Journal: Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society
Volume: JETS 46:3 (Sep 2003)
Article: Purity and Nationalism in Second Temple Literature: 1-2 Maccabees And Jubilees
Author: Joseph H. Hellerman

JETS 46:3 (September 2003) p. 401

Purity and Nationalism in Second Temple Literature: 1-2 Maccabees And Jubilees

Joseph H. Hellerman

[Joseph Hellerman is professor of New Testament Language and Literature, Talbot School of Theology, 13800 Biola Avenue, La Mirada, CA 90639.]

In 167 BC, at the instigation of an influential faction of Jewish elites, the Syrian king, Antiochus IV, began a program of forced Hellenization which prohibited behaviors and altered institutions that were particularly defining for Jewish identity:

... the king sent letters by messengers to Jerusalem and the cities of Judah; he directed them to follow customs strange to the land, to forbid burnt offerings and sacrifices and drink offerings in the sanctuary, to profane sabbaths and feasts, to defile the sanctuary and the priests, to build altars and sacred precincts and shrines for idols, to sacrifice swine and unclean animals, and to leave their sons uncircumcised (1 Macc 1:44–48).1

The king also proscribed Jewish dietary laws, and the eating of unclean food became something of a litmus test for faithfulness to Antiochus’s directives. Finally, imperial authorities destroyed copies of the Torah-the sacred source for Jewish religious practices-and determined possession of the law to be a capital offense.

Antiochus’s goal was transparently socio-political: “that [his whole kingdom] should be one people, and that each should give up his customs” (1 Macc 1:41–42).2 The king perceptively discerned that, in order to achieve his desired ends, he would have to abolish traditional Jewish distinctions between sacred and profane foods, times, and places. For the “customs” associated with these distinctions (along with male circumcision) had served to set apart Jewish inhabitants of the empire as the chosen people of Yahweh and thereby obstruct any attempt to render the Jews “one people” with their Greek overlords.3

JETS 46:3 (September 2003) p. 402

The ensuing history is a familiar one, and there is little need to rehearse it here. Suffice it to say that a series of victories on the part of the Maccabees and their supporters ultimately garnered for Judeans both religious and political independence from their Syrian Greek oppressors. My intention here is to consider the effects of the crisis of 167–164 BC upon Jewish convictions regarding those symbols of socio-religious identity proscribed by Antiochus, as reflected in later literature.

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