A Good Impression; Life-Saving Transgressions; Women Learning Torah

I have three items for my write-up today on Joseph Telushkin’s A Code of Jewish Ethics, Volume 1: You Shall Be Holy.

1.  Telushkin talks about how Jews are supposed to make a good impression on Gentiles so as to sanctify God’s name in their daily life.  On pages 459-460, Telushkin says that this entails Jews making Gentiles aware of the Torah’s teachings so that the Gentiles will see the wisdom of Israel’s God (Deuteronomy 4:6), and Jews refraining from laws that discriminate against Gentiles, for discriminatory laws give the Torah and the God who revealed it a bad name.  For an example of the latter principle, Telushkin cites a story in Jerusalem Talmud Mava Mezia 2:5 and Deuteronomy Rabbah 3:3, in which Rabbi Shimon ben Shetach insisted that his pupils return a jewel that belonged to an Arab (which was found in a donkey that the Arab sold to them) even though keeping it would not be stealing, and Jews were not legally mandated to return lost items to Gentiles.  The idea was that returning the jewel to the Gentile would bring glory to the God of Israel.  Telushkin’s discussion intrigued me on account of a teaching in rabbinic literature that Gentiles are not allowed to learn the Torah, as well as halakhot in rabbinic literature that discriminate against Gentiles.

2.  On page 471, Telushkin refers to the principle in Babylonian Talmud Sanhedrin 74a that says that Jews can transgress any command of the Torah if doing the command would cost them their lives, except for the commands against idolatry, murder, and sexual transgressions such as incest.  Telushkin then discusses contrary voices within Judaism.  There is a view in Sanhedrin 74a that Jews should be willing to be martyred for less serious commandments of the Torah in times when Judaism is being persecuted.  And in II Maccabees 6, a devout Jew is martyred when the choice Antiochus IV’s regime lays before him is to eat pork or to be killed.  Rabbi Ishmael in Sanhedrin 74a, however, says that a Jew can even perform an idolatrous act if threatened, as long as he does so in private; the idea is probably that the Jew doing the act publicly would be more likely to undermine Judaism.

On pages 473-474, Telushkin tackles the question of what Jews should do when oppressive Gentile authorities ask them what their religion is.  Should they disclose that they are Jews and face martyrdom, or should they keep their Jewish identity a secret?  The Shulchan Aruch (Yoreh Deah 157:2) states that Jews at risk of martyrdom should not claim to be idolaters to avoid death.  Telushkin then goes on to refer to another viewpoint: “On the other hand, it is permitted to offer ambiguous, intentionally misleading answers when an enemy asks our religion, and some Rabbis ruled that it was permitted to wear Christian garb to mislead antisemites (see Ramah Yoreh Deah 157:2…).”  This discussion reminded me of the Muslim concept of taqiyyah, which affirms (as I understand it) that Muslims can lie about being practitioners of Islam if doing so will save their lives.

3.  A while back, I wrote a post about whether or not Judaism permits women to learn the Torah.  See here.  Remember the movie Yentl, in which Barbara Streisand plays a Jewish woman who pretends to be a man so that she can study Torah and Talmud?  On page 499, Telushkin offers a take on the issue:

“…even highly conservative elements within the Jewish community acknowledge that women must be taught the laws that apply to them (see, for example, the eighteenth century Shulchan Aruch ha-Rav, ‘Laws of Torah Study’ 1:4).  For much of Jewish history, this ruling was interpreted restrictively, as if the only laws women need to know concern commandments such as lighting Shabbat candles or the prohibition of sexual, and all physical, contact between a couple during and after a woman’s period.  The truth is, however, that the large majority of Jewish laws pertain to men and women alike.  Thus a woman who has not studied Judaism’s interpersonal laws will not know the laws concerning charity, unfair speech, and judging others fairly.  Similarly, women are obligated, as are men, to observe the Jewish holidays, recite blessings, fear and love God, and observe Kashrut; therefore they must learn these laws.”

Targum Psalms in the New Testament; the Samaritans and Antiochus IV

I finished The Cambridge History of Judaism, Volume Two: The Hellenistic Age, and I have two items:

1.  One source that I have been using in my weekly quiet times on the Book of Psalms has been the Targum of the Psalms, for an English translation of that is on my Bibleworks.  I do not know the date of this Targum, but Roger Le Deaut on page 573 cites evidence that at least some of it is as early as New Testament times.  He states that “Eph. 4:8, of which the reading ‘he gave gifts unto men’ tallies with the Targum of Psalm 68:19, or again Matt. 27:46 and parallels.”  Matthew 27:46 is where Jesus quotes Psalm 22:1 in Aramaic.

2.  James Purvis wrote the chapter on the Samaritans, and on page 605 he talks about the Samaritans’ stance on Hellenization.  Whereas the Jews revolted against Antiochus’ attempts to impose Hellenization, there were Samaritans who accepted it to “avoid the misfortunes which had come upon the Jews who had resisted Hellenization”.  Purvis refers to Josephus’ Antiquities 12.257-264, in which the Samaritans “agreed to live by Greek customs and asked that their unnamed temple be named the Temple of Hellenic Zeus” (Purvis’ words).

Purvis thinks that the letter by the Samaritans to Antiochus IV in Josephus’ story was authentically Samaritan rather than made up by Josephus, for the letter contradicts Josephus’ story in areas.  First of all, while Josephus says that the Samaritans represented themselves to Antiochus as “colonists from the Medes and Persians” (Purvis’ words), which corresponds with Josephus’ story about the Samaritans’ origins, the letter states that the Samaritans came from the Sidonians.  Second, according to Purvis, the letter was not “as self-damning as Josephus intimated.”  In the letter, the Samaritans say that they are ethnically and culturally distinct from the Jews, even though they (the Samaritans) keep the Sabbath, and that they hope that Antiochus does not hold them accountable for the charges of which the Jews are guilty.  As I look at the passage in Josephus, the letter does request that the Samaritan temple be named after Jupiter, and the letter from Antiochus to the Samaritans acknowledges that the Samaritans have chosen to live like the Greeks.  I do not know if this means that the Samaritans (in their minds) apostasized from the worship of the one true God, the God of the Hebrew Bible.  The Hellenizers among the Samaritans may have simply felt that Jupiter was another name for the most high God.

According to Purvis, II Maccabees has a different story from what Josephus presents, for II Maccabees says that Antiochus tried to impose Hellenization on the Samaritans.  Purvis states: “According to Jason of Cyrene, Antiochus appointed a governor named Andronicus at Gerizim (2 Maccabees 5:23), and later sent an Athenian (or Antiochian) named Geron to enforce Hellenistic practices and to rename the sanctuary there the Temple of Hospitable Zeus…(2 Maccabees 6:1-2).”  (Gerizim was the Samaritan sanctuary.)  But II Maccabees does not say that the Samaritans resisted Antiochus.  Despite their differences, both Josephus (and the Samaritan letter in his story) and II Maccabees agree that the Samaritans did not want to experience the same things that the Jews did at the hands of Antiochus, and so the Samaritans embraced Hellenization.  On page 606, Purvis states that, whether or not most Samaritans were sympathetic towards Hellenization, the Hellenistic party of the Samaritans was more successful than the Jewish Hellenists in Jerusalem in “promoting an acceptable detente between Hellenistic and Hebraic traditions…”

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.

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.

Glorifying Death?

Source: John Sellars, Stoicism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006) 145-146.

“What [Nicolas Malabranche (1638-1715)] found most objectionable in Seneca’s Stoicism was the arrogance of the claim that it is possible to be happy in this life. For Malabranche the Christian, human life here on Earth is inherently miserable, for we are all sinners, and so we must wait for the next life before we can be truly happy. Stoicism’s claim that one can indeed be happy here and now is, he argues, simply the product of human pride and arrogance.”

The issues that this quote touches on have cropped up in my readings and daily quiet times.

I’m reading the letters of Ignatius in The Lost Books of the Bible and the Forgotten Books of Eden. Ignatius was a second century church leader. Basically, he had a death wish: he wanted to be a martyr. He saw this as a path to purification, and he eagerly anticipated being with Jesus Christ forever and ever.

At first sight, that looks rather selfish. After all, he can only serve people on earth when he’s alive, right? Paul wanted to die and be with Christ, too, but he realized that God may have other plans: “I am hard pressed between the two: my desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better; but to remain in the flesh is more necessary for you” (Philippians 1:23-24). There were people who needed Paul, which was why he left his time of death up to God.

But Ignatius didn’t exactly view himself as selfish, for he thought that his death as a martyr could be an expiation for the Christian community. Ignatius was not the first to maintain that martyrdom is meritorious. In II Maccabees and IV Maccabees, God stops punishing Israel after Jewish martyrs give their lives for the laws of God’s Torah. Their deaths bring expiation and divine benefit to the community of God’s people.

I have problems with a religion that celebrates death. When I was at Jewish Theological Seminary, Mary Boys of Union Theological Seminary was giving presentations against Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ. She said that Jesus did not come to earth to die; rather, he died because of how he lived. I think she meant that Jesus preached God’s love for all people–including the marginalized–and this incited Jewish religious leaders to plot against him. But I could be wrong, since she tried to pin a lot of the blame for Jesus’ death on Pontius Pilate, not so much the Jewish leaders. In any case, she tried to shift the focus of Christianity from death to life.

I admire her attempt, but I’m not sure if it’s biblical. Ignatius talks about experiencing Christ’s passion. Where’d he get such an idea? Presumably from passages such as Philippians 3:10: “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death[.]” Paul wanted to be intimate with Christ, even in terms of knowing Christ’s passion.

When I was at Harvard, a friend told me about Opus Dei, an ultra-conservative Catholic group that had people wear nails in their shoes to experience the pains of the Lord. That sort of outlook may explain why the Opus Dei character in Da Vinci Code whipped himself over and over. “Isn’t the point of Christianity that Jesus suffered in our place, meaning we don’t have to suffer?,” my friend asked? Apparently not in the eyes of certain Christians, who try to identify with Jesus in his sufferings.

I’m reminded of something a friend of mine at JTS said. America was about to go to war with Iraq, and my friend was a West Point graduate. He said that the army glorified death, since there were many monuments to people who gave their lives for their country. My professor asked him if all that death was actually necessary. Similarly, Christianity seems to glorify martyrs, as if they were athletes–people who took their faith commitment to the ultimate level.

I can understand that Christians may find themselves in a position where they’d have to die. If the world threatens to kill them because of their faith in Christ, then what are they supposed to do? What I don’t get is Christianity’s glorification of suffering and death. I like the Old Testament and Ben Sira’s focus on blessings in this life, in terms of enjoying this life to the fullest, and helping others to do so as well.

There are other things that I can say about this quote, but I’ll stop here for the time being.

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.

Jubilees and the Hellenistic Reform

Source: George W.E. Nickelsburg, “The Bible Rewritten and Expanded,” Jewish Writings of the Second Temple Period, ed. Michael E. Stone (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984) 103.

“…many of Jubilees’ additions to the biblical text of Genesis and Exodus have the Jew-gentile situation in focus. In addition to the strictures against nakedness and uncircumcision mentioned above (3:31; 15:34), are the following items. Observance of the lunar calendar is construed as following ‘the feasts of the gentiles’ (sic!) (6:35). Marriage to a gentile is strictly and repeatedly forbidden (20:4; 22:20; 25:1; 27:10; 30:1-15). Warnings are issued against idolatry and consuming blood (6:12-41; 7:30; 21:6). The author stresses Israel’s unique covenantal relationship to God and qualitative difference from the gentiles (cf. also 2:31 on the Sabbath). His stringent prohibitions against contact with the gentiles suggest that such contact was not infrequent in the Israel of his time.”

This quote is relevant to my paper on IV Maccabees, which asks what II and IV Maccabees mean when they say that the Hellenistic reform challenged Israel’s poiliteia (constitution). Here, I see what one Jewish party had against Hellenistic incursions into the nation. At the same time, II and IV Maccabees may not agree with Jubilees on everything, since the Hasmoneans (whom the Maccabees books endorse) supported the lunar calendar, which Jubilees opposed.

Josephus and Titus: Spin, Spin, Spin

Source: Harold W. Attridge, “Josephus and His Works,” Jewish Writings of the Second Temple Period, ed. Michael E. Stone (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984) 203.

“The portrait of Titus [by Josephus] as the reluctant and compassionate destroyer of Jerusalem [in 70 C.E.] is briefly sketched for the last time when [Josephus] revisits the site of the campaign on a journey from Antioch to Alexandria before departing for his triumph in Rome. He ‘commiserated its destruction, not boasting, as another might have done, of having carried so glorious and great a city by storm, but heaping curses upon the criminal authors of the revolt, who had brought this chastisement upon it: plainly did he show that he could never have wished that the calamities attending their punishment should enhance his own deserts’ ([Jewish Wars] 7:112-12).

“The whole picture of Titus stands in striking contrast to reports in Roman sources about perceptions of his character prior to his accession to the principate. Suetonius (Tit. 7:1) reports that Titus was suspected of cruelty, unchastity, greed and extravagance. Cassius Dio (Hist. 66:18, 1) notes that Titus, as emperor, committed no act of murder or amatory power, either because his character had changed for the better when he became emperor, or simply because he did not live long enough to show his true colors. It may be that the flattering portrait in Josephus was deliberately designed to counter adverse public opinion and create a favourable image of the new emperor.”

Can anyone be portrayed as a hero or a villain? Obama has been represented as a hero since his recent victory, whereas his detractors maintain that he’s a corrupt radical leftist. Books have been written that portray George W. Bush as a principled Christians, while others depict him as a greedy powermonger. Spin, spin, spin.

In II Maccabees 4:4-5, we see the following about Onias, a high priest in the second century B.C.E.:

“Onias recognized that the rivalry was serious and that Apollonius son of Menestheus, and governor of Coelesyria and Phoenicia, was intensifying the malice of Simon. So he appealed to the king, not accusing his compatriots but having in view the welfare, both public and private, of all the people” (NRSV).

In those days, various parties in Judea sucked up to powerful Gentiles in an attempt to gain power for themselves. It looks like Onias is doing that too, but the author of II Maccabees views Onias as a righteous man, so he says that Onias is sucking up to the Gentiles for the benefit of his nation, not himself. Spin, spin, spin?

What’s strange is that Josephus portrays the Roman general Titus far more charitably than the Roman sources. You’d expect Roman sources to lionize Titus, but they don’t. Josephus has a political agenda to promote Roman rule in Judea–to ensure that the Romans treat the Jews well, and that the Jews submit to Rome. Consequently, he portrays Titus as a compassionate figure. But the Roman sources don’t have much of an agenda in this case. They’re already in power, so they have nothing to lose by being honest.

Paper on IV Maccabees: Seth Schwartz Article

Yesterday, I read Seth Schwartz’s “The Hellenization of Jerusalem and Shechem,” Jews in a Greco-Roman World, ed. Martin Goodman (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998) 37-46. Here are some quotes:

1. “See Tcherikover (1958), 152-174; Bickerman (1979), 38-42, arguing that Jason established not a Greek city but a Greek corporation within the still Jewish city of Jerusalem. See also Le Rider (1965), 410-11, supporting Tcherikover’s argument on the basis of such common Seleucid coin legends as Antiochon ton en Ptolemaidi, where the reference is clearly to a Greek city, and not a Greek corporation in a native city; Millar (1978), 10; Habicht (1976), 216-217. Verse 19: ‘Jason…sent as theoroi men who were Antiochenes from Jerusalem [or, as theoroi from Jerusalem men who were Antiochenes], carrying three hundred silver drachmas…’ This is, on the face of it, difficult to reconcile with Tcherikover’s view. Perhaps the author of 2 Maccabees himself misunderstood what his source, Jason of Cyrene, had written” (39).

This sounds bumpy because it’s a footnote. But it’s a somewhat decent summary of the debate about whether Antioch was Jerusalem-turned-into-a-polis, or rather a Hellenistic sub-section within Jerusalem. I may check out some of those references.

2. “The second account is more closely related to the first: when, according to Josephus (Ant. 12.257-64), the traditional Jewish cult was abolished in Jerusalem, the rulers of the Samaritan city of Shechem petitioned Antiochus for the right to reform the municipal cult so as to make Zeus Xenios the patron-god of the city. (I am assuming, by the way, that the letter is basically genuine, notwithstanding the powerful arguments of Rappenport.) And they asked to retain their traditional laws, provided with an interpetatio graeca and altered in such a way as to obscure the laws’ connection with those of the Jews. The king responded by welcoming the Shechemites‘ adoption of ‘Hellenic customs’ (hellenika ethne; Joseph. Ant. 12.264; the expression is also used in Jerusalem in Antiochus V’s rescission of the Hellenization, 2 Macc. 11:24). What resulted in both cases were cities whose Hellenism was in part notional; Jerusalem was still governed by a high priest and a board of gerontes (elders) (2 Macc. 4:18, 44), just as Phoenician cities in the same period were still ruled by their dikastai (judges); the municipal religion in both Jerusalem and Shechem was at first basically the traditional one, and even later in Jerusalem was not precisely Greek. In sum, then, the hellenika ethe of these Greek cities consisted of normally Hellenized religion, and political structure, combined with (at Jerusalem certainly, at Shechem possibly) a gymnasium and ephebate.

“We cannot be sure that the same process occurred also in such Hellenizing cities as Sardis, Tyre, Sidon, and Gaza, but the supposition that something similar did explains the significant continuities in religious and political life listed by Fergus Millar in his discussion of Phoenician cities, and by Sherwin-White and Kuhrt (1993:180-4) in their discussion of Sardis. Indeed, such continuities may have been even more conspicuous in the other cities than in Jerusalem, where the zeal of the petitioners, or of the king, eventually led them to introduce changes more radical than what was normally required to make a community ‘Greek’–a fact which may help explain the failure of Hellenization in Jerusalem (about the fate of Shechem, where the reforms were more moderate, we can only speculate)” (39-40).

“Yet the new Greekness functioned in two different ways to preserve elements, displaced and altered, of traditional cultures. Now I assume that when one, or several, of the Phoenician cities resumed the title dikastai for one of their magistrates, few people after the first generation, were necessarily aware that anything distinctive, or at any rate distinctively Phoenician, was being preserved; but the preservation of the traditional cults in the Hellenized cities may have actually functioned to keep alive a significant consciousness of a special past. Certainly the priests preserved pre-Hellenic language and myths (even if the latter often incorporated layers of Greek interpretation)–how else are we to understand the survival of the Phoenician language and, in the work of Philo of Byblos, of fragments of Canaanite mythology, albeit stoicized and euhemerized? Once Hellenized, of course, this mythology took its place in the common elite culture of the Hellenistic world, and thereby changed it, yet it retained simultaneously an irreducable distinctiveness” (42).

These quotes tell me that, in cities other than Jerusalem that became Hellenized, there wasn’t really a radical change in political structure and culture. I’d like to follow up on that Josephus reference to Shechem, since that city tried to Hellenize while preserving its traditional customs, which resembled Judaism. If there wasn’t a radical change in political structure, then why did II and IV Maccabees claim that the politeia had been changed? I think a lot of it had to do with Hellenization’s compromise of Judaism, in that it undermined circumcision and instituted a gymnasium that challenged Jewish customs. It wasn’t enough of a change to incite a revolt, but it did cause the authors of II and IV Maccabees to retroactively claim that God sent Antiochus‘ persecution as punishment for Israel’s sins.

Paper on IV Maccabees: Philo on Sports

I read the following in Philo’s Life of Moses II 211. The translation is from C.D. Yonge, The Works of Philo (United States: Hendrickson, 1993).

“For this reason the all-great Moses thought fit that all who were enrolled in his sacred polity should follow the laws of nature and meet in a solemn assembly, passing the time in cheerful joy and relaxation, abstaining from all work, and from all arts which have a tendency to the production of anything; and from all business which is connected with the seeking of the means of living, and that they should keep a complete truce, abstaining from all laborious and fatiguing thought and care, and devoting their leisure, not as some persons scoffingly assert, to sports, or exhibitions of actors and dancers, for the sake of which those who run madly after theatrical amusements suffer disasters and even encounter miserable deaths, and for the sake of these the most dominant and influential of the outward senses, sight and hearing, make the soul, which should be the heavenly nature, the slave of the senses” (509-510).

Philo criticizes sports, as if they go against the aim of the Mosaic politeia. Of course, he does so for Stoic reasons–sports make people a slave to the senses–but it’s interesting that we have another person here who views them as contrary to the law. II and IV Maccabees seem to as well, as does Josephus. So maybe that’s why Jason’s gymnasium violated the Jews’ politeia, according to II and IV Maccabees.

I’m close to actually writing this paper, I think. This coming Sunday, I’ll want to check out that reference in which the Pharisees accuse the Hasmoneans of violating the politeia. Maybe I’ll find it online. If not, I’ll get it from my school’s library.