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Israel
Index
In 332 B.C., Alexander the Great of Macedon destroyed the
Persian Empire but largely ignored Judah. After Alexander's death,
his generals divided--and subsequently fought over--his empire. In
301 B.C., Ptolemy I took direct control of the Jewish homeland, but
he made no serious effort to interfere in its religious affairs.
Ptolemy's successors were in turn supplanted by the Seleucids, and
in 175 B.C. Antiochus IV seized power. He launched a campaign to
crush Judaism, and in 167 B.C. he sacked the Temple.
The violation of the Second Temple, which had been built about
520-515 B.C., provoked a successful Jewish rebellion under the
generalship of Judas (Judah) Maccabaeus. In 140 B.C. the Hasmonean
Dynasty began under the leadership of Simon Maccabaeus, who served
as ruler, high priest, and commander in chief. Simon, who was
assassinated a few years later, formalized what Judas had begun,
the establishment of a theocracy, something not found in any
biblical text.
Despite priestly rule, Jewish society became Hellenized except
in its generally staunch adherence to monotheism. Although rural
life was relatively unchanged, cities such as Jerusalem rapidly
adopted the Greek language, sponsored games and sports, and in more
subtle ways adopted and absorbed the culture of the Hellenes. Even
the high priests bore such names as Jason and Menelaus. Biblical
scholars have identified extensive Greek influence in the drafting
of commentaries and interpolations of ancient texts during and
after the Greek period. The most obvious influence of the
Hellenistic period can be discerned in the early literature of the
new faith, Christianity.
Under the Hasmonean Dynasty, Judah became comparable in extent
and power to the ancient Davidic dominion. Internal political and
religious discord ran high, however, especially between the
Pharisees, who interpreted the written law by adding a wealth of
oral law, and the Sadducees, an aristocratic priestly class who
called for strict adherence to the written law. In 64 B.C.,
dynastic contenders for the throne appealed for support to Pompey,
who was then establishing Roman power in Asia. The next year Roman
legions seized Jerusalem, and Pompey installed one of the
contenders for the throne as high priest, but without the title of
king. Eighty years of independent Jewish sovereignty ended, and the
period of Roman dominion began.
In the subsequent period of Roman wars, Herod was confirmed by
the Roman Senate as king of Judah in 37 B.C. and reigned until his
death in 4 B.C. Nominally independent, Judah was actually in
bondage to Rome, and the land was formally annexed in 6 B.C. as
part of the province of Syria Palestina. Rome did, however, grant
the Jews religious autonomy and some judicial and legislative
rights through the Sanhedrin. The Sanhedrin, which traces its
origins to a council of elders established under Persian rule (333
B.C. to 165 B.C.) was the highest Jewish legal and religious body
under Rome. The Great Sanhedrin, located on the Temple Mount in
Jerusalem, supervised smaller local Sanhedrins and was the final
authority on many important religious, political, and legal issues,
such as declaring war, trying a high priest, and supervising
certain rituals. Scholars have sharply debated the structure and
composition of the Sanhedrin. The Jewish historian Josephus and the
New Testament present the Sanhedrin as a political and judicial
council whereas the
Talmud (see Glossary) describes it as a
religious, legislative body headed by a court of seventy-one sages.
Another view holds that there were two separate Sanhedrins. The
political Sanhedrin was composed primarily of the priestly Sadducee
aristocracy and was charged by the Roman procurator with
responsibility for civil order, specifically in matters involving
imperial directives. The religious Sanhedrin of the Pharisees was
concerned with religious law and doctrine, which the Romans
disregarded as long as civil order was not threatened. Foremost
among the Pharisee leaders of the time were the noted teachers,
Hillel and Shammai.
Chafing under foreign rule, a Jewish nationalist movement of
the fanatical sect known as the Zealots challenged Roman control in
A.D. 66. After a protracted siege begun by Vespasian, the Roman
commander in Judah, but completed under his son Titus in A.D. 70,
Jerusalem and the Second Temple were seized and destroyed by the
Roman legions. The last Zealot survivors perished in A.D. 73 at the
mountain fortress of Massada, about fifty-six kilometers southwest
of Jerusalem above the western shore of the Dead Sea.
During the siege of Jerusalem, Rabbi Yohanan Ben-Zakki received
Vespasian's permission to withdraw to the town of Yibna (also seen
as Jabneh) on the coastal plain, about twenty-four kilometers
southwest of present-day Tel Aviv. There an academic center or
academy was set up and became the central religious authority; its
jurisdiction was recognized by Jews in Palestine and beyond. Roman
rule, nevertheless, continued. Emperor Hadrian (A.D. 117-38)
endeavored to establish cultural uniformity and issued several
repressive edicts, including one against circumcision.
The edicts sparked the Bar-Kochba Rebellion of 132-35, which
was crushed by the Romans. Hadrian then closed the Academy at
Yibna, and prohibited both the study of the Torah and the
observance of the Jewish way of life derived from it. Judah was
included in Syria Palestina, Jerusalem was renamed Aelia
Capitolina, and Jews were forbidden to come within sight of the
city. Once a year on the anniversary of the destruction of the
Temple, controlled entry was permitted, allowing Jews to mourn at
a remaining fragment on the Temple site, the Western Wall, which
became known as the Wailing Wall. The Diaspora, which had begun
with the Babylonian captivity in the sixth century B.C.,and which
had resumed early in the Hellenistic period, now involved most Jews
in an exodus from what they continued to view as the land promised
to them as the descendants of Abraham.
Following the destruction of the Temple in 70 A.D., and
especially after the suppression of the Bar-Kochba Rebellion in 135
A.D., religio-nationalist aspects of Judaism were supplanted by a
growing intellectual-spiritual trend. Lacking a state, the survival
of the Jewish people was dependent on study and observance of the
written law, the Torah. To maintain the integrity and cohesiveness
of the community, the Torah was enlarged into a coherent system of
moral theology and community law. The rabbi and the synagogue
became the normative institutions of Judaism, which thereafter was
essentially a congregationalist faith.
The focus on study led to the compilation of the Talmud, an
immense commentary on the Torah that thoroughly analyzed the
application of Jewish law to the day-to-day life of the Jewish
community. The complexity of argument and analysis contained in the
Palestinian Talmud (100-425 A.D.) and the more authoritative
Babylonian Talmud (completed around 500) reflected the high level
of intellectual maturity attained by the various schools of Jewish
learning. This inward-looking intellectualism, along with a rigid
adherence to the laws and rituals of Judaism, maintained the
separateness of the Jewish people, enabling them to survive the
exilic experience despite the lure of conversion and frequent
outbreaks of anti-Semitism.
Data as of December 1988
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