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8. Jewish Perspectives on Greek Culture and Ethnicity

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8. Jewish Perspectives on Greek Culture and Ethnicity 8. JewishPerspectivesonGreek Culture and Ethnicity Τhe encounter of Jewand Greek in antiquity continues to exercise ahold on scholarlyattention and public imagination. The conquests of Alexander the Great spread Greek languageand institutions all over the lands of the Near East,from Asia Minor to Iran whereJews weresettled—includingPalestine itself. The convergence of cultures was inescapable. Not onlydoes it represent ahistor- ical confrontation of highsignificance,but the very terms “Hellenism” and “Ju- daism” have served as metaphors for atension between reason and religion, be- tween rationalityand spirituality, through the ages. The subject has,ofcourse, attracted extensive scholarlytreatment,with in- creased interest in recent years. But inquiry has proceeded largely on three fronts:(1) the influenceofHellenic language, literature, philosophy, historiogra- phy, and even religion upon the Jewish experience,¹ (2)the attitude of Greeks (or pagans more generally) toward Jews,² (3) the changingself-imageofthe Jews in the circumstances of aHellenic world.³ By contrast, little scrutinyhas been ap- plied to arelated but quite distinct issue: the Jewishperception of Greeks.⁴ Did the Jews have aclear and consistent sense of Greeks as an ethnicentity? The very notion of “the Jews” carries its own perils. It would be illusory to imagine amonolithic group with aunitary viewpoint. The analysis here centers The most detailed and comprehensive studyisstill that of M. Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism ( vols.; Philadelphia: Fortress, ). His conclusions on the extensive and earlyspread of Hellenism amongthe Jews,however,are challengedbyL.Feldman, Jewand Gentile in the Ancient World (Princeton:Princeton University Press, ), especially –, –,and bibliographical references. Enormous literatureexists on this subject. The relevanttexts areconvenientlycollectedby M. Stern, Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism ( vols.; Jerusalem: Israel Academyof Sciences, ). Amongrecentworks, with references to earlier scholarship, see especially J. G. Gager, TheOrigins of Anti-Semitism (Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, ); Z. Yavetz, “Ju- deophobia in Classical Antiquity,” JJS () –;P.Schäfer, Judeophobia: Attitudes to- ward the Jews in the Ancient World (Cambridge,Mass.: HarvardUniversity Press, ). The classic studyisthat of Y. Gutman, TheBeginnings of Jewish-HellenisticLiterature ( vols.; Jerusalem: Bialik, , [Hebrew]). Cf. also J. J. Collins, Between Athens and Jerusalem: JewishIdentity in the Hellenistic Diaspora (New York: Crossroad, ;revised ed. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, ). Agood general discussion maybefound in D. Mendels, TheRise and Fall of JewishNationalism (New York: Doubleday, ). And see now E. Gruen, Heritage and Hellenism (Berkeley:University of CaliforniaPress, ), with further bibliography. The treatment by C. Sirat, “The Jews,” in K. Dover,ed., Perceptions of the Ancient Greeks (Ox- ford: Blackwell, ) –,istoo broadand selective. 170 8. Jewish Perspectives on Greek Culture and Ethnicity upon that segment of the Jews (no small one) for whom comingtogrips with Hel- lenism was amatter of critical importance. As is well known, manyJews were thoroughly familiar with the Greek language, with Hellenic myths, traditions, re- ligion, and institutions.They engaged in aprotracted effort to redefine them- selveswithin the terms of an ascendant Mediterranean culturethat was largely Greek. How did they conceive of Greeks as apeople, nation, or society and what relation did their concept or conceptshaveonthe shapingofthe Jews’ own self- perception? Daunting questions. Relevant texts do not exist in abundance. Asubstantial number of Greek authors concernedthemselveswith Jewish customs,traits, and practices,their works cited by later authors or occasionallyextant in fragments. But nothing comparable issued from the pens of Jewish authorsabout Greeks. Perspectivesneed to be pieced togetherfrom stray remarks,inferences, and im- plications. Andthey add up to no neat and tidypicture. Theresults, however, offer some intriguing insights into the mentality of Hellenistic Jews and their sense of interconnectedness with the dominant ethnos of the Mediterranean cul- tural world. The Jews, on the face of it,might provide auseful “external” view of Hellen- ismos. In fact,however,they are, in an important sense, both “external” and “in- ternal” witnesses. They represent adifferent culture, background, tradition, and history.Yet in the Hellenistic era, and indeedinthe Greek East of the Romanpe- riod, the Jews were part and parcel of aGreek cultural community.That very fact, of course, wascentral to their grapplingwith anew sense of identitywhich they soughttoarticulate through the genres and the media familiar to Greeks while expressingthe distinctiveness of their own character and achievement.Hence, Jews needed both to establish their own secureplace within aHellenistic frame- work and also to make it clear that they werenot swallowed up by that prevail- ing cultural environment.The construct of Jewishidentity in the Hellenistic world, therefore, an ongoing,complex, and shifting process, was tightlybound up with the construct of Greek ethnicity,i.e., the character,values, and beliefs of the Greek ethnos in Jewish eyes. That these wereconstructs is inescapable. Although Jewishintellectuals could draw distinctions among Greek peoples, communities,and conventions, they frequentlylapsed into broad characterizations and stereotypes. Forobvious reasons.They had adefinite agenda. In some form or other,Jews had to confront —or to formulate—thoseHellenic traits from which they wishedtodisassociate themselvesand,atthe sametime, to account for thosecharacteristics which they had themselvesembraced. The texts discussed here, for the most part,weredirected inward. Jews spoke largely to their own compatriots,striving to fashion aself-consciousness that 8. JewishPerspectivesonGreek Cultureand Ethnicity 171 could negotiate acultural realm of alien origin. If Greeks read these works, so much the better.But few werelikelyto. The textscontributed to the articulation of Jewish identitybyand for Jews. Greeks regularlyreckoned other ethnē as barbaroi, afamiliar cliché of this subject. Jews suffered that disability,inHellenic eyes, likeeveryone else. But they could also turn the tables.Astriking text serves as suitable entrance into the inquiry.The author of the Second Book of Maccabees was aHellenized Jewofthe late second century B.C.E. who composed his work in Greek, awriter thoroughly steeped in the traditions of Greek historiography.⁵ His topic, however, was the background, circumstances,and consequences of the brutal persecution of Jews by the Hellenistic monarch Antiochus IV Epiphanes. The Jews resisted and retaliated under Judas Maccabeus. Accordingto2Maccabees, they fought noblyonbehalf of Judaism and, though few in number,ravagedthe entire land and droveout the “barbarian hordes.”⁶ So the composer of this work, well-versed in the conventionsofthe genre, employed the standard Hellenic des- ignation for the alien—but applied it to the Hellenes themselves. And it was not the onlysuch occasion.⁷ Thepejorative contexts in which the term appears in 2Maccabees make it clear that it signifies agood deal more than mere “speakers of aforeign tongue.” Biblical precedents, to be sure, could be drawnupon. The Canaanites carried acomparable stigma of barbaric backwardness, anecessary construct in order to justify their dispossession by the Hebrews. And the Philistines, fiercest of the Is- raelite foes, receivedasimilar portrayal as savage idolators,thus to legitimize the triumph of Yahweh.⁸ But the dire circumstances of the Maccabean era brought the Greeks sharplyinto focus. The cultivated author of 2Maccabees ex- propriated the Hellenic characterization of “the Other” to his own purposes. The Greek ethnos itself could now be cast in thatrole. The work is itself an epitomeofthe now lost five-volume history of the Maccabees by Jason of Cyrene, plainlyalso aHellenized Jew; Macc :–.For aregister of scholarship on Mac- cabees, see E. Schürer, The Historyofthe JewishPeople in the AgeofJesus Christ . (rev. and ed. G. Vermes,F.Millar and M. Goodman; Edinburgh: Clark, ) –. Macc :: τοῖς ὑπὲρτοῦἸουδαϊσμοῦ φιλοτίμως ἀνδραγαθήσασιν, ὥστε τὴν ὅλην χώραν ὀλιγους ὄντας λεηλατεῖνκαὶτὰβάρβαρα πλήθη διώκειν. Cf. Macc :; :; :. See the discussions of T. Dothan and R. Cohn, “The Philistine as Other:Biblical Rhetoric and Archaeological Reality,” in TheOther in JewishThought and History (ed. L. Silberstein and R. Cohn; New York: New York University Press, ) –;and Cohn, “BeforeIsrael: The Canaanites as Other in Biblical Tradition,” in ibid., –. 172 8. Jewish Perspectives on Greek Culture and Ethnicity Arangeoftexts underscores the drive of Hellenistic Jews to brand the Greeks as villainous or ignorant aliens—or both. This would, of course, distinguish all the more conspicuouslythe advantages of being aJew. Apocalyptic literatureserved this purpose. The visions of Danielreceived their current shape in the very eraofthe persecutions. And they speak in cryptic but unmistakable tones of the catastrophic evils brought by the rule of the Hel- lenic kingdom. The terrifyingdream that paraded four huge beasts in succession represented the sequence of empires,the fourth most fearsome of all, adreadful monster with iron teeth and bronze claws that devoured and trampled all in its path. That portent signified the comingofthe Greeks,toculminate in the tenth and most horrific prince, plainlythe figureofAntiochus
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