From Yahweh to Zion

by Laurent Guyénot

  The edicts of Cyrus, Darius, and Artaxerxes are fake. No historian believes them authentic. The fraud is almost transparent in the first case, which was supposedly lost and then found. As for the edict of Artaxerxes, it is even more incredible. However, it is unlikely that writing under Persian rule, Jews would have produced false edicts, even in Hebrew. This leads to the plausible theory that the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, in their present form, were written after the end of the Persian rule over Judea. This brings us to the Hellenistic period, which followed the conquest of Alexander the Great in 333 BCE.

  Large Jewish communities were living in Egypt at that time. Some date back to the Babylonian conquest, when refugees settled there by the thousands, counting among them the prophet Jeremiah. As in Babylon, the Jews supported the Persian conquest of Egypt, and obtained under Persian rule privileged status as intermediaries between the ruling elite and the population. In 332, true to their strategy, they welcomed the new conqueror, Alexander the Macedonian, who accorded them special rights. To encourage immigration to his new capital, Alexander went so far as to grant the Jews the same privileges as the Hellenes who formed the ruling elite. This privileged status, alongside the legendary ability of Jews to enrich themselves, naturally aroused the jealousy of the natives; Jewish historian Flavius Josephus reports in his War of the Jews (II.18.7) that there was in Alexandria “perpetual sedition” of the Gentiles (Greeks and Egyptians) against the privileged Jews, which intensified in the second half of the second century BCE.

  After Alexander’s death, his generals fought among themselves over his conquests. Around 300 BCE, Ptolemy Soter reigned as Pharaoh of Egypt and its dependencies, which included Judea, while Seleucus received almost the whole of Asia, including Persia and Upper Syria. But a century later, Judea fell to the house of the Seleucids. Hellenistic culture, born of the love affair of Greece and Egypt, then permeated the entire Middle East. The use of Greek spread from Asia to Egypt, although Aramaic, from which Hebrew and Arabic derive, remained the lingua franca in Judea and Mesopotamia.

  However, in and around Judea, the assimilationist trend was being fought by an identity movement. In the second century, the tension heightened between the Jews who embraced Hellenism and those who rejected it. In 167 BCE, the decision of the Seleucid king Antiochus Epiphanes to end Jewish exclusiveness by dedicating the Temple to Zeus Olympios provoked the revolt of part of the population of Judea, led by Judas Maccabeus and his brothers.

  The Maccabean chronicle stigmatizes all those who advocated assimilation: “It was then that there emerged from Israel a set of renegades who led many people astray. ‘Come,’ they said, ‘let us ally ourselves with the gentiles surrounding us, for since we separated ourselves from them many misfortunes have overtaken us.’ This proposal proved acceptable, and a number of the people eagerly approached the king, who authorized them to practice the gentiles’ observances.” And so they “abandoned the holy covenant, submitting to gentile rule as willing slaves of impiety” (1 Maccabees 1:11–15), to the point of marrying outside their community. When Antiochus imposed his “royal prescriptions,” “many Israelites chose to accept his religion, sacrificing to idols and profaning the Sabbath” (1:43). As a consequence, the Maccabees “organized themselves into an armed force, striking down the sinners in their anger, and the renegades in their fury” (2:44). These quotations show that the Maccabean revolution was really a civil war led by the Ioudaismoi against the Hellenismoi (in the terms of 2 Maccabees 2:21, 4:13, and 14:38); the former longed for their integration into the global culture, while the latter saw such integration as tantamount to apostasy.22

  Taking advantage of the disintegration of the Seleucid state, the Maccabees seized effective control of Judea. They established a fundamentalist regime based on the book of Leviticus, written shortly before. While neither of Levitic nor of Davidic lineage, they usurped the function of high priest (in 152 BCE) and king (in 104 BCE), forming the Hasmonean dynasty that lasted until the conquest of Jerusalem by the Roman general Pompey in 63 BCE. The Hasmoneans launched a vast enterprise of conquest, absorbing not only Samaria, but Galilee in the north, Idumea in the south and Moabitide in the east, imposing circumcision there. Galilee and Idumea were converted to the centralized cult of Yahweh in Jerusalem, probably by hardy Judean settlers. But the Samaritans, who considered themselves the true Israelites, refused to forsake their temple of Mount Gerizim for the Jerusalem one. During the Maccabean war, they had already remained loyal to Antiochus and provided him with an army (1 Maccabees 3:10). Hyrcanus destroyed their temples and sanctuaries.

  The Book of Jubilees, a text of Hasmonean propaganda, reaffirms the supranational destiny of Israel, based on Yahweh’s promise to Abraham: “I am Yahweh who created the heaven and the earth, and I will increase you and multiply you exceedingly, and kings shall come forth from you, and they shall judge everywhere wherever the foot of the sons of men has trodden. And I will give to your seed all the earth which is under heaven, and they shall judge all the nations according to their desires, and after that they shall get possession of the whole earth and inherit it forever” (32:18–19).

  Although the Maccabees’ revolt was accompanied by the rejection of everything Greek, their descendants unrestrainedly adopted Greek culture and customs, which led them, in turn, to be hated by nationalists, represented then by ultra-legalistic Pharisees (Parushim in Hebrew, meaning the “Separated,” which could also be translated as “Puritans”). In 89 BCE, if we are to believe Josephus, the Hasmonean king Alexander Janneus, after taking a rebellious city, “did one of the most barbarous actions in the world to [the Pharisees]; for as he was feasting with his concubines, in the sight of all the city, he ordered about eight hundred of them to be crucified; and while they were living, he ordered the throats of their children and wives to be cut before their eyes” (Jewish Antiquities XIII.14).

  It was under the authority of the Hasmoneans that the biblical canon was established. The two books of Chronicles, which incorporate the content of the books of Kings, are dated from this period. Opinions vary on the importance of the Hasmonean influence on the final version of the Pentateuch, the historical books and the Prophets. But all historians date from this period a large number of peripheral books, written in Greek for the most part. This is of course the case with the two books of Maccabees, hagiographies in honor of the founding martyrs. The book of Jonah, whose hero is sent to the Assyrian city of Nineveh to convert its inhabitants, also dates to the time of the Hasmoneans and their efforts at mass conversion. Some texts from this period appear to be efforts at syncretism between Greek wisdom and Yahwism, such as the book of Wisdom or Ecclesiasticus (Sirach). Others are actual frauds, such as the book of Baruch, which presents itself as a letter from the prophet Jeremiah to the exiles in Babylon.

  The book of Daniel introduced the new genre of backdated prophetic visions and dreams, which contributed to the prestige of the Jewish scriptures among unsuspecting Gentiles. Flavius Josephus relates in his Jewish Antiquities that Alexander the Great was impressed when, in Jerusalem, he was given a book that announced that a Greek would destroy the Persian empire. In reality, the book did not yet exist, and Alexander had never set foot in Jerusalem.

  The narrative part of the book of Daniel was inspired by a novelistic genre in vogue in the Hellenistic world. Young Daniel, selected from the Judean exiles to be educated by the chief eunuch of King Nebuchadnezzar, proves capable of interpreting the dreams of the king. He decrypts the premonitory announcement of the fall of Babylon, as well as the collapses of the Persian and Macedonian kingdoms, and predicts with amazing clarity the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes—a contemporary at the time of writing. Impressed, Nebuchadnezzar falls at the feet of Daniel and says: “Your god is indeed the God of gods, the Master of kings” (2:47).

  We may compare this to the third book of the Sibylline Oracles, a Jewish-Alexandrian fraud composed in the middle of the second century BCE, which makes the oracl
e of Delphi glorify the Jewish people; it did not impress the pagan Greeks, but would later be taken seriously by the fathers of the Christian church. The Letter of Aristeas to Philocrates is another crypto-Jewish text from the Hellenistic period, written by an Alexandrian Jew pretending to be a Greek in order to sing the praises of Judaism. He recounts, in the style of legend, the Greek translation of the Pentateuch (the Septuagint), which Pharaoh Ptolemy II Philadelphus had ordered and sponsored in person. From reading the translation, Ptolemy supposedly swooned in ecstasy before such Jewish wisdom, exclaiming that it “comes from God.” (Josephus takes up this legend in the twelfth book of his Jewish Antiquities).

  The books of Tobit, Judith, and Esther belong to the same romance genre as that of Daniel. The heroes are smart Jews who, having reached the rank of courtier, use their influence to benefit their community. The author of the book of Esther was probably inspired by the book of Ezra to invent an even more fantastical decree than the false edict of Cyrus. It is issued by King Ahasuerus (Xerxes), under the influence of the high court official Haman, vexed by the insolence of the Jew Mordecai, and sent to the governors of 127 provinces. It is thus formulated in the Greek version of Esther: “Among all the nations in the world there is scattered a certain hostile people, who have laws contrary to those of every nation and continually disregard the ordinances of kings, so that the unifying of the kingdom that we honorably intend cannot be brought about. We understand that this people, and it alone, stands constantly in opposition to every nation, perversely following a strange manner of life and laws, and is ill-disposed to our government, doing all the harm they can so that our kingdom may not attain stability. Therefore we have decreed that those indicated to you in the letters written by Haman, who is in charge of affairs and is our second father, shall all—wives and children included—be utterly destroyed by the swords of their enemies, without pity or restraint, on the fourteenth day of the twelfth month, Adar, of this present year, so that those who have long been hostile and remain so may in a single day go down in violence to Hades, and leave our government completely secure and untroubled hereafter” (3:13c–13g).

  Needless to say, though the issues raised by Xerxes fairly reflect the complaints that we find expressed against Jews in other Hellenistic sources, the proposed “final solution” is a fiction: no known decree, no ancient chronicle, nor any other evidence exists that any sovereign has ever contemplated the solution of the extermination of the Jews. But the motif serves to celebrate the salvific action of the heroine Esther, Mordecai’s niece, who shares the king’s bed without revealing that she is Jewish. (The rabbinical tradition says that Esther was not only Mordecai’s niece, but also his wife, whom he would have somehow slipped into the bed of the sovereign as did Abraham in Egypt with his half-sister and wife Sarah).

  Convinced by Esther’s charm, the king cancels the order to kill the Jews and instead hangs Haman and his ten sons on the gallows Haman had raised for Mordecai and his sons. Since a royal decree cannot be canceled, Esther convinces Ahasuerus to issue a new decree by which he gives the Jews “permission to destroy, slaughter and annihilate any armed force of any people or province that might attack them, together with their women and children, and to plunder their possessions” (8:11). And thus do the Jews massacre 75,000 people. Throughout the land, “there was joy and gladness among the Jews, with feasting and holiday-making. Of the country’s population many became Jews, since now the Jews were feared” (8:17).

  Every year the Jews celebrate the happy ending of this imaginary story by the feast of Purim, one month before Easter. Until the Middle Ages, they used to hang or burn effigies of Haman. Since all enemies of the Jews were then assimilated to Christians, Haman was identified with Christ and often put on a cross rather than a gibbet.23

  Scholarly research in “form criticism” has shown that the “romance of Joseph,” which occupies the last chapters of Genesis (37–50), belongs to the same genre as the novels of Tobit, Esther, and Daniel, and dates from the same period. To flee famine, the 70 members of the tribe of Jacob come from Canaan with their flocks to settle in the land of Goshen, northeast of Egypt. They are nomadic herders, and “the Egyptians have a horror of all shepherds” (Genesis 46:34). Joseph, a member of the tribe, is sold by his brothers to the Ishmaelites, then becomes a slave to Potiphar, a eunuch of Pharaoh. Thanks to his gift of dream interpretation (like Daniel) and his organizational abilities, Joseph wins the trust of the Pharaoh and becomes his chancellor (41:40). Having pardoned his brothers, he encourages the members of his tribe and obtains for them “land holdings in Egypt, in the best part of the country, the region of Rameses.” Responsible for managing the national grain reserves, he stores large amounts during the years of plenty; and then, when famine strikes, he negotiates a high price for the monopolized grain and thus “accumulated all the money to be found in Egypt and Canaan.” The following year, having created a monetary shortage, he forces the peasants to relinquish their herds in exchange for grain: “Hand over your livestock and I shall issue you food in exchange for your livestock, if your money has come to an end.” One year later, the peasants have nothing left “except our bodies and our land,” and so have to beg, then sell themselves in order to survive: “Take us and our land in exchange for food, and we with our land will become Pharaoh’s serfs; only give us seed, so that we can survive and not die and the land not revert to desert!” (47:11–19). Thus it was that the Hebrews, after settling in Egypt, “acquired property there; they were fruitful and grew very numerous” (47:27).

  The basic plots of the stories of Joseph, Esther, and Daniel share much in common: Joseph advises the King of Egypt, Daniel the King of Babylon, and Esther the King of Persia. Both the stories of Joseph and Esther focus on the influence that can be exercised for the benefit of the Jewish people, by a member of the Jewish community infiltrated into the heart of power. Joseph has ascended to the position of the king’s advisor by his ability to interpret dreams; while Esther, the niece of an official “attached to the Royal Court,” was introduced into the harem of the Persian king, where she seduces and steers him. Joseph is the prototype of the court Jew who, having risen to a position of public responsibility thanks to his practical intelligence, promotes his tribe at the expense of the people he pretends to serve while actually ruining and enslaving them by grabbing their money and putting them in debt. For all this, he is blessed by Yahweh and held up as an example.

  The situation described in the Joseph novel is consistent with the Hellenistic period. The rulers of Egypt at the time, having adopted the title of pharaoh and some of the accompanying customs, were Greek, not Egyptian; they did not speak the language of Egyptian peasants, an alien and exploited people. Jews, however, had been familiar to them for centuries. A secondary argument in favor of a Hellenistic dating of the Joseph story is its resemblance to the story of another Joseph that the historian Flavius Josephus situates at the time of the Ptolemies (Jewish Antiquities XII.4). This Joseph, a man “of great reputation among the people of Jerusalem, for gravity, prudence, and justice,” was appointed as Judea’s tax collector by Ptolemy after promising to bring back double the tax revenues of his competitors. “The king was pleased to hear that offer; and, because it augmented his revenues, said he would confirm the sale of the taxes to him.” Joseph fulfilled his contract by murdering several prominent citizens and confiscating their property. He became extremely rich and was thus able to help his coreligionists. Therefore, concludes the historian, Joseph “was a good man, and of great magnanimity; and brought the Jews out of a state of poverty and meanness, to one that was more splendid.” The proximity of the two Joseph narratives suggests that they derive from the same matrix.

  When reflecting on biblical literature, it is important to understand that it is not a product of the “Jewish people.” The romantic illusion that people create their national mythology has been debunked; a literature that gains national status is always the product of an intellectu
al elite patronized by a political elite. It is today admitted that the heart of the biblical corpus, with its code of laws and its “history of Israel,” is the work of a small group of skillful priestly scribes. They produced much of the Bible in Babylon, while jealously preserving their pedigree records, intermarrying (often between cousins or uncle and niece), and making circumcision a distinctive sign (it was not practiced in Mesopotamia).24 They developed a highly effective strategy to survive and thrive by infiltrating spheres of power. Even if the stories of Joseph, Daniel, and Esther are postexilic, they convey the same culture of exile inscribed from the beginning in the genetic code of Judaism. After having probably helped the conquest of Babylon by the Persians, the Judean exiles obtained new high offices at the Persian court, as well as military and financial support for their theocratic project in Palestine. The Torah is the instrument crafted by these master propagandists to subjugate and control the Palestinian population.

  By writing a book purporting to cover the whole history of mankind, from the creation of the world to its apocalyptic end, and a history rolled out by the hand of the Creator, the priest-scribes assured their book a millennial success; they made it “the Book” par excellence. They gave it, moreover, a semblance of unbeatable seniority by pretending it was written by a Moses who had to be situated in the thirteenth century BCE. Several Alexandrian Jewish authors even attempted (with little success) to bluff the Greeks about the age of the Torah, insisting that Homer, Hesiod, Pythagoras, Socrates, and Plato had been inspired by Moses. This is the case with Aristobulus of Paneas in his Explanations of the Scripture of Moses (around 170 BCE) or with Artapanos in On the Jews, where he presents Joseph (son of Jacob) and Moses as the “first inventors” who taught the Egyptians everything they knew, from astronomy and agriculture to philosophy and religion.25 The same extravagant claims appear in The Wisdom of Salomon, composed in Egypt in the late first century BCE, then in Philo of Alexandria two centuries later. They would again be taken up by Flavius Josephus in Roman times. Yet no Greek or Latin text from a non-Jew offers any evidence that these claims ever impressed the pagans. In reality, the Hebrew Bible is much more recent than is commonly believed. With the exception of some later additions, its final redaction probably dates from the Hellenistic period, a time of great literary production. It is therefore roughly contemporary with its Greek version, known as the Septuagint.