So the author of First Maccabees, a loyal supporter of a non-Davidic dynasty, puts in the mouth of the dying Mattathiah the acknowledgment of the ultimate sovereignty of the ancient house: “David for being merciful possessed the throne of an everlasting kingdom” (I Macc. ii. 57).
The certainty of this high destiny grew inversely with the political fortunes of the people. But when even the Hasmoneans fell, and Judea, so far from increasing the possessions of Solomon, found herself a hopelessly insignificant fraction of a huge empire, it was not merely the political side of the Messianic idea that fed upon its non-realization. Obscure economic and religious factors had long been operative, and all these raised popular temper to a point of high and, as it proved, destructive tension. It must always be remembered that those who undertook to lead the people against the Romans did not aim at the restoration of the Hasmonean or even Solomonic kingdom. The establishment of a throne in Jerusalem was the first step of that triumphant march through the world which would inaugurate the reign of the God-anointed son of David. The Judean zealots fought for no mean prize.
The Jews who came into contact with Greeks and Romans were a people whose development had been continuous from the earliest times. The cataclysms of their history had produced disturbances, but no break in their institutional growth. To the civil codes of the ancient polity they were in the process of adding a new body of law based upon judicial decisions. To the ethical monotheism of their former development the popular mind was adding a belief in personal immortality and bodily resurrection. Folk-lore and superstitions on one side, and speculative philosophy on the other, were busy here, as they were busy everywhere, in modifying the attitude of the people toward the established religion.
Finally the Messianic idea was gaining strength and form. In essence a hope for future prosperity, it had united in itself all the dreams and fancies of the people, which had arisen in many ways. It became in the end the dream of a world-monarchy, in which a scion of David’s line would be king of kings and give law to the world from Jerusalem. The ushering in of that era soon became a great day of judgment affecting the whole universe and ardently desired to correct the oppressive evils of actual life.
CHAPTER VI
THE FIRST CONTACT BETWEEN GREEK AND JEW
Jews came into the occidental horizon as part of a larger whole. That whole was known as Syria. Unfortunately Syria itself is a very vague term, and is without real ethnographic or geographic unity. It might include Mesopotamia and all the intervening region between the Taurus and Egypt. One might suppose that with such a people as the Phoenicians Greek dealings had been so extensive and frequent that it was impossible to call them out of their name, but Tyrians too are considered and spoken of as branches of the Syrians. The name soon became practically a descriptive epithet, more or less derogatory in its implication.[[70]]
The lower part of the region between the Taurus and Sinai was known to Greeks as Syria Palaestina, a name almost certainly derived from the Philistine cities whose position on the coast and whose origin made them familiar to traders. The Greeks knew, of course, that variously denominated tribes occupied the hinterland, but what little they knew about them did not until somewhat later get into the literary fragments that have come down to us. Perhaps they would not even have been surprised to learn that here, as in Asia Minor, a very large number of peoples had settled and fought and jumbled one another into what seemed to superficial outsiders a common group of Syrians.
The particular section later occupied by the Jews had itself been the scene of a racial babel. The Israelites were, by their tradition, expressly commanded to dispossess Hittite, Girgashite, Canaanite, Amorite, Perizzite, Hivite, and Jebusite.[[71]] The recurrence of this enumeration indicates an historical basis for the tradition. It is very likely that nations so named were actually subdued by the invading Hebrews. The fact that the tribes dispossessed are seven in number makes caution necessary in accepting the statement. Perhaps some of these “nations” are different names for the same group. Some of them, e.g. Hittite or Amorite, may be vague descriptive terms, like Syrian or even Hebrew.
Then there were the Phoenicians, representing perhaps the first Semitic invasion of this territory. Below them, the Philistines, “from Caphthor,” who are very plausibly identified with Cretans or “Minoans,” the Keftiu of the Egyptians.[[72]] During Mesopotamian and Egyptian sovereignty, Mesopotamian and Egyptian infiltration may be safely assumed. The desert never ceased to contribute its share of tribes. Permanent results of such nomad invasions were the settlement of the various Hebrew tribes—Moab and Edom in the southeast and Israel on both sides of the Jordan.