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334 Journal of Biblical Literature
Testament Perspective [Minneapolis: Fortress, 1999], 157–68). While arguing that the
two elements are complex and related, the very positing of them indicates their separate
identities (cf. Levine, Judaism and Hellenism, 16–17). Hellenism, as the phenomenon of
the spread of “Greek” culture, is multifaceted and can be seen in terms of language (i.e.,
Greek), literature, pottery, politics, ideas, or the presence of Greek peoples. To class all
of these as one cultural system is to ignore the differences between them and the likelihood
that one person may be in favor of one aspect but not another. One could, for
instance, have no objection to the language or the people, but one might to the political
interference. Indeed, the politics of the era, involving Seleucids and Ptolemies, cannot
be said to be entirely “Greek,” as it combines Syrian and Egyptian traditions with Macedonian
and Greek.
Judaism as a religion in its diversity and Hellenism as a cultural phenomenon
embracing religious and nonreligious elements alike are both subject to flux and interpenetration
from the start. The idea that Hellenism is a dominant culture that requires
some response is dependent upon an image of Alexander and the diadochoi as promoters
of an imperialistic culture. Historical studies, however, have moved away from such
an imperialistic view of the Hellenistic empires. This arises not only from the influence
of postcolonial studies, but from the nature of the evidence itself, the need for local
recognition and acculturation of imperial power (see Susan M. Sherwin-White and
Amélie Kuhrt, From Samarkhand to Sardis: A New Approach to the Seleucid Empire
[Hellenistic Culture and Society 13; Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993];
Tessa Rajak, “Hasmonean Kingship and the Invention of Tradition,” in Aspects of Hellenistic
Kingship [ed. Per Bilde; Studies in Hellenistic Civilization 7; Aarhus: Aarhus
University Press, 1996]), and the articulation of local traditions (cf. A. Kuhrt and S.
Sherwin-White, “Aspects of Seleucid Royal Ideology: The Cylinder of Antiochus I from
Borsippa,” JHS 111 [1991]: 71–86). There was an exchange of relations rather than a
dominant culture over a subservient entity (see John Ma, Antiochos III and the Cities of
Western Asia Minor [New York: Oxford University Press, 1999]). Therefore, the language
we use should not reflect that of an older generation, such as Emil Schürer’s
description of Judaism as continuously at war (Kriegszustand) with the rest of the Hellenistic
world, “it had ever to draw the sword in its own defence” (“es hatte stets das
Schwert zur Verteidigung zu führen” [Geschichte des Jüdischen Volkes im Zeitalter Jesu
Christi (2nd ed.; Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1886), 2:770]). Schürer was probably the source for
Rudolf Smend’s designation of the book of Ben Sira as “Judaism’s declaration of war
against Hellenism” (“die Kriegserklärung des Judentums gegen den Hellenismus” [Die
Weisheit des Jesus Sirach, erklärt (Berlin: Reimer, 1906), xxiii]), which is cited by Hengel
(p. 138). Even in a sympathetic writer such as W. D. Davies, one can read that
“Judaism had been invaded by Hellenistic terminology” (Christian Origins and Judaism
[London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1962], 141; emphasis mine). Imperialistic language
does, nevertheless, come to the fore in such statements by Hengel as “the bitterest
defensive action was being fought against the destructive forces of Hellenism”
(p. 311), and the use of words such as “encroaching,” used commonly by more recent
writers too.
In the first two sections of the work, where Hengel compiles the evidence for the
presence of Greeks, the language, literature, and ideas, he does imply that all these features
amount to “Hellenism.” These sections indicate the increasing contact between