A History of Jerusalem: One City, Three Faiths. Karen Armstrong

Instead of seeing their world as an enclave, in which it was essential that limits, borderlines, and frontiers be clearly drawn and defined, many people were looking for larger horizons. The polis was a closed world, but many Greeks now considered themselves cosmopolitans: citizens of the whole cosmos. Instead of regarding their homeland as the most sacred value, since it gave them their unique place in the world, Greeks became colonialists and world travelers. The conquests of Alexander had opened up the globe and made the polis seem petty and inadequate. The very boundlessness that had seemed chaotic and threatening to their ancestors now seemed exciting and liberating. Jews in the Greek world also shared this rootlessness and wanted to become citizens of humanity rather than members of a chosen people, hampered by a law that had become constricting. By the end of the third century, some Jews had begun to acquire the rudiments of a Greek education and were giving their children Greek names.

      Others found all this extremely threatening. They clung to the old traditions centered on the Temple. In particular, the lower classes, who were not able to share in the new prosperity, tended to turn more fervently than ever to the Law, which ensured that each thing had its place and that order could prevail in society only if people and objects were confined to the category to which they belonged. The conservative Jews naturally gravitated toward the priests, the guardians of Torah and Temple. Their leaders were the Oniads, a priestly family of Zadokite descent whose members had for some time been the chief priests of Jerusalem. The Oniads themselves were attracted to the Greek ideal, and some of them had Greek names. But they were determined to maintain the old laws and traditions on which their power and privileges depended.

      Toward the end of the century, it became clear that the Ptolemies might lose Syria to the Seleucid dynasty, which ruled the Greek kingdom of Mesopotamia. In 219 the young, ambitious Seleucid king Antiochus III invaded Samaria and the Phoenician coastline, and he was able to hold his own in these territories for four years. Even though he was eventually driven back by Ptolemy IV Philopater, it seemed likely that he would be back. Because the Tobiads had been closely associated with the Ptolemies since Joseph had become their chief tax collector, the more conservative Jews of Jerusalem supported the Seleucids and hoped that they would gain control of the country. Since the Tobiads became embroiled in an internal family dispute, the energetic high priest Simon II of the Oniad family achieved considerable influence in the city and supported the Seleucid cause. After Antiochus had invaded the country again in 203, his Jewish supporters helped him to conquer the citadel of Jerusalem in 201, though his troops were thrown out of the city the following year by the Ptolemies. In 200, Jerusalem was subjected to a long siege and suffered severe damage before Antiochus was able to take it back again.

      By this time the Seleucids had conquered the whole country, which they called the province of Coele-Syria and Phoenicia. Different administrative arrangements were once again made for the various political units: the Greek and Phoenician cities, the military colonies, and the crown lands. With the help of Jewish scribes, Antiochus drew up a special charter for the ethnos of Judaea and rewarded his supporters in Jerusalem. Simon II was made head of the ethnos, which meant that the priestly conservative party had gained ascendancy over the Hellenizing Tobiads. The Torah continued to be the law of the land, and the Jewish senate (gerousia) remained the governing body. The charter made special arrangements for the Temple which reflected the sacred geography of the Jews but introduced even more exclusive measures than had Nehemiah and Ezra. To preserve the purity of the shrine, the city of Jerusalem had to be free of all impurity. A proclamation on the city gates now forbade the breeding or slaughter of “unclean” animals in Jerusalem. Male Jews were not permitted to enter the inner court of the Temple, where the sacrifices were performed, unless they went through the same ritual ablutions as the priests. Gentiles were also forbidden to enter the inner court. This was an innovation that had no basis in the Torah but reflected the hostility of the more conservative Jews of Jerusalem toward the gentile world. It would have made a strong impression on Greek visitors to the city. They would have found it natural that the laity were excluded from the Temple buildings: in almost any temple of antiquity, priests were the only people to enter the inner sanctum. But in Greece, anybody was allowed to go into the temple courts, provided that he performed the usual rites of purification. Now Greek visitors to Jerusalem found that they were relegated to the outer court, with the women and the Jews who were in a state of ritual impurity. Because they did not observe the Torah, foreigners were declared “unclean.” They must keep to their place, beyond the pale of holiness.

      But for Jews who were within the ambit of the sacred, the Temple cult yielded an experience of the divine that brought a new clarity and sense of life’s richness. Ben Sirah, a scribe who was writing in Jerusalem during the early Seleucid period, gives us some idea of the impact of the Temple liturgy on the faithful when he describes Simon performing the ceremonies of Yom Kippur. This was the one day in the year that the high priest was permitted to enter the Devir on behalf of the faithful. When he emerged, he brought its great sanctity with him out to the people. The sacred aura that seemed to surround Simon is compared to the sun shining on the golden roof of the Temple, to a rainbow amid brilliant clouds, to an olive tree laden with fruit and a cypress soaring toward the heavens.³ Reality became heightened and was experienced more intensely: the sacred brought out its full potential. In Simon’s day, the office of high priest had achieved an entirely new status. It became a symbol of the integrity of Judaism and played an increasingly important role in the politics of Jerusalem. Ben Sirah believed that the high priest alone had the authority to give a definitive interpretation of the Torah.⁴ He was a symbol of continuity: the kingship of the House of David had lasted only a few generations, but the priesthood of Aaron would last forever.⁵ By this date, Yahweh had become so exalted and transcendent in the minds of his people that it was dangerous to utter his name. When they came across the Hebrew consonants YHWH in the text of the Torah, Jews would now substitute such a synonym as “Adonai” (“Lord”) or “El Elyon” (“Most High”). Only the high priest could pronounce the divine name, and then only once a year on Yom Kippur. Ben Sirah also praised Simon for his building work in Jerusalem. He repaired the city walls and Temple porches which had been damaged in the siege of 200. He also excavated a large reservoir—“as huge as the sea”—north of the Temple Mount, which became known as the Pool of Beth-Hesda (Aramaic: “House of Mercy”). Traditionally, building had always been considered a task for a king, but Antiochus had not agreed to pay for these repairs: he had simply exempted the cost of the building from the city’s tax. So Simon had stepped into the breach, acting, as it were, as king and priest of Jerusalem.⁶

      Ben Sirah was a conservative. He deplored the materialism that had crept into the city now that so many people had been infected by the mercenary ways of the Greeks. The Greeks liked to blame the Levantines for their venality, but in fact this was a vice that they themselves had brought into the region from the West. In the old days, the Zion cult had insisted that Jerusalem be a refuge for the poor; but now, Ben Sirah complained, Jerusalemites considered poverty a disgrace and the poor were pushed callously to one side in the stampede for wealth.⁷ And yet, however much Ben Sirah distrusted those Jews who flirted with Greek culture, he was not himself immune to the lure of Hellenism. Why should the young Jews of Jerusalem not study the works of Moses as the young Greeks studied the works of Homer in the gymnasia? This was a revolutionary suggestion. Hitherto laymen might learn extracts from the Torah by heart, but they were not expected to read it themselves: the Law was expounded to them by the priests. But Ben Sirah was no priest; he was a Jewish intellectual who believed that the Torah could become the basis of a liberal education for all male Jews. Fifty years later, Ben Sirah’s grandson, who translated his book into Greek, took this type of study for granted.⁸ Throughout the Near East, the old religions which opposed the Hellenistic challenge were themselves being subtly changed by their contact with the Greek world. Judaism was no exception. Jews like Ben Sirah had already begun to adapt the Greek educational ideal to their own traditions and thus laid the foundation of rabbinic Judaism. Even the discipline of question and answer, later developed