The Oxford History of the Biblical World

by Coogan, Michael D.

  It is also consistent with Philadelphus’s intellectual curiosity that he would have given strong royal support to his chief librarian’s request for a Greek translation of the sacred texts, especially the laws, of his Jewish subjects. At the same time, such a version would have been promoted and widely accepted in the Alexandrian Jewish community, among whom knowledge of Hebrew was growing rarer. Although the Letter of Aristeas narrates the arrival from Jerusalem of seventy-two elders as translators, Alexandria itself probably supplied the group responsible for this earliest foreign-language version. As indicated in the letter, this first translation effort covered the Pentateuch, or Torah, only; the term Septuagint (meaning “seventy”) was later expanded as other portions of the Hebrew Bible were subsequently translated into Greek.

  According to the Letter of Aristeas, the process by which the translators produced their Greek text was a collaborative effort, with the work of individuals and subcommittees revised and reshaped by their colleagues into a finished product. There is little, if any, of the miraculous in Aristeas’s account. Later accounts added details, such as the picture of seventy-two scholars working in isolation and yet producing identical versions. Modern scholars have detected sufficient distinctions in the Greek translations of each of the five books of the Torah to cast serious doubt on the view that the Greek Pentateuch was the product of one group at one time. Nonetheless, the high quality of this work served as a model for many later translations, both in Greek and in other languages both ancient and modern.

  No precise precedents guided these earliest Greek translators. They seem to have constructed their own path, which lay closer to a literal rendering than to a free one. Although their choice of Greek vocabulary and syntax was partially conditioned by the Semitic text they were translating, in general the language they chose was the koine, or common Greek, then in wide usage throughout the Hellenistic world. Greek papyri from Egypt form the closest parallels to the language of the Septuagint and point to a date in the first half of the third century for the Pentateuch at least. Most if not all of the translators were bilingual. Such was clearly not the case for their intended audience, and misunderstandings and misconceptions would have arisen on the part of those who read or heard the original or Old Greek version of the Septuagint. Additionally, differing interpretations of the sacred text abounded, and some readers of the Greek, even if ignorant of the Hebrew language, were conversant with interpretations other than those in the Septuagint. These considerations would have led to calls for revising or recasting of the Greek.

  But there was a more pressing issue. Even a cursory examination of the Old Greek reveals instances where this text reflects wording at variance with the established Hebrew version that came to be known as the Masoretic Text. Although it would be anachronistic to project the work of the Masoretes, vowels and all, back to this much earlier period, it is appropriate to imagine a Hebrew text close to it, at least in the Torah, at home in Jerusalem. When differences between this text and the Greek version became known, inevitably there would be calls to revise the Septuagint to reflect more closely what was regarded as the authoritative Hebrew, and revisions of that sort are known.

  The author of the Letter of Aristeas was opposed to such calls for revision. In his view the Septuagint possessed an authority equal to that of any Hebrew text, even one located in Jerusalem. He makes this clear near the end of his letter, where he describes the Septuagint’s tumultuously positive acceptance by the Jews of Alexandria, using language reminiscent of that used in the book of Exodus to characterize the Israelites’ approval of the law of Moses. The first-century CE Jewish philosopher Philo held that the Septuagint translators, no less than the Bible’s original authors, were inspired prophets. Augustine championed a similar view, which to this day is the position of Orthodox Christianity.

  It is not surprising that Hebrew fell out of general usage among the Jews of the Diaspora, especially in an intellectual and cultural center such as Alexandria. We might think, in contrast, that the ancestral tongue or perhaps its close kin, Aramaic, held sway against a similar linguistic incursion into Judea. But this was not always the case. Although it is demonstrable that the Semitic languages continued in use among portions of the population throughout the Hellenistic period, Greek was a practical necessity not only for those who wished to succeed in occupations involving trade and commerce, but also for bureaucrats and political functionaries of all sorts. There does not appear to have been any organized reaction against the speaking of Greek as such during the first part of the Hellenistic period. It could not have escaped notice that foreign notions and patterns of thought went hand in hand with the introduction of a new language; but the new idiom might also be useful for expanding the representation of older, even venerated concepts. And with no outside power actively pressuring the Jews to give up their ancestral ways, the trade-offs probably seemed, at least to those who considered them, more positive than negative.

  Esther, Judith, and Tobit

  Before constructing a detailed time line of events and personalities that lead up to the decisive events associated with Antiochus IV and Judah Maccabee, we turn again to the question of written sources and in particular to three biblical books generally understood to originate in and reflect conditions of the Hellenistic period. These three books, listed in order of their familiarity among the general public rather than in chronological order of composition (which is extremely difficult to determine), are Esther, Judith, and Tobit. For modern Protestants and Jews, the designation of at least the last two of these works as biblical may seem puzzling, since they are not among the canonical literature for those communities. But just as all three of these works are authoritative in the Catholic and Orthodox Christian communities today, they were also highly regarded in many, if not most, Jewish communities during the period under discussion.

  Prior to a brief examination of each of these works as individual entities, we should discuss their genre. At least in their finished form, these books are Jewish novels, much like the book of Daniel, to be discussed below. As such, their authors or compilers were not intent on relating actual events of the past, nor did they expect their audience to understand these works as historical. On the one hand, this characterization has a negative result: we do not make use of novels to fill in details of historical narrative or flesh out the meager evidence of historical documents from the ancient world. There was no Queen Esther, the heroine Judith did not live, the exciting adventures associated with Tobit and his family did not occur. On the other hand, we may ask different but equally valid and valuable questions: Who composed these works? What were their purposes and how well did they achieve them? Who was the audience for these works, and how do they (audience and work alike) compare to similar phenomena in the Greco-Roman world? Answering these questions gives us enormous insight into the lives of real people, especially in the Diaspora, even if their names and the particularities of their lives remain beyond our grasp.

  By and large, these works address the question of how a Jew (understood here primarily in terms of his or her adherence to the monotheistic faith of Israel) should live, especially when faced with a seemingly endless array of attractions offered by society at large. In the case of Esther, a Jewish queen in the Persian empire, she must put aside concerns for personal safety to safeguard the continued communal existence of her people. Judith must likewise place complete trust in God and risk her very life to overcome the danger posed by an enemy general. Tobit must continue to do what he knows is correct, including burying the dead and maintaining other ritual requirements, even though his only rewards for his good deeds are anguish and animosity. Although these works are fictional, we ought not thereby to regard them as addressing issues of no importance for their audience. Jews of this period would have identified with these stories’ heroes and heroines and would have identified within their own context individuals as villainous as, say, Haman or Holofernes (from Esther and Judith, respectively). And it would no
t have taken the threat of extinction by decree or military engagement for Jews to recognize that their own circumstances were dramatically mirrored in these novels.

  The dramatic nature of these literary works is one of the keys to their genre. They are filled with clever reversals of fortune on a personal and grand scale; they delve deeply into personal motivation and character development (something largely absent in other biblical material; adding such developments is a major goal of several of the Greek additions to the earlier Hebrew story of Esther), and they are filled with delightful irony of the sort we often seek, but seldom find, in real life. In short, they are literary masterpieces, aimed at a wide audience. Some of the special appeal for this audience can be detected in the elevated and central role played by women. The books of Esther and Judith take their names from heroic females, but even in the book of Tobit women play decisive and independent parts in the narrative flow. Readers are given an opportunity, unparalleled in other biblical literature, to enter into the often anguished minds of the protagonists, from whom they learn that all Jews, being underdogs (for it was not just Jewish females who labored in disadvantaged circumstances), needed to take a stand and that each instance of danger needed to be faced decisively. Ultimate success would come in no other way.

  Another characteristic shared by these novels (and the book of Daniel as well) relates specifically to their historicity. They contain what appear to be historical notices that contradict the historical record preserved elsewhere. So, for example, we know of no Jewish queen in Persia, the forces said to have massed against Judith’s hometown come from different periods, and Daniel is replete both with otherwise unknown—and impossible—personages and with a collapsed or convoluted chronological framework. Although some fundamentalists have sought to expand or correct the generally accepted historical record on the basis of their interpretation of these “historical” details, such efforts must be judged misguided when we realize that their authors were not writing history. They were aware that these things never happened and that these individuals never lived, and their audience had the same knowledge. The overall effect was one of irony, and it added both to their readers’ enjoyment and to their enlightenment in terms of moral and theological instruction.

  This is not to say that the authors of these works lacked any knowledge of the societies or cultures they were describing. Quite the contrary, they are masterful in their ability to evoke a general sense of court life or travel-adventure or military preparations. But their primary goal in such descriptions was to lay the scene for the novels’ actions, not to prepare a backdrop for a historical account. The genre thus entails limitations as well as possibilities.

  Under the First Two Seleucid Kings

  The historical sources, such as the Zenon papyri and the narrative of Josephus, present a micro view of the situation in Judea and the rest of Syria-Palestine during the third century BCE. From other records we derive a larger picture of struggle between the two great Hellenistic powers that divided up the Near East after Alexander’s death, the Ptolemies and the Seleucids. Although the Ptolemies maintained their control over the area, which could be conceived as either their northernmost territory or the Selucuids’ southern border, there were no fewer than a half dozen separate military campaigns in this period. Slowly but noticeably the advantage began to shift in favor of the Seleucids. Aggressive, if prolonged, actions by Antiochus III resulted ultimately in their gaining decisive control of the area by century’s end.

  Jews, under the leadership of the high priest Simon (widely known as Simon the Just) and members of the Tobiad family, played an active role in favor of Antiochus III, and they were appropriately rewarded for their support. (Those Jews who had fought alongside the Ptolemies left Judea, finding refuge in Egypt.) Among the specific benefits the Jews received were Seleucid aid in efforts to rebuild Jerusalem’s Temple and to maintain its ritual of daily offerings, official support for the special status of Jerusalem and its Temple (for example, foreigners were forbidden to enter the sanctuary), reduction or elimination of some taxes, and recognition of the right to live according to their ancestral laws. These actions were intended to establish an era of peaceful relations between Seleucid overlords and Jewish subjects. On the whole such mutually desirable results were achieved and sustained during the remainder of Antiochus Ill’s reign, down to 187 BCE, and the rule of his son Seleucus IV, who governed until 175.

  Antiochus III was far less astute in dealing with a rising western European power that was making its initial forays into the Hellenistic East. The Romans, who until now had been content to flex their muscles on the Italian peninsula and elsewhere in the western Mediterranean, were drawn to the East at about the same time Antiochus had succeeded in capturing Syria-Palestine from the Ptolemies. Although their immediate goal, successfully pursued, was to stop a Macedonian king from enlarging his holdings, the Romans were quick to view aggressive Seleucid activities as equally alarming. A Roman victory over Seleucid forces in Asia Minor resulted in the imposition of harsh, if deserved, penalties, including the requirement that Antiochus and his successors pay Rome a huge sum of money over a decade or so. When the usual sources of revenue proved inadequate for this purpose, Seleucid leaders resorted to the forcible extraction of funds from religious sanctuaries in their territories. In antiquity, temples and similar institutions regularly served as banks, where people felt it safe to leave large sums of money, and they were also the recipients of often lavish gifts from grateful worshipers. We are told that Antiochus III died in an attempt to take wealth by force from such a sanctuary. Throughout his reign the Temple in Jerusalem was spared this ultimate indignity, but its lucrative coffers were to attract the attention of his successors.

  During the first part of his reign, Seleucus IV, Antiochus’s son and successor, found it expedient to follow his father’s policies toward the Jews. They had worked in achieving their twin goals of producing peace and revenue. If they also pleased Jewish religious sensibilities, all the better. But just below the surface lay pent-up rivalries and antagonisms among influential families in Jerusalem’s leadership, all of which rose to the surface during the final year or so of Seleucus’s rule and grew in severity during the kingship of his brother and successor, the infamous Antiochus IV Epiphanes. By this time Onias III had succeeded to the office of high priest after the highly regarded tenure of Simon the Just. One of his officials, also named Simon, was stung by the high priest’s refusal to allow him to expand the scope of his responsibilities, and he appealed to the Seleucid governor of the region. While such an appeal was not yet normal procedure for their Jewish subjects, Seleucid officials did regularly intervene in the internal affairs of subject peoples and in extraordinary circumstances. Since the very appointment of the high priest of Jerusalem was subject to their approval, the Seleucids would not have hesitated to intervene here if they thought it sufficiently important and to their benefit. With this in mind, Simon sweetened the deal by pointing out that substantial funds were kept at the Temple, funds that would be very useful for the perpetually cash-strapped Seleucid monarch. When Seleucus’s prime minister, Heliodorus by name, attempted to force his way into the Temple treasury, he was thwarted by the miraculous appearance of two angels—at least that is the story told in Jewish sources. Whatever happened, this much is clear: Heliodorus returned empty-handed to the Seleucid capital of Antioch, but at the same time the Seleucids benefited from learning of splits among Jewish leaders that they could exploit and of treasures they could confiscate when a more propitious occasion arose.

  The Seleucid and Ptolemaic Empires

  Antiochus IV and the Jews

  The Seleucids did not have to wait long for such an occasion. When Onias III realized that Simon still enjoyed the support of much of the Jerusalem populace, he judged that his only recourse was a direct, in-person appeal to the king. At about the same time Onias set out for Antioch, Heliodorus murdered Seleucus IV, setting the stage for the succession of one of
the king’s younger brothers, Antiochus IV. Onias’s brother, who had taken the Greek name Jason, reacted more quickly and successfully to these changed circumstances and through bribery obtained the high priesthood for himself; the subsequent whereabouts of Simon are unknown. Jason followed up his initial success by further bribing the king to allow him to establish a Greek-style gymnasium in Jerusalem and to draw up a list of the “Antiochenes” in that city. Although the exact nature of this latter request is uncertain, there can be no doubt that Jason’s requests and their approval by Antiochus marked a turning point both in Seleucid-Jewish relations and in the internal workings of the Jerusalem leadership. Since Antiochus IV had only recently returned from Rome, where he had long been a hostage for his father’s and brother’s good behavior, he may not have fully understood the likely results of his actions.

  Jason had bribed his way into becoming high priest, an action—which unfortunately became a precedent—that could have been viewed as debasing the sacred office. From the Seleucid perspective the Jerusalem high priest was probably no different from any other local leader whose power and very existence depended on royal goodwill. Even if Antiochus were aware of any of these distinctions, it would not have dissuaded him from an appointment that was otherwise so lucrative. Jerusalem “Antiochenes” probably constituted a group of leading citizens dedicated to the promotion of Hellenism, including the cultural activities associated with a gymnasium. Such a development Antiochus could enthusiastically support, despite the probability of opposition from Jerusalem traditionalists.