THREE HASIDISMS AND THEIR MILITANT IDEOLOGIES: 1 AND 2MACCABEES, PSALMS 144 AND 149

Harm van Grol Tilburg—The Netherlands

. Introduction

Biblical history has a rough time nowadays. First of all, there are reasons enough to criticize traditional history writing and its modern equiva- lents. Fundamentalist readings and non-hermeneutical theologies are a real danger in ecclesiastical environments and beyond. Our research in the history of Israel and Judah, therefore, must come up to contemporary academic standards.1 Further, the study of biblical history has matured, or, from another perspective, has become secularized. Biblical history is now the subject of historians (even if they are theologians), and they (we) tend to be straight in drawing a distinction between faith and fact, evi- dence and ideology, and sometimes, maybe, too neurotic. The most important result of this evidence—ideology project isthe loss of most of biblical history, redefined as proto-history, a world anach- ronistically controlled by myth, theology, and ideology. The discussion is not about this fact but its limits. Does the history of ancient Israel start with (king?) David, or does David still belong to proto-history, and should evidence based history writing begin two centuries later?2 Finally, according to contemporary historiography, ‘history’ does not exist, and what we know as ‘history’, is a personal or collective construct. This fundamental insight could paralyse our research if we take it as the

1 The Pontifical Biblical Commission is promoting the historical-critical method as an instrument against fundamentalism, in its document, The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church,  (see e.g. http://catholic-resources.org/ChurchDocs). 2 My personal choice of studies that discuss this subject: J.A. Soggin, An Introduction to the History of Israel and Judah, London , K.L. Noll, Canaan and Israel in Antiquity: An Introduction (The Biblical Seminar, ), London , and I. Finkelstein, N.A. Silber- man, The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of its Sacred Texts, New York NY .  harm van grol backdrop to our practical history writing. In fact, it presupposes the exis- tence of (the illusion of) truth and understanding. A fundamental motive for research is the will to know and to understand. It is a hermeneutical fallacy to consider the results of our research as just apersonalconstruct. We should take our reenactments very seriously. It will be only a mat- ter of time before someone deconstructs them, but precisely the play of constructing and deconstructing is research in progress.3 ‘Go to, let us construct!’ The subject of this paper will be the Hasidim of the second cen- tury bce. These ‘mighty warriors’ have captivated the scholarly world for more than a century. Most of the time, they were giving cause for mighty fantasies about the ancestors of the Essenes and the Pharizees and about the authors of apocalypses as  Enoch and Daniel. Lately, these the- ories have become an easy victim for deconstructing historians like Lester Grabbe:4 The paradoxical nature of focusing on sects, in spite of our limited evi- dence, is illustrated by the so-called Hasidim. These have been elevated to central catalysts for major events in Jewish history. They are supposed to have been the ancestors of both the Essenes and the Pharisees. Yet even their name is problematic: it is a scholarly invention and not found in the sources, which are all in Greek and call them Asidaioi.Weknownextto nothing about them, but this has not prevented major theories from being built on assumptions about who they were and what they did. I will argue that Grabbes great clause ‘We know next to nothing about them’ is beside the truth, excusez le mot, and that there is no reason to ban the Hasidim from history. Grabbe mentions two arguments against the existence of the Hasidim as a well defined group: The Greek translator [of Maccabees] undoubtedly understood this [the Hebrew word hâsîdîm] to be a name, but this does not mean that the original Hebrew text of Maccabees pointed to anything more than a

3 B. Becking, ‘The Hellenistic Period and Ancient Israel: Three Preliminary State- ments’, in: L.L. Grabbe (ed.), Did Moses Speak Attic? Jewish Historiography and Scripture in the Hellenistic Period (JSOT SupS, ; European Seminar in Historical Methodology, ), Sheffield , – (), argues in favour of a balance between trust and distrust: ‘the historical trade asks for distrust, while the art of reconstruction asks for trust.’ 4 L.L. Grabbe, ‘Second Temple Judaism: Challenges, Controversies, and Quibbles in the Next Decade’, Henoch  (), – (). Cf. Idem, Judaic Religion in the Second Temple Period: Belief and Practice from the Exile to Yavneh, London , –. É. Nodet, ‘Asidaioi andEssenes’,in:A.Hilhorstetal.(eds),Flores Florentino: FS Florentino García Martínez (Sup JSJ, ), Leiden , –, offers an example of fundamental mistrust.