Scattered Ramblings on II Maccabees

For my write up today on The Cambridge History of Judaism, Volume Two: The Hellenistic Age, I’ll focus on the book of II Maccabees.

On pages 294-295, Jonathan Goldstein defines a difference between I Maccabees and II Maccabees:

“The author of I Maccabees was an ardent partisan of the Hasmoneans.  He believed that the Hasmonean dynasty was the stock to whom God had granted the privilege of bringing permanent victory to the Chosen People.  Jason of Cyrene, the author of the lost work of which the history in 2 Maccabees is an abridgement, approved of only one Hasmonean, Judas Maccabeus.  As viewed by Jason, the others were incompetent and even wicked.”

On page 529, Paul Hanson states: “A whole group of writings from the period after the Seleucid persecutions is characterized by fidelity to the Torah and orthodoxy in regard to Temple praxis, but is open in varying degrees to Hellenistic forms of expression.  In contrast to Sirach and I Maccabees, this group of writings stands at a greater distance from Sadducean thought, and in closer relation to the mileau of the Pharisees, sometimes explicitly defending their doctrines (for example, resurrection) against the criticism of the Sadducees (compare 2 Maccabees and the Psalms of Solomon).”  My impression of what Hanson is saying is that II Maccabees is closely related to the Pharisees’ mileau, for II Maccabees defends the resurrection.

On page 427, Mathias Delcor goes into the teaching of II Maccabees.  Whereas I Maccabees presents the Hasmonean Mattathias allowing Jews to defend themselves on the Sabbath, II Maccabees affirm that “the holy Law (6:23, 28) cannot be transgressed, even in the interests of legitimate self-defense (5:25; 6:6; 15:3).”  In II Maccabees, heavenly forces take part in the Maccabean struggle, whereas I Maccabees is less extravagant when discussing heavenly intervention.  I wonder how the Sabbath absolutism squares with the Pharisees, for even Jesus acknowledged that the Pharisees allowed people to lift an ox from a ditch on the Sabbath (Luke 14:5), and so at least those Pharisees were not absolutist.

Delcor also states the following about II Maccabees’ teaching:

“The issue in the struggle is in fact one not of this world.  It could be said that what Judas is working toward is the enjoyment of the kingdom of the saints, of which Daniel speaks.  The enjoyment of the good things God has promised is transferred to another world by belief in the resurrection (7:14, 36).  But, while awaiting the achievement of this, all the saints work together for the coming of the kingdom.  Prayer, ritual sacrifice, and the willing sacrifice of one’s own life acquire a significance which is not limited to the present generation (7:32-38; 12:39-45; 15:11-16).”

Is Delcor’s point that II Maccabees is saying that Judas is helping to usher in the eschatological Kingdom of God, or merely that the Jews’ good deeds will receive rewards in the afterlife?  If it’s the former, then how would II Maccabees account for the failure of the Kingdom of God to arrive in the time of Judas?  In terms of the date of II Maccabees, the book ends with the death of the Seleucid general Nicanor, with Judas still being alive.  So was the book written before the death of Judas in battle?  The problem here, for Delcor, is that the book claims to be about Judas and his brothers, and so Delcor thinks that there must be more to II Maccabees than has survived—-presumably narrating the events after the time of Judas.  Delcor dates II Maccabees “towards the end of the second century B.C.E., but earlier than I Maccabees” (page 463), which is after the death of Judas (in 160 B.C.E.).  Was Jason (on whose account II Maccabees was based) a Pharisee?  According to Delcor, we do not know much about Jason, except that “he was a member of the Jewish community in Cyrenaica”, which is in Lybia.  But perhaps II Maccabees came to be prominent in Pharisaic circles, whether or not Jason was a Pharisee.

Delcor states that the rabbis did not care for the Hasmoneans, for the Pharisees opposed John Hyrcanus, and Alexander Janneus crucified many Pharisees.  Hyrcanus ruled in the end of the second century B.C.E., which is when Delcor dates II Maccabees.  That could explain why II Maccabees dislikes the Hasmoneans, with the lone exception of Judas the Maccabee.

The Maccabees and Discerning God’s Will

In my reading of The Cambridge History of Judaism, Volume Three: The Hellenistic Age, a theme that I often encountered was discerning the will of God.  In this post, I’ll be drawing from Jonathan Goldstein’s contribution to the volume, “The Hasmonean revolt and the Hasmonean dynasty”.

Throughout the time of the Maccabean revolt against the Seleucids, there were different opinions among Jews about how they should react to their oppressors.  As Goldstein discusses on page 300, there were many Jews who embraced the revolt, viewing it as God’s will for them to stand up to their oppressors and to resist attacks on their culture (and, on page 295, Goldstein says that the Hasmonean Mattathias admired Phinehas, the biblical character who killed an idolatrous Israelite who intermarried with a pagan).  But others had another point of view.  Some thought that the rebels should offer to cease fighting if the Seleucid official Lysias stopped the persecution.  Others were hesitant to attack the high priest Menelaus, who had collaborated with the Seleucid king Antiochus IV, for they saw him as a leader in Israel.  Still others believed that “God’s sentence of subjection to foreign rulers still stood” (page 300), meaning that God was still punishing Israel with foreign oppression.  In this view, the Maccabees’ revolt against the Seleucids was presumptuous and would not be blessed by God. 

On pages 309-310, Goldstein says that the victory of Judas over the Seleucid general Nicanor convinced Judas and many other pious Jews that “the age of servitude was over”.  But many still did not know what God wanted them to do.  Goldstein states, and I am placing his biblical references in parentheses:

“Even for the Hasmoneans and the majority the course was not clear.  Should they do nothing themselves and wait for God to destroy the illegitimate empire of Demetrius I[, a Seleucid king after Antiochus IV] (Isaiah 30:15)?  Should they, alone of mankind, join in God’s work of destroying the wicked kingdom (Isaiah 63:5)?  Would other nations become allies in God’s work (Isaiah 55:5)?  Surely the hostile neighbors of Judea would never be such allies.  Alliances with the ‘inhabitants of the land’ were forbidden.  Egypt was condemned by the prophets as a broken reed.  The Parthians, however, lay inaccessible across long reaches of Seleucid territory and were not yet an important power.  Rome was now the superpower in the Mediterranean world.  No Graeco-Macedonian kingdom dared to clash with her…Accordingly, the official organs of the Jewish nation, perhaps prompted by Judas and the Hasmonean party, in 161 B.C.E. sent Eupolemus son of John of the priestly clan Hakkoz and Jason son of Eleazar on an embassy to Rome to establish ties of alliance.  The ambassadors succeeded.”

The Jews in the time of the Maccabean revolt were looking to Scripture to determine what God wanted for them to do, and they were presented with a variety of biblical paradigms.  They struggled to discern which paradigm fit them, and they disagreed about this issue.  They also looked at the situation around them to see if there were open doors: who (if anybody) could be their friend in this struggle?  And did God desire for them to form alliances with certain people?

In the aftermath of the Jewish alliance with Rome, Judas Maccabeus was a casualty, for Judas died in battle.  Although I Maccabees implies that Judas’ brothers and comrades “urged him to withdraw and wait for a better day” (page 311), Judas plunged into the fight.  Perhaps he was trusting in an oracle in I Enoch 90:31, which “had predicted that Judas would live to see God’s miraculous triumph” (page 311).  But Judas did not live to see that.  And the response to Judas’ death was yet another attempt to discern the will of God.  According to Goldstein, some Jews probably interpreted Daniel 12:7 (which talks about when “the shattering of the power of the holy people comes to an end”) to mean that Judas’ death would immediately precede the victory of God and of Israel.  But I Maccabees 9:23 reflects that something different actually happened—-that evildoers only flourished after Judas’ death, for they solidified their power and hunted down Hasmoneans, plus a crop failure hurt the rebels.

Sabbath observance was another issue that pertained to the Maccabees and attempts to discern God’s will.  Several Jews chose not to fight on the Sabbath, with the result that they were slaughtered when their enemies attacked them on that day.  Consequently, Mattathias proclaimed that Jews could fight to defend themselves on the Sabbath, and the author of I Maccabees (perhaps in response to critics of Mattathias’ policy) insists that “Mattathias and his son Jonathan enjoyed divine favor after engaging in defensive warfare on the Sabbath” (Goldstein’s words on page 296).

The appeal to the Maccabees’ military successes for validation that they were following God’s will cut both ways, however, for there were struggles to account for how God could allow tragedies and the Maccabees’ military failures.  Sometimes, there really was no good answer. 

Even after the Maccabees succeeded against the Seleucids and inaugurated a period of independence for Israel from foreign oppression, there were still debates about God’s will.  The Hasmonean rulers believed that the time of God’s wrath on Israel was over and that God supported their rule over Israel, but there were a few Jews who were eager to point out that the Hasmoneans were not descendants of David, and so they were not qualified to be rulers of Israel.  Moreover, when the Roman Pompey took Judea for the Romans, that disappointed people who believed that “the age of God’s wrath had ended forever with the heroic Hasmonean liberation of Israel”, for “Now, contrary to the promises at Isaiah 52:1 and Zechariah 9:8, unclean and uncircumcised foreigners and tax-gatherers marched through the Holy Land” (page 349).

Is there a way to discern God’s will?  Or is “discerning God’s will” instead an attempt to make a coherent narrative out of the chaos of life?  Can wisdom still emerge out of the struggle to discern, however?  And when can beliefs about God’s will inhibit wisdom?

Antiochus, Transubstantiation, Edenic Sabbath

1. Source: Isaiah Gafni, “Historical Background,” Jewish Writings of the Second Temple Period, ed. Michael E. Stone (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984) 7-8.

“The change in Seleucid policy may be attributed at least in part to external events. Following the defeat of Antiochus III at the hands of Roman legions in Magdala in 190 B.C.E., and the ensuing peace treaty of Apamea (188), the Seleucid Empire found itself in dire need of funds to pay the tributes forced upon it by Rome. Antiochus III himself was killed while attempting to sack a temple in Elymais (187), and under his successor Seleucus IV (187-175) the Jews of Palestine experienced a similar attempt to extract funds from the Temple of Jerusalem. The event, described in 2 Maccabees 3, reflects not only on predicaments of the Seleucids, but more importantly on the internal developments among the ruling class of Jerusalem. Apparently, elements within the priesthood and particularly the family of Bilga, had joined forced with the Tobiads in an attempt to usurp power from Onias. This new coalition seems to indicate not only a power struggle within the priestly oligarchy, but a cultural clash as well, for it is this element that ultimately carried out (if it did not instigate) the reforms initiated by Antiochus IV in Jerusalem, culminating with religious persecution. [Antiochus also] devoted the first seven years of his reign to plans for the conquest of Ptolemaic Egypt. In this context one can understand the steps taken to ensure a loyal leadership in Judaea, which would necessarily serve as a staging area for the invasion of Egypt.”

This doesn’t explain to me why Antiochus IV persecuted the Jews. Do the ancient sources give us guidance? Some. I Maccabees 1 doesn’t really give a reason for Antiochus‘ activity, as far as I can see. And II Maccabees 5 states that Antiochus invaded Jerusalem to put down Jason’s attack of the city. Antiochus had given the Jewish priesthood to Jason, then to Menelaus. When Jason thought that Antiochus was dead, he (Jason) gathered up some men and attacked Jerusalem. That’s when Antiochus launched his persecution. As far as Antiochus‘ attack of Egypt was concerned, I and II Maccabees present Antiochus as already engaging in that when he decided to go after Jerusalem. So I don’t think he started the persecution to invade Egypt.

So I’m not entirely satisfied with Gafni’s explanation so far, but maybe he’ll go into more detail in the coming pages. Maybe Antiochus was trying to show the Jews who’s boss, hoping to maintain his base of operations in Palestine.

2. Source: Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, Volume II: Ante-Nicene Christianity (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1910) 242.

“Irenaeus says repeatedly, in combatting the Gnostic Docetism, that bread and wine become, by the presence of the Word of God, and by the power of the Holy Spirit, the body and blood of Christ, and that the receiving of them strengthens soul and body (the germ of the resurrection body) unto eternal life. Yet this would hardly warrant our ascribing either transubstantiation or consubstantiation to Irenaeus. For in another place he calls the bread and wine, after consecration, ‘antetypes,’ implying the continued distinction of their substance from the body and blood of Christ.”

Roman Catholics believe that the bread and wine of communion become the literal body and blood of Jesus Christ. What did the second century church fathers teach about this? Schaff documents ambiguity. Ignatius talked as if the elements of communion were the flesh and blood of the Lord. Others, however, tended to view the bread and wine as symbolic. Then there was Irenaeus, who either contradicted himself, or had a nuanced position.

3. Jacob Neusner, Judaism’s Story of Creation: Scripture, Halakhah, Aggadah (Boston: Brill, 2000) 55.

“The Halakhah forms a social system for the sanctification of Israel’s here-and-now, aiming at the salvation of Israel–its ultimate victory over the grave–at the end of days. The basic teleology of the Halakhah aims at the recovery of Eden. It promises the restoration, now within the household of Israel, of the conditions that ought to have prevailed in Eden: the occasion of perfect Repose, sanctified by God’s own action at the instance of the advent of the Sabbath. God has defined the condition for restoring Eden’s Sabbath: sanctifying the Sabbath day at the climax of the week of work.”

Neusner’s argument is not entirely clear to me. For one, I don’t understand why Israel’s system in the here-and-now should have anything to do with victory beyond the grave. Is it solely a matter of earning one’s way into the good afterlife by keeping the Torah, or is there another connection? Second, does the Sabbath restore Eden? Adam and Eve didn’t just rest in the Garden, for they had to dress and keep it. That’s work, right? Neusner says that the Sabbath restores the Edenic Sabbath because Jews don’t create things that are permanent on that day, as God on the original Sabbath rested from his work of creating something long-lasting: the heavens and the earth.

According to Neusner, did the Sages believe that Adam and Eve kept the Sabbath? I wouldn’t be too surprised if such were the case, since there is a rabbinic tradition that God created Adam circumcised, and circumcision (in Judaism) is specifically for Jews. By and large, the rabbis viewed the Sabbath as an Israelite institution, not something for all people, regardless of whether Adam and Eve kept it or not.

Stoic Martyrs

Source: John Sellars, Stoicism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006) 108-109.

“If I am doing my best to be a rational being who is free and independent of others, then I will sometimes have to make choices that may appear not to further my own self-preservation. For instance, if a tyrant threatens to kill me if I do not do certain things that I find objectionable or think to be wrong, then–if I am to preserve myself as a rational being–I should stand up to the tyrant even if this may mean the loss of my life (see e.g. Epictetus, Diss. 1.2). But why? How could getting myself killed possibly contribute to my self-preservation? Well, it may not contribute to my self-preservation in so far as I am merely a living animal, but giving in to the tyrant will equally destroy me as an independent rational being. I may remain biologically alive if I give in to the tyrant, but I will have lost something far more important, having reduced myself to a slave. Thus the Stoic doctrine of self-preservation will, in cases of rational beings–that is, philosophers working towards the ideal of the sage–sometimes lead to choices that may actually threaten an individual’s physical existence. But then as Socrates famously put it, it is not merely living, but living well that matters (Plato, Crito 48b).”

When I read the books of Maccabees, a question that entered my mind every now and then was, “Why does any of this matter?” What do I mean by that? Well, basically, the books are about the Jews being willing to fight and die for their religion. They fought to preserve the Sabbath and circumcision. When Antiochus threatened them with death if they refused to eat pork, many of them held fast to God’s food laws. I guess my question was, “Why? What’s the big deal?” What’s it matter if a Jew leaves his foreskin on rather than taking it off? Or if a he works on a Saturday rather than resting on it? Or if he has a taste of nice, juicy pig-meat?

I wonder how Catholics would answer my question. They see I-II Maccabees as canonical, yet they believe that Jesus abolished the Sabbath, circumcision, and biblical food laws. Were Jews dying for things that Jesus would soon abolish, anyway? What was the point of that?

I’ve wondered at times if I would be willing to die for the Christian faith. To be honest, Christianity often looks to me like one religion among others. Why should I die for this particular belief system? Does it really matter?

I guess this quote on Stoicism made certain things clear to me. One should be willing to die for something because otherwise he’s a slave. He’s a slave to someone who tries to force others to see things his way, while eliminating belief systems that contain a lot of good.

I’m approaching this from a perspective of modern-day tolerance, and the ancients may not have done that. Jews and Christians believed that their deaths demonstrated their commitment to the sovereignty of God, not some petty dictator. And I’m not sure why the Stoics died. Maybe they wanted to show that nothing shook them, not even death.

Self-Defense on the Sabbath

Source: H. Graetz, History of the Jews, volume II (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1893) 2.

This isn’t on my reading list, but I don’t care because I’ve wanted to read Graetz’s history for a long time–ever since I learned about it in Herman Wouk’s classic book on Judaism, This Is My God. Wouk calls Graetz’s work a “banquet.”

Here’s a line the jumped out to me:

“The fact is, however, that Hyrcanus withdrew without accomplishing his siege. It may have been the Sabbatical year which prevented him from proceeding with the siege…”

The context concerns Ptolemy ben Habeb, the brother-in-law of Hyrcanus who killed his (Hyrcanus’) father and wanted to take Hyrcanus’ life as well. This occurred in the second half of the second century B.C.E. Graetz is unsure about why Hyrcanus stopped his siege of Ptolemy ben Habeb, so he offers the Sabbatical year as one explanation, and the arrival of Ptolemy’s Syrian friends as another.

But why would the Sabbatical year have stopped the siege? Hyrcanus was trying to protect his own life, right? Isn’t that acceptable on the Sabbath? In I Maccabees 2:32-41, we see that the Maccabees allowed Jews to fight on the Sabbath rather than allowing themselves to be killed. Why wouldn’t that apply to the Sabbatical year?

Paper on IV Maccabees: Looking for Diodorus

Diodorus of Sicily was a Greek historian who lived in the first century B.C.E. In his Bibliotheca Historica, Book 40, he discusses the Jews. Martin Hengel cites him to say that some Jews believed the Hasmoneans were violating their ancestral laws. Later in Book 40, Diodorus refers to Hecataeus, who describes the Jews as xenophobic and committed to their political system.

Reading this may give me insight into what violation of ancestral laws actually meant, as well as why Jews may have been eager to unite with the Gentiles. I Maccabees 1:11 states, after all: “In those days certain renegades came out from Israel and misled many, saying, ‘Let us go and make a covenant with the Gentiles around us, for since we separated from them many disasters have come upon us’” (NRSV). What laws separated Jews from Gentiles?

I could not find all of this Diodorus passage online, but I found some of it in Greek and French. Next week, I may try to translate it (see here, pages 76-77).

I’m trying to order it on the library, but my computer is slow today.

Tomorrow, I’ll probably shift gears and write some about my Fishbane paper.

Paper on IV Maccabees: Other Changes in Government

Today, I read Robert Doran’s “Jason’s Gymnasion,” Of Scribes and Scrolls, ed. Harold W. Attridge, John J. Collins, Thomas H. Tobin (Lanham: University Press of America, 1990) 99-109.

Here is a quote about a change in education impacting the politeia:

“The strong connection between education and politeia is particularly well attested for Sparta. When Solon praises Spartan practices, Anacharsis asks why the Athenians have not imitated them. Solon’s reply is interesting: ‘Because we are content, Anacharsis, with these exercises which are our own; we do not much care to copy foreign customs…” (Lucian, Anach. 39) In every discussion of Greek education, Sparta’s system…is given a separate chapter. Sparta had its own way of forming its citizens. Awareness of this deep division between Sparta and other Greek cities is important in understanding what Philopoemen did to Sparta in 188 BCE. Besides demolishing the walls of Sparta, dispersing foreign mercenaries and scattering newly-freed slaves, the Achaeans are said by Livy to have abrogated the laws and customs…of Lycurgus and to have forced the Spartans to adopt the laws and institutions of the Achaeans: ‘so that they would all become one body, and concord would be established among them…The state of Lacedaemon having, by these means, lost the sinews of its strength, remained long in subjection to the Achaeans; but nothing did so much damage as the abolition of the discipline of Lycurgus…in the practice of which they had continued during seven hundred years’ (Livy 38.34)” (104).

Doran then quotes Plutarch, Phil. 16.5-6, which discusses the destruction and later reinstitution of Sparta’s politeia. Doran’s argument is that, by altering Sparta’s notorious educational system, the Achaeans were challenging its ancestral constitution. The same thing is said about Jason’s introduction of the gymnasium in Jerusalem in I Maccabees 1:13-14, II Maccabees 4:9-15, and IV Maccabees 4:19-10: that it challenged Israel’s law.

Now, I wonder about Sparta the same thing that I’m wondering about Jason’s reform of Jerusalem: what exactly changed?

Paper on IV Maccabees: Was Jerusalem a Polis?

II Maccabees 4:22 says that Antiochus IV “was welcomed magnificently by Jason and the city, and ushered in with a blaze of torches and with shouts” (NRSV). The Greek word for city is polis.

In Hellenistic Civilization and the Jews (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2004), Victor Tcherikover states about this passage: “It may well be that this mention of the ‘city’ (the Greek polis of Antioch) is not by chance, but possesses a deeper significance; possibly the visit of Antiochus and the festivities associated with it marked the actual juridicial foundation of the polis…” (165).

I have some thoughts/questions about this:

1. Just because I-II Maccabees call Jerusalem a polis, that doesn’t mean it was a formal Greek city. Fergus Millar points out in “The Problem of Hellenistic Syria,” Hellenism in the East, ed. Amelie Kuhrt and Susan Sherwin-White (University of California Press: Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1987): “In 1 Macc. 5.26-27 a whole string of places across the Jordan, all of which have retained analogous Arabic names until modern times–’Bosora’, ‘Bosor’, ‘Alema’, ‘Chaspho’, ‘Maked’, ‘Karnaim’–are described as large fortified poleis. These too will have been fortified villages; it is worth noting that the author of 1 Macc. has no notion that polis ought to be restricted to self-governing cities formally recognized as such; he uses it for instance of Modein (2.15), the village from which the Maccabees came” (123).

R.J. van der Spek makes the same argument about Greek sources in his essay (58-59 of the same book): that they don’t limit the term polis to Greek city-states.

2. A city could have a gymnasium without being a polis. Babylon had a gymnasium, yet it was allowed to keep its own traditions and system of government (20-65). Similarly, van der Spek asserts that “the action by the high priest Jason to hellenise Jerusalem did not affect the government structure, even though a dynastic name was introduced (2 Macc. 4.9, 12, 14)” (59).

What’s my point? Maybe Jerusalem was a Greek polis, or maybe it wasn’t. II Maccabees 4:9, 19 says that Jason wanted to enroll the Jerusalemites as citizens of Antioch. That may mean that Jerusalem became a polis.

But the change in the government was minor. I have a hard time thinking that this offended Jews, especially when Jerusalem got to keep its high priest and gerousia. Since challenges to the politeia can encompass sins in general (see Paper on IV Maccabees: Other Challenges to Politeia), I think that the authors of II and IV Maccabees believe that the introduction of foreign customs into their country encouraged a violation of the politeia, the law.

What I may get into Sunday is the idea that a polis could exist alongside traditional Jerusalem. That could work, but what would happen when the authorities of traditional Jerusalem were the participants in the polis? Could that result in the polis undermining traditional Jerusalem?

Paper on IV Maccabees: Leads–Homosexuality

Someone suggested to me that the Jewish objection to Jason’s gymnasium in the second century B.C.E. might have related to homosexuality that was occurring there. I found an Internet site that claims this: First Maccabees – Marriage and Giving in Marriage. The site itself is ideologically charged, but it refers to other articles. It sites Johansson and Percy:34, but it doesn’t tell me what book. But these guys have written about homosexuality in encyclopedias, so maybe they’re worth checking out. The other article is Patrick G.D. Riley, Homosexuality & the Maccabean Revolt, New Oxford Review (September 1997). He teaches classical civilization at Concordia University of Wisconsin, so perhaps he offers some evidence.

I may look more into this tomorrow, or some time thereafter. Tomorrow, I’ll be picking up more books at the library about Israel and Hellenism. I’m beat right now. I’ll read through some French and German, watch an episode of Lost, and go to bed.

Paper on IV Maccabees: Bickerman on the Gym

I’m going through Elias Bickerman’s The God of the Maccabees (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1979) right now. He states the following:

“[W]hereas athletic contests were merely strange to Cappadocian custom, they were objectionable according to Jewish law…These high priests, then, one minute watched the exercises of the naked ephebes in the palaestra ‘directly below the citadel,’ and the next, climbed the steps of the altar to offer the sacrifice, adorned with the princely golden crown over the tiara, while the bells attacked to the gowns of the sons of Aaron rang, ‘to make music as they walked’ (Ecclus. 45:9). We must try to realize for ourselves the juxtaposition of these scenes, in order to make clear that, what was natural to the Greeks and an abomination to the Hebrews, could be seen in Jerusalem year after year. No schism occurred because of this, either in Jerusalem or in the diaspora. No new Pinchas (I Macc. 2:26) raised his hand against the transgressors of the law, and no indignant revolt broke out among the people” (41-42).

I’d like to know more. What’s Bickerman source for his claim that athletic contests were objectionable according to Jewish law? Why did Jews deem it abominable for priests to be in the gymnasium once minute, then at the temple the next minute? Unfortunately, he doesn’t offer documentation here. Maybe he will later in the book.