Journal of Biblical Literature - Society of Biblical Literature

330 Journal of Biblical Literature
the most hardened skeptic. To replace the customary distinction between Hellenistic
and Palestinian Judaism, Hengel suggests a distinction between “the Greek-speaking
Judaism of the western diaspora and the Aramaic/Hebrew speaking Judaism of Palestine
or of Babylonia” (p. 193). This distinction could also be misleading, he notes, since even
in Jerusalem there was a strong and influential group of people who were genuinely
bilingual.
According to Hengel, Hellenistic influence was practically all-pervasive in Palestinian
Judaism, even in circles that decisively adopted an anti-Hellenistic stance. The
hundred years of predominantly peaceful Ptolemaic rule gave an easily recognizable
Hellenistic character to the life and interests of the Palestinian Jewish nobility and affluent
class. Gradually, a critical attitude was developed toward traditional Jewish Law and
practices, since they hindered further economic and cultural advancement. Hengel
argues that this group’s Hellenism led it to exercise decisive influence on the shape of
Antiochus IV Epiphanes’ persecution. The detailed knowledge of Jewish beliefs and
practices evidenced in the persecution could not have been available to Antiochus IV or
to his advisors. Only the hellenized Jewish upper classes, regarded as apostates by their
fellow Jews, could or would have worked out such a thorough attempt to turn the Law
inside out. In order to ensure their own survival and prosperity, the Hellenists sought to
crush traditional Jewish observance in Jerusalem, break the power of the “pious,” and
remove the obstacles to total hellenization. The “reform” failed, but it had decisive
effects on subsequent Palestinian Judaism.
The traditional wisdom circles were hellenized in a slightly different way. The
identification of “Wisdom” and “Torah” led to a rapprochement between the wisdom
tradition and a popularized Stoicism. Oriental-Jewish wisdom and Greek popular philosophy
both exhibited a rational, empiricist character, a universalistic tendency, an
interest in the divine order of the cosmos, and a strong anthropologic-ethical focus of
interest.
Not only these groups, but also the Hasidim, bitter opponents of the Hellenistic
reform, were deeply influenced by the winds of Hellenism. The “pious” authors of the
early apocalypses opposed the new Hellenistic knowledge with a form of revealed
knowledge, superior to human knowledge, that laid bare the secrets of the cosmos and
of history. An “encyclopedic” character and a concern with understanding the cosmos
are clear signs of the Hellenistic roots of this new anti-Hellenistic viewpoint. Hengel
argues that, when one group of the “pious” later split off from the Hasmoneans and fled
to the desert, the community they formed at Qumran to preserve fidelity to the Law in
its purity had organizational analogies with contemporary Greek communal organizations.
The second main descendent of the “pious,” the Pharisaic movement, itself developed
a “Torah-ontology” that allegedly has parallels in Philo’s thought.
Hengel stresses the crucial importance of the events of 175 B.C.E. and later for the
further history of Judaism and even for the rise of Christianity. He argues that the Hellenistic
reform movement and the persecution by Antiochus IV forced the main body of
Jewish faithful to put even greater emphasis on the Law as central to, and all-important
for, Judaism. Jewish zeal for the Law made the Jews of Palestine increasingly difficult to
govern, while it also split the people into mutually hostile parties, each accusing the
other of infidelity to the Law and unable to unite even against a foreign oppressor. Jew-