When the Macedonian Alexander changed the face of the East, the Jews were swept along with the rest of the loose-jointed empire built by Cyrus and Darius. Upon Alexander’s death, after uncertainties which the whole Levant shared, Palestine fell to Egypt, of which it was a natural geographical appanage as it had been for millennia before. Under the suzerainty of the Ptolemies the Jewish communities in Egypt received very considerable reinforcements, and the home-country became a real national expression, and rapidly attained a relatively high degree of material well-being, since the practical autonomy of Persian days was continued. Seized by Antiochus of Asia in the decrepitude of Egypt, Judea entered with full national consciousness into the heterogeneous kingdom ruled by a singularly fantastic royal house. A blunder in policy of the peculiarly fantastic Epiphanes provoked a revolt that was immediately successful in causing the prompt abandonment of the policy, and was helped by dynastic chaos to a still larger measure of success.
RUINS OF THE AMPHITHEATER AT GERASA (JERASH) GILEAD, PALESTINE
(© Underwood and Underwood)
The leaders of that revolt, the Hasmonai family, produced a succession of able soldiers. Besides the old Mattathiah and his heroic son Judah, Jonathan, Simon, and John, by selling their service dearly to this one or that one of the Syrian pretenders, by understandings with the ubiquitous Roman emissaries, above all by military skill of the first order, changed the virtual autonomy of Persian and Ptolemaic times into a real one, in which Syrian suzerainty was a tradition, active enough under the vigorous Sidetes, non-existent under the imbecile Cyzicenus.[[64]]
During all this time Jews, from personal choice and royal policy, had extended their dispersion throughout the new cities founded by their Seleucid masters. Until the battle of Magnesia, 190 B.C.E., Asia Minor was the real center of the Seleucid monarchy; and in the innumerable cities established there, Jews in large numbers settled. When Judea became independent there were probably as many Jews outside of it as within it.
With the Hasmonean princes—“high priest” is the title which the Hebrew legend on their coins gives them[[65]]—the country entered upon a career of conquest. Galilee, Idumaea, the coast cities of Philistia, portions of Gilead were seized by John, or Aristobulus, or Alexander, so that Judea rapidly became one of the important kingdoms of the East, with which no one could fail to reckon who became active in the affairs of that region. Rome had backed the Hasmoneans against Syria so long as Syria presented the possibility of becoming dangerous. But that soon ceased. By a strange paradox of history the Hellenized East found its last champion against the Romans in the Persian kings of Pontus, and when Mithradates was crushed, it could only be a question of the order in which every fragment of Alexander’s empire would slip into the maw of the eagles. The Roman liquidator, Pompey, appeared in Asia, and Antioch became a suburb of Rome.
The pretext for clearing their way to Egypt by taking Judea presented itself in a disputed succession. The sons of Alexander Jannai were compelled to accept the arbitrament of the Romans, with the usual result. The loser in the award, Aristobulus, attempted to make good by arms what he had lost in the decision. A Roman army promptly invested Jerusalem, moved by the patent injustice of allowing a capable and vigorous prince to usurp the place of a submissive weakling. The Roman general walked into the inner court of the temple, and peered into the Holy of Holies. He found nothing for his pains, but his act symbolized the presence of the master, and left a fine harvest of hate and distrust for the next generations to reap.
From that time on, the history of Judea is the not uncommon one of a Roman dependency. The political changes are interesting and dramatic but not of particular importance: vassal kings, docile tetrarchs, finally superseded by the Roman procurator with all the machinery of his office. Judea was different only in that her rebellions were more formidable and obstinate. But Rome had developed a habit of crushing rebellions. Simeon bar Kosiba, known chiefly as Bar-Kochba, was the last Jew to offer armed resistance. With his death the political history of Judea comes to an end.
The religious and social history of the Jews had for many centuries ceased to be identical with that of their country. It was a minority of Jews then living that participated in the rebellion of 68, and perhaps a still smaller fraction that took part in the rising under Trajan and Hadrian. The interest of all Jews in the fortunes of Judea must at all times have been lively and deep, but the feeling was different in the case of non-Palestinian Jews from that of men toward their fatherland.
Meeting for the study of their ancient lore in their “guild-house,” the proseucha, or schola, the Jewish citizens of the various cities of the Roman empire or the Parthian kingdom did not present to their neighbors a spectacle so unique as to arrest the latter’s attention at once. They were simply a group of allied cult-communities, sometimes possessing annoying exemptions or privileges, but not otherwise exceptional. An exceptional position begins for them when their privileges are abolished, and their civil rights curtailed, by the legislation of the early Christian emperors.