Book contents
- Frontmatter
- 1 The archeology of Hellenistic Palestine
- 2 The political and social History of Palestine from Alexander to Antiochus III (333–187 B.C.E.)
- 3 Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek in the Hellenistic age
- 4 The Diaspora in the Hellenistic age
- 5 The interpenetration of Judaism and Hellenism in the pre-Maccabean period
- 6 The men of the Great Synagogue (circa 400–170 .b.c.e.)
- 7 Pharisaic leadership after the Great Synagogue (170 B.C.E.–135 C.E.)
- 8 Antiochus IV
- 9 The Hasmonean revolt and the Hasmonean dynasty
- 10 Jewish literature in Hebrew and Aramaic in the Greek era
- 11 Jewish–Greek literature of the Greek period
- 12 The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Hellenistic period
- 13 The book of Daniel
- 14 The matrix of apocalyptic
- 15 The Septuagint and its Hebrew text
- 16 The Targumim
- 17 The Samaritans
- 18 The growth of anti-Judaism or the Greek attitude towards the Jews
- Bibliographies
- Chronological table
- Index
- References
4 - The Diaspora in the Hellenistic age
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2008
- Frontmatter
- 1 The archeology of Hellenistic Palestine
- 2 The political and social History of Palestine from Alexander to Antiochus III (333–187 B.C.E.)
- 3 Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek in the Hellenistic age
- 4 The Diaspora in the Hellenistic age
- 5 The interpenetration of Judaism and Hellenism in the pre-Maccabean period
- 6 The men of the Great Synagogue (circa 400–170 .b.c.e.)
- 7 Pharisaic leadership after the Great Synagogue (170 B.C.E.–135 C.E.)
- 8 Antiochus IV
- 9 The Hasmonean revolt and the Hasmonean dynasty
- 10 Jewish literature in Hebrew and Aramaic in the Greek era
- 11 Jewish–Greek literature of the Greek period
- 12 The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Hellenistic period
- 13 The book of Daniel
- 14 The matrix of apocalyptic
- 15 The Septuagint and its Hebrew text
- 16 The Targumim
- 17 The Samaritans
- 18 The growth of anti-Judaism or the Greek attitude towards the Jews
- Bibliographies
- Chronological table
- Index
- References
Summary
POLITICAL HISTORY
The beginnings: Alexander the Great
Alexander's breath-takingly rapid campaign of conquest, which in the space of a few years made him master of all the most important territories of the huge Persian empire, is commonly held to have ushered in a new historical era, the Hellenistic age. Though this accepted view has recently been hotly disputed, it is still in fact correct. In this particular instance, what we see is not just the replacement of one ancient empire by another, but the introduction of something substantially new and different. Even though to begin with this transformation remained more of a vision than a reality and had not developed beyond the initial stages, the phenomenon is clearly recognizable: a community of nations inwardly united by the intellectual power of a transnational culture, the dawn of the Hellenistic era.
The origins of this development were not without paradox. To the Greeks proper, the Macedonians appeared a semibarbaric people, for all that the ruling dynasty was acknowledged to be of Greek blood. Only by force of arms did King Philip of Macedonia prevail upon the Greek city states to unite in the Corinthian League (in 338 b.c.e., after his victory over them at Chaeronea). Only with reluctance did they accept him as their commander-in-chief and support his plans for a war of revenge against the Persians, which he saw as a means of forging national unity. When Philip was suddenly assassinated in 336 b.c.e., this plan took on new dimensions. The place of the fiftyish Philip who had already attained the summit of his ambition, the unification of Greece, was taken by Alexander, thirty years his junior.
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- Information
- The Cambridge History of Judaism , pp. 115 - 166Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1990
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