Fall 2 Fast

The relationship of Jews and Judaism to gentiles and gentile culture is a complex topic that consists of three distinct but interrelated themes: political (to what extent should the Jews submit to foreign domination?), cultural (to what extent should the Jews absorb pagan ideas and practices?), and social (to what extent should Jews mingle and interact with gentiles?). I shall examine each of these separately, beginning with the simplest, the political. Political: Gentile Domination       From 587 B.C.E., the destruction of the first temple and the exile to Babylonia, until 1948 C.E., the establishment of the modern state of Israel, the Jews of both the diaspora and the land of Israel lived almost exclusively under foreign domination. During extensive portions of the pre-exilic period, the northern kingdom suffered political subjugation at the hands of Aram and Assyria, and the southern kingdom at the hands of Aram, Assyria, Egypt, and Babylonia, but at no point before their actual destruction did either kingdom lose its monarchs or its nominal independence. The dissolution of the northern kingdom in 722 B.C.E. led to the ultimate disappearance of "the ten tribes" (although the Samaritans would later claim, perhaps correctly, to be the descendants of these tribes). The dissolution of the southern kingdom, however, did 'not lead to the disappearance of the Judeans. They returned to their land, rebuilt their temple, and tried to continue as before-but without a king and without political independence.       This political situation raised religious questions: Why did God allow the Jews to be subjugated by gentiles? Why didn't God protect his people? Why do the gentiles but not the Jews deserve temporal power? The answers to these questions will be treated in the next chapter. Here our theme is the response of the Jews to the political questions raised by the fact of subjection to foreign rule: How should the Jews relate to the state? Should they support it, oppose it, or adopt a neutral stance? Should their support or opposition be active or passive? The answer was provided by Jeremiah. This prophet had warned the inhabitants of Jerusalem that their rebellion against the king of Babylonia was also a rebellion against God. The prophet counseled surrender. Nebuchadnezzar was performing God's will in his assault on the holy city, and the Jews were foolish to believe that they could flout God's will. The Jews were condemned to failure because of their sins; Nebuchadnezzar was merely God's agent for their punishment (Jer. 25). In this conception Jeremiah transferred to his own day the prophetic interpretation of the fall of Samaria enunciated by Isaiah generations before (Isa. 10).       But Jeremiah also added a different interpretation, a new conception not articulated by previous prophets. The fall of Jerusalem and the triumph of Babylonia are the• consequence not of sin and punishment 'but of immutable fate. God, who controls the destiny of nations and empires, has for undisclosed reasons decided that Babylon shall rise and that Judah and other states shall fall (Jer. 27:2-8). The dominion granted the Babylonians was only temporary; after a predetermined amount of time, whether the three generations of Jeremiah 27 or the "seventy years" of Jeremiah 25:12 and 29:10, the Babylonian, empire will fall and/or the Jews will return from exile in triumph and glory. The last two prophecies of the book are visions of doom directed against Babylonia (Jer. 50 and 51), In the interim the Jews were powerless to change the divine decree. Let them support their conquerors and pray for the welfare of the countries in which they lived (Jer. 29:5-7).How much of this was enunciated by Jeremiah during the ,dark days of the 590s and ,580s B.C.E., and how much was added by later disciples and editors, it’s not easy to determine, but, whatever their origin, these ideas had an enormous impact on subsequent Jewish. Thought and practice, when the author of Daniel sought to understand the meaning of the desecration of the temple by Antiochus l Epiphanes in 167 B.C.E., he turned to the prophecies of Jeremiah, especially the prophecy concerning the period of "seventy years" , (Dan. 9:2). When the author of the Apocalypse of Baruch, Joseph, us, and the rabbis sought to understand the meaning of the destruction of the second temple by the Romans, they too turned to Jeremiah. Jeremianic influence is particularly noticeable in the apocalypses. These texts, beginning with Daniel, regularly combine the two basic elements of the political theology of Jeremiah: the gentiles rule the Jews in order to punish them for their sins; the gentiles will continue to rule the Jews until the immutable sequence of empires has run its course and the predetermined day of their destruction has arrived.       The prophecies of Jeremiah also provide the ideological context for the political behavior of the Jews in antiquity (and, indeed, of medieval and modern times as well). When Cyrus the Great of Persia conquered Babylonia in 539 B.C.E. and issued his edict permitting the Jews to return home and rebuild their temple (Ezra 1:1-4), many Jews chose to remain. They had adjusted to life in Babylonia and were prepared to remain there until God would redeem them. The Jews who returned, or who were preparing to return, to the land of Israel were reassured by an anonymous prophet that an emancipation proclamation issued by a gentile king was precisely the redemption forecast by Jeremiah (Isa. 45: 1-13; see too Ezra I: I). Of all the nations exiled from their lands by the Assyrians and the Babylonians, only the Jews returned to their homeland in order to rebuild their ancestral temple. For these Jews the redemption promised by Jeremiah was to consist of repatriation and the renewal of the temple cult; perhaps many of them also hoped for a restoration of the kingship and political independence, but they were to be disappointed. The Jews who stayed behind in Babylonia, like all the Jews of the diaspora communities that would flourish during the subsequent centuries, were willing to forgo even their temple and their land. For both communities, then, complete redemption would have to await the promised day of the Lord.       In the meantime they supported the state. For over a thousand years the Jews of antiquity lived under the rule of the Persians, the Hellenistic kingdoms of Egypt and Syria, the Romans and and their Christian continuators, and the Parthians. They seldom rebelled, even when provoked. The best illustration of this attitude is the history of the Jews during the reign of Caligula (37-41 C.E.). In Alexandria!- a mob let loose by the Roman governor destroyed Jewish homes and property, and threatened the political existence of the Jews of the city. Rather than rebel against the state, however, the Jews sent a delegation to the emperor requesting him to listen to their grievances. While these events were taking place, the governor of Syria, acting upon Caligula's instructions, was attempting to erect a statue of the emperor in the temple in Jerusalem. Faced with the possibility that the temple might be desecrated, the Jews of Judea threatened to have themselves massacred en masse by the soldiers. The stated goal of these Jews was not the elimination but the amelioration of Roman rule. Ancient Jewish history provides numerous other instances of appeals to the imperial power for the adjudication of some dispute or the bequest of some favor. The early Christians adopted the same stance toward the state (Rom. 13:1-7). During the period surveyed by this book only four exceptions break the overall pattern the revolt of the Maccabees against Antiochus Epiphanes (167-164 B.C.E.); the two major rebellions of the Jews of Israel against the Romans, the first hi 66-73 (or 74) C.E., the second in 132-135 C.E. and the rebellion of the Jews of Egypt, Cyrene, and Cyprus against Roman rule in 115-117 C.E. I shall examine each of these separately. The Maccabean Rebellion       The Maccabean rebellion began as a struggle for religious liberty. Either King Antiochus, or a group of Jews acting under his authority, desecrated the temple by erecti11g in the sacred precincts a statue and/or an altar of a foreign god, and attempted to compel the Jews to abandon their traditional religious practices ( circumcision, Sabbath, etc.). The goal of the king and his supporters was to remove all the peculiar features of Judaism that made it different from the other religions of the world. The religious persecution that accompanied this forced "Hellenization" (on this term see below) provoked Judah the Maccabee and his followers to rebel against the state. This was the Jews' first departure from theJeremianic political tradition, and it was prompted by the state's first departure from a policy if religious toleration. In antiquity religious persecutions were something of a rarity. The polytheistic and polyethnic empires of both Mesopotamia and the Mediterranean basin tolerated religious and cultic diversity. As long as the peace was maintained and the taxes were paid, the state did not care much about the religious life of its citizens. What provoked the persecution by Epiphanes remains an enigma in spite of intense study by many scholars, but a persecution there was, and the war it provoked is history's first recorded struggle for religious liberty. At some point during the struggle the goals of Judah and his party changed. He was no longer lighting for religious liberty but for political independence. He and his brothers after him sought to make Judea free and independent, under the rule of a new dynasty that of the Maccabees themselves. Even after they regained the temple and put an end to the persecution (164 B.C.E.), they did not cease their light. Some Jews supported them in the first phase of the war, but abandoned them during the second and third phases. They were prepared to fight against their rulers for the sake of religious freedom, but they were not prepared to support the dynastic pretensions of the Maccabees and to create an independent state (l Mace. 2:42 and 7:13). Indeed, the state and dynasty that the Maccabees created never succeeded in garnering the total support of all the Jews. Social factors played an important role in this war as well. Mattathias, the patriarch of the clan, and his son Judah the Maccabee, were country priests who drew the bulk of their support from the countryside and fought against the well-to-do priests of Jerusalem. The Maccabees expelled or killed many of the "old guard" and advanced "new men" like themselves to become the new aristocracy. The Rebellion Against The Romans (66-74 c.B.)       The war of 66-74 is similar in many ways to the rebellion of the Maccabees, but also very different. The revolutionaries who fomented this war and saw it to its catastrophic conclusion consisted of diverse groups, each with its own leaders, history, and ideology. Some hailed from the countryside, others from the city of Jerusalem. Some were priests, others lay. Some were wealthy, others poor. Some had socialist or utopian goals, and spent most of their energy in attacking the rich and the hereditary aristocracy. Others, notably some of the priests, fought to maintain and expand their traditional prerogatives and power. Others were motivated by an intense hatred of the Romans and a desire to rid the holy land of foreign contagion. Many of the revolutionaries believed that the Messiah would soon come to redeem Israel and that all the Jews had to do was to get the ball rolling; God and the angelic hosts would do the rest. We may assume that the messianic theories which motivated the revolutionaries were as numerous and diverse as the revolutionaries themselves. The Zealots and the Sicarii are the best known of these groups, but there were many others (see chapter 5 below).       One of the major reasons the Jews lost the war is that they were unable to mount a united front against the Romans. They spent much of their time killing each other rather than lighting the enemy. Thus both the Maccabean revolution and the war of 66-74 were motivated in part by social factors, but the "war party" of the rebellion against Epiphanes was far more united than the "war party" of the rebellion against Nero. The two wars also had very different beginnings and conclusions. The war of 66-74 was sparked not by a profanation of the temple and a religious persecution, but by the administrative incompetence of the Roman procurators, by the fighting between Jews and pagans in the cities of Palestine and Syria, and by the action of some Jewish hotheads who suspended the temple sacrifice on behalf of the emperor. The two wars also had very different outcomes. The rebellion of the Maccabees prevented Judaism from becoming just another local variation of Syrian Hellenism, and thereby saved it from extinction The war of 66-74 removed the institutional foundations of Judaism, brought tremendous destruction upon the land of Israel and its inhabitants, and endangered the status of the Jews throughout the Roman empire; it threatened the very survival of Judaism.       In the eyes of the revolutionaries Roman rule was as oppressive and intolerable as that of Epiphanes, but many Jews disagreed with this assessment and participated in the war only in its initial chaotic stages, if at all. For every peasant willing to give up everything in order to fight the Romans, there was a peasant who did not want to suffer the inevitable disasters inflicted by war. These Jews felt that the Romans had done nothing to justify a departure from the Jeremianic political tradition. Fighting against the Romans was foolish at best and sinful at worst. God will redeem Israel by sending the messiah, but Israel can do nothing to hasten the appointed time. This point of view was advanced by Flavius Josephus in his The Jewish War, our major source for the history of the war and its antecedents. The same perspective is ascribed by rabbinic literature to Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai, who is alleged to have left Jerusalem during the siege and to have hailed Vespasian as a man destined to destroy the temple and to become emperor.1 At his meeting with the soon to-be-emperor, the rabbi quoted from Isaiah (10:34): "And the Lebanon [ = the Temple constructed from the cedars of Lebanon) shall fall by a majestic one [=Vespasian]." The rabbi neglected to inform the Roman that the next verse of the prophecy begins with the messianic prediction "There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse." Had Vespasian known the Bible of the Jews he might not have received the rabbi so kindly. The Wars of 115-117 C.E. and 132-135 C.E.       The other two exceptions to the Jeremianic political tradition can be treated briefly, not because they are less important than the wars just discussed, but because their documentation is so poor. In 115-117 C.E. . the Jews of Alexandria, the Egyptian countryside, Cyprus, and Cyrenaica (part of modern-day Libya) fought the Romans. Archaeological evidence proves that this was a major uprising that caused much destruction for both Jew and gentile. The Jewish community of Alexandria, one of the largest and most important of the ancient world, was dealt a serious blow. The causes of this war are most obscure. Apparently its root cause was the political tension between Jews and gentiles in the cities of the Greek east, a tension that had flared up many times in the first century C.E. Messianic speculations also played an important part.       Equally important and only slightly less obscure is the war of 132-135. The war of 115-117 was the revolt of parts of the Greek diaspora; there is no reliable evidence that the Jews of \he land of Israel participated. By contrast the war of 132-135 was the revolt of the land of Israel, or, to be more accurate, the district of Judea. Its leader was Bar Kosiba, better known as Bar Kosiba ("Son of a Star"), the name given to him by those who accepted his messianic status. On his coins he styled himself "Simon the Prince (Nasi) of Israel”. One ancient historian says that this war was provoked by Hadrian’s decision to rebuild Jerusalem as a pagan city. The coinage of the new city, named Aelia Capitolina in honor of Hadrian (whose family name was Aelius) and Jupiter (the god of the capitol), shows that tile city was indeed established before the outbreak of the rebellion, but whether the construction caused the rebellion is a point that cannot be confirmed. Another ancient historian claims that the war was provoked by a prohibition of circumcision. Castration and other mutilation of the male genitalia had been long prohibited by the Romans, but Hadrian extended the prohibition to include circumcision, a step which the Jews found intolerable. Rabbinic literature confirms that during and after the war the Romans forbade circumcision as well as other Jewish practices (including the recitation of the Shema, the public study of the Torah, and the observance of the Sabbath), but whether this persecution was a cause or a consequence of the war is an important point which, again, we cannot determine precisely. In any case, both historians agree that this war was provoked by a Roman action against the Jews1.       In the rabbinic imagination Hadrian was another Epiphanes, another gentile ruler who sought to destroy Judaism, but for us Hadrian's motives, as well as those of Epiphanes, remain obscure. The war of Bar Kokhba was the product of internal factors as well. Modern scholars have highlighted the social and economic stress engendered by the war of 66-74 C.E. In the wake of that war the Romans confiscated a great deal of land, leasing or giving it to their supporters and soldiers. This process created a large number of landless peasants in Judea, and it is this group which seems' to have provided Bar Kokhba the bulk of his support. Another important factor is Bar Kokhba's messianism. Little is known about this either, but the timing of the war is very suggestive. Seventy years after the destruction of the first temple the second temple was built in fulfillment of Jeremiah's prophecy. The Jews had no doubt that the prophecy would be fulfilled again, but sixty years had already gone and nothing had happened. By the 130s C.E. the Jews must have been very restive as they contemplated the rapid approach of the septuagintal year. Bar Kokhba was seen by some of his followers as the anointed redeemer who would inaugurate the end by destroying the Romans and rebuilding the temple. In the wake of his defeat we may imagine the Jews of the second century C.E., no less than Daniel in the second century B.C.E., contemplating with renewed intensity the opaque words of the prophet from Anathoth. Conclusion       I end this survey where I began, with Jeremiah. In spite of these four exceptions, the basic political stance of the Jews of both the land of Israel and the diaspora was not rebellion but accommodation. The Jews must support the state until God sees fit to redeem them. This was the counsel of Jeremiah in the sixth century B.C.E., of Josephus in the first century C.E., and of the rabbis of the second through the twentieth centuries C.E. This advice was accepted by the masses of the Jews throughout antiquity. The only principled rejection. The Jews must support the state until God sees fit to redeem them. This was the counsel of Jeremiah in the sixth century B.C.E., of Josephus in the first century C.E., and of the rabbis of the second through the twentieth centuries C.E. This advice was accepted by the masses of the Jews throughout antiquity. The only principled rejection of it was by the Sicarii and assorted other group in the first century. Their actions contributed mightily to the war of 66-74, but as we have seen, that war was caused by many different factors and was joined by many different groups. The revolt of the Maccabees and the rebellion of Bar Kokhba were caused, at least in part, by the hostile actions of the ruling power. Even Jeremiah might have approved. Cultural: Judaism and Hellenism       From biblical until modern times Jews have seen themselves, and have been seen by others, as a distinct group. The world consists of Jews and gentiles ("the nations"). God chose the Jews from among all the nations and made them his special people. They alone possess his Torah and perform his will. God placed the sun, moon and stars in the heavens for the nations to worship; but the Israelites are permitted to worship only the true God alone (Deut. 4). Be seen the "us" of Judaism and the "them" of paganism was a boundary that separated the holy from the profane. The precise contours of this boundary were never very clear, but one of the characteristic themes of Jewish thought throughout the ages is this sense of contrast between the "us" and the "them," between Jew and gentile, between the ideas of Judaism and the ideas of the gentile world (whether paganism, Christianity, or Islam). The Greeks drew a similar distinction between "Hellenes," the bearers of enlightened culture, and "barbarians," the members of foreign nations, but the demarcation between Jew and gentile was much stricter than that between Hellene and barbarian. A barbarian could become a Hellene by adopting the Greek language and culture, but a gentile could become a Jew only by "converting," that is, by denying the pagan gods and affirming exclusive loyalty to the god of the Jews. A pagan who wished to become a Jew did not merely add Judaism to his paganism or apply Jewish terminology to his pagan practices; he replaced his pagan beliefs and practices with Jewish ones. Polytheism was tolerant, monotheism was not. But for all its vaunted intolerance Judaism was an active participant in the cultural and social life of antiquity. "Hellenism," "Hellenization," and "Hellenistic Judaism"       Modern scholars use the term "Hellenism" in two different ways. In one usage "Hellenism" means the culture, society, and way of life brought to the peoples of the east by Alexander the Great and his successors. The culture was "Hellenistic" (the adjective spun from the noun "Hellenism") because its language was Greek, its literary classics were Greek, its ideas were Greek, its gods were Greek, its social elite was Greek (and Macedonian), and its most distinctive form of social organization (the polis) was Greek. Hellenism was the way of life brought by the conqueror and was a great challenge to the Jews and to all the other inhabitants of the East. In this conception "Hellenism," the worship of the Greek gods and the practice of Greek ways, is an antonym to ''.Judaism," the worship of the God Of Israel and the practice of Jewish ways. This conception and usage were inspired by the accounts of the Antiochan persecution and the Maccabean revolt contained in First and Second Maccabees. Intion "Hellenism," the worship of the Greek gods and the practice of Greek ways, is an antonym to ''.Judaism," the worship of the God of Israel and the practice of Jewish ways. This conception and usage were inspired by the accounts of the Antiochan persecution and the Maccabean revolt contained in First and Second Maccabees. Indeed, in separate passages Second Maccabees uses the terms '' Judaism" (2:21) and its antonym "Hellenism" (4:13) .       This conception of "Hellenism" gave rise in turn to the conception of "Hellenistic Judaism" as an antonym for "Palestinian Judaism." According to this view "Hellenistic" Jews are the Jews who lived in the diaspora, spoke Greek and wrote literature in Greek, and adulterated their religion with ideas and practices imported from the "Hellenistic" world. In contrast, the Jews of Palestine lived in the mother country, spoke Hebrew and Aramaic and wrote literature in those languages, and struggled to observe their religion in all its rigor and to keep it pure from foreign contagion. This conception was inspired by the figure of Paul of Tarsus, who seemed to represent the urbane and cosmopolitan (that is, not law-observant) Jew of the diaspora in contrast with the "orthodox" and legalistic Jew of Palestine, and by passages like Acts 6:1 which spoke of tension between the "Hebrews" and the "Hellenists" in the early church.       Many scholars have argued that this conception does not do full justice to the complexities of either "Hellenism" or "Hellenistic Judaism." Whatever it was that Alexander the Great tried to achieve, and whatever the purity of the "Hellenism" which he brought with him from Macedon, within a very short time after his death all the cultures of the East began to contribute to the new creation we call Hellenism. Hellenistic culture was not merely a debased version of the culture of classical Athens. Its substrate was Greek and its language of expression was Greek, but it absorbed ideas and practices from all the cultures with which it came into contact, thereby assuming many and diverse forms. The natives were Hellenized, and the Greeks were "Orientalized."       In the Egyptian countryside the peasants expressed their traditional hopes and prayers in Greek, even as the Ptolemies adopted the royal ideology of the ancient Pharaohs in order to bolster their command over their subjects. Some of the new poleis were bastions of high culture and "Hellenism," but more often than not the Hellenism which reached the man in the street or the peasant on his farm was a mixture of traditional with novel elements: the ancestral gods were given Greek names, traditional ideas were dressed in Greek garb, etc. The cultures of the' East were too powerful and too attractive to lose their grip on their adherents. Through intermarriage with local women and through veneration of the local gods, the Greeks often lost much of their Greekness. When used as a descriptive epithet for the culture of the world from Alexander the Great to the first century B.C.E. or C.E., Hellenism' ought to mean not "Greek culture" but the fusion of various cultures. In this conception "Judaism" and "Hellenism" are not antonyms, since, by definition, Judaism was part of Hellenism and Hellenism was 'part of Judaism. This approach attempts to get beyond the rhetoric of the Jews of antiquity. If various Jews of antiquity saw Judaism and Hellenism as antithetical, that hardly means that these entities were antithetical. Several church fathers expressed a similar hostility toward Hellenism, even after the triumph of the church over paganism. Jerome was warned in a vision that he was spending too much time on Cicero and not enough on sacred scripture. Statements like these advance the claim that Christianity is the exclusive source of truth and has no need for classical culture. But we would err badly if we deduced from these texts that Jerome and the other fathers who make similar pronouncements viewed classical culture as antithetcal to Christianity. Similarly, we cannot deduce from Maccabean and rabbinic ideology and rhetoric the real relationship of Judaism to Hellenism. Nor can we generalize from that very unusual Jew, Paul.       This conception of "Hellenism" leads to a redefinition of "Hellenistic Judaism." All the Judaisms of the Hellenistic period, of both the diaspora and the land of Israel, were Hellenized that is were integral parts of the culture of the ancient world. Some varieties of Judaism were more Hellenized than others, but none was an island unto itse1£ It is a mistake to imagine that the land of Palestine preserved a "pure" form of Judaism and that the diaspora was the home of adulterated or diluted forms of Judaism. The term "Hellenistic Judaism" makes sense, then, only as a chronological indicator for the period from Alexander the Great to the Maccabees or perhaps to the Roman conquests of the first century B.C.E. As a descriptive term for a fertain type of Judaism, however, it is meaningless, because all the Judaisms of the Hellenistic period were "Hellenistic."Since the second approach is much more convincing than the first, I shall avoid the term "Hellenistic Judaism" for the rest of this book. I shall, when necessary, distinguish the Judaism of the diaspora from that of Palestine, and the Judaism of Greek-speaking Jews from that of Hebrew- and Aramaic-speaking Jews, but the term "Hellenistic Judaism" is too vague to be helpful. Judaism and Hellenistic Culture       The basic problem that confronted all the Jews of antiquity was to determine a working relationship with Hellenistic culture. How to preserve Jews identity. while simultaneously partaking of the riches of Hellenistic culture? How to balance the conflicting claims of universalism and particularism, the desire to be part of the larger world and the desire to be separate and distinct? Where was the line that separated the licit foreign element which enriched and fructified, from the illicit foreign element witch threatened and destroyed? This was a perpetual dilemma, not only for the Jews in their homeland but especially for the Jews in the diaspora.       The problem was not new wven in pre-exilic times the Israelites had to determine the extent to which they could draw on the riches of the cultures among which they lived. King Solomon built the temple of God with the aid of Phoenician architects and on the standard plan of Syrian temples. The psalmist modeled some of his poems on Canaanite hymns to Baal and Egyptian hymns to Aton. The author of Proverbs drew upon the wisdom of Amenemope. When the Israelites, however, began to worship Baal alongside their own God and to incorporate Canaanite practices into their religion, the prophets objected vociferously. Complicating all these issues was the political setting. The lack of political autonomy increased the need for the erection of clear boundaries that would safeguard the group's identity. In. pre-exilic times Ahaz the king of Judah replaced the altar in the temple with an altar constructed like one he saw in Damascus (2 Kings 16: 10-18), thereby indicating his fealty to his master the king of Asyria. Political subjugation brought in its wake enormous pressure to conform to the ways of the conqueror, even if the conqueror did not actually initiate a "persecution."In the second temple period the integration of the Jews in the Hellenistic world manifested itself in three different areas: material culture; language; and philosophy and way oflife. I shall consider each of these separately. Material Culture       The pottery, clothing, art, architecture, and the myriad other details that constituted the realia of Jewish life were all standard Hellenistic types or variations on them. That this was the case in the Greco-Roman diaspora should occasion no surprise, but it was also the case in Palestine. Cities were built on the Greek pattern. The elders no longer sat at the gate as in pre-exilic times, but in the agora or central plaza of the city, an architectural feature unknown to the Hebrew Bible. All of Herod the Great's building projects, including the reconstruction of the temple in Jerusalem, were in the Hellenistic style of the Near East, and this fact is not to be attributed to the idiosyncracy of one mad ruler Josephus remarks that the building of one Galilean village closely resembled those of Tyre, Sidon, and Berytus (Beirut). All the coins issued by the Jews, from the Maccabees to the Herodian kings to the revolutionaries of 66-70 C.E., were minted on the Tyrian standard, which was widespread throughout the Hellenistic East. Language        The essence of Hellenization, of course, is the Greek language. In the diaspora the triumph of the Greek language was complete. Hebrew was virtually unknown to Egyptian Jewry. Even Philo, certainly the most learned and literate Jew produced by the Jewish community of Alexandria, was no Hebraist; in all likelihood his knowledge of Hebrew did not extend beyond select words and phrases of the Torah. Elsewhere in the diaspora the situation was the same. Virtually all the inscriptions engraved by diaspora Jewry, from Egypt to Rome to Asia Minor, were in Greek. In Rome a few were in Latin, and a few epitaphs append the Hebrew word shalom, but again there is no sign that the Jews of these places spoke or knew any Semitic language. The earliest literary work produced by diaspora Jewry was a translation of the Torah into Greek, known as the Septuagint (third century B.c.E.). By the second century B.C.E. the Jews of Egypt were writing scholarly essays, philosophical tracts, and poetry based on this Greek translation. As far as we know, Greek was the exclusive language of literary expression for diaspora Jewry.       In the land of Israel the situation is much more complicated, because Greek had to compete with Hebrew and Aramaic, but even here many Jews spoke and wrote Greek. The Maccabees arranged for the translation of First Maccabees from Hebrew into Greek (it is this translation which survives, the Hebrew original having completely disappeared). A Jew from Jerusalem translated the book of Esther into Greek. The Wisdom of Ben Sira, a work written in Hebrew by a Palestinian sage around 200 B.C.E., was translated into Greek by the author's grandson. By the first century C.E., if not before, Palestinian authors like Josephus and his archrival Justus of Tiberias were writing original compositions in Greek. Greek documents have been found at Qumran and constitute a large part of a private family archive. that was discovered in the J udean desert and dates from the first quarter of the second century C.E. (the "Babata" archive). Bar Kokhba wrote some of his letters in Greek. In the burial caves at Beth Shearim, which were in use during the third and fourth centuries C.E., most of the epitaphs are in Greek, although most of the inscriptions of contemporary synagogues are in Hebrew and Aramaic.       Even in rabbinic circles the Greek language had an enormous impact. This is evidenced not only by the thousands of Greek (and Latin) words in the rabbinic lexicon and by the fact that in a synagogue of Caesarea in rabbinic times the Shema was recited in Greek, but also by the fact that some rabbinic Jews needed a Greek translation of the Bible which was more faithful to the Hebrew text than was the Septuagint. According to both Christian and rabbinic legend a convert to Judaism named Aquila translated the Bible anew into Greek under rabbinic aegis his goal being a faithful word or word translation. Whether there is any truth to this legend is hard to establish, but the important point is that the translation at tributed to Aquila is a revision of the, Septuagint in the direction of the emerging newly standardized Hebrew text. Qumran fragments show that revisions in this direction were being done already in the first century C.E., demonstrating the existence in Palestine of a group of Jews who needed a Greek translation of the Bible, but a translation which would be closer to the Hebrew original than that produced by diaspora Jewry.       The Greek language, then, had an enormous impact in Palestine in both second temple and rabbinic times. As far as we know, however, Hebrew remained the primary language of literary expression. The Qumran scrolls demonstrate that Hebrew was the original language of most of the works written in Palestine between the period of the Maccabees and the destruction of the temple in 70 C.E. The same pattern continued into rabbinic times. The Mishnah and ancillary worldss were all written in Hebrew. To what extent Hebrew was a spoken language in Palestine in second temple and rabbinic times remains a disputed question. It is likely that many of the people used" Aramaic. As a result of the influence of the Arameans, knowledge of the Aramaic language became widespread among the political elite of Judea even in pre-exilic times (2 Kings 18:26). By the fourth or third century B.C.E. it became a literary language for the Jews (Dan. 2-7, Tobit, Enoch) and would so remain until the Middle Ages. By the first century B.C.E. it was used for the translation and paraphrase of scripture. In rabbinic times, from the third century C.E. onward in! both Palestine and Babylonia, Aramaic was the language of both scholars and boors, and was used for Bible translations and legal discussions, synagogue homilies and prayers, popular storytelling and magical incantations. The survival and later efflorescence of Hebrew and Aramaic are sometimes taken as proof that the Jews of Palestine both before and after 70 C.E. resisted the blandishments of Hellenism. There is some truth to this generalization, but we must avoid both simplification and exaggeration. Language certainly is a critical part of human identity, but the fact that some Jews continued their use of a Semitic language hardly proves that they sought to separate themselves from the culture of the world around them. The Jews were not the only people of the Near East to preserve their ancestral language. The centuries that witnessed the height of rabbinic creativity also witnessed 'the birth of Armenian, Coptic, and Syriac literatures, all of which were heavily imbued with Greek ideas. The Greek language, then, is neither a necessary nor a sufficient criterion for Hellenization. Philosophy and Way of Life       All the Jews of antiquity were "Hellenized" to some degree. All shared in the material culture of the larger world and all were exposed to the Greek language. But usually the term "Hellenization" involves more than just pots, pans, and language. It involves the way of thought and way of life To what extent did the Jews of antiquity adopt and adapt the ideas and practices of the world around them? How did they reconcile the truths of their tradition with the truth of contemporary culture?Some Jews in both Israel and the diaspora sought to obliterate all distinctions between themselves and the gentiles. These Jews are usually called "apostates" (rebels). Their reasons were diverse. Some, hoping to make a career in the civil service, felt that their Judaism was an obstacle in their path. The most spectacular example of this type is Tiberius Julius Alexander, the nephew of Philo, who abandoned his Judaism for the sake of a government career. He succeeded brilliantly; he was in turn procurator of Judea, prefect of Alexandria, and a member of Titus' general staff during the siege of Jerusalem. Some apostates were motivated by the desire to partake fully of the delights of Hellenistic civilization. Particularly onerous in their' eyes were the laws that prevented social and sexual intercourse between Jew and gentile. They wanted to "belong." Others were "uprooted intellectuals" who could accept the truths of Greek philosophy but had difficulty accepting the truths of Judaism. In a polytheistic world they could not believe in monotheism, in a sociality that revered philosophy they could not accept revelation, and ma universal culture they could not remain distinct. These three categories of apostasy are not mutually exclusive. Sometimes it is hard to determine precisely which motives were operative in any given case, indeed, sometimes it is hard to determine whether the term "apostate" is appropriate at all.       During the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes a group of Jews known to modem scholarship as "the extreme Hellenizers" tried to remove the distinctive characteristics of Judaism and to make it indistinguishable from other forms of Semitic-Hellenistic polytheism. Their program was to "go and make a covenant with the Gentiles round about us, for since we separated from them many evils have come upon us" (I Mace. 1:11). Whether they were motivated primarily by social, economic, political, religious, or economic desires is difficult to determine. The adherents of the Maccabean interpretation of these events had no doubt, however, that these Jews were sinners and rebels. But it is likely that these Jews, who included many priests, high priests, and aristocrats, were attempting not to destroy Judaism but to reform it. Two centuries later in Alexandria Philo describes a group of "extreme allegorists" who argued that the laws of the Torah, including the laws of circumcision and forbidden foods, were meant to be observed not literally but allegorically (an interpretation that would find its way into some elements of early Christianity). These Jews obviously believed that they were remaining loyal to the Torah all the while they were not observing its laws in the normally accepted fashion, but Philo castigates them. Like the "extreme Hellenizers," they too were attempting to remove the distinctive characteristics of Judaism. The number of apostates in Jewish antiquity, if we exclude the Jewish Christians and the Christian Jews, was never very large. Both in the diaspora and in Israel, even in rabbinic times, there were always some Jews who were prepared to obliterate the distinction between Jew and gentile, and between Judaism and Hellenistic culture. Universalist trends had always existed in Judaism, even in pre-exilic times, especially in intellectual circles. The "Wisdom Literature " of the Bible (Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes) completely ignores the distinctive elements of Israelite cult, history, and theology, freely draws upon the wisdom literature of the ancient East, especially Egypt; and emphasizes the common morality and ethics applicable to all peoples. Thought of this type had an enormous influence on later Jewish writers, including Philo and the rabbinic author of Chapters of the Fathers (who omits nearly all distinctively Jewish practices). Other universalist trends in ancient Judaism will be discussed below. But the universalism of these apostates was different from the universalism of the Wisdom school and the other Jewish philosophers, because the apostates actualized their universalism and surrendered their Jewish identity. For the vast majority of Jews this was not an acceptable response to the challenges of the Hellenistic world.       For most Jews the ideal solution was to create a synthesis between Judaism and Hellenism. The rabbis expressed this beautifully in a comment inspired by Genesis 9:27, "May the beauty of Japheth (= the Greeks) dwell in the tents of Shem ( = the Jews)."4 Since the definition of Hellenism is complex and elusive, as I discussed above, the statement that the Jews were influenced by Hellenistic culture or that they "borrowed" this or that idea from Hellenism does not necessarily imply that they consciously and purposefully imported material from abroad. For some Jews, especially in the diaspora, the adaptation of Judaism to contemporary culture was a conscious process. For others it was not. Sometimes it is hard to determine whether a phenomenon that appears in both Judaism and other forms of Hellenistic culture is to be attributed to the "influence" of the one upon the other or to parallel development. As a participant group in Hellenistic culture, the Jews gave and received. What the Jews gave I shall discuss in the next section. Here I shall discuss what the Jews received, as well as developments in Judaism that are paralleled by developments elsewhere in Hellenistic culture.       Many scholars have noted that the religions and philosophies of the Hellenistic period share a concern for the individual whereas the religions and philosophies of classical Greece centered more upon the polis, the collective. The same development can be seen in the Judaism of the Hellenistic period (see chapter 3). The concern for the fate of the individual in both this world and the next, the elaboration of a system of requirements for the individual to follow (prayer, Torah study, performance of the commandments, etc.), and the creation of new social structures in which the individual figures prominently (school, synagogue, and sect)-all these developments attest to the new ethos in Judaism, an ethos closely paralleled by, and perhaps derived from, Hellenistic culture.       Much of the Jewish literature of the Hellenistic period follows Greek literary forms and/or the canons of Greek taste (see chapter 6). This fact is not particularly surprising for works written in Greek in the diaspora, but it is no less true for many of the works written in Hebrew or Aramaic in the land of Israel. The book of Judith, originally written in Hebrew, is a typical Greek novella or romance, complete with a heroine in distress, narrow escapes, and a happy ending. The Genesis Apocryphon, an elaboration in Aramaic of the stories of Genesis, employs Hellenistic literary techniques to dress up its narrative (warning dreams, the pathos of the hero). One member of the Maccabean circle in Jerusalem wrote an epic poem in Greek, apparently paraphrasing the Bible5. The commentary form which is first attested in the Qumran scrolls and later was to play such an important role in rabbinic culture, also is of Hellenistical origin. All of these works are fiercely loyal to Jewish tradition, but all of them are expressions of Greek literary taste. The beauty of Japheth did indeed reside in the tents of Shem.       I turn now from the form of the literature to its content. No area of Hellenistic culture influenced the Jews as much as philosophy. The God of the Hebrew Bible is very different from the supreme God of Plato or Aristotle. The former is a anthropomorphic being capable of anger, joy, and other emotions, who create the world and continues to direct human affairs. The God of the philosophers, however, was a much less human and much more abstract figure, incapable of emotion, and far removed from the daily concerns of humanity (see chapter. 3). Many Jews tried to combine these two conceptions, or, more precisely, to reinterpret the _God of the B1b~e in the light of the ideas of the philosophers, especially Plato. In his numerous essays on the Torah, Philo tried to demonstrate that the God of Judaism was very like the God of Plato, and that the stories of Genesis were not mere amusing diversions but hid profound philosophical truths. This approach to scripture was developed even further by Origen, Ambrose, and other fathers of the church, but its first great exponent was Philo and its origins reach back to Alexandrian Jewry of the third century B.C.E.       The impact of "philosophy" upon Judaism went much deeper than the exegetical essays of Philo. Much of the Jewish thinking on the questions of fate, free will, immortality, and divine providence was influenced by, or at least was expressed m, the terminology of Greek philosophy. Many authors, even those of a decidedly non-philosophic character like Josephus), present Judaism as a philosophy," a system of practice and thought that cultivated pagans could appreciate and admire. These writers emphasize those aspects of Judaism which we call "ethics" and "morality," arguing either implicitly or explicitly that the ideal way of life recommended by Greek legislators and thinkers had been put into practice by only one people, the Jews.       The interaction with the Hellenistic world was not limited to the realm of ideas. In the public sphere Jewish life not only in the diaspora but also in the land of Israel was radically transformed by the building of cities and by the creation of new urban elites. Adopting a page from Greek political theory Judah the Maccabee had the people declare by acclamation that Hanukkah was to be celebrated annually in commemoration of the great victory over Epiphanes. A generation later Simon the Maccabee had himself declared the high priest through acclamation. In Greek political theory the power to declare festivals, appoint priests, etc., was vested in the people (the demos), but such an idea was completely foreign to Judaism. The Maccabees, the alleged opponents of foreign ways, adopted a Hellenistic practice for their own ends. By Roman times the chief judicial body of the land was known by a Greek name (synedrion, or, in Hebrew pronunciation, Sanhedrin) and perhaps was modeled on a Greek or Roman institution.       Private life too was enriched by Hellenistic social forms. Schools, clubs, and associations were common features in the social and civic life of the Hellenistic world, including the social and civic life of the Jews (see chapter 4). The impact of the new ways is evident too in some of the most basic social f6rms. According to the custom in force in pre-exilic times, a custom that was almost universal in the Semitic East, a groom "buys" his bride from his prospective father in-law by tendering a "bride-price." Already in the third century B.C.E. the Jews began to follow the Greek practice (shared by the Romans) according to which a groom receives money or goods (a dowry) from his father-in-law in advance of the marriage. The shift from bride-price to dowry may well be connected with other major developments (for example, the shift from polygamy to monogamy) that may have been occasioned by the entrance of the Jews into Hellenistic society. Conclusion       "To Hellenize or not to Hellenize" was not a question the Jews of antiquity had to answer. They were given no choice. The questions that confronted them were "how?" and "how far?" How should Judaism adapt itself to meet the new conditions of the age? How far could Judaism go in absorbing foreign ways and ideas before it was untrue to itself and lost its identity? These were the questions which the Jews of antiquity had to answer, and they answered them in numerous and diverse ways. Some were prepared to become "apostates" by abandoning all those beliefs and practices which made Judaism distinctive. Others in response adopted an anti-Hellenistic stance, but their rhetoric cannot mask their willingness to follow Hellenistic ways as long as those ways did not threaten Judaism. Even if the majority of Jews agreed that the golden mean was best, the diversity of their responses indicates that the precise definition of this golden mean remained elusive. Social: Jews and Gentiles       The Jews of both the diaspora and the land of Israel had an uneasy relationship with their environment. For the most part they were willing to support the state and to partake of the cultural bounty of the Hellenistic world, but they were unwilling to surrender their identity. They wished to "belong" but at the same time to remain distinct. Support for the state was not to be confused with the abnegation of nationalist dreams. Hellenization was not to be confused with assimilation. This tension is also evident in the social relations between Jews and gentiles. Anti-Judaism and "Anti-Semitism"       In order to maintain their distinctiveness and identity most Jews of the ancient world sought to separate themselves from their gentile neighbors. In the cities of the East they formed their own autonomous ethnic communities, each with its own officers, institutions, and regulations (see chapter 4). Some cities, notably Alexandria and Rome, had neighborhoods inhabited mostly by Jews. (These were not "ghettos" but "ethnic neighborhoods.") Following the lead of Ezra, the Jews of the second temple period grew more and more intolerant of marriages with foreigners. Even Philo admired the zeal of Phineas, who killed an Israelite chieftain for consorting publicly with a Midianite woman (Num. 25). The Jews also buried their dead separately, thus maintaining separation from gentiles in death as in life. They refused to participate in public ceremonies that involved worship either of the pagan gods or of the emperor; in other words, they refused to participate in practically all the communal events of ancient society. The pagan empires tolerated this behavior; Julius Caesar even exempted the Jews from appearing in court on the Sabbath and from serving in the army. In the poly-ethnic Hellenistic and Roman empires, national distinctiveness and loyalty to ancestral customs were not unusual, but the Jews carried their separateness to unusual lengths. In particular, the refusal of the Jews t? participate in any religious ceremony, including emperor worship, was unparalleled, because the Jews alone of all the peoples of antiquity were monotheists who believed in a jealous God.       But their exclusiveness and separation did not prevent the Jews from seeking civic equality with their gentile neighbors. During the first century of our era severe disturbances broke out in Alexandria, Caesarea (in Israel), Antioch (in Syria), and several cities of western Asia Minor (modern Turkey). The details behind these events are obscure, but most scholars agree that the Jewish communities of these places antagonized certain elements of the local population by demanding both tolerance and equality. They asked that the city continue to recognize their autonomous communal organization while also extending them the rights of citizenship. (These rights included a certain degree of political power, various tax advantages, and increased prestige.) The city refused. "If the Jews wish to be Alexandrians, let them worship the gods of the Alexandrians" was the reply, and the battle was joined. In Alexandria the troubles first erupted in 38 C.E. There was a virtual war between the Jews and the pagan mob of the city. Synagogues were desecrated, Jewish shops and homes were pillaged, and many Jews were killed. The situation did not quiet down until 41 C.E., when the emperor Claudius declared that the Jews should not seek more than their due. But the tension between the Jews and Alexandrians continued to fester and broke out anew (not only in Alexandria but in cities throughout Palestine and Syria) in 66 C.E. on the eve of the great rebellion. In Alexandria and Cyrene it reached its climax in the war of 115-117 C.E. In order to support their position the opponents of the Jews, especially in Alexandria, resorted to anti-Jewish propaganda. Their leader, Apion, wrote a book which attacked the Jews on three fronts. First, he contended that the history of the Jews demonstrates that they are an ignoble lot with an ignoble; history. In particular, Apion said, the exodus from Egypt was really an expulsion, since the Israelites were lepers, and the Pharaoh threw them out so that they would not infect the people and shrines of Egypt. Second, the Jews are not, never were, and have no right to be Alexandrian citizens. Third, the Jewish religion is not a religion at all but, at best, an agglomeration of silly superstitions, and, at worst, a conspiracy aimed at Greeks and at all those who share Greek values. In particular, Apion said, when Antiochus Epiphanes entered the temple in Jerusalem he discovered that the Jews annually hold a festival at which they slaughter a Greek youth, especially fattened for the occasion, and eat his corpse while swearing fearsome oaths of hostility toward all Greeks. (A slightly different version of this accusation, known as the "blood libel," was later raised by the Romans against the Christians and, in the twelfth century, by Christians against Jews.)       How is this ferocious outburst against the Jews to be explained? To dismiss it as "anti-Semitism" will not work, because "anti-Semitism" did not exist in antiquity. This term was coined in the middle of the nineteenth century by a German writer who wished to bestow "scientific" respectability upon the hatred of Jews by arguing that Jews and Germans belonged to different species of humanity ("races"). But the ancients did not have anything resembling a racial theory. They observed that Ethiopians were dark skinned and that Germans were pale skinned. They further observed that different nations had different moral characteristics, both good and bad (Egyptians are superstitious, Arabs are thieves, Greeks are fast-talking tricksters, and so on), but neither the Greeks nor the Romans ever explained these differences by appeal to what we would call a racial theory. They argued instead that climate, soil, and water determine both the physical and moral characteristics of nations. Therefore the notion of anti-Semitism" is inappropriate to antiquity, even if many of the motifs and arguments of the anti-Jewish literature of antiquity are familiar from their subsequent reuse in the "anti-Semitism" of the medieval and modem worlds. Furthermore, the social and economic tensions that produced the virulent anti-Semitism of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Europe did not exist in antiquity. There were no "nation-states" in antiquity in which the Jews were an inassimilable foreign element. The Jews of antiquity had a variegated economic life in both the diaspora and the land of Israel. They were farmers, laborers, artisans, soldiers, etc. Most of them, like the vast majority of the people of antiquity, were very poor. Not a single ancient text says or implies that the Jews are hated or feared because of their economic power. Money lending was still centuries in the future, and the rise of the Jewish middle classes did not begin until the nineteenth century.       Finally, an unmistakable component of modem anti-Semitism is its theological justification developed by Christianity. But the pagans of antiquity had no reason to believe that the Jews were cursed by the gods or were in league with the devil. When they accused the Jews of atheism, they were objecting to the fact that the Jews refused to worship the pagan gods. Although they may have despised Judaism, the Greeks and Romans respected its exclusiveness as an ancestral usage that the Jews themselves were not free to change. The Christians too were accused of atheism, and since they could not defend their refusal by appeal to ancestral custom, they were persecuted. But when the Christians accused the Jews of being "Chris killers" and of denying the Trinity, they meant something much more serious. In their eyes the Jews were cursed by God, doomed to hell, and denied salvation in the hereafter, concepts that are foreign to the perception of Judaism by pagans.       In sum, "anti-Semitism" did not exist in antiquity, but "anti-Judaism" did. "Anti-Judaism" was the consequence of political strife between the Jews and their neighbors in both Palestine and the diaspora. The revolt of the Maccabees against the Seleucid empire marks the entrance of the Jews into the rough-and-tumble world of the politics of the Hellenistic world. Before that point, most of the references to Jews in pagan literature are favorable. In the fourth and third centuries B.C.E. many pagans thought that the Jews were a race of "philosophers," like the Brahmans of India. After the rise of the Maccabees the literary tradition becomes ambivalent. Positive evaluations persist, especially of Judaism's avoid ance of images in worship, but negative voices predominate. In order to justify his attack on the temple Antiochus Epiphanes had his "propaganda bureau" attempt to prove that the Jewish temple was not a real temple and that the Jewish religion was not a real religion. Many of the anti-Jewish stories first circulated by the Seleucid government were reused centuries later by Apion to justify his opposition to the Jews of Alexandria and by Tacitus (a Roman historian of the early second century c.E.) to justify the destruction of the temple in 70 C.E. Although \he persecution of Judaism by Epiphanes, the attack on Alexandrian Jewry by the pagan mob, and the destruction of the temple by Titus were each caused by local factors and not by some deep-rooted anti Judaism, nevertheless, the literary propaganda spawned by these conflicts helped shape the "anti-Semitic" image of the Jew of later generations. Philo-Judaism       We shall err badly, however, if we imagine that all social relations between Jews and gentiles were characterized by "clannishness" on the part of the Jews and anti Judaism on the part of the gentiles. The period from the middle of the second century B.C.E. to the first part of the second century C.E. (approximately from the Maccabees to Bar Kokhba), which witnessed the growth of political and literary hostility toward the Jews, also witnessed the development of admiration and veneration for many Jewish rituals and ideas. It was the age of philo-Judaism as well as anti-Judaism, of conversion to Judaism as well as hatred of Judaism. Although the Jews sought to keep themselves separate and distinct, they also were eager to accept and retain gentile converts. Indeed, some of the anti-Jewish literature of this period is motivated (in addition to the political motives just discussed) by a desire to discourage conversion to Judaism. The literature that evinces a dislike of Judaism paradoxically confirms Judaism's powerful attraction. Conversion to Judaism       The Hebrew Bible is not familiar either with the prohibition of intermarriage or with the conversion of gentiles to Judaism. Deuteronomy 7:1-4 prohibits the marriage of Israelites with the seven Canaanite nations; other nations, apparently (except perhaps those listed in Deut. 23:2-9), were not included in the prohibition. Leviticus is not familiar with any such prohibition, even for Canaanites. Upon his return from Babylonia in 458 B.C.E. Ezra tried to compel the priests and nobles of Jerusalem to divorce their foreign wives, whose abominable ways resembled those of the Canaanites (Ezra 9: I), but it is not until the Maccabean period that a general prohibition is attested. The explanation for this development is not the sudden irruption of intolerance and "particularism" into the Jewish psyche, but the new social setting of the community. In pre-exilic times, when the Israelites were a nation living on their own land with their own king, they had nothing to fear from an occasional intermarriage with foreigners. The Canaanites, who still lived in substantial numbers on the land, were the sole group that was prohibited (according to Deuteronomy), because it was the sole group that posed a threat to Israelite identity. (Of course, according to Judg. 3:5-6 many Israelites married Canaanites anyway.) The primary ingredient in Israelite identity was nationality, that is, birth (nation in Latin). Even if many Israelites condemned intermarriage as something improper (Judge 14:3), it was never outlawed, and the children of intermarriages were never expelled from the community. In pre-exilic times "conversion" to Judaism did not yet exist because birth is immutable. An Ammonite or an Aramean could no more become an Israelite in pre-exilic times than an American can become a citizen of Liechtenstein in our own. Mere. residency in the land does not confer citizenship, and a social system which defines a citizen solely as the child of a citizen has no legal mechanism by which to assimilate a foreigner. Biblical law frequently refers to "resident aliens" (gerim in Hebrew) who are grouped with the widow, the orphan, and the Levite. All of these are Iand less and powerless, and all are the potential victims of abuse. (An American analogy to the ger is the Chicano farm worker; a European analogy is the Turkish laborer in Germany.) The Bible no-where states how a ger might ameliorate his status and become equal to the native born, because there was no legal institution by which a foreigner could be absorbed by a tribal society living on its ancestral land. Resident aliens in the cities of pre-Hellenistic Greece fared no better.       The exile of 587 B.C.E., however, brought in its wake the destruction of the old order. The tribal structure was gone; the Jews who returned from Babylon to Judea were organized as clans, not tribes. Their ritual classification was "Priest, Levite, and Israelite," the classification that has endured in Judaism to this day. Land owner ship was no longer tied to membership in a tribe. Many Jews, of course, did not return at all, but remained in Babylonia. Within a few centuries the diaspora in the East was complemented by an extensive diaspora in the West. Political autonomy was lost. In this new setting the old conception of Israelite nationhood no longer made sense. The Jews began to redefine themselves as a religion, and it was Judaism, not the religion of pre-exilic Israel, that prohibited intermarriage but permitted conversion. The transition is clearly under way by the period of Ezra and is more or less complete by the period of the Maccabees. Ezra attempted to expel from the Jerusalem community approximately one hundred thirteen foreign women and the children whom they had borne to their Jewish husbands. Several texts of the Maccabean period (notably Jubilees 30) speak of intermarriage as a capital crime. One Roman historian writing about the year 100 C.E. remarks that the Jews refrain from intercourse with foreign women. Although we may be sure that many Jews, especially in the diaspora, did intermarry, most Jews did not. As Philo explained, basing his remarks on Deuteronomy 7:3-4, intermarriage leads to impiety and disloyalty to God. Intermarriage was a threat to the religious community.       But these centuries saw the creation of an institutionalized method for the admixture of gentiles. Ezra was still unfamiliar with the notion of "conversion," but some of his contemporaries were discussing the idea. One prophet assured the "foreigners who join themselves to the Lord, to minister to him, to love the name of the Lord, and to be his servants" that they would not be excluded from the rebuilt temple but would be gathered to God's people (Isa. 56:6-8). Several prophets predicted that in the end of days foreigners would join in the worship of the true God in Jerusalem, either as servants of the Israelites or as independent worshipers. One prophet declared that the resident aliens "will join them [the Israelites] and will cleave to the house of Jacob" (Isa. 14:1); another even predicted that some gentiles would become priests and Levites (Isa. 66:21)!       In the Maccabean period these visions of the end began to influence the behavior of the Jews and gentiles in this world. The book of Judith, a romance written, or at least redacted, during the second century B.C.E., describes the conversion of an Ammonite general toJudaism: "And when Achior saw all that the God of Israel had done [to protect his people], he believed firmly in God, and was circumcised, and joined the house of Israel, remaining so to this day" Uudith 14:10). Here are all the essential elements of conversion to Judaism: belief in God, circumcision, and joining the house of Israel. I shall discuss each of these elements separately.       Belief in God (and denial of other gods). In the Bible various foreigners, impressed by the might of the God of Israel, bless God or otherwise acknowledge his suzerainty. Even generals and kings of foreign nations revere the Lord, but these are not cases of conversion." None of these gentiles joins the house of Israel.",None swears exclusive loyalty to the God of Israel. "Conversion" means a "turning around," a spiritual reorientation, a denial of the past and a pledge for the future. The convert to Judaism denies his foreign gods and accepts the God of Israel as the only true God (and, according to the rabbis, acknowledges the truth and binding authority of the Torah). None of the biblical figures (except, perhaps, for Naaman in 2 Kings 5) promises exclusive loyalty to God; rather, they poly-theistically add the God of Israel to their list of gods. This is not true conversion.       Circumcision and baptism. The central ritual for conversion was circumcision . This practice, quite common in the ancient Orient (Jer. 9:24-25), figures prominently .in only a few sections of the Bible, notably Genesis 17 (the institution of circumcision, including the requirement that all acquired slaves must be circumcised), Genesis 34 (the rape of Dinah and the massacre of Schechem), Exodus 4:24-26 (the incident of Moses, Zipporah, and the angel), and Exodus 12:43-49 and Joshua 5:2-11 (the celebration of the Passover sacrifice). All of these passages assign some unusual importance to circumcision, but the Bible as a whole generally 'ignores it andnowhere regards it as the essential mark of Jewish identity or as thesine qua non for membership in the Jewish polity. It attained this status only in Maccabean times. Some of the extreme Hellenizers of the Maccabean period, ,in their zeal to remove Jewish distinctiveness, tried to hide their circumcision (other Jews tried to do the same in the time of the Bar Kokhba war). For the Maccabees circumcision was such an essential component of Jewish identity that upon conquering various sections of the holy land they compelled the inhabitants to follow Jewish customs, a demand that meant first and foremost circumcision. The Greek version of the book of Esther, completed about 114 B.C.E. by a resident of Jerusalem, understands the phrase "and many from the peoples of the country declared themselves Jews" (Esth. 8:17) to mean that the gentiles "were circumcised." By the end of the first century B.C.E. circumcision was widely known to the Greeks and Romans as a typically (though not exclusively) Jewish practice. For Paul circumcision represents subjugation to the demands of the Torah.       Were there any other rituals that signaled the entry of a gentile into the people of Israel? According to rabbinic law, transmitted in the name of authorities who lived in the second century C.E., a convert must also be immersed in water (in Christian terminology, be "baptized") and must offer a sacrifice at the temple. The same rabbinic authorities insist that the convert's inability to bring a sacrifice after the destruction of the temple in 70 C.E. does not impair his or her Jewishness, however. The convert merely incurs an obligation that will have to be satisfied in the messianic future. According to rabbinic law, then, in the second temple period the ritual requirements for conversion were three: circumcision, immersion, and sacrifice. The first of these applied only to men, the latter two applied to both men and women. The major problem raised by this rabbinic tradition is that no text from the second temple period knows o( immersion and sacrifice as rituals of conversion. The baptism that figures so prominently in certain portions of the New Testament obviously bears some relationship to the immersion for converts, but the precise nature of that relationship has been debated endlessly by scholars. The fact that gentile converts to Christianity were baptized is the strongest argument for the view that gentile converts to Judaism must have been baptized already in the first century. A pagan writer living about the year 100 C.E. also is aware that Jews baptize their converts (or does the writer have Christian Jews in mind?)7. All in all, it seems most likely that baptism/immersion was part of the conversion process in at least some Jewish circles in Palestine by the first century of our era. Whether the baptism was initiatory, purificatory, or some combination of the two, remains unclear.       Not all Jews of the first century recognized baptism/immersion as a ritual of conversion, and we have no evidence that any Jew of the first century considered a sacrifice at the temple to be the culmination of the conversion ceremony. If, then, neither baptism/immersion nor sacrifice was generally a part of the conversion process, what ritual served to demarcate the change of status of a female convert? Was there a rite of passage by which a woman born a gentile became a Jew? Apparently not. In pre-exilic times, women "conversion" did not exist for either man or woman, a foreign woman was assimilated into the community through marriage with an Israelite husband. Solomon may have sinned by marrying foreign wives but no one suggested that they should be divorced or that his children were not members of the people of Israel. In fact, Solomon's successor was his son Rehoboam, the offspring of an Ammonite woman. In the first century of our era Josephus still adheres to the same system: intermarriage is prohibited, but if a Jewish man marries a non-Jewish woman she joins his house and bears him legitimate children. Marriage with a Jew was the.de facto equivalent of conversion for a woman. Non-marital conversion for a woman, in those communities where baptism/immersion was not yet practiced, meant apparently the simple fact that a woman observed Jewish practices. Rabbinic texts of the second and third centuries are the earliest references to conversion rituals for women.       Joining the house of Israel The third element in Achior's conversion to Judaism was his acceptance into the community. He joined the house of Israel, remaining so until this day" (Judith 14:10). Acceptance by the Jewish community is essential if conversion is to be something other than a theological abstraction, but the social mechanisms that effected this acceptance in antiquity are obscure. Presumably the convert became a "member" of the synagogue or the community. If the sources tell us nothing about this Process, at least they tell us something about the attitudes of native-born Jews toward converts and conversion. Attitudes toward converts. In the second temple period there are few traces of either opposition to conversion or disdain for converts. One text from Qumran asserts that converts will be barred from the temple to be built in Jerusalem in the messianic future. (A parallel rabbinic law excludes the convert from the entire city of Jerusalem.) The opponents of Herod the Great called him a ''half Jew" because he was a descendant of the Idumeans, who had been forcibly converted to Judaism by the Maccabees. Does this sneer prove disdain for all converts and their descendants or is it merely a statement of opposition to Herod? Probably the latter. The Idumeans looked upon themselves as Jews and participated (along with the descendants of other converts ) in the great war against the Romans. Philo has gene.ous praise for converts, because they abandon their former people and way of life in order to join a new people and follow a new way. Many Jews regarded converts so highly that they actively propagated Judaism among the gentiles in order to increase the number of the faithful, a phenomenon which I shall discuss below.       Rabbinic texts are full of sentiments in favor of converts. The convert is equal to the native-born Jew "in all respects," the rabbis say. Many homilies begin with phrases like "Beloved are converts in the eyes of God." However, other rabbinic texts assert that the convert can never be fully equal to the native born because, like Ralph Rackstraw of H.M.S. Pinafore, he lacks birth. A gentile can convert to Judaism by accepting the God and Torah of the Jews, but he can never become an "Israelite." One Mishnah declares (Bikkurim 1:4) that a convert in his prayers ought not to say "Our God and God of our fathers," because the God of the Jews was not the God of his fathers. He ought instead to say "Our God and God of their fathers." This law was ultimately rejected, but it reflects a deeply held view about converts. Some rabbis were not comfortable with the entire idea of conversion. Others pointed to cases of recidivism or irreligiosity. In the Middle Ages this negative attitude came to prevail. In ancient times, however, the rabbinic views were much more balanced, with the positive outnumbering the negative. A gentile who fully and faithfully converted to Judaism encountered only minimal disabilities in rabbinic society. "God-Fearers"       Conversion to Judaism entails three elements: belief in God (and denial of pagan gods), circumcision (and immersion/baptism), and integration into the Jewish community. Many gentiles, both men and women, converted to Judaism during the last centuries B.C.E. and the first two centuries C.E. Even more numerous, however, were those gentiles who accepted certain aspects of Judaism but did not convert to it. In polytheistic fashion they added the God of Israel to their pantheon and did not deny the pagan gods. Throughout the Roman empire various practices of Judaism found favor with large segments of the populace. In Rome many gentiles observed the Sabbath, the fasts, and the food laws; in Alexandria many gentiles observed the Jewish holidays; in Asia Minor many gentiles attended synagogue on the Sabbath. Although these gentiles observed any number of Jewish practices and venerated in one form or another the God of the Jews, they did not see themselves as Jews and were not seen by others as Jews. One Jewish practice they studiously avoided was circumcision. They resemble the pagans of the pre-exilic period who feared the Lord but who never changed their identity. In pre-exilic times conversion was not yet an option; in late second temple times it was an option, but these gentiles did not wish to exercise it. The book of Acts calls these people "those who fear" (phoboumenoi) or "those who venerate" (sebomenoi) the Lord (Acts 13:16, 26; 16:14; 17:4, 17; 18:7). Modern scholars call them sympathizers" or "semi-proselytes," but these terms lack ancient attestation and are best avoided.       Those who see Judaism and Hellenism as discrete entitles are perplexed by the phenomenon of the "God-fearers." some have even questioned their existence. After all, how can a gentile become a "little bit Jewish"? And why would he or she want to? The explanation is to be sought in the other conception of Hellemsm discussed above. Many Greeks and Romans adopted the gods. (for example, Isis, Cybele, Mithras, Jupiter Dolichen us),,and practices .of various "barbarian" nations, without "converting or losing their identity. Similarly, thinking that the God of the Jews was like the god of other nations, they added him to their pantheon. They observed the Sabbath much as they would the sacred days of other peoples. They frequented the synagogues of the Jews. much as they would the temples of other foreign gods. The motives for this behavior were many and diverse, and need not be invested here; this is the domain of the historians of the Roman empire.       Rather than look upon "God-fearers" as gentiles interested in Judaism, perhaps we should see in the phenomenon the contribution of Judaism to the cultural mix we. call Hellemstic. Pagan culture provides various analogies to Jewish ideas and practices (for example, many philosophers! rejected polytheism and the cult of images; Stoic ethics closely resemble rab?m1c ethics; m the first centuries of our era burial replaced cremation as the most common means of disposing of the dead), but none of these is the product of Jewish influence. But throng? the “God-fearers" Judaism had a clear and distinctive impact on its environment. Observance of the Sabbath and holidays, attendance at synagogue, and the veneration of God, were parts of Hellenistic culture.       The phenomenon of "God-fearers”. implies another important point as well. Ancient Judaism was visible and open to outsiders. Gentiles were able to enter synagogues and witness the Jewish observances. Josephus insists that Judaism has no mysteries, no. secret that it keeps hidden from curious observer (Against Afnon 2 .8,, 107). This claim is not entirely true, but 1t 1s essenually correct. Some Jews even engaged in "missionary" work. The Phansees travel about the land and the sea in order to make even one proselyt; (the Greek word. for convert to Judaism; Matt. 23:15). Josephus narrates that in the middle of the first century C.E. the royal house of the kingdom of Adiabene became Jewish under the. tutelage of itinerant Jewish merchants. Several winters from the city of Rome refer to the eagerness of the Jews to win gentiles to their side. There is no evidence for an organized Jewish mission to the gentiles, but individuals seem to have engaged in this activity on their own Some scholars have suggested that much of the Jewish literature written in Greek had as its goal the propagation of Judaism among the gentiles, since the literature often emphasizes those elements of Judaism which would make it attractive to outsiders. Of course, those elements which make Judaism attractive to outsiders are precisely those which also strengthen its hold on insiders, and it is impossible to tell whether the literature was written in order to attract gentiles to Judaism or to encourage Jews to stay within the fold. In any case, during the first century C.E. at least some Jews were trying to attract converts and "God-fearers."       Even after the destruction of the temple in 70 C.E., the decimation of Alexandrian Jewry in 115-117 C.E., and the Bar Kokhba disaster of 132'-135 c.E.,Judaism remained attractive to outsiders. Gentiles were still eager to buy the spiritual wares of the Jews. Perhaps because of the growth of Christianity pagan philosophers began for the first time to treat Judaism seriously as a philosophical system, and some of them liked what they found. "What is Plato if not Moses speaking Attic Greek?" was the remarkable observation of one NeoPlatonist8. Judaism contributed its God and its angels to the religious syncretism of the second to fifth centuries. But pagans were not the only "God-fearers" during these centuries. Many Christians, generally called ''.Judaizers" by modern scholarship, were drawn to Jewish practices. For some of these Christians Judaism was attractive became of Christianity. Through Christianity they learned the Jewish scriptures and became familiar with Jewish observances. Many Christian groups, for example, insisted that Easter must coincide with the Jewish Passover and that it be celebrated with rites similar to those of the Jewish Passover. Other Christians, however, were really pagan "God-fearers" in disguise. In Antioch in the late fourth century John Chrysostom was shocked that many Christians were doing what pagan "'God-fearers" had been doing in other parts of the empire three centuries previously: they were attending synagogues and observing the Jewish festivals.       In addition to these "God-fearers" of various sorts, converts too testify to the fact that Judaism's power of attraction had not dimmed. Rabbinic literature mentions a dozen or so converts in Palestine and many more than that in Babylonia. The church fathers and pagan writers mention several others. Hadrian's edict against circumcision, one of the causes (or consequences) of the Bar Kokhba war, was rescinded by the following emperor but only for native-born Jews. It was now a violation of law for a gentile to be circumcised. At the end of the same century the Roman emperor outlawed conversion altogether, a prohibition that would be repeated by the Christian emperors of the fourth century (and later). This legislative activity implies that conversions were continuing. Perhaps fewer gentiles than before were converting to Judaism or becoming "God-fearers," but Judaism clearly had not lost its allure.       What did change after 70 C.E. was that Jews, or at least the rabbis, were no longer eager to sell their spiritual wares to the gentiles. The motives of the mission to the gentiles are obscure, but whatever they may have been whether to hasten the messianic deliverance, whether to save souls, whether to garner political support-the rabbis were not interested. They were not active messianists. In their eyes the souls of gentiles did not need to be saved, because all ,righteous gentiles who observe certain basic norms of (what we would call) religion and ethics were guaranteed a share in the world to come. (Not all rabbis subscribed to this ecumenical view, but even those who did not felt no moral obligation to convert the heathen.) Perhaps (and this is the common explanation) the rabbis saw the growing power of Christianity and decided not to try to compete with it. Outside of rabbinic circles perhaps some Jews still actively attempted to interest gentiles, especially Christians, in Judaism, but the evidence for such activity is minimal. Conclusion       Throughout the second temple and rabbinic periods the Jews stood in an uneasy relationship with their environment. They learned early on to live under the political dominion of gentile powers and to find a theological justification for this fact, but they always dreamed of their own kingdom. Several times in antiquity the Jews tried to make their dream into reality, but only once with any ,degree of success. The Maccabees successfully turned a war for religious freedom into a war for political independence, but their rule was of limited duration and mixed success. In the cultural sphere the challenge 'l'as much clearer. Hellenistic culture was by its very nature a "melting pot" of ideas and peoples, and some Jews wished to obliterate all the distinctions between themselves and the gentiles among whom they lived. Most Jews, however, tried to fin!l a way to combine the ideas, beliefs, and values of the dominant culture with their own. It was never very easy to define the line that separates the illicit influence which threatens to dilute and destroy Judaism from the licit influence which enriches Judaism and makes it modern. This was the subject of ongoing debate. In the social sphere, the Jews kept themselves apart, prohibiting all marriages with outsiders but allowing gentiles to convert to Judaism. Mirroring this ambiguity was the response of the gentile world. Many gentiles converted to Judaism or became "God-fearers," but others, because of political tensions between the Jews and other elements in their communities, expressed a pointed anti-Judaism.The challenges mounted by the gentile world in the political, cultural, and social spheres were sufficiently distinct so as to permit varied responses to each. A Jew might, say, be quite accommodating in the social sphere, wholeheartedly supporting the ruling power, but quite unyielding in the cultural or social sphere. Ezra, for example, enjoyed the protection of the Persian king and supported the Persian state in return, but opposed intermarriage. The Maccabees, by contrast, rebelled against the state but did not divorce themselves from Hellenistic culture. Some Jews, the extremists, were consistent. The "extreme Hellenizers" who supported Epiphanes wanted to merge Judaism more fully into the Hellenistic world in all three spheres. The revolutionaries of 66-70 C.E. had as their goals the creation of an independent state, the purification of the land of Israel from all foreign contagion, and the separation of Israel from the gentiles. Most Jews, however, were not so consistent. Their goal was not adherence to principle but the perpetuation of Judaism.