles.²⁹ Even so, this influence certainly does not reflect contact between Greek and Jewish thought in the Land of Israel. Similar contacts of Pythagoras with Jewish thought are alleged by Antonius Diogenes (cited in Porphyry, Life of Pythagoras 11) at the end of the first century C.E. and by Origen (Against Celsus 1.15, citing Hermippus) in the third century; but this seems merely to reflect the romantic tendency during the Hellenistic period to have Greek thinkers come into contact with Eastern ideas. Indeed, all of these alleged encounters between Greeks and Jewish philosophers are part of a stereotyped theme of Hellenistic literature—the encounter of a Greek with a barbarian philosopher in which the non-Greek shows his superiority.³⁰

Thus, we may well ask why cultural contacts between Greeks and Jews were so few and so late, especially when we consider that the everyday language spoken by the Jews, from the sixth century B.C.E. onward, was Aramaic, which was also the common international language of the entire Near East from India to Egypt, so that any Greek expecting commercial or cultural contact with this entire area probably had to know Aramaic or had to employ an interpreter who understood it.³¹ One answer is that the Jews apparently lived inland rather than along the coast,³² because even at a much later date, the first century, according to Josephus (Against Apion 1.60), the Jews were not a maritime people. Rather, they were a relatively minuscule tribe lost, as it were, in the immensity of the Persian Empire.³³ Ancient travelers did not find it easy to enter into the interior of countries, so that even Herodotus, who (in the context of the fifth century B.C.E.) traveled so widely, seems never to have penetrated beyond the coast. Indeed, Josephus, who labors to explain why the Greeks should have dismissed the Jews in silence and who, as we have emphasized, searched everywhere for references to the Jews in Greek literature, was able to find no indirect references earlier than Herodotus and Choerilus in the fifth century B.C.E. As for these two Greek authors, it is possible, as we have indicated, that neither is referring to the Jews. The Letter of Aristeas (313-16), resorting, so to speak, to a deus ex machina—an artifical device introduced suddenly to resolve the problem—explains that the reason for the silence is that when, in the fourth century B.C.E., the historian Theopompus and the tragedian Theodectes attempted to introduce references to the Torah into their works, they were smitten with illness, presumably becaus of the very holiness of the Writ. All that this argues, however, is that fruitless efforts had been made to find references to the Jews in Greek literature dating from before the time of Alexander. Apparently, pagan writers had come to contest the Jewish claims to antiquity—so important in the ancient period. Josephus, too (Against Apion 1.60-65), feels constrained to explain why they had been ignored by Greek writers for so long. According to him, as we have noted, the Jews did not live along the coast and hence, unlike the Egyptians and the Phoenicians, did not have extensive commercial contacts with the Greeks. But the chief reason why the Greeks ignored the Jews may well have been this: From the Greek point of view, the Jews were obscurantists who had not contributed significantly to the arts and sci-ences.³⁴

As a parallel to the Greeks’ silence about the Jews we may cite, as does Josephus (Against Apion 1.66), their silence about the Romans until a relatively late date. Thus, though Thucydides writes at length about the Athenians’ expedition to Sicily in 415 B.C.E., he says not a word about the Romans. Indeed, not until Theopompus in the fourth century B.C.E. do we find a Greek writer who mentions an event in Roman history, the capture of Rome by the Gauls in 387 B.C.E. The Greeks seem to have been enormously self-centered, throwing all others into one common denominator, barbarians.

The lack of cultural contact between Greeks and Jews is surely not due to the immunity of the Jews to foreign influence, because, after all, they had often succumbed to it during the biblical period. Nothing indicates, however, that Jews worshipped Greek gods or combined their G-d with the Olympians prior to the Hellenistic period. Perhaps the explanation is that the Greek intelligentsia felt that they had little or nothing to learn from the Jews, who had produced only a single important work, the Bible, and who certainly had nothing comparable to the Homeric epics or lyric poetry or tragedy or philosophy or scientific critical history. After all, the great heroes of Judaism from Moses on down in the Bible are farmers and shepherds and warriors, not intellectuals. Moreover, it would appear, the Jews deliberately sought to isolate themselves; the Greeks, on the other hand, often attempted to disturb the peace of the Persian Empire, on which the reconstruction of Judaism depended so heavily.

We must, however, explain why there is Jewish literature in Greek, perhaps from the Land of Israel,³⁵ notably the anonymous Samaritan (pseudo-Eupolemus), who probably wrote, between 200 and the Maccabean revolt in 167 B.C.E., a history, fragments of which have survived, identifying Noah, Nimrod, Bel, and Kronos, and describing Abraham as the discoverer of astrology. But we may counter that the Talmud, Josephus, and the New Testament, at any rate, would have us believe (though, admittedly, the reality may have been more ambiguous than this) that the Jews avoided contact with the Samaritans; and hence it is unlikely that the anonymous Samaritan, pseudo-Eupolemus, had any significant influence on Jews. Moreover, because we know that there was a Samaritan colony in Greek-speaking Egypt, it is more likely that he wrote there than in the Land of Israel.

3. MILITARY, POLITICAL, AND ECONOMIC CONTACTS BETWEEN GREEKS AND JEWS FROM THE TIME OF ALEXANDER TO THE MACCABEAN REVOLT

During the period between 330 and 200 B.C.E., Greek armies frequently marched through the Land of Israel and must have had contact with the Jewish inhabitants. Furthermore, there is evidence (Josephus, Against Apion 1.192) that Jewish mercenaries served in the armies of Alexander and of his successors. Moreover, the Jews were greatly impressed with the Macedonian techniques of war. The apocalypses of the Jews are consequently couched in military terms. The Zeno papyri show that the Greek language was known in aristocratic and military circles of Palestinian Jewry between 260 and 250 B.C.E.³⁶ But we have no evidence in either Greek or Jewish sources, literary or epigraphical, of any influence exercised by Greek armies marching through the Land of Israel; and, to judge from admittedly much later comments in the Talmudic writings, the Jews’ reaction to such soldiers was contempt.³⁷

In particular, we may note the claim, in 1 Maccabees (12:6-23) and 2 Maccabees (5:9), as well as in Josephus (Ant. 12.226-27, 13.166-67), based on correspondence between the Spartan king Areus and the Jewish high priest Onias I about 300 B.C.E. and renewed by Jonathan the Hasmonean in the middle of the second century B.C.E., that the Jews and the Spartans are related. Though the Spartans at this time had little military power, such a claim, if authenticated, would have lent much prestige to the Jews in view of the high regard in which the Spartans were held in antiquity. Indeed, the high priest Jason, the author of the Hellenistic reform in Jerusalem, ended his life in Sparta.³⁸ But we may here suggest that the theory of a connection between Jews and Spartans may have come about through the association with the mythical founder of Thebes, Cadmus, whose very name is probably Semitic (from qedem, east) and who, indeed, is reported to have come to Thebes from Phoenicia; Cadmus is said to have sown a serpent’s teeth in the ground, from which sprang armed men who were called that is, sown men. Though there is apparently no connection between sown, and Sparta, the words are very similar, and folk etymologists may well have connected them, thus bringing Cadmus of Phoenicia into juxtaposition with Sparta. The next step would be to connect the Phoenicians’ neighbors, the Judaeans, with Sparta.

To be sure, there were a large number of free or semi-free cities in Palestine with constitutions following the Greek models.³⁹ Hence, Judaea would appear to have been a temple-state similar to other templestates of the period. But we must insist that it is an error to assume that what was true of the non-Jewish Palestinian cities was also true of the Jewish cities. Moreover, the relationship between the Jews and the Hellenistic cities during the Second Temple period was, on the whole, one of profound religious hostility, based, as it was, on a long history of conflict, aggravated by the fact that the Hellenistic cities were built on the foundation of the old Canaanite and Philistine cities, with neither side willing to consider the option of peaceful coexistence.⁴⁰ This tension, furthermore, had an economic basis in that the Hellenistic cities had a purely urban population, whereas the Jews were primarily a rural society. It was the cities that minted currency, that controlled imports and exports, and that set prices and standards for goods. In addition, the Hellenistic cities were protected by foreign conquerors, whether Ptolemies or Seleucids. Finally, the Jewish population, both through natural increase and through conversions to Judaism, became much more numerous than the non-Jewish population of the cities. This undoubtedly added to the fear of the cities that they would be overwhelmed by the Jewish religion, which left no room for other gods. The fear increased particularly after the triumph of the Hasmoneans and the establishment of an independent Jewish state and contrived to transform Judaea into a sort of demographic pressure cooker.⁴¹

During the Ptolemaic rule of Palestine in the third century B.C.E., the Jews developed an aristocratic ruling body known as the gerousia, modeled, it has been argued, on the Greek system and limiting the authority of the high priest.⁴² Yet, with regard to the gerousia or the Sanhedrin, for that matter, although there can be no doubt that the name was borrowed from the Greek, more borrowing than that has not yet been proved.⁴³ To be sure, during this early Hellenistic period the Jews would appear to have held positive views toward the foreign state and its rulers, making them more susceptible to influence.⁴⁴ But we can see in the prophet Isaiah and in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah that even before the Hellenistic period the Jews were favorably inclined toward the Persians, presumably because they opted for the Persian policy of granting religious autonomy to their subject states rather than war with a highly dubious outcome. Inasmuch as Alexander and his successors continued this policy of laissez-faire in religious matters, the Jews later continued to pray for the welfare of the secular government, as we see in the statement attributed to the first-century Hanina Segan Ha-Kohanim in the Mishnah (Avoth 3:2). But this was a purely pragmatic relationship, as we see from the advice, also in Avoth (1:10), that no Jew should seek intimacy with the ruling power. Moreover, to judge from the pages of Josephus, to be sure from his first-century point of view, the attitudes of the Jews toward non-Jews in the Land of Israel ranged from disagreement to disdain.

Hengel would have us believe that the Hellenization imposed forcibly by Antiochus Epiphanes in 167 B.C.E. was actually the natural consequence of the process that had been going on for at least a century and a half, explaining in that way how the Hellenizers in Jerusalem came to be strong enough to force the hand of Antiochus in the first place.⁴⁵ But Diodorus (34.5.1), Tacitus (Histories 5.8.2), and 2 Maccabees indicate that Antiochus did not continue a process of syncretism that was in motion but rather attempted to abolish Jewish observance completely, thereby ensuring substantial resistance.⁴⁶ Although the Maccabees (1 Mac 2:46) did have to circumcise by force many children of those who had feared to disobey Antiochus, many Jews resisted Antiochus’s decrees even at the cost of martyrdom. By contrast, the Samaritan leaders, according to Josephus (Ant. 12.257-64), who was admittedly no great friend of theirs, petitioned Antiochus to name their temple after Zeus Hellenios and promised to apply themselves seriously to their work so as to increase Antiochus’s revenues. Meanwhile, the abrupt abandonment of the attempt forcibly to convert the Jews to paganism suggests either that the original decision of Antiochus was a whim rather than the climax of a gradual movement or that Jewish resistance was successful, or both.

As for economic influence, the Egyptian Ptolemies employed the Greek system of tax-farming in the Land of Israel during their century-long rule prior to their displacement by the Syrian Seleucids in 200 B.C.E. During this period the Ptolemies introduced Greek weights, coins, and trade usage. Finds of coins and pottery indicate that there was a commercial boom in the land favored by the long period of relative peace in the third century B.C.E. Economic ties led to social relations, as we see in the story of the Tobiad family in Josephus (Ant. 12.158-236).⁴⁷ However, aside from the highly assimilated—and truly exceptional—family of the Tobiads, there is little indication of Greek influence among the masses. It would be as if someone were to draw conclusions about the extent of assimilation of American Jews by considering only the wealthiest German Jewish families in the United States at the end of the nineteenth century. Nor is there much to indicate that the Jewish communities of Egypt and Palestine had more contact with each other and drew closer together even though during the third century the Ptolemies ruled both lands.

4. LINGUISTIC CONTACTS BETWEEN GREEKS AND JEWS BEFORE THE MACCABEAN REVOLT

In language, as in culture generally, the degree to which Hellenism spread after Alexander has been much exaggerated. Thus, even in the most heavily Hellenized portions of Syria, Phoenicia, and Cyprus, bilingual inscriptions and coins for this period are common.⁴⁸ In Antioch, the capital of the Seleucid empire, for example, Aramaic remained as the second language and continued thus even after the Roman conquest. Hence, if the Greek language emerged clearly triumphant in the Land of Israel, this would be the exception to the general pattern.

Inscriptions, though admittedly there are few in any language prior to the third century B.C.E., should give us a clue of the extent to which the Jews had absorbed the Greek language. Hengel, in his latest publication on the subject, stresses that as early as the third century B.C.E. in various parts of the Land of Israel we have a whole series of testimonies to Greek as a language, and that the evidence is slowly but steadily increasing.⁴⁹ The earliest Greek text in the Land of Israel, found in 1971, is a bilingual Edomite-Greek ostracon dating from 277 B.C.E. Previously the earliest known Greek inscription was one set up by a priest of Ptolemy IV dating from 217 B.C.E. But as Fitzmyer correctly concludes, these inscriptions at best tell us about the use of Greek by Greek foreigners in Israel; they say little about its use by the Jews of Judaea.⁵⁰ Moreover, the bilingual character of the Edomite-Greek ostracon would appear to indicate that Greek was not the primary language of the inhabitants. In addition, the level of Greek in these inscriptions is very elementary (though it is true that the Greek usage in many contemporary funerary inscriptions and papyri in other parts of the Greek world is hardly more grammatical); usually it consists of little more than the names of the deceased and their age at death.⁵¹ If we ask why Greek was employed at all, we may reply that perhaps it was intended to deter non-Jewish passers-by from molesting the graves. Not until the second century C.E. do we find the letter in Greek of Bar Kochba to his lieutenants, and there the handwriting is much less than elegant and the spelling rather reminiscent of presentday teenagers.

To be sure, we must note the increasing prevalence of Greek names among Jews. The adoption of Greek names by Phoenicians as early as the century before Alexander, followed by the adoption of double names (Semitic and Greek) by Phoenicians in the third century, may have spread from them to the Jews;⁵² but the mere fact that the Phoenicians in the third century adopted Greek names does not mean that the Jews also did so. Indeed, little can be said about Jewish names in the Land of Israel during the third century B.C.E., as almost no Jewish material from the Land from that century has survived. To be sure, from the moment when the sources for Judaism in the Land become fuller, we come across an abundance of Greek names, such as Antigonus of Socho (Mishnah, Avoth 1:3), at the end of the third century B.C.E., as well as a number of the seventy-two elders among the translators of the Septuagint in the third century B.C.E. and of the ambassadors sent by the Hasmoneans Jonathan and Simon to Sparta in the second century B.C.E. That the name Simeon (which is almost identical with the Greek name Simon) is the most frequent name in the Land of Israel during the Hellenistic-Roman period up to about 200 C.E. seems clearly to point to Greek influence. And yet there is no meaningful correlation between pagan versus Jewish naming and the extent of allegiance to and attitude toward Judaism and Jewish observance.⁵³

Because Alexandria is geographically close to the Land of Israel, it has been assumed that the connections between the two were also cultural.⁵⁴ In particular, we may note the traditional claim that there were seventy or seventy-two elders in Jerusalem in approximately the year 270 B.C.E. who were said to know Greek well enough to translate the Torah into that language.⁵⁵

But joining previous scholars, we may express our doubt about Aristeas’s statement that there were seventy or seventy-two Palestinian Greek specialists, especially because the number seems a deliberate attempt to parallel the number of elders whom Moses chose to assist him (Num 11:24).⁵⁶ In addition, if we hear that seventy-two elders in the third century B.C.E. knew enough Greek to be able to translate the Torah into that language, the question still remains how many others possessed such knowledge. Furthermore, there is some reason to think that the translators were not from the Land of Israel at all but rather were Alexandrians.⁵⁷ Even if they were from Judaea, the level of their knowledge of Greek, to judge from the style of the Septuagint, is far from that of a Philo.

Moreover, to say that the translators of the Septuagint knew enough of the cosmological vocabulary to avoid it completely in rendering Genesis and that they did so in order to avoid the charge that they had plagiarized from the Greek philosophers⁵⁸ is a case of argumentum ex silentio. On that basis we could argue that they knew the political theories of Thucydides, because they avoid them in rendering the Pentateuch.

5. INFLUENCE OF GREEK IDEAS BEFORE THE MACCABEES

Hengel suggests that there is Greek influence on ideas in the Bible, the Apocrypha, and the Pseudepigrapha.⁵⁹ Thus the book of Ecclesiastes, which some have dated to 270-220 B.C.E., is said to reflect the spirit of Hellenism in both ideas and mood.⁶⁰ In particular, the breach with faith in the efficacy of divine righteousness in reward and punishment had already been introduced into Greece a considerable time earlier, as we see in the views of Thrasymachus in Plato’s Republic, Book 1. Ecclesiastes contains parallels with the third century B.C.E. comic poet Menander and Cercidas (ca. 290-220 B.C.E.), a politician and poet influenced by Cynic philosophy, in the opinion, for example, that one should not fight against G-d (Eccl 6:10). The concepts of miqre chance) and of heleq portion) are said to have influenced the author of Ecclesiastes, who absorbed not the school opinions of the philosophers but the popular views of the Greek bourgeoisie. Moreover, even in syntax the author of Ecclesiastes would seem to have been influenced by Greek style. For example, the complex and cumbersome sentence that comprises the first seven verses of chapter 12 is far from the paratactic norms of Hebrew. But we may counter that the question of theodicy, at any rate, need not go back to the Greeks, because it is found in the book of Job.

The Book of Daniel is said to show that Hellenistic sources mediated themes that were originally Near Eastern.⁶¹ For example, the idea of four world kingdoms is Greek, common in Orphic as well as in Hermetic writings. Striking also is the analogy between Hesiod’s three times ten thousand immortal watchers of men, who observe decisions of law and unwholesome deeds and go about the whole earth clothed in air (Works and Days 252-53) and watcher-angels in Daniel (4:10, 14, 20) and in 1 Enoch (1:5; 12:2, 3; 20:1). The idea that four metals of increasingly inferior quality correspond to the ages of man finds its nearest parallel in Hesiod (Works and Days 109-201), according to Hengel, who likewise adopts from Schlatter the view that Daniel took over from the Greeks a reverence for the power created by knowledge.⁶²

Nevertheless, to trace back to the Greeks the reverence in Daniel for the power created by knowledge is to disregard the commandment in the Torah (Deut 6:7) to study and teach. Moreover, the kingdoms in Daniel differ considerably from Hesiod’s five ages; in particular, Daniel’s fourth kingdom is partly of iron and partly of clay, indicating a divided state. In addition, a fifth kingdom, symbolized by a stone, shall never be destroyed, whereas the fifth age in Hesiod is the worst age, that of iron. Indeed, Flusser argues for a Persian source for the four metals and the four ages in Daniel.⁶³ As for the analogy between Hesiod’s watcher-angels and those in Daniel and I Enoch, many in scholarly circles believe that Hesiod drew on Near Eastern sources in that case as in others.⁶⁴

Though Ben Sira (ca. 180-175 B.C.E.) is said to wage war with Hellenism and though he refutes the denial of free will and Epicureanism, Hengel still claims that he falls under Greek influence.⁶⁵ In his theodicy, notably in his great confidence in the possibility of a rational understanding of the world, a spirit seems to emerge that draws on Hellenistic popular philosophy. Ben Sira apparently has close parallels with Stoic conceptions, especially the purposefulness of individual phenomena and the phrase He is all. In fact, the hymn to Zeus of the Stoic Cleanthes (SVF -1.122, no. 537) could well have come from Ben Sira. Ben Sira likewise shares with the Stoics the notion that the whole world is a single cosmos that a rational power has permeated and shaped down to its smallest part. He is alleged to have rediscovered a number of other important elements found in Stoic thought: a drive toward ethical conduct, an attempt at a balance between human freedom and divine providence, the value of man as G-d’s first creation, and even the identity of the divine reason (or wisdom) of the world and the moral law that binds all people. Supposedly, this borrowing was all the easier for him, because the Stoics had grown up on Semitic soil.⁶⁶ The statements made by Wisdom about herself (Ben Sira 24:3-7) parallel similar discussions of the qualities of Isis. In view of archaeological finds in Jerusalem pertaining to the Isis cult,⁶⁷ we cannot exclude the possibility that in the third century B.C.E. this cult had attempted to penetrate Jerusalem itself.

However, Ben Sira’s understanding of the world as rational, down to the smallest detail, is implicit not only in Stoic sources but also in the latter chapters of the book of Job. Likewise, the phrase He is all may hark back to Jeremiah 23:29 and Psalm 139:7-12. The ethical ideas in Ben Sira, as well as the delicate balance between human freedom and divine providence, pervade the Bible and the oral Torah; they need hardly be traced back to the Greeks. That it was easy for Ben Sira to borrow from the Stoics because several of the important Stoic thinkers had grown up on Semitic soil might imply that the Stoics had borrowed from the Bible, at least indirectly, and that Ben Sira had thereafter borrowed from the Stoics. But why not say that Ben Sira did what the Stoics had done before him, namely, borrow directly from the Bible? Furthermore, the claim that the descriptions of Isis parallel Ben Sira and that archaeologists corroborate the possibility that Isis had penetrated even Jerusalem rests on the assumption, hardly proved, that the human remains are those of Jews, whereas they may very well be those of Ptolemaic administrators or soldiers.

In short, the evidence for appreciable influence of Greek thought on the Jews of Palestine prior to the Hasmoneans is slight. What about the Hasmonean and Roman periods?

6. POLITICAL CONTACTS BETWEEN GREEKS AND JEWS DURING THE HASMONEAN AND ROMAN PERIODS

Ostensibly, the Maccabean revolt against the Syrian Greeks was a reaction against the attempt of the latter to enforce Hellenization on the Jews. Yet Antiochus Epiphanes had not the slightest interest, any more than his father had had, in stamping out local culture as such, let alone in proselytizing for Hellenism, a role that, ab initio, was alien to the Greek mind and seems to be a modern invention.⁶⁸ Nevertheless, considerable evidence indicates that the successors of Judah Maccabee succumbed increasingly to the very Hellenization that they had originally opposed so vehemently. Simon, the last of the Hasmonean brothers, built a mausoleum that was completely in the Hellenistic style of his time.⁶⁹ Moreover, it is most striking that the Hasmonean king Aristobulus I, who ruled from 104 to 103 B.C.E., adopted the surname Philhellene, which was popular among Eastern monarchs.⁷⁰ His successor, Alexander Jannaeus, hired mercenaries from Asia Minor to preserve and extend his realm.

A claim of a friendship between the people of Pergamum and the Hebrews in the time of Abraham similar to that between the Spartans and the Jews that we have noted above is made in a document quoted by Josephus (Ant. 14.255), dating from the reign of John Hyrcanus in the latter part of the second century B.C.E., when Pergamum renewed this friendship formally. Such a treaty undoubtedly lent prestige to the fledgling state of the Hasmoneans, inasmuch as Pergamum was a brilliant center of culture, especially of sculpture, particularly during this period, and ranked second only to Alexandria in this respect. Yet there is no evidence that the treaty led to any kind of cultural exchange between their respective peoples.

That the masses of the people strongly resisted paganism can be seen from the passion with which they resisted the attempts of the procurator Pontius Pilate early in the first century C.E. to introduce busts of the emperor into Jerusalem, so that even Pilate was astonished at the strength of the devotion of the Jews to their laws and straightway removed the images (Josephus, War 2.169-74; Ant. 18. 55-59).⁷¹ We see similar zeal on the part of large numbers of Jews a few years later when, we are told (Ant. 18.263), many tens of thousands of Jews came to the Roman governor Petronius at Ptolemais asking that he slay them rather than set up an image of the Emperor Gaius Caligula in the Temple in Jerusalem. When many additional tens of thousands similarly faced Petronius at Tiberias (Ant. 18.270), he realized their stubborn determination and decided to write the emperor asking him to revoke his orders (Ant. 18.278).

7. CULTURAL CONTACTS BETWEEN GREEKS AND JEWS DURING THE HASMONEAN AND ROMAN PERIODS: THE ALLEGED INFLUENCE OF THE GREEK LANGUAGE

Josephus’s admission (Against Apion 1.50) that he needed assistants in composing the version in Greek of the Jewish War illustrates that few attained the competence in the language necessary for reading and understanding Greek literature. Another indication that real knowledge of Greek was not widespread is the fact that Josephus, a mere youngster of twenty-six, was chosen in the year 64 to go on a mission to the Roman emperor, presumably, in part, because he knew Greek well, though also perhaps because he had connections at the Imperial Court.⁷² It is Josephus himself, certainly not a modest person (cf. Ant. 20.264), who says that knowledge of foreign languages is a skill common to freedmen and even slaves.⁷³ From this Sevenster concludes that every man, even a slave, if he put his mind to it, could learn to speak good Greek; but the point of the passage is that learning Greek was frowned on, so that only the lowest classes of the population acquired the skill.⁷⁴ To be sure, because slaves and freedmen knew and used Greek, we may wonder whether people in the middle and upper classes may not have had to know some Greek in order to deal with them and whether, indeed, the upper classes may not have been influenced by popular culture, because culture can and often does trickle up. Indeed, Hengel assumes that Jesus, who, as a building craftsman, belonged to the middle class, was capable of carrying on a conversation in Greek, inasmuch as the synoptic tradition presupposes without further ado that he could talk with the captain from Capernaum, with Pilate, and with the Syro-Phoenician woman (Mark 7:26).⁷⁵ And yet the language in which slaves communicated with their masters was apparently Aramaic, so that slaves probably knew Greek mostly because they had to act as interpreters in business transactions. As to Jesus’ knowledge of Greek, there is no specific indication in the Gospels that he lapsed into Greek as he did into Aramaic from time to time; and, in any case, in antiquity, as we can see from conversations between Greeks and Trojans in Homer and between Greeks and Persians in such writers as Herodotus, there is generally no indication that interpreters were needed, even though it is quite clear that they must