Journal of Biblical Literature - Society of Biblical Literature

338 Journal of Biblical Literature
with Greek philosophical concepts of divinity is indicated by two types of evidence.
First, two Greek inscriptions from Apollonopolis Magna (Edfu) in Upper Egypt are
dedications by Jews but found in a temple to Pan amidst various pagan inscriptions (now
thought to be mid-second to late first century B.C.E. rather than third century B.C.E.; A.
L. Connolly, “Safety from a Sea Voyage,” in New Documents Illustrating Early Christianity,
vol. 4, A Review of the Greek Inscriptions and Papyri Published in 1979 [ed.
G. H. R. Horsley; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987], 113–17). We might add the thirdcentury
evidence of the Zenon papyri in which the Jew Tobias addresses the Ptolemaic
king with a polytheistic greeting (CPJ #4). Whether these represent syncretism or the
employment of a formulaic address is hard to determine. These examples are clearly
from everyday life rather than theological or careful literary creations. Second, philosophical
discussions of the identity of the Jewish god with the Greek pantheon are
extant. In the Letter of Aristeas, for example, a “Greek” explains to Ptolemy the nature
of the Jewish God: “They worship the same God . . . though we call him by different
names, such as Zeus or Dis” (Aristeas 15). Later in the second century Aristobulus also
sees the Greek name for god as a designation of the Jewish god, but he offers the caution
that it is philosophically wise to select one’s name for God. These attitudes of the interpretatio
graeca Hengel contrasts with the more frequent negative separatist tendencies
(p. 266).
For Syro-Palestine, however, he only finds sparse evidence of such alignments
prior to the charges leveled in the books of the Maccabees. Most of the evidence
adduced for a reforming movement is from later writers such as Philo, who allegorized
the law. Hengel felt one could trace back a trajectory from these writers to the reformers,
whose goal of a new religion was fulfilled for a while by the new cult of Zeus on the
temple mount. He does point to Eupolemus, who, writing in Greek and using the Septuagint,
produced a work typical of Hellenistic historiography in its interest in origins
(On the Kings of Judea). The account there of Solomon’s gift of a golden pillar to the
king of Troy, who set it up in the temple of Zeus, is taken as evidence of the belief of the
pre-Maccabean Hellenists that the greatest god (theos megistos), to whom Solomon
owed his allegiance and position, was identified with Zeus of the Phoenicians and
Greeks. The fact, however, that this Eupolemus was probably chosen as envoy to Rome
by Judas Maccabeus (1 Macc 8:17) indicates that the Maccabean cause might not have
aligned itself against such views (see John J. Collins, “Cult and Culture: The Limits of
Hellenization in Judea,” in Hellenism in the Land of Israel, ed. Collins and Sterling,
45–46).
The evidence adduced throws little real light on the pre-Maccabean era in Syro-
Palestine, much of it coming from the Diaspora and from post-Maccabean days. It is
noticeable how little the Septuagint itself plays a part in Hengel’s book. Although C. H.
Dodd (The Bible and the Greeks [London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1935]) had shown the
influence of Greek terminology and thought on the translation, such features are not
prominent in the Septuagint, and the silence of such a fundamental document for Hellenistic
Jews calls into question the extent of the “reform movement.” What little evidence
there is need not be interpreted as a move toward theocracy but as expressions of
historiographical techniques of the period, apologetic and formulaic language. To downplay
such a religious crisis before the Maccabean revolt is not to deny the role of reli-