Journal of Biblical Literature - Society of Biblical Literature

Book Reviews
The Intellectual Response to Hellenism
In his account of the Jewish philosophical interpretation of God and the causes of
the Maccabean war, Hengel is relies primarily upon E. J. Bickerman’s Der Gott der
Makkabäer (Berlin: Schocken, 1937; see Hengel’s expressed debt to Bickerman
[“Judaism and Hellenism Revisited,” 9]). Hengel identifies the reformist group as “Hellenists,”
a term from Acts 6:1, where it seems to be used only of Greek as opposed to
Hebrew/Aramaic speakers (“Hebraists”). For Hengel they are the wealthy upper
classes, who wish to improve their situation through their contact with Greeks. The Hellenists
saw the possibilities of unrestricted economic and cultural exchanges with the
non-Jewish environment open to them by the removal of the “religious prejudices of
conservative groups.” The nationalistic religion of the Jews bound by law was unintelligible
to Greeks, while the idealized religion was one of theocracy in which the different
religions were only the manifestations of the one deity. For Greeks the Jewish faith was
not far from such an ideal, if only the Jews could liberate themselves from their national
limitations.
Hengel adopted Bickerman’s thesis of the Hellenizers’ role in instigating the persecutions
under Antiochus IV. Thus, Bickerman used the separateness of Jews, and the
criticism of Moses and his successors found in Greek writers (e.g., Ps.-Hecataeus), to
account for Jewish motivation in the Maccabean revolt. He saw the reformers as
responding to the patent difficult position of Jews in society (he was writing in the
1930s) and as wishing to return to a golden age. By removing recent accretions (such
legal prescriptions as circumcision, purity laws, dietary regulations) the “Hellenists”
would return to a pure religion and remove the barriers separating them from the Gentiles
(cf. opening of 1 Macc 1:11; Dan 11:30).
The problem with Bickerman’s thesis is that it relies on hostile sources, both views
of Greco-Roman writers hostile to the Jews and pro-Hasmonean sources hostile to their
opponents. It also presupposes a distinction between Judaism and Hellenism, in which
“to hellenize” was the equivalent of abandoning one’s faith. Bickerman makes frequent
reference to his own contemporary situation, praising the Jewish reformers of his time
(G. Riesser, A. Geiger, and I. Einhorn). His argument extols the Judaism of the time of
Abraham and finds the legalism of the postexilic period a problem. Such views are strikingly
close to those nineteenth-century writers who saw the ideal Christianity as a fusion
of Abrahamic religion and Greek philosophy. Bickerman was probably following Moriz
Friedländer (Geschichte der jüdischen apologetik als vorgeschichte des christentums:
Eine historisch-kritische Darstellung der Propaganda und Apologie im Alten Testament
und in der Hellenistischen Diaspora [Zurich, 1903]), who argued that in the Diaspora
the law of Moses was being turned into a general doctrine that could be admitted by
every enlightened mind. Friedländer further argued that the spreading of this principle
was the historic mission of Alexandrian Jews, and thus provided the transition from biblical
Judaism to Christianity. Hengel himself seems to have taken on some of these ideas
of Friedländer, since he concludes his work with some thoughts on the origins of Christianity.
Judaism was faced with “national self-preservation” and a “protective attitude”
(p. 323), and it required primitive Christianity to break the “nationalistic legalism” and
begin a “world-wide mission” (p. 309).
That the Hellenists were aiming to dispense with legalism and align themselves
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