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Judaism in the Hellenistic period
An excerpt from Hans
Kung's brilliant synthesis of Jewish history in his book: Judaism
(pp 112-126), cited here with the author's kind permission
1. Influence of Hellenistic culture on Israel's Wisdom Writers
2. Crisis of theocracy: from the revolution to the 'church state'
3. The apocalyptists - warning and interpreting the time
4. The fall of Jerusalem and the end of theocracy
The place of the prophets was
initially taken by the wisdom teachers, whose concerns were entirely
practical. However, these wise men were no longer charismatic individuals,
but representatives of a school. They no longer proclaimed Yahweh's
revelation and liberation, but attached importance to observing the
ordinances of life, to pedagogical applications of them in the everyday
world. The focus of their interest was not God and his action in history but
human beings and how they were to act correctly in a great variety of spheres
in life. Wisdom theology does not presuppose the recognition of the mighty
acts of God in 'salvation history' (exodus and settlement play no decisive
theological role here). What is important is, rather, the confidence that all
of creation rests on a wise order, and that human beings are capable of correct
conduct by observing this order which has been appointed by God and thus can
find their place in the divine world order. In complete contrast to the
prophet, in Israel the wise man is primarily an empiricist, a detached
observer, one who maintains a clever balance between the extremes, though his
work is focussed on the communication of existential experience.
Where are the beginnings of
Israelite wisdom teaching, a kind of wisdom which can be detected throughout
the whole of the ancient Near East at that time? Individual proverbial
material may well go back to the time of King Solomon. In that case the term
used is 'earlier wisdom'. Throughout the monarchy there were individual
wisdom teachers, and as early as the time of the prophet Jeremiah, alongside the
king and the court, the priests and the prophets, there is express mention of
a group of wise men. During the Exile, though, both in Mesopotamia and in
Egypt the exiles were exposed to an international wisdom culture; this means
that the flourishing of wisdom literature after the Exile is not as
surprising as all that. Nowadays it is described as 'later wisdom': proverbs,
admonitions and instructions were now reshaped or compiled and collected in
books. Through the inclusion of creation and revelation, wisdom became a
comprehensive theological system, wisdom theology: divine wisdom was the
teacher of human beings.
However, the crisis of wisdom
which is recorded in books like Job and Koheleth shows how little Jewish
piety had really been consolidated, despite all attempts at restoration, all
institutionalization and canonization. A good century after the return from
Exile, above all one of the fundamental doctrines of Jewish belief in God,
the doctrine of retribution, of God's righteousness which rewards and
punishes, and which was advocated both by wisdom theology and by the piety of
the law, had been shattered: this was the theory that there is a connection
between how one does and how one fares which human beings can recognize. Do
we really reap what we have sown? This is precisely what is vigorously
disputed in the book of Job, and even more in a book like Koheleth, which was
probably accepted into the canon only because it was attributed to Solomon.
For Koheleth, a man who was morei a sceptical philosopher than a theologian,
the break with ancestral belief in retribution has already become a fundamental
problem. Koheleth embodies the thought 'of the parting of the ways, the
boundary between two times', in which 'under the impact of the spiritual
crisis of early Hellenism, his critical thought could no longer make sense of
traditional wisdom and... traditional piety and the cult'; but even Koheleth,
with a more Socratic and conservative disposition, avoided 'breaking with the
religion of the fathers and identifying God, say, with incalculable fate'. In
view of this crisis of wisdom, the Book of Proverbs, like Jesus Sirach, seeks
a new trust in the divine order, in the wisdom of God the Father, in the
universality and reliability of God's plan. To this degree these are books of
restoration, the restoration of traditional belief in Yahweh.
However, the crisis of wisdom
simply reflected a more deep-seated structural crisis of the era. In order to
understand its political dimensions we must look at northern Greece, from
where the greatest danger now began to threaten for the Persian empire. For
the Macedonian king Philip II (359-336) had been astonishingly successful in
bringing together the Greek city-states, engaged in constant rivalry after
the battle of Marathon, in the 'Corinthian Alliance' against the Persians; at
the same time he developed a new military unit, the tightly-packed phalanx,
into a feared Greek battle formation. The focal point of world history began
to shift from east to west: for the first time a major European power
appeared on the scene of world history.
However, it was not Philip, but
his son, who was to take up the war against the Persians finally and
succesfully, in 336, after Philip's murder. Alexander, twenty years old,
educated by the brilliant philosopher Aristotle, and known as 'the Great',
changed the face of the earth, both politically and culturally, in no more
than thirteen years. The first European invasion of Asia was the work of
Alexander, who was a strategist on a grand scale. After the conquest of Asia
Minor, in 334 he turned south, occupied the coastal cities of Phoenicia
(including Tyre, the mother city of Carthage, after a seven months' siege),
Palestine, and finally Egypt. There, crowned with the double crown of the
Pharaohs, he had the city built which bears his name to the present day -
Alexandria. What about Jerusalem? Jerusalem seems to have surrendered
voluntarily on Alexander's march through the land to Egypt - in contrast to
Samaria, which also tried to rebel later.
Back from Egypt, Alexander turned
northwards, defeated the last Persian Great King Darius III at the battle of
Gaugamela in 331, and entered Babylon without a fight. After also capturing Susa,
Persepolis, and Ecbatana, and after the murder of Darius by one of his
satraps, Alexander had achieved his goal. He entered into the heritage of the
Achaemenids, only to press on immediately to the 'ends of the earth', the
foot of the Himalayas. However, Alexander wanted more than mere military
conquest. He imposed the union of Greek and Eastern blood, ceremonial and
culture. He had ten thousand Greek officers and soldiers married to Persian
women in Susa in a kind of mass wedding. So although he died in Babylon in
323 - completely unexpectedly, at the age of thirty-three, of a fever,
without any heirs capable of ruling - he forcibly introduced a new age: after
the Persian era came the Hellenistic: era.
This Greek cosmopolitan
'Hellenism' deliberately encouraged by Alexander, this mutual
interpenetration of Greek and Eastern culture in the states which succeeded
to Alexander's empire, and the consequent religious universalism and
syncretism, represented an enormous chal lenge ito the Jewish religion. Was a
new paradigm shift perhaps announcing itself here? Would Judaism now also
become a world religion with a universalistic orientation as a result of its
encounter with the universalistic world culture of Hellenism, since its
ethical monotheism already exercised a strong fascination on many non-Jews everywhere,
and therefore the Jewish mission was also increasingly successful?
What we note, rather, is the
opposite development. Certainly there is a by no means insignificant
collection of Hellenistic Jewish writings: alongside the historian Jason of
Cyrene and the philosopher Aristobulus in the second century BCE there is the
towering figure of the philosopher Philo of Alexandria (15/10 BCE - 40/50
CE), a contemporary of Jesus of Nazareth, who attempted to reconcile the
Jewish religion with Greek philosophy by interpreting the Pentateuch in his
commentaries with the help of allegorical methods of interpretation taken
over from the Greek' Stoa. He also attempted to discuss the creation story,
the legislation of Moses and the patriarchal narratives systematically in a
Hellenistic spirit. But in the end, all these efforts remained episodes. In
the middle and longf term the consequence of the encounter with Hellenism
was, rather, a strengthening of the traditional Jewish piety of Temple and
Torah.
Does all this 'no longer belong
to the theme of the history of the people of Israel'? No, the history
of the people does not come to an end here. But it does enter into
a long-drawn-out, fundamental crisis which will finally result in
a further epoch-making paradigm shift.
Beyond doubt the culture of the
Hellenistic world also exerted a strong influence on Palestine, especially
after the second century BCE, above all in jthe cities, which were becoming
increasingly more numerous, and among the educated and well-to-do,
particularly in Jerusalem, where the rich aristocratic priestly families
lived. A marked increase in building activity and the creation of works of
art, a heightening of efficiency in the economy, administration and among the
military were a mark of Hellenistic culture anyway, and led to a general
raising of living standards. People were concerned to show that they were
enlightened. Even high priests now increasingly often had Hellenistic names.
On the other hand, however, not only in the Diaspora but also in Judaea,
powerful circles loyal to the law stood firm against Hellenistic influence,
at least in their own religious sphere. After the first power struggles among
Alexander's generals, known as the Diadochi (= successors), with their
changing fortunes, this was already true for the rule of the Egyptian
Ptolemies (the Thirty-First and last Egyptian dynasty) over Palestine for
about a century (300-200/198 BCE).
The centre was now the rapidly
growing new city of Alexandria. Here the Hellenization of Judaism was to find
its most visible expression. For as the knowledge of Hebrew and Aramaic had
declined in the great Jewish community of Alexandria, in succession first the
Pentateuch and then the whole of the Hebrew Bible were translated into Greek.
As we heard, legend attributes this work to 'seventy' translators - hence the
name Septuagint (Greek for seventy).
However, the periods of harmony
and cultural interaction were soon to be disrupted when the Seleucids,
advancing from the region of Mesopotamia and Syria, displaced the Ptolemies
from Palestine. After five 'Syrian wars' over the land-bridge of
Syria-Palestine, the Seleucids took possession of Palestine. And after
initial tolerance there were increasingly pointed attempts to advance the
Hellenization of Jerusalem (Greek language, constitution, theatre, stadium,
gymnasium...). The question was whether a reformed Judaism, adapted to the
new time, could not be a significant possibility. At the time this
possibility was also affirmed by some Jewish reformers.
For those who were faithful to
the law, however, any reform was apostasy. At all events, opposition to this
Hellenization grew among the people. There was an explosion in 169 BCE when
the Seleucid king Antiochus IV Epiphanes appropriated the Temple treasure to
improve the state's financial position for a campaign in Egypt. He twice had
to occupy Jerusalem. Then he made the city a Hellenistic military colony,
which in effect amounted to a forcible Hellenization of Israel. In 167 there
was a ban on cultic worship in accordance with the law, circumcision and the
observance of the sabbath; those loyal to the Torah were persecuted; and
pagan cults were forced on the people. There was even what the book of Daniel
calls the 'abomination of desolation'62: an altar to Zeus on the altar of
burnt offering in the Temple.
The conflict between traditional
Jewish and Hellenistic culture now escalated enormously, and the hour had
come for a revolution by the people of the land, those of the old faith -
inspired;and led by the priest Mattathias and his five sons from the family
of Hasmon: the Hasmonaeans. The third son, Judas, called Maccabaeus (Aramaic
maqqabay = the 'hammer man'), managed to defeat the Syrian Seleucid troops in
three battles. In 164 BCE he entered Jerusalem and removed thepagan
abomination - but without attacking the Seleucid garrison in the citadel
(Akra) of Jerusalem, the sign of Syrian supremacy. On 14 December of the same
year the desecrated Temple was solemnly reconsecrated, and to the present day
Jews throughout the world mark this date by the feast of Hanukkah (the
'purification' of the Temple), which as the 'Feast of Lights' (with the
eight-branched Hanukkah lampstand) has turned into a kind of Jewish Christmas.
'
What were the political
consequences? Reaction among the people was split. The group of the 'pious'
("Hasidim'), from which the party of 'Pharisees' was later to come, was
content with spiritual and religious autonomy under Syrian and Seleucid supremacy.
The same was even more!true of a group of radically pious Jews, called
'Essenes', who probably broke away in protest as early as this; some of them
even began to emigrate into the wilderness. The Maccabaean movement took
precisely the opposite view: they were now also intent on the political
autonomy of Judaea - among other things by means of a dangerous defence
treaty made in 161 with the rising great power of Rome! The result was a
series of wearisome struggles.
The third party, the Hellenizing 'Sadducees',
composed of the leading priests and aristocratic families, under pressure
from both sides, eventually called on the Seleucids for help: initially,
moreover, the Seleucids even defeated the Maccabees, and Judas lost his life.
But his brother Jonathan continued the struggle, first as a guerrilla leader,
then as high priest, and two years later also as 'strategos (general) of
Judaea' (150 BCE). Thus in Judaea, for the first time for more thanjour
hundred years; spiritual and secular power were combined in one person. In
141 Jonathan's older brother and successor Simon - who in 142 had been
recognized as high priest and independent ruler by the Seleucid rulers - also
captured the Akra of Jerusalem and forced the evacuation of the Syrian
occupying forces. A year later the people bestowed on him the hereditary
honours pf general, prince and high priest. After his murder these] passed to
his son "John, with the name Hyrcanus I (135/4-104); he thus de facto
became the first king (and high priest) of the Hasmonaean dynasty. Under him
Judaea became politically independent and was only nominally under Seleucid
supremacy. So with Simon and John the Maccabees had achieved their great aim:
not only religious but political autonomy. But how was the religious renewal
faring?
With such a priest-king,
theocracy now seemed to have found its most marked expression. Yet in the
land of Israel people were anything but content with the Hasmonaeans. The
opposition became increasingly vociferous: the 'pious', the popular
'Pharisees' (= Aramaic perisbayya, from the Hebrew peruskim, those 'set
apart' by their piety). For these, observance of the law, interpreted in a
binding way by oral tradition, was more important than any nationalism. For
this group the new priest-kingship had already been all too secular, by no
means religious enough, for a long time.
Faced with this pious opposition,
John Hyrcanus was forced to rely completely on the Hellenistic party of the
Sadducees, for whom only the Pentateuch, and not just any tradition, was
binding. He was able to hold the line, but his son and successor, Alexander
Jannaeus (103-76), who now also formally took the title of king - which
according to the views of the orthodox was reserved for a son of David - had
to maintain his rule with bloody terror. After his victory, Alexander ended a
rebellion by the Pharisees which had gone on for several years by crucifying
800 of the rebels. The wars of faith had long since become wars of conquest:
not only the coastal cities and Galilee, but also large parts of Transjordan,
had been seized.
The two books of Maccabees -which
were not included in the Jewish canon - recount the history of the rebellion
and the rule of the Maccabees from 175-135, without glossing anything over or
playing it down. This is a history which in our day has again become a symbol
of the Jewish concern for self-assertion. As N.K.Gottwald has rightly pointed
out, it is an irony of history that 'Judas, the first Maccabee, had led a
majority of Jews against a small but powerful group of Jewish Hellenizers and
their Seleucid backers. In a turnabout, Alexander Jannaeus, a successor of
the Maccabees, now led a small but powerful group of royal supporters in a
desperate battle against a majority of countrymen who saw him as an
embodiment of Hellenistic corruption and oppression. Thus any exploitation of
the Maccabees for contemporary political ends is questionable.
The almost eighty years of Jewish
independence under the Hasmonaeans (142-63) was to remain an interlude - it
lasted only as long as there was a power vacuum on the land-bridge of
Palestine. That was not to be very long. The Roman empire had long since
pushed forward its Eastern frontiers to Greece and Asia Minor, and Pompey,
Caesar's rival, now chief commander in Asia, was intent on having a new order
in Asia Minor. Called on as an arbitrator by Hyrcanus and Aristobulus, who
were at odds over the Hasmonaean succession, Pompey in fact acceded to the
request of delegates from the Jewish people: having had more than enough of
any Hasmonaean royal rule, these once again called for a separation betwen
religious and political rule. In other words, they wanted a restoration of
priestly rule, to be limited to the religious and cultic sphere. They were
ready to cede political rule to the new world power, Rome: 'The supporters of
Hyrcanus agreed to this and handed Jerusalem over to Pompey. Aristobulus
entrenched himself on the Temple Mount, which was captured after a
three-month siege. Thus after almost a century of struggle, of temporary
political freedom and a Jewish state, the Macca-bean movement had comeito
grief on the selfishness of a Hasmonaean ruler who came from its ranks.'
The! result of this policy was
that Judaea was now a vassal state of Romel- very much reduced, without the
coastal cities and without accessjto the Mediterranean. The high priest was
stripped of his power: he was denied the title of king and the right to levy
taxes. Now he ruled only over the faith community in Jerusalem, and
temporarily still as ethnarch by courtesy of the Romans. And what about the
Hasmonaeans ? Because of their dangerous political connections with the
Parthians - Rome's great opponents in Asia Minor - the Romans later allowed
the whole family to be exterminated. A Judaized Idumaean was to get the
'credit' for this cruel business, a district governor of Galilee who had fled
to Rome, son; of Antipater Hyrcanus II by the daughter of an Arabian prince,
who in fact had shortly beforehand been appointed by the Roman senate as
'allied king' (rex socius) of Judaea - which in fact meant that he was its
vassal king. This was Herod, later also called 'the Great'. In 37 he captured
Jerusalem with Roman help and, sly, cruel and purposeful as he was,
established a state which, while dependent on Rome (it was indirectly under
the senate), was nevertheless relatively independent, and was no smaller than
the Hasmonaean kingdom.
In Jerusalem Herod ostentatiously
acted as a Judaeah; he did not attack the Jewish cult and supported Diaspora
Judaism: he developed Jerusalem and the Temple to give them great splendour,
and secured peace! and prosperity for the city and the whole country through
the Pax Romana. However, he was deeply hated by the people, and particularly
by those with a strict faith. As king he was virtually the counterpart to the
great David. Why? A Roman and of mixed birth, he built or enlarged
Hellenistic palaces, temples and cities everywhere (for example, iSamaria was
renamed Sebaste, Augusta, 'imperial city', in honour of Augustus), encouraged
emperor worship, and built or rebuilt numerous fortresses - signs of his
reign of terror (the citadels of Jerusalem, Machaerus and Masada on the Dead
Sea). Worse than that, though, he manipulated high priests at will,
encouraged the separation of state and religion, violently nipped any
opposition in the bud, and just on suspicion killed all potential successors
in the Hasmonaean family and his own (from eight marriages in all). The
victims included his second wife Mariamne, great-niece of the high priest
Hyrcanus; Hyrcanus himself, at the age of eighty; and three of his own sons,
the third murdered just a few days before his own death. All this forms the
background to the New Testament legend of the murder of the children at
Bethlehem (carried out on Herod's orders) in the Gospel of Matthew, and also
provided material for the great dramatists of world literature, from Hans
Sachs and Calderon through Voltaire to Friedrich Hebbel...
From the time of the Hasmonaeans,
the internal political struggle in Judaea was mainly dominated by the battle
between the rich Hellenized upper class of the Sadducees, who collaborated
with the Roman forces of occupation,: and those pious people who were
anti-Greek, the Pharisees; these: were interested in a life under the law,
'righteousness', and judgment. The Pharisees now gained increasing support
from the people. There is no question that under Roman supremacy, with its
religious toleration, the theocratic paradigm consolidated itself further and
had become a kind of church-state - again with the Temple as an economic,
political and religious centre. Even Herod and his successors (after Herod's
death in 4 BCE, the emperor Augustus divided the Herodian kingdom among his
three younger sons), and also the Roman governors (procurators) with a seat
in Caesarea Maris (they included the well-known Pontius Pilate, 26-36 CE), in
general respected the structure of theocratic power and rule represented by
the priestly hierarchy, which the Jews regarded as having been legitimated by
God himself, the supreme Lord. Religion, the dispensation of justice,
administration, and to a limited degree also politics, are here indissolu-bly
bound up together. The central organ of government, administration and
justice, responsible for all religious matters and matters of civil law, was
not a Jewish king but the Supreme Council in Jerusalem - in Greek synhedrion
(= 'assembly', hence Aramaic sanhedrin) - with the high priest at its head.
The ruling classes of the country were represented in it; in addition to the
Sadducaic priests and aristocrats these were above all the 'scribes'
(theologian-lawyers) of both the Sadducaean-priestly and Pharisaic-popular
trends. The Sanhedrin consisted of precisely seventy men under the presidency
of the high priest, who, although utterly dependent on the king and the
occupying forces, was still regarded as the supreme representative of the
Jewish people. However, whether they were expressed openly or in secret, the
expectations widespread among the people were quite different from those in
the hierarchical establishment.
Under the pressure of events, on
the periphery of the theocratic paradigm, among the circles of the 'Hasidim'
a novel interpretation of history! came into being, and a new literature of
'apocalyptic' (= 'un-veiling', 'revelation'), which took up again the earlier
end-time, eschatqlogical hope. Now above all in the form of prophecies,
testaments, dreams and visions, in rich imagery and numerical speculation, it
claimed to be able to 'un-veil' the divine mysteries and above all the future.
(What was unveiled here?
The apocalyptists had already
taken the place of the prophets and the wise men, warning and; interpreting
the time, as visionaries, seers and dreamers, in the crisis of the Maccabaen
period. And it was the book of Daniel in which - after a number of
preliminary stages in prophetic literature - the apocalyptic proclamation
came to be fully elaborated. A book by the prophet Daniel? It has now been
demonstrated jthat because of its language, its theology (the later theology
of angels) (and its unitary composition, the book of Daniel cannot in any way
come from the seer at the Babylonian court in the sixth century BCE. Rather,
its author comes from the second century, concealed behind) the mask of
iDaniel, and writes in the time of that brutal Hellenizer Antiochus IV
Epiphanes. Moreover, in the Jewish canon the book isjnot put among the 'Prophets',
but among the 'Writings'.
The book of Daniel represents
another, less political than theological form of jreaction to political
repression and the cultural struggle between Judaism and Hellenism. This now
called above all for a new answer to the meaning of history: 'This
extraordinarily aggressive Seleucid expansionary pressure southwards, bound
up with the seductions of Hellenistic culture, which in Jerusalem led to mass
if often also concealed apostasy among the well-to-do, clergy and aristocracy
- even to the point of doing away with the Torah - brought about such
fundamental crisis among pious circles in Judaism both externally and
internally that it gave rise to that completely changed theology of history
which we call apocalyptic.' This changed theology of history, often bound up
with the expectation of a final cosmic catastrophe and the coming of the
kingdom of God, had two momentous consequences - in terms of its later
historical effects. : One was that for the first time in the history of the
Jewish people, belief in an individual resurrection from the dead came into
being. That is understandable, since in the face of such a time of
persecution - for the author of the book of Daniel virtually an emergency in
which men, women and children were being cruelly tortured for holding firm to
the law - the old problem of just retribution posed itself far more sharply than
it had done generations before. New questions emerged - different ones from
those in the time of the Ptolemies and Koheleth, who in his melancholy
delight in this world (enjoy life while it lasts!) is far removed from the
traditional theology of retribution in the wisdom literature, but equally far
removed from any joyful hope for a world to come. Now, in the face of the
loyalty of many martyrs to the faith - they had been faced with the crazy
alternative of apostasy or death - unprecedented new questions emerge. What
can be the significance of a martyr death if those who are loyal to the faith
no longer receive any recompense? They do not receive it in this life, since
they are already dead, nor in the life to come, since that is only a shadow
existence. Where is the just God with his righteousness - in particular for
those who are most righteous of all?
The answer of the apocalyptist
Daniel is that this emergency will be followed by the end-time, now! Israel
will be saved and - here is the new element - the dead will rise again: both
the witnesses to the faith and their persecutors. The dead who have slept in
the 'land of dust' will awaken. They will return to life as whole human
beings (and not just, say, Platonically as 'souls'), in this this-worldly existence,
but that existence will now last'eternally, without end: for the wise in the
form of eternal light, for the others in the form of eternal shame (this too
is not elaborated on). 'The wise will shine like the splendour of the
firmament and the many will be led to righteousness, like the stars for ever
and ever.' This passage should be noted: this text from Daniel is the
earliest, indeed the only undisputed evidence for a resurrection from the
dead in the whole of the Hebrew Bible! However, outside the Hebrew canon, in
the Greek Septuagint, there are further testimonies to this hope of
resurrection which emerged at so late a stage - especially in II Maccabees,
which contains the oldest Jewish accounts of martyrs, accounts which became
the model for the Christian acts of martyrs. Thus belief in the resurrection
became a main theme of Judaism in the century and a half before Christ.
A second development is just as
important. In view of the way in which history had gone completely astray,
the traditional messianic expectation among the Jewish people, the coming of
a 'Son of David', had lost its power of conviction - and that was as a result
of history itself. Apocalyptic circles in Palestine had now become convinced
that help could now come only from God's emissary sent directly from heaven:
another, pre-existent bringer of salvation, kept hidden with God. So,
strikingly, the Davidic messiah is completely absent from a number of
apocalyptic writings. The place of the Davidic, earthjy messiah is taken by
the pre-existent and transcendent judge and saviour figure of the Son of Man:
only later in Palestine was there a fusion of the Son of Man with the
traditional messiah figure.
This period, which was largely
shaped by apocalyptic, saw the birth, barely noticed by the wider world and
not listed in its chronicles, of that Jew who was to become the destiny of
Judaism and Christianity: Jesus of (Nazareth, called the 'Son of Man'. There
was already vigorous controyersy over him in his; lifetime, and a small but
rapidly growing group of Jews was firmly convinced of his resurrection to new
life after a violent death. We shall
hear more of him later in this book. Here I want to recount further the
history of the Jewish people, which is exciting enough, given a new shift in
the times.
Quite independently of the
execution of Jesus of Nazareth around the year 30 BCE - the Romans liquidated
him as one of the numerous Jewish troublemakers - the political and religious
crisis of Judaism had heightened dramatically in subsequent decades. Jewish
freedom fighters above all in Galilee, and urban guerrillas in Jerusalem,
Zealots and Sicarii (dagger men), had already for a long time been carrying
out attacks on the Roman forces of occupation. These forces were represented
by rapacious, insensitive and politically incompetent procurators, who
allowed themselves some very stupid incursions into the religious sphere.
However, the great rebellion against
Roman power only came around forty years after Jesus' death, in the years
66-70 of our era. We are well informed about the course of events, since the
Jewish writer Flaviusjosephus, who was himself involved in the rebellion in
Galilee but later became a protege of the Flavian emperors, described the
ultimately breath-taking events in his book On the Jewish War. His account is
detailed, but biassed throughout (against the Zealots and in favour of Rome).
And yet at that time there was not just a conspiracy by a single
revolutionary group or party, which then kept snowballing, as Josephus
suggests to excuse the Jewish people. Rather, a general political, social and
religious confrontation was in the making in the 50s and 60s. The consequence
was a national popular war against the rule of Rome, a war which at the same
time was a social class struggle against the rich aristocratic establishment
friendly to Rome and thus for that very reason in a most profound sense also
a religious struggle. As a chosen people the Jews believed that they had the
right to political freedom, and the renewed loyalty to the national religious
institutions - zeal for Temple and law - seemed to guarantee them victory
with the help of their God. Here are the most important dates on which
historians are in agreement.
66 CE: Provocation by the
governor Gessius Florus, riots in Caesarea and Jerusalem, seizure of the
Temple Court and the Antonia citadel by Eleazar, the son of the high priest,
who was himself later executed (his palace and that of the Hasmonaeans was
burned down); unsuccessful intervention in Jerusalem by the Roman governor of
Syria; preparations for war on both sides.
67: On the orders of the emperor
Nero a slow recapture of the country under the command of the general Flavius
Vespasianus and his son Titus - both later emperors and protectors of
'Flavius' Josephus. There are clashes resembling a civil war in Jerusalem;
the earliest Christian community emigrates (according to certain traditions)
from Jerusalem to Pella in Transjordan.
68: Nero's death and the
encirclement of Jerusalem by Vespasian. As Vespasian begins to lay siege to
Jerusalem in the following year, he is proclaimed emperor by the legions of
the East. He hands over command to his son Titus and hastens to Rome.
70: At the beginning of the year
the attack on the city of Jerusalem is launched, but there are months of
vigorous Jewish resistance in house-to-house fighting. In August the Temple
is burned down, and in September the citadel and the upper city are finally
captured. There is an enormous blood-bath, plundering, and destruction of the
city.
71: Triumphal procession of Titus
in Rome. He brings with him as victor's booty the menorah, the seven-branched
lampstand from the Temple. This is depicted on the triumphal arch of Titus in
the Roman Forum (the original disappeared in 455 during the Vandal attack on
Rome).
74: Only now was the fortress of
Masada, long besieged and completely starved out, captured, after the whole
960-person Zealot garrison (apart from two women and five children) had
committed suicide. Masada was long forgotten, but in our time has been
identified and excavated. Against it the tremendous Roman siege ramp can
still be seen. Masada today is a monument of the Jewish state, and recently
has become a sign of Jewish bravery to the death. For the Jews of the time it
was a senseless catastrophe without parallel. For we must not forget that all
in all, around a quarter of the Jewish population of Palestine - according to
Josephus and Tacitus around 600,000 people - may have perished in the first
Jewish-Roman war.
Some decades later, in 132-135,
against all the warning signals, a second,tmessianically-orientated, hopeless
and ultimate Jewish rebellion took place against the Romans. We do not know
much about it. It was led by a Simeon ben Koseba, who was hailed as messiah
by Rabbi Akiba, the most influential teacher of his time, and given the title
Bar Kokhba (= son of the star). However, he was then reviled by others as one
who had led the people astray (as is attested in the Talmud) and given the
name Bar Kosiba (= son of lies). This rebellion which was again put down
methodically by the Romans, led to the final catastrophe after the capture of
fifty fortresses and around a thousand fortified places. Bar Kokhba fell in
battle and Rabbi Akiba suffered martyrdom, recitingithe 'Shema' as he died.
This second war is said to have claimed around 850,000 victims. Any one of
the followers of Bar Kokhba who was not cut down was sold into slavery. The
old Jerusalem was completely destroyed. And almost worse, after the end of
the war a completely new, totally Hellenized, city was built. Even its name,
Colonia; Aelia Capitolina, was an entirely new one. Jerusalem became a Roman
colony with sanctuaries of Jupiter Capitolinus, Juno and Minerva. Those who
had been circumcised were prohibited from entering the city on pain of death.
This was an epoch-making break:
virtually no other event had such a sustained influence on the history and
self-understanding of Judaism as did the loss of Jerusalem and the Second
Temple. Was this not the final end of the holy city of Israel? Throughout the
following centuries the Bar Kokhba revolt was seen as a costly and senseless
catastrophe - until almost two thousand years later, after the Six Day War
and the recapture of Jerusalem, lit was to be glorified quite directly as a
heroic action. But might not what people in Israel have called the Bar-Kokhba
syndrome also bring renewed danger to the Jewish people and state, instead of
peace?
It is more than nineteen
centuries since Roman troops levelled city and Temple to the ground. And the
city of Abraham, who is said to have met the priest Melchizedek and to have
bound his son Isaac at God's behest there, the city of David and Solomon, the
city of the Hasmonaeans and Herodians, has meanwhile become the holy city of
three wprld religions in another long and eventful history; But Jerusalem,
which according to Jewish popular etymology is meant to be the 'city of
peace', has become a city of no peace.
There is no ignoring the fact
that each of the three Abrahamic religions has a legitimate claim on
Jerusalem. But at the same time none is ready to acknowledge the rights of
the two others. And so today the barely thirty-five acres of the Temple Court
are the most disputed piece of land on this earth, the slightest incursion
into which has bloody consequences, as has been evident in our days. But many
people are asking whether a Temple is an essential part of Judaism; does it
not (like the monarchy) belong to certain limited constellations of a
particular period ? Is it part of the substance of the faith of Judaism, or
just of a particular paradigm? The political positions and strategies of all
three Abrahamic religions are very different, without any uniformity in this
respect.
- A
number of Jews would like to see the Temple rebuilt, and pray for that three
times a day. They are already constructing a model, raising money, and
training priests. However, the vast majority of present-day Jews do not want
a rebuilding of the Temple, far less the resumption of bloody animal
sacrifices, which would be the consequence.
- Some
Christians, too, want the rebuilding of the Temple, but only because for them
this would be a preliminary sign of the return of Christ. However, the majority
of Christians are content with their own places of worship and do not want
any rebuilding of the Temple, the result of which could quite easily be a
confrontation with the Jews.
- Not
a few Muslims are ready to defend the Dome of the Rock and the mosques on the
Temple Court to the last drop of blood, in order to prevent the rebuilding of
the Temple. However, the majority of Muslims do not want to wage any new war
over the 'holy rock'.
This is the ambiguous and highly
dangerous situation, and only one thing is certain. There will definitely be
no real peace between Jews, Christians and Muslims unless a way of peaceful
co-existence over Jerusalem and its Temple Mount is found.
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