How and why and to what extent Greek culture was absorbed into the ancient Jewish world is not always clear, but that it was is undeniable.

To some extent, the answers depend on whether we study Judaism primarily as a separate culture, developed from its Biblical roots in an unbroken line, or whether we study it primarily as part of the wider cultural and religious history of the Mediterranean and the Near Eastern world. Scholars will naturally respond that both approaches are important. Nevertheless decisions taken at the start of any investigation about which aspect deserves more attention will inevitably color our conclusions. How can the right balance be achieved?

From the time of Alexander the Great in the fourth century B.C.E., Jews lived in a world in which Greek culture carried a certain prestige and offered a route to political influence, first within the Hellenistic kingdoms that succeeded Alexander in the third to first centuries B.C.E., and thereafter within the Roman Empire in the eastern Mediterranean and the Near East. During this period—when Alexander’s empire was divided between the Seleucids and the Ptolemies, and later when the Romans dominated both the eastern Mediterranean and the Near East—Greek was the language of government and administration. Native elites conformed, at least outwardly, to a Greek way of life and thereby gained access to political control of their own communities. Neither Greeks nor Romans were generally racially prejudiced, but both had a strong cultural prejudice in favor of a Greek way of life, and they encouraged the peoples they conquered and ruled to adopt this way of life.

This pressure to Hellenize came to a head within Jewish society in Jerusalem in the 160s B.C.E. The willingness of even some leading members of the high priesthood in Jerusalem to adopt Greek names—think of the Jewish high priests Jason and Menelaus—attests to the attraction of the dominant culture.

Other Jewish factions, however, claimed that Hellenism constituted a break with the Torah. When the forces of the Seleucid king Antiochus IV Epiphanes defiled the Temple in Jerusalem in 168 B.C.E., it was claimed that this was nothing less than divine punishment for the adoption of Hellenism. This process of Hellenization and the intra-Jewish conflict it produced is described in the Book of Maccabees:

A heroic Jewish revolt against the Hellenizers led by Judas Maccabee culminated in the purification of the defiled Temple and is still celebrated in the Jewish festival of Hanukkah.^a The story is recounted in the books of 1 and 2 Maccabees, which are preserved in the Apocrypha.

The Hellenized high priests themselves suffered a special punishment at the hands of the victors. The line of high priests was eventually replaced by the family of Judas Maccabee, thus inaugurating the dynasty known as the Hasmoneans, named for a family ancestor.

At least some of the concerns about Hellenization as a danger to Judaism in the time of Jason and Menelaus may well be the product of propaganda by later Hasmonean priests. Indeed, the right of the Hasmoneans themselves to the high priesthood seems to have been questioned by many Jews. Asserting the illegitimacy of the previous regime on grounds of their enthusiasm for Greek culture would be a natural form of self-defense for the Hasmoneans to use. It is striking that by the end of the second century B.C.E. the Hasmonean Aristobulus I, who served as high priest in Jerusalem from 104 to 103 B.C.E., seems to have been able without embarrassment to style himself a “Philhellene.” In short, the Hasmoneans had themselves become as Hellenized as the regime they had replaced.