The Exposure of Jews to Hellenism
Antiochus continued the wars against the
Ptolemys in
Egypt, and found some success ranging from minor to great. In 168 B.C., however, an invasion into
Egypt ended in complete and utter
humiliation at the hands of the
Romans, an up and coming empire of the time. The
Romans, who were allied with the
Ptolemys, sent a single representative to
Antiochus' army, and the representative commanded
Antiochus to withdraw or face some dire consequences. Humiliated,
Antiochus complied and limped back home to
Persia.
Asimov suggests, "it seems reasonable enough to suppose that
Antiochus IV, half-maddened with frustration, would be anxious to vent his anger on some victim. . .the
Jews were weak enough for the purpose. .." (715).
Antiochus IV came to the conclusion that the time had come to put the
Jews in their place and began to emphatically thrust
Hellenism upon them. He equated
Zeus and the
God of the Jews, demanded the sacrifice of
swine and the like to the gods, and decreed that "
pagan altars, idols, and sacred precincts were to be established" (1 Maccabees 1:47 REB). Most the altars
Antiochus erected, at least those in the
Temple, were probably to himself, since he considered himself an incarnation of
Zeus (Asimov 715). Furthermore, and perhaps more interestingly,
Antiochus also forced the
Jews "on the feast of
Dionysus to wear ivy-wreaths and join the procession in his honour" (2 Maccabees 6:7 REB). Some have taken this to suggest that some or all the
Jews were forcibly made to join the
Mystery Cult of Dionysus (Benson). More on
Mystery Cults later.
The
Jews had never taken well to such things; in the past, they were repeatedly exiled from their country, forced to live in
alien lands, and compelled at
sword point to accept
pagan gods, and yet
Judaism had never buckled. The
Jews responded to
Antiochus with the rebellion of the
Maccabees as recounted in, fittingly enough, the First and Second Book of the Maccabees in the
Apocrypha.
Ironically, where thrusting
Greek thought on the
Jews had failed to particularly influence
Judaism as a whole, gradual exposure over the centuries succeeded.
Greek thought actually found its way into several of the books of the
Old Testament, including later portions of
Proverbs and the Apocryphal
Song of Solomon (Noss 389).
From all of this, it is clear that the
Jews of the era just before
Jesus had extensive exposure to
Greek thought. This would heavily influence early
Christians at the dawn of their
theology.
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