Hellenistic Jews
Alexander the Great
Under the Persians the Jews did very well.
They were able to worship their own God, and even to travel around the
Persian Empire converting people to Judaism. But in 331 BC
Alexander the Great,
who was from Macedon, conquered the Persian Empire and "liberated" (as
he called it) the Jews from Persian rule. At first the Jews thought
that they would be independent again and have
a king, but it soon turned out that Alexander was making Israel part
of his own empire. After Alexander
died in 323 BC, Israel became part of the empire of Alexander's general
Seleucus.
In 168 BC, the Seleucid king Antiochus
IV tried to make the Jews worship the Greek
gods instead of their own. He sacrificed
a cow to Zeus
on the altar in the Temple. The Jews were very upset and, led by the
Maccabee family, they revolted and gained their independence from the
Seleucids. Our holiday of Hanukah comes from one battle in this rebellion. The Jews set up a new independent state of Israel.
Pompey
In 65 BC, about a hundred years later,
the Romans under their
general Pompey took over Israel and ruled the Jews.
To find out more about this period of Jewish history, check out this book from Amazon.com or at your local library:
Heritage and Hellenism: The Reinvention of Jewish Tradition (Hellenistic
Culture and Society)
by Erich S. Gruen
by Erich S. Gruen
