The Failure of a Religious Reform: Observations on the Hellenistic Reform in Jerusalem

Zadokite Propaganda in the Late Second Temple Period is a monumental epoch-breaking work of scholarship in ancient history and Jewish studies. This book examines centuries of scholarship on ancient Jewish group identity and official Jewish religion in the most tumultuous period of Jewish history, namely the beginnings of the Maccabean era. Popularly known as the time period that gave the Jewish world the most famous Jewish celebration period, Hanukkah, the Maccabean Revolt was far more than a rebellion against Syrian domination. The period represented an important turning point in Jewish history, as village priests without any significant heritage or repute successfully overthrew and expelled Zadokite priests from the Jerusalem Temple and the city of Jerusalem itself. The Zadokites had been the legitimate and dominant priests of the Jerusalem Temple since the days of King Solomon, who built the First Jerusalem Temple. The physical and political displacement of Zadokite priests from their places of power, authority, and wealth produced historically significant literate communities, such as the Qumran community, and an abundance of literature, such as commentaries, creative poetry, and apocalyptic works. These writings all lamented the Zadokite displacement and prophesied a New Age, when all would be restored to the way it should be. Thus, Zadokites engaged in propaganda warfare of epic proportions with all their erudition and political savvy, creating a model for effective propaganda warfare. The Zadokite propaganda was so effective that it set the tone for the language and theme of the New Testament.

Reviewed by: Palace and Temple: A Study of Architectural and Verbal Icons Martha Sharp Joukowsky Palace and Temple: A Study of Architectural and Verbal Icons, by Clifford Mark McCormick. Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2002. 221 pp. Euro 63.55. C. Mark McCormick has published his thought-provoking dissertation supervised by John Van Seters with Jack M. Sasson serving on his committee. This book is a study of two cultures: the Neo-Assyrian of the eighth and seventh centuries and the Judahite of the sixth and fifth centuries BCE. The author applies built environment analysis to both of these cultures, specifically focusing on Sennacherib's Palace at Nineveh and Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem. McCormick's ideas are revisionist, exciting, and substantive. The book is organized into five chapters that incorporate the nature and interpretation of these subjects. A theoretical overview is tackled in the first chapter, which outlines the author's thesis and concerns his method of architectural and textual studies and its meaning for the built environment. In Chapter 2, McCormick shifts from the theoretical to the application of built environment analysis in a discussion of Sennacherib's Palace. In Chapter 3 the same analysis is applied to Solomon's Temple. Chapter 4 suggests different religio-political approaches for examining each structure, and addresses the issue of why these buildings are considered architectural and verbal icons to be "read" on many levels. Chapter 5 is a short conclusion, but sums up his thesis: " Understanding the temple description as a verbal icon that is related to the architectural icon of Sennacherib's palace is possible because of the application of built environment analysis. The palace of Sennacherib and the Deuteronomistic Historian's Jerusalem temple are human constructs that present the divine-human relationship, icons that embodied the human social behaviors and concepts desired by their creators." This conclusion is followed by indices of authors, subjects and biblical texts. Built environment analysis emerged from psychological and cultural anthropological relationships between the structure and the culture surrounding and influencing it. In other words, a culture creates material objects—fixed artifacts such as architecture, and features and tools such as decorative elements as well as moveable features. The form of these artifacts is dependent upon cultural, social, and environmental prerogatives that influence them; ergo, environmental factors help to mold or determine culture. McCormick goes on to insist that textual analysis "offer[s] an interpretation of the building based on its role within society." The most important aspect of this study is its success in interpreting built environment studies and verbal icons in a comprehensive manner for which the author works on a high level of abstraction displaying erudition and a clear sense of purpose for his argument. Touchstones of achievement, Sennacherib's Palace in Nineveh and Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem are compared and contrasted in this book as verbal icons and architectural achievements. Sennacherib's Palace is a well-preserved building of the seventh century BCE. Designed as an extraordinary spatial arrangement of portals, courtyards, triple entryways, doorways, columns and walls and unique decorative relief [End Page 152] embellishments, the archaeological remains of Sennacherib's Palace and epigraphic evidence stand at the forefront of Assyrian architectural development. Conversely, the architectural form of Solomon's Temple, for which the physical evidence is less secure, is analyzed with respect to built environment analyses as seen predominantly through its texts. Archaeological research advocates the use of fixed features that can be verified through controlled excavation. McCormick touches on controversies associated with archaeological scholarship and describes these issues in a comprehensive manner. He suggests we accept the Jerusalem temple verbal icon as a sound database. Here he displays a great deal of thought, citing the texts and identifying questions of historicity and the shaky if non-existent archaeological evidence for the temple. In Chapter 4, McCormick further develops his ideas about the Nineveh palace and the Solomonic temple as products of religious reform. Sennacherib's Assyrian religio-political agenda in the face of Babylonian resentment is the propaganda behind his building program and his shared identity with the god Assur—factors ultimately resulting in his assassination. Similarly, the role of Solomon's Temple...

Reviewed by: Cyrus the Great: Life and Lore ed. by M. Rahim Shayegan David B. Levy M. Rahim Shayegan (ed.). Cyrus the Great: Life and Lore. Ilex Foundation Series 21. Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England: Center for Hellenic Studies; Distributed by Harvard University Press, 2018. Pp. vii, 258. $24.95 (pb.). ISBN 978-0-674-98738-8. Cyrus the Great: Life and Lore consists of fourteen wide-ranging essays by a cast of distinguished scholars. They offer a representation of Cyrus’ impact on his own age, his legacy, and his reception history. An overview of the topics treated in this work includes: (1) Elamo-Persian acculturation; (2) Mesopotamian antecedents of Cyrus’ religious policy; (3) Cyrus’ Baupolitik, and the genesis of Persian imperial art; (4) the Babylonian exile of the Jews; competing Biblical references to Cyrus, and his influence on the return of Judean exiles; (5) Cyrus’ exalted but conflicted image in the later Greco-Roman world; (6) his reception and function in the genealogical construct of the Hellenistic and Arsacid periods; and (7) Cyrus’ enigmatic evanescence in the Sasanian and Muslim traditions. Cyrus’ decree allowing the Jews to return to the land of Judah to reconstruct the Temple (Ezra 1:1–4; 2 Chronicles 36:22–33) reflects his magnanimous policy as an archetypal prince. Deutero-Isaiah, Ezra, and Chronicles refer to Cyrus as a divine instrument of the Israelite God for benevolently allowing the return of some Judean exiles and the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem. Isaiah 44:28 and 45:1 refer to Cyrus as “God’s messiah.” Schniedewind’s essay defines the vacuum that the Babylonian exiles (led by Ezra and Nehemiah) filled as a “post-collapse society” in the wake of the destruction wrought by Nebuchadnezzar in the year 586 bce, as chronicled by the prophet Jeremiah in Lamentations. Schniedewind cites the statistical data of archeological excavations documenting the destruction of Israel to propose the thesis that the leadership role of the messiah was projected upon Cyrus de facto with the encouragement of the Levitical priesthood, who sought to displace the monarchal Davidians as the leaders of the Jews. Sweeney’s outstanding essay rightly suggests caution about the possibility that Cyrus was promoting the Levitical priesthood to supersede the Davidian royal line as leaders. Sweeney makes clear that among the later 12 Prophets, especially Zechariah and Haggai, the Achaemenid house was regarded with a hostility that had to be overcome. Zechariah and Haggai internalized the then historical turmoil occasioned by the war campaigns of Darius. The minor prophets embrace a Davidian monarchal independence and the overthrow of Persian rule. Zechariah thus entered into a genre of apocalyptical literature forecasting the ultimate triumph of the Hebrew monotheistic God. Whereas Deutero-Isaiah calls for submission to the Persian empire, Zechariah does not. Zechariah and Haggai differ from Isaiah with regard to the new political turmoil of their [End Page 495] time—turmoil that centered on whether God was about to depose the Achaemenid monarchy with a hoped-for restoration of the Davidic dynasty. The prophets Joel and Micah give voice to God’s longer-term plan for the reappearance of a Davidic messianic King who will defeat the nations that oppress Jerusalem, thereby achieving the messianic kingdom so that all may come to recognize the G-d of Israel as world Sovereign on Mt. Zion. Haggai calls for the establishment of Zerubbabel ben Shealtiel, the grandson of Jehoiachin ben Jehoiakim, as the last ruling monarch of the Judean dynastic house of David that is referred to as “God’s signet ring.” That prophecy serves as a paradigm for the cryptic call for the restoration of the royal house of David. Such views challenge the Deutero-Isaiah call for the recognition of Cyrus as the only messiah in God’s destined plan in history to help rebuild God’s Temple. My one caveat with this excellent scholarly collection is the absence (except for in Sweeney’s essay) of the role that Cyrus plays in Rabbinic lore and history. Midrash Esther Rabbah attributes significance to Cyrus in God’s plan by allowing the Jewess Esther to have offspring with the Persian King Ahasuerus, a mysterious and hushed lineage of...

Reviewed by: In Search of the Promised Land? The Hasmonean Dynasty between Biblical Models and Hellenistic Diplomacy by Katell Berthelot Robert Doran Katell Berthelot. In Search of the Promised Land? The Hasmonean Dynasty between Biblical Models and Hellenistic Diplomacy. Translated by Margaret Rigaud. Journal of Ancient Judaism Supplements 24. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2018. 494 pp. doi:10.1017/S036400941900014X Katell Bertholet investigates the bases for the claim by many twentieth-century scholars that the Hasmoneans had intended to reclaim the land promised by God to Israel or to reinstate the kingdom of David and Solomon. In her introductory chapter, Berthelot provides a succinct overview of historical scholarship on the Hasmonean period from 1850 to 1950, which supported the view that the Hasmoneans had set out to reclaim the Promised Land of Israel. She notes the dissident voices that have downplayed the biblical models for Hasmonean [End Page 206] action and preferred a more "secular" model for the dynasty's aims. The author points to problems in seeking biblical models to explain the Hasmonean policies: (a) there are several borders given in the Bible for the Promised Land; (b) it was not clear how long the commandment to conquer the Promised Land was to endure; (c) there is no biblical precedent for the forced conversion of non-Jews. She emphasizes that one must be cautious in speaking of the Hasmoneans as a whole, and that each ruler must be studied separately. After this introductory chapter, the work is divided into three parts. Part 1 concentrates on the account of the actions of Judas, Jonathan, and Simon in 1 Maccabees. The author first provides an analysis of 1 Maccabees, and looks at 2 Maccabees and the parallel accounts in Josephus's War and Antiquities. She finds that: "1) the author of 1 Maccabees could have made the land (even if only the Judean territory) into a much more explicit motivation for the Maccabean revolt, but he did not do so; 2) the reconquest of the promised land is not listed among the objectives of the revolt in either 2 Maccabees or the writings of Josephus" (91). She further concludes that "the conquest of parcels of land within and outside Judea did however constitute a major economic, demographic, political and military incentive for the Hasmoneans" (93). As for biblical models, she finds that Joshua and the war against the nations of Canaan do not play a major role in 1 Maccabees, but rather that the primary biblical touchstones are royal figures—David, Solomon—who provide legitimation for the rule of the Hasmoneans. She finds no mention of the purification of the land as a goal. Her analysis of the response of Simon to the threat of Antiochus VII at 1 Maccabees 15:33—"We have neither taken foreign land nor seized foreign property, but only the inheritance of our ancestors, which at one time had been unjustly taken by our enemies"—shows how Simon here does not base his answer on the notion that the land had been given to Israel as a divine gift, but grounds it on the juridical category of ancestral ownership, an argument found in other territorial disputes in the Hellenistic world. In part 2, Berthelot examines the Judean territorial expansion from John Hyrcanus to Aristobulus II. She shows by her analysis of the sources that the territorial expansion from Simon on was made possible by a specific set of historical and political circumstances: the Seleucid Empire was becoming weaker, and the Romans did not interfere until the reigns of Aristobulus II and Hyrcanus II. "Besides these historical circumstances and geopolitical factors, the sources suggest that the Hasmonean wars were motivated by questions of strategy and national security, as well as by political and economic concerns. Demographic issues may also have played a role" (282). She discusses the role of "forced conversions" (283–324) and sees this policy as a means not only to exclude idolatrous practices but also to consolidate Hasmonean power through the fiscal demands of the temple in Jerusalem. These "conversions," therefore, were linked to the political and economic interests of the Hasmoneans and considerably enriched Judea. As for the use of mercenaries, "their presence...

Ḥanukkāh, the Jewish festival of lights, will soon be celebrated all over the world. This eight-day holiday commemorates the rededication of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem at the time of the Maccabean Revolt against the Seleucid Empire of the second century BCE. During Ḥanukkāh, we light candles of peace to renew our faith in the ultimate triumph of peace over war.

This chapter focuses on the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, looking at it from the point of view of Flavian religious policies. Vespasian and Titus were fully aware of the ramifications of the destruction. In Roman religious terms, their actions would result in the elimination of the major cult centre of the Jews. The removal of the chief cult objects (the menorah, the table, and the sacred vessels) to Rome symbolized the end of the cult in Jerusalem, and emphasized the notion — found in Josephus — that the Jewish God had abandoned his people and gone over to the Roman side. In some senses this amounted to a sort of evocatio of a foreign deity, as so often occurred when Roman armies captured enemy cities. Vespasian was keen to close down cult centres that he considered potential focal points for further Jewish resistance against Rome.

The books of Kings claim that the worship of Yhwh should have been centralized at Solomon’s temple in Jerusalem and that, for most of their history, Israel and Judah did not conform to that principle. This chapter shows that cult centralization is a major theme of Kings indeed. It also discusses the possible origins of this religious principle and the hypotheses concerning its rationale. But Kings also claims that two kings, Hezekiah and Josiah, made religious reforms based on cult centralization. This chapter introduces the reader to the debate about the historicity of these reforms, which involves both the literary analysis of the relevant passages of Kings and the interpretation of potential archaeological evidence.

In the complicated history between the Jews and the Samaritans in antiquity, it is possible to identify several foundational events that influenced the relationship between the two groups. Two of these events concern the destruction of a Israeli/ Samaritan temple by the ruler of Judah. The first is the destruction of the Israeli/ Samaritan temple in Beit El by King Josiah at the turn of the seventh century BCE. The second is the destruction of the Samaritan temple on Mount Gerizim by John Hyrcanus at the end of the second century BCE. Although more than 500 years elapsed between the two events, the two nonetheless show many similarities. In both cases, the period in question is the first period of independence in Judea after many years of foreign rule; in both cases, the ruler of Judah had carried out significant religious reforms in the Land of Israel; in both cases, this was a Jewish ruler who had expanded the borders of his kingdom; in both periods, a national awakening had taken place. The resemblance between these two events associated with the destruction of a Samaritan temple is even more pronounced in the view of the "long dimension," which examines processes in history over centuries. Along with the many similarities, however, we found that the events' consequences were completely different: While Josiah's goal was probably to bring the Samaritan population closer to Judah, John Hyrcanus treated the Samaritans as rivals. The destruction of the Temple at Beit El appears to have brought some of the Samaritan population closer to the Kingdom of Judah and the Temple in Jerusalem, thus apparently fulfilling the goals of King Josiah. By contrast, the destruction of the Samaritan Temple on Mount Gerizim and the transformation of the complex, holy to the Samaritans, into a heap of ruins was probably a breaking point in the relationship between the Jews and the Samaritans. From that point on, the relationship began to deteriorate severely, culminating in actual physical injury on the eve of the destruction of the Second Temple.

Communal Reading in the Time of Jesus: A Window into Early Christian Reading Practices

King Josiah of Judah (ruled 640–609 b.c.e.) is a figure of extraordinary importance for the history of ancient Israel and Judah. According to the biblical narrative, a Torah scroll was discovered during the renovation of the Jerusalem Temple in the eighteenth year of Josiah's reign. This scroll, commonly identified as a form of Deuteronomy, became the basis of an ambitious program of religious reform and national restoration in which Josiah closed down all pagan worship sites throughout the land of Israel, centralized worship at the Jerusalem Temple, and attempted to reunite Israel and Judah as an independent monarchy under the rule of the royal house of David. The narratives concerning Josiah's reign have proved to be pivotal in discussion among biblical scholars, insofar as they have provided the basis for the reconstruction of the history of Israelite/Judean religion and the compositional history of much of the Hebrew Bible. This study reexamines the relevant biblical literature and the archeology evidence concerning the reign of King Josiah of Judah and its impact on ancient Judean thought. It argues that early forms of the book of Deuteronomy, the so‐called Deuteronomistic History (Joshua; Judges; 1–2 Samuel; and 1–2 Kings), and much of the prophetic literature (Isaiah; Hosea; Amos; Micah; Jeremiah; Zephaniah; Nahum; cf. Habakkuk) were written or edited to support King Josiah's reform and to present him as the righteous Davidic monarch, who would realize the divine promise of security for the land and people of Israel. Following the tragic death of Josiah at the hands of the Egyptian Pharaoh Necho at Megiddo in 609 b.c.e., Josiah's program of religious reform and national restoration came to an end as Judah was subjugated first to Egypt and then to Babylon prior to the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in 587 b.c.e. The image of Josiah as a righteous Davidic monarch and his program nevertheless continued to influence Israelite/Judean expectations of restoration in the aftermath of the Babylonian exile.

In contrast to the exclusion of human use considerations in MPA designation processes under the European nature directives, the distinct UK legal framework for Marine Conservation Zones (MCZs) permits social and economic factors in site selection decisions. These considerations were, however, kept separate from the science-policy framework to deliver an Ecologically Coherent Network (ECN) under the legislation. This set the basis for site selection and designation in English waters, applied under four regional stakeholder projects between 2009 and 2011 and subsequently via a more centralised government process that by 2019 had culminated in three tranches of MCZ site designations. We describe the interplay between top-down policy, stakeholder dynamics and the role of evidence in taking account of commercial fisheries during the process. We argue that a failure to integrate human use considerations in the science-policy framework, and the resulting de-facto subordination of fisheries in site selection decision-making, risks undermining wider conservation gains.

To date, Zimbabwe does not have an overt and comprehensive language policy. Policy is inferred from language practices in various spaces and from pieces of legislation in education, the media and legal domains. In multilingual schools, teachers make and renegotiate language policy through practices and choices that they make to manage classroom multilingualism. This article examines teachers’ self-reported language ideologies and how they occasioned conflicting language practices with the top-down language-in-education policy in Zimbabwe. Drawing on Spolsky’s innovation in the theory of language policy, the article specifically discusses how teachers’ ideologies about African languages and colonially inherited English predispose them to naturalise and normalise English as the default language of instruction, contrary to the provision for the use of African languages in the Education Act. I argue that the mismatch between the top-down policy and bottom-up practices is mediated in part by a lack of broad-based considerations of the sociolinguistic, economic and political factors. Together, these engender language ideologies that inform the practice of foisting English on students in the classroom, thereby diminishing transformative educational outcomes for African language-speaking learners. Teachers’ views showed that translanguaging could be a welcome language management alternative to the ‘difficult to implement’ mother tongue instruction.

Despite the rapid development of aquaculture worldwide, production has stagnated in Europe and North America, notwithstanding the public policies that support the sector. This stagnation may stem from the insufficient integration of social dimensions into aquaculture governance, often characterized by top-down policies and technology-driven approaches. While environmental, economic and social factors significantly influence the social acceptability of aquaculture, environmental impacts, such as habitat degradation and the spread of disease, have historically dominated regulatory frameworks. Today, low social acceptability appears to be the major obstacle to the sector's growth, highlighting shortcomings in terms of stakeholder engagement, transparency and fairness in the distribution of the benefits generated by the sector. This paper reflects the collective insights from the ICES Working Group on Social and Economic Dimensions of Aquaculture, emphasizing that challenges to social acceptability of aquaculture are widespread but context-dependent and remain insufficiently addressed in public policies related to aquaculture development. This paper recommends broadening governance beyond environmental concerns to include social and economic dimensions from the outset, strengthening public participation in decision-making processes and adopting holistic, socially informed marine spatial planning. In addition, it highlights the importance of recognizing the role of informal governance mechanisms and the production of meaningful social data as essential aspects to foster community acceptance and the sustainable development of aquaculture. Adapting aquaculture policies to local contexts through inclusive and adaptive governance is therefore essential to the sustainable growth of the sector.

The term “Hellenistic Judaism” is a conventional one, long used, but a misnomer according to many contemporary scholars. Traditionally, “Hellenistic Judaism” was a designation for Judaism in the Greek-speaking world, including those Jews who spoke Greek and adopted (to some extent) a Greek way of life. It has been argued, however, that all Judaism after the conquests of Alexander was Hellenistic Judaism. The Hellenistic period begins with the conquests of Alexander, but when did it end? In one sense, it continued under the Romans and even encompassed the Byzantine period, ending only with the Islamic conquest. For practical purposes, however, the bibliography given here covers primarily the period from Alexander to the Roman conquest under Pompey, circa 335 to 65 bce, a period of almost three centuries. From the point of view of the region or province of Judah, it takes in first Ptolemaic, then Seleucid, and finally Hasmonean rule. The last is very important as almost a century of rule by a native Jewish dynasty of priest-kings. Although many have seen the Maccabean revolt as opposing Hellenistic culture, this is to be very much doubted. Hellenistic Judaism is part of a wider historical period and phenomenon known as “Second Temple Judaism,” which refers to Judaism from Cyrus’s conquest of Babylon to the fall of the Jerusalem temple in 70 ce, or the Persian, Greek, and early Roman periods. Many of the major developments of Judaism during this time actually began in the Persian period, but they sometimes accelerated under Greek rule, and Greek rule brought its own influences and contributions to the Jewish people. This has been most discussed with regard to Hellenization and the so-called Hellenistic reform preceding the Maccabean revolt. See Hellenism and Hellenization and Maccabean Revolt and Hasmonean Rule.

This study evaluates the applicability of Spolsky’s tripartite model of language policy, consisting of language beliefs, practices, and management across three different minority contexts in Europe. The research respectively targets Algerians in France, Hungarians in the UK, and Turks in Hungary. The first study centres around the national and community level, while the second and third studies focus on the family domain. For the case of Algerians in France, the study investigates language management by analysing governmental top-down language policies and probes language beliefs and practices among first-generation immigrants using a questionnaire. The second study shifts to the familial domain, using a questionnaire based on Spolsky’s tripartite model to explore bilingualism efforts among Hungarian-speaking mothers in the UK. Meanwhile, the Turkish context in Hungary utilizes both semi-structured in-depth interviews as well as a short questionnaire to examine Turkish families’ language management, beliefs and practices. The studies present varying results, with Algerians strongly upholding Arabic against the weight of French monolingual policies and the societal demands for using French. Moreover, Hungarian families’ efforts to meticulously cultivate bilingualism among their children are undermined by external pressures in education, leading to a more fluid bilingual experience. By contrast, the results showcase the shift of Turkish immigrants towards Hungarian due to intermarriages and the lack of institutional support. Although the findings underscore Spolsky’s model adaptability in depicting language policy dimensions across different contexts, it falls short of accounting for layers of complexity pertaining to the impact and role of external socio-political and economic factors. Furthermore, the model partially grasps the dynamic nature of multilingual identity construction. As such, these insights call for a rigorous investigation of these complexities in order to arrive at a better understanding of the fluid and ever-evolving nature of language policy as well as producing more context-sensitive policies.