With the closure of the Old Testament canon, we have some 400 years before Christ and the beginning of the New Testament. The details can be found in books too numerous to name. A couple of books published during this period add some useful insight, particularly those named for the Maccabees, but they have been found by the Church lacking the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Thus, we do not include them in our Bible. And while they provide some interesting accounts from those four centuries, they miss the whole story by focusing on a narrow selection of events. Our purpose here to is provide sufficient outline of the events to lay the foundation for understanding much of what Jesus said and did, and the situation in which it happened.
Here is a rough outline:
In the midst of all that came the central event in human history: The Savior came and taught, died, and rose again. The Roman Empire was a convenient means to spread His story. Let us examine some of the important details within this rough outline.
From the time of Malachi, around 400 BC, life in Judea was uneventful for at about 50 years. Egypt grew restive under the Persian yoke and warfare ensued for a time. During the reign of Artaxerxes III, a large number of Jews were found offering treasonous support to Egypt, and were exiled either to Babylon or to the shores of the Caspian Sea. Things were tense between Judea and Persia for quite some time. Meanwhile, the office of High Priest became equivalent to governor of the kingdom. The political maneuvering and petty rivalry involving that office easily matched that of any secular king. Legitimacy under the Law of Moses was seldom of any concern.
During this same time, far away in a land still called Macedonia by some, a petty king named Phillip managed to unite his noble friends and break the power of the Greek City States. Just as the whole thing came together, Phillip died and passed it all to his brilliant son, Alexander. This young king managed to gather a mighty army and inspired them to conquer the known world. As their power grew, the Jews were torn between an old but shattered loyalty to Persia, and the promise of better things under a strong conqueror from Greece. As it was, Alexander destroyed the Persian armies. He first drove down to Egypt. On the way, his genius and tenacity became legend. When Tyre, off the coast on her island fortress, refused to capitulate, Alexander went to the trouble of building a causeway out to her from the coast by having his men bring stones and toss them into the sea. The causeway still stands today.
It was around 333 BC when the Jews gladly capitulated to Alexander and he dealt kindly with them. After defeating the Egyptian armies, he founded a new city, one of several named after himself: Alexandria. This one in Egypt was by far the most famous of the lot. The Greek culture was already ancient at this point, and was referred to as Hellenic, taken from the supposed object of the ancient wars between Athens and Troy, Helen of Troy. Wherever he went, Alexander promoted his native Hellenic culture, but with friendship and enthusiasm. It was beguiling, and drew many under its sway. It didn't hurt he donated so very much wealth to libraries and cultural centers as he conquered. He went on to break the Persians completely, marching his troops to very banks of the Indus River in India before dying.
The Jewish community already in Egypt, those who fled the Babylonian conquest, were drawn to the new City of Alexandria, if for no other reason than commerce. They established a major presence such that a full quarter of the city was Jewish. The wealth of trade brought by the Greek Empire created the ancient equivalent of millionaires among the Alexandrian Jews.
Upon Alexander's death, his empire was divided between his four senior generals. From each of them arose a dynasty. While the general who based himself in modern Turkey was given Judea, he didn't keep it long. Jerusalem was seized by the general based in Egypt. The dynasty in Egypt we call the Ptolemies. They continued Alexander's favorable policies toward Jews. Taxes were suspended during sabbatical years, Jews were granted the same status as native Greek citizens in the capital of Alexandria, and so forth. There were even more incentives offered to bring the Jewish banking and cultural wealth to the city. It was the Ptolemies who sponsored the Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures we now call the Septuagint. The legends impute this translation with an inspired accuracy, but later examination by scholars showed that false. It was badly corrupted by the taint of new and unbiblical ideas.
For here indeed was the great opportunity to break away from the orthodoxy of the crusty old Eastern Synagogue of Babylon. The intellectual ferment of Greek culture, with its long history of grand philosophical inquiry, provided the roots for a particularly Western flavor to rabbinical studies. It was the age old rivalry between the ancient blue-bloods and the up-and-coming newly wealthy, and found expression in Jewish religion. The radical departure here cannot be understated. The ancient Mosaic Law, under-girded by a wealth of study by generations of rabbis in the Eastern culture of Babylon, remained essentially faithful to Moses. The Babylonian Great Synagogue viewed things through eyes not significantly different from those of Abraham.
The centuries-old traditions of Greek philosophy, built from pagan Greek polytheistic religion, were wholly foreign to Mosaic tradition. In their haste to break away from the now far distant Great Synagogue in Babylon, the Alexandrian Jews found Western ways more than just new and fashionable. They were thrilled by the intellectual newness of Greek philosophy. The rules of inquiry were applied fastidiously to the Torah and the written teachings derived from it, and whole new meanings were found. It should come as no surprise these meanings often became an excuse to ignore the burdens of ancient Semitic customs. Greed and self-interest became, in a measure, companions of "holiness" in this new understanding. Before it was over, rabbis were saying the traditions built up over a couple of centuries, a book of interpretation called the Talmud, took precedence over the actual Law of Moses. On top of this, Alexandrian rabbis placed a Western spin on everything. Thus, "the traditions of men" were an excuse to dismiss the original intent of God in His revelation to Moses.
This new Alexandrian Rabbinical School became, quite naturally, the favorite of the ruling Ptolemies. It quickly formed the dominant philosophical strain in Judea. This did not entirely break the link to the Great Synagogue in Babylon. Rather, while always greatful to the Babylon-based scholars for re-introducing the Torah when lost, and for the Talmud teachings, these were always read through Alexandrian eyes. Sadly, even Babylonian Judaism was drained of life and possessed of no real fervor beyond fussy exactitude over the details of the Law. The Eastern School found few friends in Judean politics. There remained for a time an Orthodox party in Judea, at times alone and extreme like the Essenes. Often it was compromised by alliance with the Pharisees. At the same time, there arose a truly secular Hellenistic party, going far beyond the Alexandrian Jewish departures. Eventually, the old Babylonian Orthodox had become a tiny forgotten minority, and the Alexandrian rabbis were regarded as conservative compared to the Hellenists.
Meanwhile, the Syrian quarter of Alexander's empire was ruled by a dynasty we call the Seleucid. In 198 BC, Antiochus III took Judea from the Ptolemies of Egypt. The new ruler's seat was in Antioch, a city on the River Orontes, north of old Hamath. It was quite close to the pocket of the Mediterranean coast where the eastern shore meets the southern shore of modern Turkey. For awhile, things went pretty much the same for the Jews in Judea. However, an ugly fracas arose between the older Orthodox Jews and the Hellenists under Alexandrian influence. The Seleucids had taken Alexander's loving promotion of Greek culture and made it an obsession. They forced Hellenism at every opportunity. Naturally, the new Seleucid ruler Antiochus IV (Epiphanes -- claiming to be a divine manifestation) took the side of the Hellenist Jews. He appointed a new High Priest to his liking, and the two of them conspired to destroy orthodox worship in the Temple. That priest was deposed a couple years later, replaced with another Hellenist. Things got confusing and the former and current priest between them brought Jerusalem to complete chaos.
Antiochus IV had had enough. He brought his troops into the city in 170 BC, executed countless Jewish residents, plundered the Temple, and placed an idol to Zeus inside it. There he sacrificed to Zeus a pig on the altar, and proceeded to outlaw the most characteristic observances of Mosaic Law. Daily sacrifices were stopped, Sabbath-keeping was outlawed, residents were forced to eat pork, and all copies of the Torah found were confiscated and burned. The nickname Epiphanes became secretly mocked as Epimanes ("madman") in typical Jewish fashion.
The Jews, long noted as a stiff-necked people by their own prophets, were not long in responding violently.
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Ed Hurst
03 September 2005
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