The History of the Jews in Antiquity

Peter Schafer, Peter Schäfer

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9783718657940
• eBook ISBN: 9781134371372
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

First Published in 1995, the main emphasis of this book is on the political history of the Jews in Palestine, where "political" is to be understood not as the mere succession of rulers and battles but as the interaction between political activity and social, economic and religious circumstances. A particular concern is the investigation of social and economic conditions in the history of Palestinian Judaism.

1.
Alexander the Great and the Diadochi

1.1. Alexander the Great

The Palestine in which we find ourselves at the beginning of the Hellenistic period was anything but a homogeneous economic and cultural entity. The dominant power before the conquest by Alexander the Great had been the Persians, an oriental empire that had long since gone into decline. The western regions of this Persian empire (and above all Phoenicia, that is, the maritime coastal towns) had long been oriented toward Greece and exposed to the economic, cultural and also the military influence of the Greeks. Numerous individual findings in Palestine have shown that Greek ceramics, Greek artworks and even Greek coins were widespread in this region, and that entire cities (especially on the coastal plain) might well be designated as “Greek” even prior to the country’s conquest by Alexander.

Nevertheless, the triumphant campaign of the young Alexander (he was twenty-three years old), starting with the celebrated battle of Issus (333 BCE), opened a new chapter in the history of the Near East. The Orient, which had previously known the Greeks primarily as traders and artists, now came to know them and the ethnically related Macedonians as hard and brutal conquerors. After the victory at Issus, the general Parmenion advanced as far as Damascus and conquered Syria, while Alexander proceeded along the coast and was paid homage by the Phoenician cities of Aridus, Marathus, Byblos and Sidon, all of which surrendered without a fight. Only the reputedly impregnable Tyre (which had previously been laid siege to by Sanherib and Nebuchadnezzar for many years without success) refused the king access to city and temple. Alexander, who wanted both to make an example and to deprive the Persian-Phoenician fleet operating in the Aegean of a base, besieged the city for seven months before conquering it in August 332 with the aid of an artificial dam and his fleet. Classical historians report that two thousand able men were crucified and thirty thousand survivors sold as slaves.¹ The city (as usually happened with Alexander’s conquests) was converted into a Macedonian colony and settled by Greek colonists.

From Tyre, the campaign on the Phoenician-Palestinian coastal strip then proceeded further south. Alexander did not meet with any further significant resistance until reaching Gaza, one of the most important Arabian trading centres (Gaza was where one of the old caravan routes from the east reached the sea: in particular, trade with the Nabataeans was conducted via Gaza). Gaza fell after two months, the able men, as in Tyre, were killed, and the women and children sold into slavery.

While Alexander’s campaign advanced south along the coast to Egypt, what was happening in the meantime in the Syro-Palestinian hinterland, and particularly in the province of Yehud (= Judah) which had remained autonomous under the Persians? Naturally, the classical historians had little interest in the fate of this provincial corner of the world. They concentrated mostly on the great conquests of the king and give the impression that most of the Palestinian cities had already submitted to Alexander either before or during the siege of Tyre. Nowhere is there mention of a special campaign by Alexander in the Palestinian hinterland.

Contrary to this consensus of opinion by the classical historians, the Jewish tradition reports a visit by Alexander to Jerusalem, as well as connecting the final separation of the Samaritans from the Jewish cult community (the so-called Samaritan schism) with the events surrounding Alexander’s conquest of Palestine.

1.1.1. The Samaritan schism

The main source for the separation of the Samaritans and the founding of a (in Jewish eyes) schismatic sanctuary on Mt. Gerizim is Josephus.² According to him, Manasseh, a brother of the High Priest Jaddua, married Nikaso, the daughter of the Persian governor of Samaria, Sanballat. This Manasseh fled—still under Persian jurisdiction—to Samaria, as they could not tolerate his “mixed marriage” with Nikaso in Jerusalem. Sanballat promised to build a temple on Mt. Gerizim and to appoint him High Priest of this new sanctuary. Alexander, preoccupied with the siege of Tyre, demanded of the Jewish High Priest military support and the tribute which had up to then been paid to the Persian king, Darius. This was, however, refused him by the Jewish High Priest on the grounds of his oath of allegiance to Darius. Sanballat, on the other hand, saw his opportunity, hurried to Alexander’s assistance with eight thousand Samaritan soldiers (that is, defectors from Darius) and was rewarded with permission to build the temple. Shortly afterward, Sanballat died. This version of the story can perhaps be supplemented by Josephus’ later note: “But the soldiers of Sanballat he [Alexander] ordered to accompany him to Egypt; there, he said, he would give them allotments of land”.³

So much for Josephus. To evaluate this source, one may turn first of all to a parallel in the biblical book of Nehemiah (12:10-22; 13:28). Many researchers suppose that Nehemiah (particularly Nehemiah 13:28) is the basis of Josephus’ report, which was then “elaborated into the legend of the origin of the Samaritan community”.⁴ This assumption is certainly problematic, even from a purely methodological point of view: biblical texts do not develop into legends in a vacuum, within the confines of the author’s room, as it were. Moreover, there is a difference in genealogy between Nehemiah and Josephus; i.e. one must ask why, if he wanted to spin out the report in Nehemiah, Josephus decided to alter the genealogy in particular. It is more likely that both reports reflect a historical fact, although the relation between these two sources must remain an open question. Perhaps there were also links between them of which we are not aware.

As regards the historical basis, the papyri found in the so-called Cave of Death in Wadi ed-Daliyeh, north of Jericho, would seem to establish that a third governor called Sanballat ruled in Samaria at the time of Alexander’s campaign.⁵ If there was a governor called Sanballat at the time of Alexander’s campaign, then there is little reason to doubt Josephus when he goes on to report that this same Sanballat submitted to Alexander along with the other local rulers of Syria and Palestine and also—as a sign of this submission—offered his assistance in the conquest of Tyre. Josephus’ abovementioned note, that Sanballat’s soldiers accompanied Alexander to Egypt, is thus also not improbable.

But what are we to make of the report of the founding of the temple on Mt. Gerizim which, according to Josephus, was both connected with these political events as well as being the result of an internal dispute within the Jerusalem priesthood? It must first of all be pointed out that Josephus’ report is the only relevant source for the founding of the temple on Mt. Gerizim, that is, the actual Samaritan schism. Reference has indeed been made to biblical passages for this schism,⁶ but it is very unlikely that these passages, which refer originally to a conflict between the northern and the southern kingdoms, were written with the Samaritans in mind. Archaeological digs have produced some confirmation of the fact that there was a temple on Mt. Gerizim; the archaeologists (above all R. J. Bull) suspect that the remains of the building found under Hadrian’s temple on Mt. Gerizim date from this Samaritan sanctuary. The Greek ceramics found in this building would seem to support this.

So we are left with Josephus’ report, which probably stems from a propaganda story of Samaritan origin from the second century BCE. Its historical core seems to consist in an internal dispute among the Jerusalem priesthood over the mixed marriage question following the rebuilding of the Temple and the restitution of the Jewish city state. A group of priests had evidently seen a danger for the new Jewish order in such mixed marriages, and in the wake of such quarrels certain parties (including the Manasseh mentioned by Josephus) may have left Jerusalem and resettled in an area under Samaritan rule. Whether the building of the temple was approved by Alexander is, however, quite another matter. It would seem much more likely that we see here the understandable concern of the Samaritans to establish that the construction of the temple on Mt. Gerizim was authorized by the great king Alexander, i.e. this particular aspect of the narrative is almost certainly unhistorical.

This is further confirmed by a second report by Josephus which probably stems from another source.⁷ Here the Samaritan temple is presumed to be already in existence, even though Sanballat (according to the first report by Josephus) had received permission to build from Alexander only a few months earlier. Moreover, relations between Alexander and the Samaritans are much cooler here than one would expect in view of Sanballat’s defection to Alexander as described in the first text. It is therefore not unlikely that this second source stems from a Jewish, and thus anti-Samaritan original. Historically, this means that Alexander certainly had nothing to do with the building of the temple by the Samaritans, and so neither had he authorized it (as the first text will have us believe), nor was the temple already built during his stay in Palestine.

The conflict between Alexander and the Samaritans and the preferential treatment of the Jews, only hinted at by Josephus, is dealt with more thoroughly in other sources. As well as a legendary story in the Talmud,⁸ Curtius Rufus mentions in his biography of Alexander that the inhabitants of Samaria had burnt alive (vivum Samaritae cremaverant) Andromachus, the governor of Syria appointed by Alexander.⁹ Alexander is said to have hurried immediately from Egypt to Samaria to avenge his death, to have put the perpetrators of the crime to death and to have appointed Menon successor to Andromachus. This report is supplemented by the Chronicle of Eusebius, which states:

Alexander laid siege to Tyre and took Judaea; exalted by the Jews, he made sacrifice to God and honoured the high priest. He appointed Andromachus governor of the province, who was killed by inhabitants of the Shamyrtaean city (= Samaria). Alexander punished them, after returning from Egypt and occupying the city, by settling Macedonians there.¹⁰

According to this version of events, then, Alexander personally destroyed Samaria and turned the city into a Macedonian military colony. Admittedly, the historical value of the last point of this report (the transformation into a military colony) must be qualified by another remark in Eusebius to the effect that it was not until Perdiccas was governor (296/95) that the city was resettled.

This contradiction has still not been settled, but does not play a decisive role. What is important, and backed up by the findings in Wadi ed-Daliyeh (aside from documents, the remains of two hundred and five persons were found there, apparently eminent Samaritans who had gone into hiding and had been thoroughly smoked out by the pursuing Macedonians), is the fact that Samaria was destroyed at an early date (probably already under Alexander). Such a finding fits in with the history of the settlement of the city of Shechem, which had been unpopulated between 480 and 330 BCE, but experienced a new period of growth from 330 onward, peaking in 300 BCE. The resettlement of Shechem and the building of the Samaritan temple on Mt. Gerizim are in all probability related to the destruction of Samaria and its subsequent re-establishment as a Macedonian military colony.

1.1.2. Alexander’s visit to Jerusalem

There are references in both Josephus and rabbinical literature to a visit to Jerusalem by Alexander.¹¹ According to these, the High Priest Jaddua marched out of the gates of Jerusalem to confront Alexander and prevent him plundering the city. When Alexander saw the High Priest he prostrated himself before him since, according to Josephus, he recognized in him the figure which had once appeared to him in a dream and encouraged him to wage war against the Persians. Finally

he gave his hand to the high priest and, with the priests running beside him, entered the city. Then he went up to the temple, where he sacrificed to God under the direction of the high priest, and showed due honour to the priests and to the high priest himself. And, when the book of Daniel was shown to him, in which he (scil. Daniel) had declared that one of the Greeks would destroy the empire of the Persians, he believed himself to be the one indicated; and in his joy he dismissed the multitude for the time being, but on the following day he summoned them again and told them to ask for any gifts which they might desire. When the high priest asked that they might live in accordance with the laws of their fathers and in the seventh year be exempt from t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• CONTENTS
• Preface
• Preface to English Edition
• List of Abbreviations
• Chapter 1 Alexander the Great and the Diadochi
• Chapter 2 Palestine Under Ptolemaic Rule (301-200 BCE)
• Chapter 3 Palestine Under Seleucid Rule (200-135/63 BCE)
• Chapter 4 The Hasmonean Dynasty
• Chapter 5 Herod the Great (37-4 BCE)
• Chapter 6 From Herod to the First Jewish War
• Chapter 7 The First Jewish War (66-74 CE)
• Chapter 8 Between the Wars: From 74 to 132 CE
• Chapter 9 The Bar Kochba Revolt (132-135 CE)
• Chapter 10 From the Bar Kochba Revolt to the Arab Conquest of Palestine
• Bibliography
• Index